But I prayed that no other car would pull out from one of the few side streets ahead before I reached the Eternal Peace. I know I wouldn't be able to stop in time. There wasn't a chance I could stop. I could hear the wind hissing past, feel the growing vibration of the car. My throat was dry, and my heart was thudding in my chest like a hammer.
The miles from Alexander's to my first sight of the cemetery were a blur of kaleidoscopic images and frozen thought. But finally I saw on my right the flat green acres of the cemetery. Less than half a mile ahead was the low gray building in which, now, the men and women were gathered near the casket, in which the services were about to begin—or, probably, had already begun. But the building was still there. Solid, in one piece still.
I started to brake the car, and the steering wheel pulled against my numbed fingers. A long row of cars was ahead, parked at the side of the road before the funeral parlor. Beyond them another car was coming this way, toward me on my left. It grew nearer with shocking suddenness, flashed by. It was a police car, only a blur in the corner of my eye.
I was fighting the wheel, skidding, easing my foot off the brake pedal and then shoving it down again. The tires shrilled on the surface until I was afraid they'd burn through and blow out. The funeral parlor was looming on my right, and cars parked along the street raced back past me, but slower now.
I let up on the brake, pumped it, hit it again. I'd slowed so much it seemed I was barely moving after the speed of moments before, but still I wasn't going to be able to stop in front of the entrance. I was going to skid yards past, and some unconscious mechanism ticking the seconds away told me the time was up. I was out of time. I could almost hear the ticking inside my head, getting louder and louder.
I braced my legs, spun the wheel right, and tightened the muscles of my arms. The Cad's right front fender slammed into a long sedan parked at the curb, jolted it sideways and forward with a screech and bang of metal. The Cad shuddered, rocked, came to a stop. Before it stopped moving, I was out the door, eyes falling momentarily on the watch strapped to my wrist
Two-thirty. Even in that fraction of a second I saw the minute hand pointing straight down and, almost next to it, making one little jump, one little tick, the second hand moving. It was already after two-thirty, nearly half a minute after.
I jumped to the rear of the dark sedan and then sprinted toward the funeral parlor's entrance. I could hear organ music, hear the full, round, gloom-filled tones pouring from the gray building, washing over me. I was covered with sweat and could feel the air cooling my face and neck as I ran. On my left, two men several yards away turned toward me. One of them was Samson.
The big double doors ahead were closed, but as I neared them one was opened—probably by somebody who'd heard the sound of the crash. The organ music swelled louder. There were four cement steps leading up to the door, and I went over them in one leap, shoes sliding when they hit the level cement landing beyond. A man in the doorway jumped back as I slid toward him, then I was by him, inside the building.
On my left dark red draperies filled an arched doorway. The deep, quavering tones of the organ—from beyond those draperies—suddenly softened as a man began to speak. I jumped toward the drapes, slapping them aside with both hands, and skidded to a stop in the chapel.
Right ahead of me were benches, row on row, filled with somberly clothed men—and women. They extended to my right for ten yards or more, and before the front row was an empty space beyond which rested the ornate casket. On a slightly raised platform the Reverend stood, with his mouth opened in speech and one hand raised in a gesture. His head turned toward me, his mouth opened wider, and the hand began to drop suddenly.
But by that time I was moving toward him. Because I had seen not only the heavy casket and the massed banks of flowers before and around it, but the body of Geezer. I could see part of his profile, the dark, mustached face—and the vast, swollen belly.
I must have known what I was going to do all along, at least what I was going to try to do. An aisle covered with dark red carpet stretched from me to the front of the chapel, and I was leaping down that aisle. The Reverend's last words still hung in the scented air. “...Here gathered, not to..."
There had been no other sounds. Not yet. No shouts, or even gasps. It took perhaps five seconds for me to burst through the draperies into the chapel, turn, and get to the casket. I slid to a stop against it, feet sliding over the carpet, mid-section banging into its metal side.
