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Authors: Graham Masterton

Tags: #Speculative Fiction

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He parked up behind Samuel's Dodge Ram, jammed on the parking brake hard so that the Jeep wouldn't roll back down the slope, and climbed out. As he made his way up to the porch, several vehicles sped along the road behind him, on their way back to Trinity.

He walked along the boarded porch, and as he did so the front door opened, and there was Samuel.

‘Hi, there, Michael,' he said. ‘You came back a darn sight quicker than we thought you would.'

‘I'm sorry. I don't yet have the money to pay you for the gas.'

‘Oh, don't you worry about that, my friend. All in good time.' He sniffed the air, and looked around. ‘Whole lot of traffic out on the road tonight. What's that about?'

‘Armageddon, I think you could call it.'

Samuel gave him a complicated, narrow-eyed look, with his head tilted slightly to one side. ‘Maybe you'd better tell me about it. Do you want to come on in?'

‘That would be great. I'm bushed.'

As he entered the living room, where the fire was crackling, Nann came out of the kitchen with a wide smile. ‘Pleased to see you back so soon, Michael! How about a beer, or a hot drink, maybe?'

‘A beer, please. My mouth feels like the bottom of a birdcage.'

Nann said, ‘Sure. But I got a surprise for you first.'

‘Really? What kind of surprise?'

Both Samuel and Nann turned their heads toward the far end of the living-room. Michael hadn't noticed that the door there had silently opened, and that someone was standing there, waiting for him to see her.

Michael turned around, too. It was Natasha, smiling at him shyly, wearing a white cotton hat and a long white cotton nightgown.

‘Tasha,' he said. ‘I thought …'

He was incapable of saying any more. All he could do was walk over to her and hold her. She felt just as thin as she had before, and just as cold, but it was still Tasha, and here she was. She even smelled of that same flowery perfume.

‘I thought you were gone,' he said, at last. ‘God, that was some trick you pulled there.'

She touched his forehead with her ice-cold fingertips. ‘I came here to Samuel and Nann's and Samuel helped me. I didn't want you to think that you had to stay in Trinity because of me.'

‘But I might have left Trinity and never come back here. You didn't even leave a note.'

Natasha smiled and shook her head. ‘I knew you'd come back. You had to pay Samuel for the gas.'

She paused, and then she said, ‘You can still go, you know. I'll be fine here, with Samuel and Nann. They can be my companions.'

Michael shook his head. ‘No. I love you, Tasha, and I'll go on loving you until
I
die.'

‘Hooo-ee,' said Samuel. ‘Then you can
both
be ghosts. I'll drink to that.'

EPILOGUE
Siskiyou Daily News
,
Thursday
,
February 27

F
ollowing last week's devastating fire at the Trinity-Shasta Clinic in Trinity, medical director Kingsley Vane announced today that the facility would be closed for at least the foreseeable future.

Mr Vane and several members of his staff were lucky to escape with their lives when fire swept through the building. Seven critically ill patients were rescued by firefighters from Weed Volunteer Fire Department.

Weed police and fire investigators are working on the theory that the fire was set deliberately by a previous patient who suffered from a severe mental imbalance.

Mr Vane commented today that the intensive care at TSC had been ‘revolutionary'. He said that ‘regretfully, we have now lost our chance to become immortal'.

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