Eppstadt stepped away from the thicket, and from Joe. The serpents crisscrossed as they emerged, their beady white eyes seeking out some new warm place to nest.
“Are you going to help me or not?” Joe said.
Eppstadt simply shook his head.
“Eppstadt!” Joe wept. “For God’s sake get me out.”
Eppstadt had no intention of getting any closer to the snakes than he already was: but the goat-boy had no such scruples. He pushed past Eppstadt and grabbed hold of Joe’s outstretched hand. His strength, like his member, was out of all proportion to his size. One good haul, and he had Joe halfway freed from the thorn bushes. Joe screamed as his back was scored by the thorns, which had been pressed deep into his flesh by the weight of the man on top of him.
“Ah now, shut up!” the goat-boy yelled over Joe’s complaints. Hanging out of the thicket, poor Joe looked half-dead. The pain had made him vomit, and it was running from the side of his mouth. His demands had become pitiful sobs in the space of a few seconds. Horrified though he was-and guilty too (he’d come down here to help Joe; and now look at him)-Eppstadt still couldn’t bring himself to intervene. Not with the snakes raising their heads from the body in which they’d nested, still eager for another victim.
Ignoring Joe’s weak protests, the goat-boy pulled on him a second time, and then a third, which was the charm. Joe fell free of the thicket, landing heavily on his pierced back. Sheer agony lent him the strength to throw himself over onto his stomach. His back was nearly naked; the violence of the goat-boy’s haulings had torn open his shirt. He lay face down in the dirt, retching again.
“That’ll teach you,” the goat-boy said. “Playing with criminals! You should get some of your own!”
While he was addressing Joe in this witless fashion, Eppstadt chanced to look up at the man still sprawled on the bed of thorns. The two snakes had slithered over his chest and were now entwined around his neck. He was too close to death to even register this last assault. He simply lay there, eyelids fluttering over sightless eyes, while the life was throttled out of him.
“See that?” the goat-boy said. “So much for you and your tricks. Now I lost my toy and your little friend is dead. Why couldn’t you stay out of it, huh? He was mine!” The boy’s fury had him jumping up and down now. “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
And suddenly he was up on Joe’s back, dancing a tarantella on the mess of thorns and wounds and blood. “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
It was a show of petulance; no more nor less. Joe rolled over and threw the boy off. Then he started to get to his feet. But before he could do so, the goat-boy came at him, his step still reminiscent of some peculiar little dance.
“Get up!” Eppstadt yelled to Joe, not certain what the goat-boy was up to, but certain it was mischief. “Quickly!”
Despite his agonized state, Joe started to push himself off his knees. As he did so the goat-boy made a high slashing kick. Joe’s hand went up to his neck, and he fell back in the dirt.
The foot which had struck Joe was the one with the long middle nail, and what had looked to Eppstadt like a glancing blow had in fact slashed open Joe’s windpipe.
Both Joe’s hands were at his neck now, as blood and air escaped his throat. He turned his gaze towards Eppstadt for a moment, as though the Head of Paramount might know why Joe was lying in the dirt of a place he couldn’t even name while his last breath whined out between his fingers.
Then the look of incomprehension went out of his eyes, to be replaced with a blank stare. His hands dropped away from his neck. The whining sound died away, and he rolled forward. All the while the goat-boy went on dancing, out of pure pleasure.
Eppstadt didn’t move. He was afraid to draw the murderer’s attention. But then the boy seemed to take it into his half-witted head to go find some other plaything, and without looking back at Eppstadt again, he ran off, leaving Joe dead in the dirt and the man who’d come to save him alone in the darkening air.