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out, but most of all, as his breathing and heartbeat stumbled, faltered, and
faded, he cursed himself for underestimating her . . . just what I Ching
warned against. How could he explain this to Marti when he saw her?
See the idiot cop, he thought bitterly. See him bleeding to death . . .
dying alone in a cold and dirty alley.
1
Rest in peace. Like hell. Death is not peace. It leads not to Marti, nor to
any kind of heaven . . . not even to oblivion. Death is not that kind. Death
is hell.
It is dreams . . . nightmares of suffocation and pain, of restless
discomfort, of aches when one cannot move to ease them, of itches impossible
to scratch. It is hallucination invading the void, playing blurrily before
half-open eyes that are unable to focus or follow . . . imaginary hands on
him, patting him, then lights, footsteps, sirens, voices. Oh, God! Call the
watch commandeer . . . I didn't kill him, Officer! I'd never kill no cop, and
anyway how could I do that to him? I just took the gun and stuff out of his
pockets. Would I show you where the body was if I'd done it? . . .Garret ? . .
. Easy, Takananda. Garreth! Oh, God, no! . . . He hasn't been dead long; he's
still warm . . . Are there loose dogs in this area?
Death is hell, and hell is dreams, but mostly, hell is fear . . .
panicstricken, frantic. Are all the dead aware? Do they remain that way? Is
this to be eternity . . . lying in twilight and nightmares, throat aching with
thirst, body crying for a change of position, mind churning endlessly? Does
Marti lie like this in her grave, insane with loneliness, begging for peace,
for an end? No, not for her . . . please, no.
He hates giving up life, but accepts that in the jungle, death is the price
of carelessness, of error, and he has errored badly. Surrendering life to
rejoin Marti would be welcome. He could even accept oblivion. This, though . .
. this limbo? The thought of having to endure it for eternity terrifies him.
He screams . . . for himself, for Marti, for all the dead trapped sleepless
and peaceless and tormented in their graves. He screams, and because it is
without sound, unvoiced, it echoes and reechoes endlessly down the long, dark,
lonely corridors of his mind.
2
The horror escalated. A sheet over him blocked the vision of his eyes;
temperature had become all one to him, unfelt; and the lack of breath
prevented him from smelling anything, but he knew he lay in the morgue. He had
heard its cold echoes on arriving, had felt himself slid into a drawer and
heard the door close. Now he heard, had lain listening for countless time, the
hum of refrigeration units about him while he dreamed nightmares and wished
Lane had thrown him in the bay, too. Maybe he would have gone out to sea.
Better to be fish food than lie in this hated purgatory of cold and steel. He
prayed his parents did not have to see him here.
That was when he thought of the autopsy. One would have to be done. His
heart contracted in fear. What would it be like? How would it feel to lie
naked in running water on cold steel, sliced open from neck to hips, shelled
out like a pea pod . . .
Heart!
He could not cease moving or hold his breath, but his mind paused, waiting.
Yes, there it was! Like the distant boom of a drum, his heart sounded in his
chest. It squeezed. A slow ripple moved outward from it along his arteries. He
felt almost every inch of them. A long pause later, the drum beat again, then
again.
He listened in wonder. If his heart beat, he could not be dead. His body
lay leaden, held unmoving to the surface beneath him, but a silent cry of joy
banished the darkness inside him. Alive!
He drew a breath . . . slow, painfully slow, but a breath nonetheless.
He could have sworn he was not breathing before, nor his heart beating. He
had felt-how he had felt!-the silence of his body. What miracle caused the
heart and lungs to resume function? He could not imagine, and at the moment,
overjoyed with the sound and feel of them, he did not give a damn about the
reason.
But he remained in a morgue locker, naked in a refrigerated cabinet. Unless
he found a way out, the cold would kill him again. Could he attract attention
by pounding on the locker door?
He tried, but the weakness that had held him motionless the past-how
many?-hours persisted. He still could not move.
Could he survive until they came to take him out for the autopsy? He did
not feel the cold of the locker right now. Perhaps if he kept alert, he could
fight off hypothermia.
He wished, though, that he could change position. His body consisted of one
continuous, unrelenting ache, stiff from neck to toes.
By concentrating and straining, he finally managed to move. Like the first
heartbeat and the first breath, it came with agonizing slowness. Still, by
persisting, he managed to shift his weight off his buttocks and turn on his
side. Not that that helped a great deal; he still felt uncomfortable, but at
least the position of the aches changed.
He tried again to knock on the locker door, but he moved in slow motion,
and the sound he produced was barely audible even to him. He would just have
to wait for them to open the door.
He fought his way onto his stomach to change the pressure points once more.
He did not sleep. Certainly he did not rest, but in spite of himself, he
must have dozed because the motion of the drawer sliding out startled him. He [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]