Chapter Eight

Cape Peligro lighthouse

Amazingly, when he heard Al's warning cry and saw the approach of the one-man stampede that was Gil Burgess, Sam didn't run full pelt in the opposite direction to get out of the way. Instead, he calmly sidestepped, placing himself between Gil and the Fresnel lens.

Gil struck at where Sam had been, swinging at air and stumbling again. His movements were uncoordinated and jerky, like an old film sticking in the gate of the projector.

"Don't take your eyes off him, Sam," Al knew he was pointing out the blindingly obvious but Sam's instinct for self-preservation seemed to have taken a hike.

Gil spun round, looking behind him with a 'where did he go?' bemused look on his face. Sam circled round too, getting into Gil's field of vision and drawing him back away from the precious lantern.

"I hope you're not thinking of trying to disarm him, Sam," Al was afraid that was precisely what Sam was thinking. "You gotta stay outta range of that thing if you want to keep your skull in one piece."

"I know, Al," Sam conferred upon his friend a falsely cheerful grin. "There's never a hard hat around when you need one, is there?"

"You talkin' t'me, whelp?" Gil growled, squinting to try and bring the blurred image of the boy into focus. The boy didn't look as hideously ugly as before, an attribute that Gil instantly dismissed as being a trick of the light. Having found his target, Gil rushed at him again, raising his weapon high. Again, Sam sidestepped and Gil brought the handle down on thin air.

"Is this guy never gonna pass out?" Al asked incredulously.

This time, his stumbling brought Gil into a near collision with the locked store cabinet. Memories of what it held penetrated his sozzled skull and diverted his attention from his aggression. Using the handle as a crowbar, he levered it open.

Al hoped and prayed that in his eagerness to grab the last of his prized bourbon, Gil would simply drop the iron bar for Sam to retrieve.

If only it were that simple. The implement remained firmly in his grasp. Rather, he found the quickest, though far from safest, way to get at the contents of the bottle. Gil smashed the neck of the bottle against the edge of the cabinet, taking the top inch or so off, including the stopper. Heedless of the jagged edge, he up ended the bottle and let the elixir pour out like a fountain, tipping his head back to catch the torrent as it splashed around his face.

A good deal went down his clothes and spilled onto the floor but enough reached his parched throat for him to ignore the wastage.

Sam edged closer while his opponent was thus distracted, not really sure what he intended to do but wanting to bring this grim pantomime to a swift and satisfactory conclusion.

Seeing that Sam was determined to act rashly, Al decided the best way he could help was by testing his theory that Gil's brain was so juiced up it was enabling him to see, if indistinctly, the holographic image he was projecting. A decoy may be just the thing to give Sam the edge he needed.

As Sam got within grabbing distance, Al positioned himself on the other side of Gil and waved his hand in front of the old man's face.

"Hey, Burgess!" he yelled, "over here!"

Gil didn't pause in his imbibing, but he did frown as if unsure whether he saw and heard anything or not.

"Yeah, you!" Al waved his hand again and whistled as if calling a dog.

Sam saw and appreciated what Al was trying to do. He didn't know if it was working, but Gil was certainly not focused on 'Ken'. It was now or never.

Sam made a lunge for the handle, dangling from Gil's now relaxed arm.

Unfortunately, as he did so, Sam slipped on a patch of bourbon pooled on the floor. Losing his balance, he also missed his aim and floundered, reaching out for anything that would keep him from going down. His hands found nothing, as Gil pivoted his body out of range to look for the source of the annoying noises. Unluckily for Sam, his head found the edge of the cabinet door, which he butted like a stag in rutting season.

Recoiling from the impact, Sam's hand went to his forehead even as he struggled to stay upright. He was clearly dazed. "Oowwwwwww," he howled.

Gil turned back to seek out the new source of cacophony. The sight of the boy who'd stolen his booze once more inflamed his anger and he raised both the iron bar and the broken bottle in a threatening manner.

"Back off, booze hound!" yelled Al, trying to get Gil's attention away from Sam again so his friend could recover his senses.

Gil lashed out randomly with the bottle, narrowly missing slashing Sam's cheek. That was enough to focus Sam's attention away from the ringing in his ears and back to the little matter of trying not to get murdered.

