A Question Of Time, Fred Saberhagen [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

      Moments later, the sounds of Tyrrell’s labors ceased. That was a sure sign that dawn was coming.

      Unless, this morning, he was quitting early to deceive them.

      “Listen!” Camilla had been lying as tautly awake as Jake.

      “Shh!”

      No more noise came from Tyrrell. Undoubtedly there was daylight in the east.

      Moments after reaching that decision, Jake was up and pulling on his clothes.

* * *

      The sun had still not cleared the canyon’s eastern rim when Jake and Camilla began trying to break into the little shed in which the old man kept his explosives jealously, if not very effectively, locked up. Camilla said that she was certain, or almost certain, that Tyrrell usually wore the key to the explosives store on a chain around his neck. But the long crowbar in Jake’s hands proved quite adequate for wrenching away the padlock and its hardware.

      Jake pulled open the doors of the shed and took out the box of dynamite, stubby sticks wrapped in heavy, waxy paper that bore red warning labels. For a moment his heart sank as he thought the necessary blasting caps must have been hidden elsewhere; but no, there they were, another box, printed with warnings, way back on the top shelf. And there on the same shelf as the caps was the wire, several big spools of it; and down in the bottom of the cabinet the electric blasting machine, a little square box with a big handle sticking up on top, newer-looking than the one the CCC used.

      Why hadn’t the old man locked this stuff up more securely. He supposed it was because Tyrrell didn’t think his current slaves would have the wit and the nerve to do what they were doing.

      Now Jake could hear Camilla’s hurrying footsteps. She had already drawn kerosene from the drum behind the house, and she was carrying two containers full of the smelly liquid when she met Jake on the way to the little cave across the creek where Tyrrell was supposed to sleep. One container was the two-gallon can normally used to bring kerosene to the house and fill the lamps, the other their biggest cooking pot.

      The plan, worked out over a period of days, was to drench the sleeping vampire with kerosene, running the liquid in on him with hoses or a length of metal pipe. Then they would use dynamite in an attempt to blast Edgar out of his snug sunless hiding place—the blast, Jake calculated, might itself set fire to the drenching liquid. If not, they would have to ignite the kerosene by tossing burning rags or torches into the recess.

      Jake started carrying the blasting materials to the slab of rock that shielded the vampire. Meanwhile Camilla was busy filling all the glass jars she could find in the house with kerosene.

      As soon as she brought them across the creek, Jake took one, screwed the lid on tight, then hurled the container carefully into the vampire’s shady recess. The glass shattered quite satisfactorily, and the liquid splashed and dribbled inside the shaded recess. Cam and Jake looked at each other. As far as they could tell, the stuff had gone right where they wanted it.

      No reaction had been provoked inside the miniature cave. The smell of kerosene, oily and pungent, quickly filled the air.

      “He’s got to be covered with it now. He’s got to be.”

      “If he’s there. If he’s there.”

      “He’s there. He’s got to be.”

      Neither of them could be one hundred per cent sure of that. Yet there was nothing to be done but forge ahead. As Camilla tightened the lid on a second jar of kerosene, Jake wished aloud, not for the first time, that they had gasoline available.

      “Why?”

      “Burns hotter.”

      “This won’t work?”

      “Of course it’ll work. Kerosene burns hot enough. I wouldn’t be trying it otherwise. Give me that.” Jake hurled another missile, scoring another direct hit.

      Gasoline just wasn’t available, nor was diesel fuel. Tyrrell had no motor vehicles in the Deep Canyon, no need for the stuff, and so none was kept on hand. The generator ran on waterpower, and Jake had made sure that there was no auxiliary engine for it.

      He capped and hurled a third jar, and winced as this missile shattered on the stone atop the cave, wasting most if not all of the precious deadly stuff inside.

      Handing him the last filled jar, Camilla suddenly shouted a question. “Jake, goddam it, Jake, what if this doesn’t work?”

      “Too late now to worry about that.”

      “But what if—?”

      “You said you’d seen him hurt by burning.”

      Camilla shuddered. “No, what I said was I never saw him stick his hand in the fire.”

      “He’ll burn, he’s got to burn, goddam it. We’re going to kill him, one way or another, now we’ve started. We’ve got to.” He hurled the last jar into the cave.

      Their pitifully small collection of jars was used up already. Now it seemed to Jake that the jars hadn’t held nearly enough kerosene—it seemed to him crazy that he had ever thought they might. But no time to worry about that now. On to part two of the plan. A piece of garden hose taken from the little irrigation system was pressed into surface to convey the flammable liquid to where they wanted it.

      As Jake had foreseen, using the hose was very awkward. First one end of it had to be pushed over the barrier slab of rock, well back into the cave where Tyrrell supposedly was sleeping.

      (Would the eyes of the vampire open? Jake wondered. Would he see what was coming at him? You’d think he’d have to smell it, anyway, unless he was completely dead.)

      Then the other end of the hose had to be elevated, held high by straining human hands, while kerosene was poured into it by other hands, through the funnel which was normally used to fill the two-gallon can from the drum. Jake had to run to the house to get a chair for Camilla to stand on while she poured.

      Between episodes of these lifting