The Last Place on Earth | Page 6

had been imagining things.
"Doc, you take a look at her," Collins begged.
The old man vibrated over to the stretcher and looked down. The girl
twisted in pain, throwing her head back, spilling her hair over the head
of the stretcher.

"Rigor mortis," Doc Candle diagnosed, with a wink to Collins.
"No, Doc! She needs a doctor, blood transfusions...."
* * * * *
"Nonsense," Candle snapped. "I'll take her in my black wagon up to my
place, put her in the tiled basement. I'll pump out all her blood and
flush it down the commode. Then I'll feed in Formaldi-Forever Number
Zero. Formaldi-Forever, for the Blush of Death. 'When you think of a
Pretty Girl, think of Formaldi-Forever, the Way to Preserve that
Beauty.' Then I'll take a needle and some silk thread and just a few
stitches on the eyelids and around the mouth...."
"Doc, will you...?" Michaels said faintly.
"Of course. I just wanted to show Sam how foolish he was in saying the
Beloved was still alive."
Nancy kicked one leg off the stretcher and Candle picked it up and
tucked it back in.
"Ed, if you'd just turn around and look." Collins said.
"I don't want to have to look at your face, you murdering son. You
make me, you say one more word, and I'll turn around and shoot you
between the eyes."
Doc Candle nodded. Collins knew then that Michaels really would
shoot him in the head if he said anything more, so he kept quiet.
Candle held the door. They managed to get the stretcher down the back
steps, and right into the black panel truck. They fitted the stretcher into
the special sockets for it, and Doc Candle closed the double doors and
slapped his dry palm down on the sealing crevice.
Instantly, there was an answering knock from inside the truck, a dull
echo.

* * * * *
"Didn't you hear that?" Collins asked.
"Hear what?" Michaels said.
"What are you hearing now, Sam?" Candle inquired solicitously.
"Oh. Sure," Michaels said. "Kind of a voice, wasn't it, Sam? Didn't
understand what it said. Wasn't listening too close, not like you."
Thud-thud-thump-thud.
"No voice," Collins whispered. "That infernal sound, don't you hear it,
Ed?"
"I must hurry along," the undertaker said. "Must get ready to work on
Nancy, get her ready for her parents to see."
"All right, Doc. I'll take care of Sam."
"Where you going to jail me, Ed?" Collins asked, his eyes on the closed
truck doors. "In your storeroom like you did Hank Petrie?"
Michaels' face suddenly began to work. "Jail? Jail you? Jail's too good
for you. Doc, have you got a tow rope in that truck?"
Ed Michaels was the best shot in town, probably one of the best
marksmen in the world. He had been in the Olympics about thirty years
ago. He was Waraxe's one claim to fame. But he wasn't a cowboy. He
wasn't a fast draw.
Collins put all of his weight behind his left fist and landed it on the
point of Michaels' jaw, just the way he used to do when gangs of boys
jumped onto him.
[Illustration]
Michaels sprawled out, spread-eagled.

Then Collins wanted to take the revolver out of Ed's belt, and press it
into Ed's hand, curling his fingers around the grip and over the trigger,
and then he wanted to shake Ed awake, slap his face and shake him....
Collins spun around, clawed open the door to the truck cab and threw
himself behind the steering wheel.
He stopped wanting to make Ed Michaels shoot him.
He flipped the ignition switch, levered the floor shift and drove away.
And he was going to drive on and on and on and on.
And on and on and on.

IV
Collins turned onto the old McHenty blacktop, his foot pressed to the
floorboards. Ed Michaels didn't own a car; he would have to borrow
one from somebody. That would take time. Maybe Candle would give
him his hearse to use to follow the Black Rachel.
Trees, fences, barns whizzed past the windows of the cab and then the
steel link-mesh fence took up, the fence surrounding the New Kansas
National Spaceport. Behind it, further from town, some of the concrete
had been poured and the horizon was a remote, sterile gray sweep.
The McHenty Road would soon be closed to civilian traffic. But right
now the government wanted people to drive along and see that the
spaceship was nothing terrible, nothing to fear.
The girl, Nancy Comstock, was alive in the back. He knew that. But he
couldn't stop to prove it or to help her. Candle would make them lynch
him first.
Why hadn't Candle stopped him from getting away?

He had managed to break his control