Before I'd even stopped moving, I shoved my hands into the casket, got a good grip on Geezer, and yanked him up.
He came up easily enough; that was the easy part. He snapped to a sitting position, and his head flopped limply forward.
Then there was some shouting.
In fact, there was a lot of shouting.
13
I damn near ruptured myself.
But I got it done, and I got it done fast. I wrestled him half out of the casket, bent my legs, gave him a big heave, and flopped him over my shoulder.
He was hard to hold, because of that vast belly of his, but I clamped both arms around him and turned. Toward the approximately seventy people gathered here in the chapel. Including at least twenty or thirty, and probably even more, of the most venomous, miserable—and astonished—hoods in the State of California.
The astonishment was only now growing from the bud of confusion into the full flower of befuddlement. Not only was what had occurred a most unlikely occurrence for this time and place, but it had actually taken very little real, measurable time. I had been moving about as speedily as it is possible for me to move, and, or so it seemed, even more so.
There was that one sudden, sharp, howling outrush of sound from several throats, the involuntary blend of gasp, scream, and shout swelling in one chord of flabbergasted ejaculation. And then—silence.
Silence total, frozen, absolute.
Not a sound, not a breath, not a whisper.
And in that silence I heard Geezer ticking.
He was draped over my right shoulder, the curve of his mid-section mashed against my ear, and I could hear him clearly, very clearly.
Tick-tick-tick ...
Shock roared through me like an explosion. My nerves seemed to twitch and writhe, quivering and undulating like thin worms stretched in every part of my body. Because, for seconds, or perhaps even minutes, I bad forced from my mind the consciousness of that bomb in Geezer's gut. I'd focused my thought only on getting here, doing what I had to do.
Now, though, the realization slammed into my awareness with physical impact. Now I thought again about that bomb, the pounds of dynamite—against my ear.
It kind of addled me, I'll be honest. Besides, I'd been under a bit of a strain to begin with. But I had the sudden conviction that my head was a bomb and its fuse was lit and I could hear it sizzling, only not with a sizzle but with a—
...tick-tick-tick....
And a strange think happened. The sound in my head went—
...tick ...
And stopped.
I knew, though, that it wasn't the ticking that had stopped; that each tick was a second or part of a second, exactly like those that went before and came after; and that the next tick would come no sooner or later than any of the others or all of the others; it was only my awareness that had changed.
Time—and its rush toward death, or life, or boom, or whatever—hadn't changed; but my perception of its passage had become wackily warped. Between one tick and the next was an arc of time which stretched fluidly, spread amoebically. I could see everyone and everything in the chapel clearly, and I could think about what I saw almost leisurely.
And I didn't like what I saw any more than I liked what I was thinking.
I was thinking: I'm killed. One way or another I'm killed positively. If my head didn't blow up, there were at least twenty guys out there who'd be glad to shoot it off for me. Assuming, of course, that any of them had shooters. I could see several who would—m
erely on impulse, with kind of automatic and for them perfectly normal reflex—haul out their cannons and pop me.
That's what they'd do under ordinary circumstances, and just for the hell of it, the sense of accomplishment, the sheer enjoyment. But now there was also that prospect of twenty-five G's—and some of these creeps would commit suicide for twenty-five G's.
I knew, however, they'd been warned that if they packed heat they'd be slammed into the cooler; and I was sure at least some of them, under the circumstances, would have been shaken down by the police before they got inside. So maybe they didn't have guns in holsters; but they sure had murder in their eyes.
At least, some of them did. Some of the others hadn't got that far yet in their comprehension. A few who'd heard my feet thumping down the aisle had turned with expressions of total disbelief, as if thinking nobody, surely, could be that anxious to peek into the casket; and they still wore those same expressions. Others stared with open mouths and bugging eyes.
