The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (45 page)

“
Yes, Sir. No—well, I
swear...”

Grinner stopped speaking,
but when Belking remained silent Grinner went on, in little spurts
of words separated by brief pauses, “I swear I hit him...twice, put
two pills right through him just like he was a ghost...I swear,
I—”

”
Knock off the crap. At
least, it isn’t likely that big white-haired jerk will come back
here again. Not likely—but if he should happen to show up here, day
or night, no matter when, you’re dead if you screw it up twice. Is
that abundantly clear to you, Harris?”

I didn’t know if Grinner
had an answer to that or not, because before he responded I heard
the warm, mellifluous voice of Doctor Wintersong, saying gently,
“That Mr. Scott would actually attempt to return now is an
extremely remote possibility, to be sure. However, should he,
perchance, do so, and should you finally succeed in killing the
bastard, you would be wise to leave no evidence that he was ever
here, Harris. By that, I mean you would be sensible enough to slide
him down the chute, would you not?”

“
Sensible...ah, yeah, sure.
Blast him and burn him, right? You got it, Doc. Be my pleasure.” A
brief pause, then, “What’s with the broad, Doc? Can’t she
walk?”

“
Oh, she’ll be all right.
It became necessary for me to sedate her, but I
believe—”

Then the hard voice of
Belking again, interrupting angrily “Harris, you mouthy
sonofabitch, I’ve told you for the last time. Bag your goddamn head
about what’s none of your business. Are you going to control that
yap, or—”

“
Yes, sir. Sorry. Won’t
happen again, sorry.”

All that dialogue gave me
almost too much to think about. But most important had been:
“What’s with the broad?” That had to be a reference to
Dane.

My skin felt flushed, and
my heart had given a jump, started pounding harder. Dane Smith,
sedated. And still right here—but probably not for long. I stuck a
hand into my coat pocket, gripped the little socket wrench, then
decided no way. Slow; noisy; and suicidal. Maybe I could kick out a
couple of boards in the crate’s side, with some luck be out in,
well, a few seconds. Probably quick enough, given a little element
of surprise, but depending on how solidly those boards were. I was
afraid if I analyzed the possibilities carefully, I just wouldn’t
do it. And I had to give it a try. I bent my knees, preparing to
lie flat on my back, lift up both legs and slam them—

Before I could kick it the
crate gave one hell of a lurch, upward and sideways, then jerkily
down—which also described my own movement, or part of it. Already
disoriented, in blackness, and totally unbalanced by that quick
jerky movement, I went from a squat into a twisting flow, landing
on my left hip and elbow, and clunking my head solidly against the
crate’s wall on my way down. It was not a silent clunk. When my
head cracked against the wood, it made a surprisingly loud and
painful sound. The important thing was, I felt sure that a
stupendously expensive Nuclear Resonance Analyzer wasn’t supposed
to do that.

“
What the crud?” somebody
said. Kell, I think it was. No matter, somebody, continuing, “You
hear that?” A moment later, “Well, screw em, screw ‘em
all.”

Which, if my head was
still working okay after that booming clunk, meant Wintersong and
Belking must already be out of earshot. Apparently, I was right
about that, because I heard the whoom-whoom of a car’s engine
starting—another immediately after that, then the crunching of
tires rolling over gravel.

I reached under my coat,
gripped the checked butt of my Colt Special. I’m not quite sure
why, because I wasn’t going to shoot anybody, wasn’t going
anywhere. No point now in trying to crash out of this wooden jail.
Which was still moving, bouncing a little. In a few more seconds
there was a clunk and a thud as Grinner, with whatever equipment he
was using, lowered me not very expertly to the floor.

Then, “Georgie! Hey,
c’mere and gimme a hand. I can’t get this thing through the goddamn
door here.”

Kell, answering, “Hell,
Francis, I can’t lift nothin’ with this busted finger. Whyn’t you
just leave it—”

“
Goddammit, I’ll
bust—”

“
Okay, okay. Don’t wet your
pants, Francis.”

