He screamed; and even as he screamed, the lights flickered back on.
And as they flickered back on, and his scream died, he heard the noise of the Butcher’s feet approaching down the length of Car One towards the intervening door.
He let go of the body he was embracing. His face was smeared with blood from her leg. He could feel it on his cheek, like war paint.
The scream had cleared Kaufman’s head and he suddenly felt released into a kind of strength. There would
be no pursuit down the train, he knew that: there would be no cowardice, not now. This was going to be a primitive confrontation, two human beings, face to face. And there would be no trick — none — that he couldn’t contemplate using to bring his enemy down. This was a matter of survival, pure and simple.
The door-handle rattled.
Kaufman looked around for a weapon, his eye steady and calculating. His gaze fell on the pile of clothes beside the Puerto Rican’s body. There was a knife there, lying amongst the rhinestone rings and the imitation gold chains. A long-bladed, immaculately clean weapon, probably the man’s pride and joy. Reaching past the well-muscled body, Kaufman plucked the knife from the heap. It felt good in his hand; in fact it felt positively thrilling.
The door was opening, and the face of the slaughterer came into view.
Kaufman looked down the abattoir at Mahogany. He was not terribly fearsome, just another balding, overweight man of fifty. His face was heavy and his eyes deep-set. His mouth was rather small and delicately lipped. In fact he had a woman’s mouth.
Mahogany could not understand where this intruder had appeared from, but he was aware that it was another oversight, another sign of increasing incompetence. He must dispatch this ragged creature immediately. After all they could not be more than a mile or two from the end of the line. He must cut the little man down and have him hanging up by his heels before they reached their destination.
He moved into Car Two.
‘You were asleep,’ he said, recognizing Kaufman. ‘I saw you.
Kaufman said nothing.
‘You should have left the train. What were you trying to do? Hide from me?’
Kaufman still kept his silence.
Mahogany grasped the hand of the cleaver hanging from his well-used leather belt. It was dirty with blood, as was his chain-mail apron, his hammer and his saw.
‘As it is,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to do away with you.’ Kaufman raised the knife. It looked a little small beside the Butcher’s paraphernalia.
‘Fuck it,’ he said.
Mahogany grinned at the little man’s pretensions to defence.
‘You shouldn’t have seen this: it’s not for the likes of you,’ he said, taking another step towards Kaufman. ‘It’s secret.’
Oh, so he’s the divinely-inspired type is he? thought Kaufman. That explains something.
‘Fuck it,’ he said again.
The Butcher frowned. He didn’t like the little man’s indifference to his work, to his reputation.
‘We all have to die some time,’ he said. ‘You should be well pleased: you’re not going to be burnt up like most of them: I can use you. To feed the fathers.’
Kaufman’s only response was a grin. He was past being terrorized by this gross, shambling hulk.
The Butcher unhooked the cleaver from his belt and brandished it.
‘A dirty little Jew like you,’ he said, ‘should be thankful to be useful at all: meat’s the best you can aspire to.’
Without warning, the Butcher swung. The cleaver divided the air at some speed, but Kaufman stepped back. The cleaver sliced his coat-arm and buried itself in the Puerto Rican’s shank. The impact half-severed the leg and the weight of the body opened the gash even further. The exposed meat of the thigh was like prime steak, succulent and appetizing.
The Butcher started to drag the cleaver out of the wound, and in that moment Kaufman sprang. The knife sped towards Mahogany’s eye, but an error of judgement buried it instead in his neck. It transfixed the column and appeared in a little gout of gore on the other side. Straight through. In one stroke. Straight through.