"I don't want to hurt you, Gil," Sam told him, putting his hands out in a non-threatening gesture.

"I wanna hurt you, whelp. I wanna cut yer thieving hands off!" Gil made a huge sweeping gesture with his razor sharp glass weapon. Sam quickly retracted his exposed wrists.

Al rolled his eyes, "Just knock him down with a flying noodle kick, Sam, and be done with it."

"No, Al, it's too risky in his condition. He may think he's invincible right now but he's actually particularly vulnerable." Sam was getting cross with his friend's heavy-handed suggestions. There had to be a better way. If not, then surely he shouldn't have to play for time for much longer before the yacht was past danger. It seemed like this game of cat and mouse had been going on for hours.

Again Sam was reminded of a certain wrestling match. He'd had to stay in the ring, knowing that if he tagged his partner, the other man would die of heart failure. All the while his opponent had been pummeling him with barbarian brutality, Sam had yearned for the bell to ring the end of the round, the end of the match. Each minute had felt like hours then too.

Gil's head was turning one way and another as he tried to sort out the sounds in his ears from the ones in his head. His body swayed in protest at the dizzying movements. It looked to Al as if one good gust of wind would knock him over yet Gil remained tenaciously and treacherously on his feet.

For his part, Sam was struggling to stay on his. The floor beneath him was swamped with spilled bourbon and the soles of his shoes were wet from his previous slip. The blow to his forehead had left his head spinning. He would normally have been predicting his adversary's next move but, fortunately for Sam, he doubted if Gil had much of an idea himself what that was likely to be.

For this reason, both Sam and Al were now being cautious not to make any sudden moves or sounds that might enflame the anger of the armed assailant. Both in their own way were staying poised and ready to react when Gil finally made his move.

For a while, this stratagem led to Sam dodging just out of reach of the indiscriminate swishing and jabbing of the bottle in the general direction of various parts of his anatomy. If Gil had been sober, it would have seemed as if he were taunting Sam.

While this was going on, Al slowly and silently moved around to the side, wanting to be close if his diversionary tactics should prove necessary again and also wanting to keep Sam in sight to be sure his friend remained unharmed.

Gil continued his tirade, against "Ken" and against the lighthouse. As the lantern turned inexorably round it kept shining across the pair, casting grim shadows and reminding the old man of the purpose he'd embraced for so long and now resented.

It was on one of these rotations that things came to a head. Gil had just parried forward with the bottle and Sam had not dodged quite fast enough, earning him a small cut on the cheek just below his left eye. Al instinctively cried out when he saw blood had been drawn.

Hearing the sudden yell, Gil rounded in Al's direction and was blinded by the sweep of the lamp. In his alcoholic haze, it seemed to Burgess that the lantern itself was crying out in mockery of him.

The focus of his rage now became the lens and Gil charged toward it, screaming his hatred, still brandishing the bottle as his main weapon but keeping a tight grip on the metal handle in his other hand.

Sam knew the Fresnel lens would stand up to far more than the scratch the bourbon bottle could inflict. He was concerned that the bottle could jam in the cogs at the base of the turntable and, whilst the machinery would smash the bottle rather than the other way round, Sam could not risk there being any damage that might keep the light from its appointed course, even slightly. There was also the unacceptable risk that, once in range and having destroyed the bottle, Gil would switch to the heavier weapon.

All this was instant and instinctive in Sam's mind, leading him to sprint forward to intercept the whirlwind of fury personified in Gilbert Burgess.

As Gil struck out with the bottle, Sam reached across to deflect Gil's arm with his own forearm, successfully blocking the move, and by way of a bonus, jarring him enough to make the broken bottle slip from his fingers.

Before Sam could celebrate his victory, however, Gil had automatically thrown up his left arm in an attempt to counterbalance the downward thrust of the one Sam had attacked. Without even aiming to do so, his wild flailing caused the large metal implement to make sudden and substantial contact with Sam's skull, just below and behind his right ear.

Before his brain could process the information that he'd been hit, let alone what it was that had hit him, Sam fell to the floor unconscious.