In the front row, Cyril Alexander was halfway to his feet, mouth open, chin down so far I could see his tongue curling. Next to him—Zazu, shrinking back, hands in small fists against her cheeks. Then Clara Alexander, solid, heavy, scowling, looking pretty normal. Three rows back was beef-shouldered, vacuum-faced Luddy, looking as if he'd started to pick his nose and couldn't find it. On his left Stiff was springing to his feet like a corpse come suddenly to life. In the second row were two little kids who looked like twins, a boy and a girl maybe six or seven years old; next to them was a woman who might have been pretty when she wasn't screaming.
In back, on the left, those red draperies were billowed out, and Sam was just coming through them. And near me, close on my right, two burly men stood just beyond an open arched doorway. They were torpedoes, killers for hire. Big Horse and Sad Mick McGannon, old friends of Geezer's.
Yeah ... Geezer.
Tick!
It was over.
I was still turning. Geezer's weight pulling me to one side. Sounds crashed against my ears. Yelling, shouts and foul swear words, thumping of feet, pandemonium. Above all was the shrill, thready screaming of that woman in the second row.
It wasn't merely over; everything seemed speeded up, sounds high and squeaky like a record run too fast, movements jerky and too rapid. Men were popping out of their seats; Alexander jumped toward me; in that left aisle the drapes snapped back behind Samson as he jumped toward the front of the chapel.
I planted a foot, shoved myself toward the door on my right, toward that door and the two men just beyond it. I knew I couldn't get out the way I'd come in. And not merely because Samson—who would sure as hell stop me—was in the aisle now, but because, before I could get near him, at least half a dozen mugs would land on me—even if one or two of them didn't have guns handy, handy enough to shoot me.
The last thing I saw in the chapel as I swung around and started toward the door was Alexander coming toward me, his hands flapping up jerkily like puppet hands yanked by strings, Samson leaping down the aisle, and in that fourth row Luddy trying to get out, moving in one direction, and Stiff moving in the other. Then I was plunging through the doorway, my weighted body slamming into the two men there.
I went between McGannon and Big Horse like a pro fullback hitting a high school line. They spun, flew in opposite directions. Light caught my eye, and I turned toward it, to the right. I was in a narrow hallway. At the end of it a door stood open, but another door, screened, was closed there. Beyond it was the light, sunlight pouring down on the cemetery's green grass. I ran toward the light with sound bubbling wildly behind me, trying to pull my body erect, force it to the left to counteract the massive weight of Geezer on my shoulder.
I hit the screen door head on, and it splintered like brittle ice. A shard of wood pinwheeled in the air ahead of me, and I heard the crash as the door slammed open and another fainter crash as part of it swung around and hit the wall.
And I heard Geezer, too. The tick-tick-tick was faster, louder, booming in my ear, exploding inside my head. Faster, as I sprinted forward, trying to keep my feet. The tick-tick-tick became ticktickticktick and then TICKTICKTICK until it was one continuous roaring through which I ran, pain shooting up my right leg whenever it hit the ground, a fiery ache in the muscles of my shoulder.
Greenness danced and shimmered before me. But in the greenness was a splash of vivid color. Massed banks of flowers. And a dark scar in the green grass. An open grave. And because of that mountain of flowers it almost had to be Geezer's grave.
Whose it was didn't matter. The important thing was that it was a deep hole in the ground. And that would help.
It would help—if I made it.
The grave was still thirty yards away, under a hundred feet, only a hundred miles. I sprinted forward, forced my legs to move, kept them driving. There was a roaring in my ears, a hissing roar like a thousand little sounds blending, as if I could hear all the different pitches and whispers made by the blood as it squirts through arteries, veins, capillaries, the thudding of heart and swish of hot redness through the brain. And, like the conductor's baton tapping the podium or a skeleton finger strumming its ribs, like a stick on a picket fence, over and through and above it all was the TICKTICKTICKTICKTICK—of Geezer.
Of Geezer, exploding.
With every step I took, in my mind Geezer exploded, crashed open, erupted. As if over and over I heard that final thunderous booming in my ear. Twenty yards. Ten. I loosened my grip, let my arms slide down his body, got my hands beneath him, fingers digging into his dead flesh.