That removed any doubt I
might have had about who the two lobs were. But, also, Kell had
called Grinner “Francis.” They must be really good friends, I
thought. Georgie and Francis, how nice.

Then more bumping,
grunting, sliding movement as they muscled the crate a few
feet—somewhere. Finally a half-dozen swear words, and “Shee-it,
that’s good enough. Whuddabout a beer, Francis. Hey?”

“
Suits me. Didn’t think
them jerkoffs was ever gonna leave, but we can still flop in the
trailer and watch the fight.”

“
Yeah. Ten bucks Mercury
knocks Bunion’s conk off.”

“
I love takin’ your money,
Georgie. Bunion’ll kill that loser in the first round.”

They were jawing about the
upcoming Saturday night fights, shown locally on Channel Five. A
couple of heavyweight contenders were meeting, the winner earning a
chance to get pulverized by the champ. “Mercury” was a white kid
named Delbert Jones, alleged to be quicker and more slippery than
quicksilver. The other man, a black old-timer of twenty-eight
years, had been described by a local sportswriter, who wrote well
but couldn’t spell worth a damn, as, “Stronger than Paul Bunion’s
ox,” and the Bunion had stuck.

There were a few more
comments, getting fainter as Grinner and Kell walked out—out of
wherever we were. I heard the sound of a door being pulled
shut.

Then...nothing.

Inside my crate, the
blackness was total, absolute, as though light had never existed
here; but the silence wasn’t complete. There was very faint, very
soft sound somewhere, coming from somewhere, almost like the
rustling of far-away surf, or even the rush of traffic on a distant
freeway.

It was a strange sensation
sitting there, momentarily unmoving, in the almost-silent
blackness, and my emotions were mixed. I had wanted very much to
get inside the Omega Medical Research Center, among its ten
thousand experimental animals, its unknown number of virulent
bacterial and viral cultures, its serums and vaccines—or bugshits
and GOKs—and laboratories, offices, cages....

But my primary
reason—almost only urgent reason in the beginning—was because Dane
Smith had been here. And Dane was here no longer. She was either
with Wintersong or with Belking—I’d heard two cars driven
away—being taken somewhere. No telling where. Or why.

Curiously, that brief
thought of Doctor Wintersong was accompanied by an echo of his
musical voice, saying, “...slide him down the chute...” and
Grinner’s reply, “...blast him and burn him, my pleasure...”
Curiously, because at the time Wintersong’s words had registered
but their full meaning had not. I had been occupied with other
thoughts immediately afterward, of Dane, then of bullets
splintering wood “with terminal velocity,” jagged odds and bloody
ends.

Now, though, the good
doctor’s meaning became suddenly if belatedly, clear. Wintersong
had been referring gently to my cremation, to Grinner’s sliding my
corpse down a slanted and slick steel chute into Omega’s
incinerator.

That picture—briefly but
vividly visible against blackness before my eyes—shouldn’t have
bothered me as much as it did. Logically, if Grinner slid my corpse
lickety-split into the incinerator, I wouldn’t feel anything at
all, because I’d be dead. Corpses are, by definition, and my own
personal experience of them, kaput. No problem, not to
worry.

So, no, it shouldn’t have
bothered me; but, yes, it did bother me. Plenty. Maybe because, in
that picture I’d perversely invented, the corpse was yelling,
kicking, and twitching, scratching bloody nails on steel, shouting
as hungry eighteen hundred degree incandescent flames started
eating feet, legs, thighs...shouting and finally
screaming..

Well, I thought, I’ve done
it. I wanted to get in here, and by God I am in here. I have done
the impossible, I am, unnoticed, unsuspected, undetected, actually
inside the impregnable Omega Medical Research Center. Almost
flippantly, remembering fragments of a dumb poem I’d read
somewhere, I thought: They showed me the thing that couldn’t be
done—and I did it! I have succeeded! So, I should have been feeling
wonderful, right? So, why didn’t I?

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

I propped my pencil
flashlight in a corner of the crate, took the socket wrench from my
pocket and began unscrewing the four nuts.

