First Blood (Rambo: First Blood Series Book 1)

by David Morrell

He came back to town all those times, didn’t he? And he’ll come this time too. Oh, he’ll come all right. “Hey, you’re trembling,” Shingleton said. “Just look out for Lester and them.” He could not keep from thinking about it. Legs stiff and hard to move, holding Mitch up as he and the others trudged wearily through the trees in the rain, he could not help remembering what had happened to his father, that Saturday, the six other men who had gone on the deer hunt. His father had wanted him along, but three had said he was too young, and his father had not liked the way they said it, but gave in: that Saturday was the first day of the season, an argument would spoil it.

The rule: everybody was to stay in position so that nobody would be confused about where anybody else was. But one of them, on his first hunt, tired of waiting all day for a deer to go by, wandered off to see what he could find on his own, heard noise, saw movement in the brush, fired, and split Teasle’s father’s head very nearly in half.

He strained to see if Lester and the others were in the dark trees ahead. If they did lose direction and shoot scared, he knew it would be nobody’s fault but his own. What were his men anyhow? Fifty-seven-hundred-dollar-a-year traffic police, small-town deputies trained to handle small-town crime, always hoping nothing serious would happen, always near help if they needed it; and here they were in the wildest mountains in Kentucky with no help around, up against an experienced killer, and God only knew how they had managed to bear up this long. He should never have brought them in here, he realized. He should have waited for the state police.

“I don’t think he saved his rifle anymore than we did,” Teasle said. “That’s the kid shooting.” There was one more shot, still from a rifle, and he listened for yet another, but it never came. “He ran around and caught them at the break in the cliff,” Teasle said. “Four shots. Four men. The fifth was to finish somebody. Now he’ll be after us.” He hurried to lead Mitch in the opposite direction from the shots. Ward balked. “Hold it. Aren’t we going to try and help? We can’t just leave them.” “Depend on it. They’re dead.” “And now he’ll be coming for us,” Shingleton said. “You bet on it,” Teasle said.

“The kid will probably wait for us at the cliff in case we didn’t hear,” Teasle said. “That will give us a lead. As soon as he’s sure we’re not coming, he’ll set off across the bluff to find our trail, but this rain will wipe it out and he won’t find anything.” “We’re in the clear then,” Ward said. “Clear then,” Mitch repeated stupidly. “No. When he doesn’t find our trail, what he’ll do is run toward the far end of the bluff and try to get ahead of us. He’ll find a spot where he thinks we’re most likely to climb down, and he’ll lie waiting for us.” “Well then,” Ward said, “we’ll just have to get there first, won’t we?”

“Hell yes, we’ll just have to get there first,” he said, looking at Shingleton and Ward, impressed by their control, and he suddenly thought that things might work out after all.

13

Next he sagged; Ward heaved him up; and then Ward himself heaved up, careening backward. The report from the rifle was rolling through the trees, and Ward was now on his back, arms and legs stuck out in a death frenzy, and from where Teasle lay on the ground, he saw that Ward had taken the bullet directly in the chest.

What about Mitch? Not him too. He was fallen into the mud, lying still as if he had been shot as well. No. He was all right, eyes opening, blinking at a tree.

“But he’s trained to fight like this.” “And I was trained for night patrol in Korea. That was twenty years ago, but I haven’t forgotten all of it. I might be slow and out of practice, but I don’t hear any better ideas.” “Stay here and wait for him. Let him come to us. We know he’ll come. We’re ready for him.”

Immediately he crawled up out of the hollow, to the left around the fallen tree.

It wasn’t Shingleton who had been in charge and made the mistakes that killed Orval and Lester and the young deputy and Ward and Galt and the two men in the helicopter and all the rest. So how could Shingleton understand why he couldn’t bring himself to let anybody else die for him? This time it would be just himself and the kid and nobody else, just the way this thing started, and if there were going to be any more mistakes, this time it would be just himself who would pay.

He wanted desperately to turn and go back, and because of that, he urged himself to go farther on.

Then it was seven-thirty and the shadows had merged deep enough to trick him. What looked like the kid was only the dark trunk of a crooked tree set far back in the gloom. A fallen log in back of a bush deceived him the same way, and he knew he had done the best he could. It was time to head back.

He almost forgot to let Shingleton know it was himself coming. Wouldn’t that be a laugh. To risk searching for the kid and then be shot by his own man. “It’s me,” he whispered. “It’s Teasle.” But nobody answered.

He circled the hollow and crept up from behind, and something was more than wrong. Shingleton wasn’t there, and Mitch was flat on his back in the water, his throat neatly slit from ear to ear, his blood steaming in the cold. Shingleton. Where was Shingleton?

Instead Shingleton called to him from some place on the right. “Look out, Will, he’s got me!” His cry was punctuated by a rifle shot, and that was all Teasle could stand.

He finally had his breakdown, running before he knew it, screaming, racing away, charging through the shadows, through the trees and bushes.

The cliff the cliff!

14

Rambo really had to admire him as he shot him again, through one eye now, and this time Shingleton was dead for sure.

15

He staggered through woods, circling he guessed, going nowhere, winding around and around until he’d be brought to bay. Already his knees were buckling. His direction was wobbly. He was bumping against trees, a crazy vision in his head of him in his office, bare feet on the desk, head tilted sipping hot soup. Tomato soup. No, bean with bacon. The rich expensive kind where the label said “don’t add water.”

