He grasped at the hatchet, feeling no shock but knowing that he was falling, thinking So this is how it’ll end, and he believed that he was about to die and when something crashed against the back of his head he thought How did he hit me there? Only maybe he hit me a long time ago, he thought, And I just now felt it, and he thought Hurry. Hurry. Get it over with, and then a furious desire not to die seized him and he struggled, hearing the old man wailing and cursing in his cracked voice.
He still struggled when they hauled him to his feet, but they held him and he ceased.
“Am I bleeding much?” he said, “The back of my head. Am I bleeding?” He was still saying that while he felt himself being propelled rapidly away, heard the old man’s thin furious voice dying away behind him. “Look at my head,” he said, “Wait, I—”
“Wait, hell,” the man who held him said, “That damn little wasp’ll kill you. Keep going. You aint hurt.”
“He hit me,” Jason said. “Am I bleeding?”
“Keep going,” the other said. He led Jason on around the corner of the station, to the empty platform where an express truck stood, where grass grew rigidly in a plot bordered with rigid flowers and a sign in electric lights: Keep your on Mottson, the gap filled by a human eye with an electric pupil. The man released him.
“Now,” he said, “You get on out of here and stay out. What were you trying to do? Commit suicide?”
“I was looking for two people,” Jason said. “I just asked him where they were.”
“Who you looking for?”