“What the hell is the matter with you people now?” I asked. I did not have to fake a definite quaver in my voice.
“You know, each of you, why you are dying today.”
“Chicken shit,” Nicky said in a husky voice.
‘where can be no carelessness. None. Maximum
The Green Ripper precautions will be taken to prevent any premature disclosure. There will be no second chance for anyone whose actions could compromise us all. All orders will be obeyed, without question, without argument.”
“Chicken shit,” Nicky said again.
“Come here, Mr. McGraw,” Persival said. “Over here. Stop there. Fine. Now turn and face the condemned.” I was three feet from Persival, but I noted as I turned that Ahman’s gun muzzle followed me like an empty steel eye socket.
Persival’s voice deepened. “Dear God of wrath and mercy, take unto thy bosom this soldier of our faith and grant him eternal peace. We send him to thee now so that he will not further endanger the holy mission with which thou hast entrusted us, thy faithful soldiers in the army of justice. Amen.
His hand appeared in front of me, holding a slender automatic pistol with a long barrel. “Take it and shoot him in the head, please,” Persival said. Same tone of voice as he would have said, “Have some more stew, please.”
And the scenario was suddenly clear. I would shoot Mcky in the head with a blank, and my obedience would remove Persival’s lingering suspicion of me, and Nicky would be frightened into being more careful next time. Two birds with one fake stone.
“It’s ready to go,” he said. “Just aim and fire.”
There was no great need to aim. Nicky was per haps fifteen feet from me. If you aim a handgun with the same motion you use to point your finger at someone, if the barrel becomes your finger, you can hit a six-inch circle on the other side of the room ninety-nine out of a hundred times.
So I pointed and fired. It made an unimportant snapping sound. A dark spot appeared beside Nicks nose, on his good cheek. It snapped his head back a little. He made a coughing sound and sagged down onto one knee, then rolled over backward and rolled down the slope. I moved forward to keep him in sight. He came to rest in dead branches, against a splintered trunk, his back to us. One leg jumped and quivered and vibrated for a few seconds and then subsided. He seemed to become visibly smaller.
The life had gone out of him, now and forever. Persival reached around and tugged the weapon out of my hand and moved back away from me. ‘`Turn around slowly,” he said. This was not the scenario I had envisioned. I had imagined all of them crowding around me, Nicky included, whacking me on the back, welcoming me to the team.
Instead, Persival was chucking a magazine into the pistol. The slide had remained back after I had fired. So there had been just the one shell in the chamber. This man took no chances. They held weapons on me. Ahman had set his weapon aside and was collapsing an SX-70 Polaroid while Sammy examined the print as it developed. I re
The Green Ripper called hearing that tantalizingly familiar sound of the SX-70 a fraction of a second after I had fired and killed Nicky.
They were all curious about me, all waiting for my reaction. I could read a certain righteous satis- faction on their faces. I was fighting nausea and hoping I hadn’t turned so gray-green they would suspect how close I was. Nausea, and a tendency of the world around me to fade in and out. Killing is such an ancient taboo. Only freaks ever adjust to killing people they have known and talked to, except when it is to save their own lives. Discipline enables uniformed people to kill unseen strangers. Children can imitate something seen on television, but the aftershock can be deadly. I had killed before, and it has never ceased being a wrenching psychic trauma. As I sought for some reaction which would make me reasonably acceptable to these people, suddenly I lost control of my acquired identity.