16

He had figured to tag him several miles ago, and here they were still at it. But not for long. A few minutes now. That was all.

Then he stumbled and fell. He hadn’t done that before. No, he was wrong about that. He had stumbled at the ravine. Then he stumbled again, and rising to his feet, working on, he decided it might take slightly more than a few minutes before he caught up to Teasle. It would be soon, though. No question about it. Just a little more than a few minutes. That was all.

Double back. Maybe the brambles did not go far along the other end of this ridge, maybe they curved down over there.

His face stung from the gashes of the brambles. His ribs were on fire, his hands pulpy, his clothes ripped, his body slashed. And he had lost him, the rain coming down in a gently cooling drizzle as he lay there splayed out, breathing deeply, holding it, letting it out slowly, breathing deeply again, letting the dead weight of his arms and legs relax with every slow exhale—for the first time he could remember, crying, softly crying.

17

You bastard kid, I’m going to get away and kill you for this. Kill you for this.

Then it all confused, and then the sun was up, and through the tops of the brambles, he saw the sky bright and stark blue. He laughed. What are you laughing at?

A few more feet. Just try to do a few more feet. I get away, I’ll kill that bastard kid…tear him Because I’m a, but then the idea fell apart on him.

Can’t stop. Pass out. Die. Move. But he couldn’t move.

Worm. The kid. That’s it. He remembered now. He was going to fix the kid. I’m not as good a fighter. Oh yes, the kid’s a better fighter. Oh yes, but I’m, and then the idea fell apart again as he lapsed into the mechanical rhythm of shoes against furrow—push—one more time—and push—one more time.

And then he clawed forward and he touched something. It took a while to register. A wire.

Organize. That was it. Now he remembered it all. I know how to organize. The kid’s a better fighter. But I know how…to organize. For Orval.

For Shingleton and Ward and Mitch and Lester and the young deputy and all of them.

Fo...

I’ll cream that fuckin...

He lay there at the side of the road, repeating that over and over to himself, closing his eyes to the glare of the sun, snickering at how his pants were in shreds, at how bloody he was, the blood seeping through the mud on him while he grinned, repeating his idea, telling it to the state trooper who said “M...

PART THREE

1

The radioman wore earphones. “National Guard truck twenty-eight in position,” he was saying to a deputy. “Three miles down from the bend in the stream.” The deputy nodded, shoving one more red pin into the map next to the others along the south side. To the east, yellow pins showed the deployment of state police. Black pins in the west were police from nearby towns and counties; white pins to the north were police from Louisville, Frankfort, Lexington, Bowling Green, and Covington.

Before, at the hospital, Kern had shown up damn mad at him for rushing into the forest after the kid without waiting for the state police. “It’s my jurisdiction, and you took advantage, and now you can just stay the hell out of this,” Kern had said. Teasle had taken it all, letting Kern get rid of his anger, and then slowly he had done his best to convince Kern that more than one person was needed to organize this wide a search. There was another argument that he did not use, but he was sure that Kern was thinking it: as many men could die this time as at the start, and somebody ought to be around to share the responsibility. Kern was that sort of weak leader. Teasle had seen him rely on others too often. So now Teasle was here helping, but not necessarily for long. Despite Kern’s faults, he did worry about his men and how much work they could stand, and if he once thought that Teasle was in too great pain, he could easily decide to send him away.

“Sure, and that bunch in the woods might get jumpy again and take a shot at your men. Anyway, you’ll never round everyone up. Tomorrow morning there’ll be civilians all through those hills. You saw the way they’ve taken over town. There’s just too many of them to control. The worst hasn’t come yet. Wait until the professionals show up.” “I don’t know what you mean professionals. Who in hell are they?” “Amateurs really, but they call themselves pros. Guys with nothing better to do than chase around the country to every place that has a search. I met a few of them when we were looking for that little girl. One guy had just come from the Everglades where they were tracking down some lost campers. Before that he’d been to California helping search for a family out hiking caught in a brush fire. That winter he’d been to Wyoming after skiers hit by an avalanche. Between times he went where the Mississippi was flooding or where miners were sealed off by a cave-in. The trouble is, types like him never work with the people in charge. They want the power of organizing their own groups and going off on their own, and before long they confuse the search pattern, interfere with official groups, run ahead to places that look exciting, like old farms, leaving whole fields unsearched—”

“Listen. What I said at the hospital about the poor way you went after him.” “It’s done. Forget it.” “But listen. I know what you’re trying. You’re thinking about all your men shot and you’re straining your body to punish yourself. Now maybe it’s true what I said—that Orval might still be alive if you had worked with me from the beginning. But the kid is the one who pulled the trigger on him and the rest. Not you. Remember that.”

2

“They’re hovering,” he told the radioman. “Try them again. Make sure they don’t land.” But already the copter was setting down, motor quieting, blades whipping through the air in a recurrent whistle that came less and less often. There was a light in the cockpit, and Teasle saw a man climb out, and from the bearing of this man as he walked across the field toward the truck, steady and lithe and straight, Teasle knew even without being able to make out his clothes that this was no reporter, nor any state policeman coming back with motor trouble. This was the man he had sent for.

“I’m Teasle.” “Well, I’m Col. Sam Trautman,” he said. “I’ve come about my boy.”

“You sound almost proud of him,” Teasle said. “Do I? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. It’s just that he’s the best student we ever turned out, and things would certainly be wrong with the school if he hadn’t put up a good fight.”