Five yards, and I bent forward, shoving, pushing him from me. I started to fall and gave him a last shove as I fell. He turned slightly in the air, sagging like a huge rag doll. I saw him hit short of the grave, start to roll. But then I landed flat on the grass, skidding, turning, rolling myself.
I had been running as fast as I could with that dead weight slowing me down, calling on every ounce of strength and will in me to keep going, and when I fell and the weight was released, for a moment I was as limp as a corpse myself. It was as though in that instant all the energy and strength left in me drained from my nerves and muscles. I tumbled, rolled, eyes wide, grass and sky and limbs of a tree and gray of granite-headstones spinning before me.
And Geezer, too. In a blur I saw him flop over, hang on the edge of the grave. But then I'd rolled again, clutching at the grass with my hands, trying to stop. And finally I did stop, left hand buried deep in grass, fingers digging so hard I could feel the nails bending back, tearing, and my right hand over—nothing.
It didn't register at first, didn't penetrate. I thought my right hand must be up in the air. But then I saw Geezer.
I was on the very edge of the open grave, right arm extended stiffly, fingers clutching, clawlike, as if I were reaching down for the corpse. He lay on his back below me, turned a little sideways, coat napped open, distended belly swelling beneath part of a white shirt, tie under his chin. His eyes stared, and strands of hair lay on his forehead like black seaweed. One of his eyelids drooped, as if he were winking.
It was a sight that, if I lived, I'd carry with me for the rest of my life; and if I didn't live I'd take it into the next world with me. I rolled away, got to my feet, ran from the grave. Ran—not very fast. I ran as fast as I could, but it was all I could do merely to move.
But I kept moving.
And there came a time, somewhere in there, when I realized I'd made it. I wasn't going to get blown up, after all. But ...
But by running from one grave it seemed likely, even probable, that I was running toward another. Because by running away from Geezer I was running straight toward—well, I can only describe it as what appeared to be an entire funeral leaping at me. They weren't taking me to the funeral, they were bringing the damn thing to me.
I was in such a pooped and all-gone state that when I realized I apparently wasn't going to get blown to little bits, a surge of something like elation swirled up in me. So even though I w
as now physically in a state approaching total collapse, I was mentally elated, even exhilarated.
That must be why the sight of approximately thirty bellowing hoods racing toward me struck me as almost amusing. I recognized Alexander, Luddy, Stiff—he was really a sight, running through the graveyard—Tamale Willie, the two mugs I'd bumped into on my way out of the chapel, half a dozen other familiar faces.
They were pretty well strung out, and scattered, but all running like hell, the closest man no more than twenty yards distant. One of the hoods had a gun in his hand. But of the others, at least twelve or fifteen were grabbing at their zippers. Down went one zipper, then two more, then half a dozen.
What's this? I thought.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
It was a sight perplexing enough to make the brain tilt. All those creeps clutching at their flies, grabbing at their zippers, here in the graveyard, here in the Eternal Peace Cemetery. It couldn't be.
But it could.
It was.
I understood.
With a great sinking sensation I realized what had happened. There was only one sane, logical, sensible answer.
I was dead.
Geezer had blown up. He had blown me up with him, into little bits. And this was:
Hell.
14
Dead.
I skidded to a stop.
I skidded just like always. I could feel myself skidding, and everything. It was just like living.
Maybe I was in limbo—or whatever they call it.
For millions of years I would carry Geezer, throw him into a grave, and he'd blow up and kill me. Then I'd be running toward murderous hoodlums who would blast me with .45's, .38's, .22's, club me with clubs and knife me with knives. Then Geezer again. And hoodlums ...
This is sure as hell no way to live, I thought.
But there was one good thing. If I was dead, that funeral couldn't kill me. How could they? I felt I was on the verge of a great discovery, but then something very interesting caught my eye sockets.
The Meandering Corpse (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 12