When the last one came
free, I put it on the boards near my feet, then slid the crate’s
top sideways, gripped its exposed edge and lowered the thing slowly
to the floor. One of the long bolts fell out and wobbled toward the
wall. In a few more moments I was outside the crate and in some
kind of storeroom. There was a sharp almost vinegary scent in the
air. Enough light spilled under a nearby door, so that I could see
shelves along three walls, filled with small items of unfamiliar
equipment and stacks of cloth items, some green and some
white—maybe robes the workers wore, or towels; I didn’t check.
Instead, I stepped to the door, turned the knob and pulled.
Nothing; the door opened outward. I took a deep breath, and stuck
my neck past it, looked left, right, and let my breath bubble out
in a long sigh.

I knew immediately where I
was. It was apparent I was in the “bisecting” corridor Hank had
described—which I might have anticipated, since Hank had said it
ended at two large double doors in the building’s rear, next to the
loading dock. The dock where I’d just been.

When I looked right, I
could see those large doors, closed to my left, highly polished
ivory and white linoleum stretched away from me until it met the
east-west hallway I’d been in earlier today. Halfway up this
hallway, on my left was the large metal bin Hank had made a point
of mentioning to me. The burn-bin. From this angle, I could barely
see the metallic gleam of what appeared to be a metal plate in the
wall at this side of the bin but about level with its top. Probably
an opening to the slide, extending down into the incinerator which
Dr. Wintersong had made a point of mentioning to
Grinner.

I stepped out of the
storeroom, turned left and walked up the hallway over the polished
linoleum, heels squeaking slightly on its waxy stickiness. That
sour vinegary smell got stronger, was almost overpowering when I
reached the bin.

Now that I was out of the
confining crate, and the storeroom, the faint sounds I’d heard when
in there, like distant surf, were a little louder and, finally, in
part identifiable. I could hear the yap-yapping and barking of what
sounded like half a dozen dogs, another dog howling somewhere like
a wolf baying at the moon. And there was the higher, shriller, more
nerve-shredding cry of a cat—sounded like a big cat, in
pain.

Hank had told me that
most—but not all—experimental animals subjected to
experimentally-necessary torture or trauma made no sounds, did not
bark or wail or scream, due to the fact that their vocal cords had
been cut. I could certainly understand why scientists and research
physicians would perform such simple surgical operations before
experimentation commenced, because thousands of animals making all
kinds of horrible noises would unquestionably be disturbing to the
researchers involved, even possibly—more likely, probably—so
distracting as to invalidate some of their experimental results.
Certainly the few animal sounds I could hear, far off or behind
walls somewhere, but persistent, unending, fell upon my ears with
extraordinary effect, much like the effect that might be produced
by several chalks squeaking on living blackboards, or an audible
version of what you feel when you accidentally bend a long
fingernail backwards into the tender quick...a sort of shivering
discomfort beginning in ears and seeping into miles of thin,
twitchy nerves. I didn’t like it at all.

I put thoughts of what
might be happening to Dane out of my mind, or tried to, and walked
in front of the large bin. No question, that’s where the stink was
coming from. Part of it, but only part, was undoubtedly some kind
of bactericide or antiseptic. The down-slanting metal lid or cover,
its lower edge almost touching my midsection, was closed—more than
closed, the damned thing was locked, a padlock’s shiny steel U
looped though holes in the metal flanges welded to both the cover
and top-front of the bin.

Everything else I’d
brought with me was in my pockets, but I had been holding the
two-foot-long crowbar, carried along for a different purpose, in my
left hand. I shifted it to my right hand, inserted one end through
the U and started prying. Without any success—probably because I
was trying to avoid making any noise, which was clearly going to be
impossible. Finally I rammed the crowbar’s narrow end between the
two flanges, already weakened by those holes drilled through them,
and after a minute of prying broke the top one cleanly near the
weld. Cleanly, but noisily.

I checked the empty
corridor then half-ran to its end, where it joined the intersecting
hallway. No sign of life, animal or human, and the only sound was
the muffled yap-bark-howl of animal protest constantly twisting in
my ears.