The Last Place on Earth | Page 6

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 for a second. He had done that before when he deflected Nancy's aim. But he couldn't resist Candle for long. Why hadn't Candle made him turn around and come back?
Candle's control of him had seemed to stop when he got inside the cab of the truck. Could it be that the metal shield of the cab could protect an Earthling from the strange mental powers of the creature from another planet which was inhabiting the body of Doc Candle?
Collins shook his head.
More likely Candle was doing this just to get his hopes up. He probably would seize control of him any time he wanted to. But Collins decided to go on playing it as if he did have some hope, as if a shield of metal could protect him from Candle's control. Otherwise ... there was no otherwise.
* * * * *
Collins suddenly saw an opening.
The steel mesh fence was ruptured by a huge semitrailer truck turned on its side. Twenty feet of fence on either side was down. This was restricted government property, but of course spaceships were hardly prime military secrets any longer. Repairs in the fence had not been made instantaneously, and the wreckage was not guarded.
Collins swerved the wheel and drove the old wagon across the waffle-plate obstruction, onto the smooth tarmac beyond.
He raced, raced, raced through the falling night, not sure where