Shattered

blade. Instead, he had been hit on the backswing of the first blow. He had taken the head of the ax, the three-inch-wide top of it, just below the ribs on his right side. There had been enough force in the blow to knock the wind out of him and to leave him with a welt and eventually a bruise. But that was all. There was no torn flesh. No blood.
        But where was the madman-and the ax?
        Doyle looked up, blinked tears out of his eyes.
        The stranger had dropped the weapon. He was pressing the palms of his hands against his temples, grimacing furiously. Perspiration had popped out on his forehead and was trickling down his reddened face.
        Gasping for breath, Alex clambered to his feet and leaned back against the wall, too weak and pain-racked to move any farther.
        The stranger saw him. He bent down to pick up the ax, but stopped short of it. He gave a strangled cry, turned, and stumbled out of the room, out into the night and the rain.
        For a long while, as he struggled to regain his breath and to overcome the pain which stitched his side, Alex was certain that he had been granted only a temporary reprieve. It made no sense for this stranger to walk away from a job so nearly finished. The man had desperately needed to kill Doyle. There had been nothing playful or joking about him. Each time that he had swung that ax, he had intended to sever flesh and spill blood. Certainly, he was insane. And the insane were unpredictable. But it was likewise true that a madman's violent compulsions were not easily or rapidly dissipated.
        Yet the man did not return.
        The pain in Doyle's side gradually eased until he could stand erect, could walk. His breath came much less raggedly than it had, although he could not inhale too deeply without amplifying the pain. His heartbeat softened and slowed.
        And he was left alone.
        He walked slowly to the door, his right hand pressed to his side, and he leaned against the frame for a moment, then stepped outside. The rain and wind struck him with more force than ever, chilling him.
        The parking lot was deserted. The green brown cars sparkled with water, all still and unremarkable.
        He listened to the night.
        The only sounds were the steady drumming of the rain and the fluting of the wind along the building.
        It seemed almost as if the events in the maintenance room had been nothing but a bad dream. If he had not had the pain in his side to convince him of its reality, he might have gone back to look for the ax and the other signs of what had happened.
        He walked back toward the courtyard in the center of the motel complex, splashing through puddles rather than walk around them, wary of every velvety shadow, stopping half a dozen times to listen for imagined footsteps following close behind him.
        But there were no footsteps other than his own.
        At the top of the stairs which led to the second level, in the northeast corner of the courtyard overlook, he leaned against the iron safety rail to catch his breath and to clamp down on the renewed thump of dull pain in his side and chest.
        He was cold. Deep-down cold and shivering. The raindrops struck him like chips of ice and melted down his face.
        As he sucked the crisp air, he looked at the dozens of identical doors and windows, all of them closed and lightless… And he wondered, suddenly, why he had not screamed for help when the stranger had first attacked him with the ax. Even though they had been clear at the back of the motel, and even though the thunder of rain and wind was a blanket over other sounds, his voice would have carried into these rooms, would have awakened these people. if he screamed as loudly as he could, surely someone would have to come to see what was wrong. Someone would have called the police. But he had been so frightened that the thought of crying out for help had never occurred to him. The battle had been strangely noiseless, a nightmare of nearly silent thrust and counterthrust which had not reached the motel guests.
        And then, remembering various newspaper stories he had read, accounts of the average man's indifference to the commission of a rape or murder in front of his eyes, Doyle wondered if anyone would have answered his call for help? Or would they all have turned and put pillows over their heads? Would these people in these identical rooms have reacted