The Name of the Game is Death (20 page)

I tried to smother the flames by rolling on the ground. It didn't help. I still had the gun. I hoped they could see me and were coming at me. I knelt up on my good leg and faced the highway, bracing the .38 in both hands. I squeezed off what was left in it, waist-high in a semicircle, blind.

I threw the empty gun as far as I could in the direction of the road.

There was a dull roaring sound in my ears. I tried to put out the fire in my hair. I could smell my own burning flesh.

The last thing I heard was myself, screaming.

I was blind for six months.

I may have gone a little crazy, too. I went the whole route: baths, wetpacks, elbow cuffs, straitjackets, isolation. I stopped fighting them a while ago. They don't pay much attention to me now.

I knew what I looked like even before I could see again. I could tell from the reaction when a new patient was admitted or a new attendant came on duty. Hazel came to see me five or six times. I refused consent for her admission.

They don't know that I can see again. That I'm not crazy. They think I'm a robot. A vegetable.

I'll show them.

There's a hermetically sealed quart jar buried in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, and another in Grosmont, Colorado. There's nothing but money in both. I don't need money. All I need is a gun. One of these days I'll find the right attendant, and I'll start talking to him. It will take time to convince him, but I've got plenty of time.

Plastic surgery will take care of most of what I look like if I can get back to the sack buried beside Bunny's cabin. With a gun, I'll get back to it.

That's all I need—a gun.

I'm not staying here.

I'll be leaving before too long, and the day I do they'll never forget it.