He was a step behind her as she sprinted down the corridor. He ran with inhuman speed, taking twenty feet at a stride and caught her at the end of the hall. He held he elbows pinioned, his hip against her, and grinned into her screaming face, which was losing all human semblance as he smashed her against the wall and threw his hammer-fist into her face, crushing the perfectly chiseled nose and lips that that crumpled like rubber.
Now he was clawing out her eyes, which were blank and white and rubbery. Someone was shaking his shoulder.
'Mr. Carsons, what are you doing? Why, you're waking up the whole ward.'
Audrey found himself looking at a ruptured pillow. A nurse stood over him.
'Just look what you've done. You've torn your pillow to pieces.' She snatched the pillow from his hands and bustled out.
The nurse returned with a new pillow. She straightened the bed and put the pillow under his head in a way that said, See that it stays there. She looked at her wristwatch. 'I'll get you an injection.'
Audrey lay back looking at the ceiling. He felt calm and relaxed. He must have had a nightmare. He couldn't remember what it was and it all seemed very remote and unimportant. Just a pillow. Well, he had a new pillow now. The nurse was back with a hypo on a little silver tray. He rolled back his sleeve, felt the alcohol on his arm—and the prick of the needle. GOM one quarter grain.
He woke in gray dawnlight and lay there trying to remember. When had it all started? In London with Jerry Green and John Everson. His first real habit.
He had chippied around in New York with cut shit but this was pure H dispensed by a woman doctor with a title. The Countess, they called her. If she liked you she would write for any amount of heroin and coke or both. She liked the 'boys,' as she called them.
Then, suddenly, the terrible news. The Countess was dead of a heart attack. The Home Office was clamping down. Time to move.
So Audrey, Jerry and John set out for Katmandu in a second-hand car that got them as far as Trieste, where they took a boat arriving in Athens in the middle of the summer.
The boat was like an oven. They finally found quarters in a hostel: a bare room with three cots. The proprietor had inquisitive unpleasant eyes. Everything about him said 'police informer.' But they were thin and the room was cooler than the street. The boys stripped to their underwear and sat down on the cots.
'I feel terrible,' said Audrey.
'I got some kinda awful hives,' said Jerry scratching at a red welt on his ribs.
'Probably just the heat and being sick,' said John. 'Let's see what we've got left.' He stood up and swayed and put a hand to his forehead.
Audrey stood up to steady him and silver spots boiled in front of his eyes. They both sat down again, then got up very slowly and took a little Chinese H and some cotton from the knapsacks. They cooked it all together and split it.
Ten minutes later, Audrey was down with Cotton Fever. Teeth chattering, his whole body shaking, he lay on the bed, knees up to his chin, hands clenched in front of his face.
Finally, he got two Nembutals down and the shivering stopped. He went to sleep.
He dreamed he was back in Saint Louis as a child. He was eating orange ice very fast for the sharp headache and the relief that comes from sipping a little water. Just as he reached for the water, he woke up with a pounding searing headache, his body burning with fever. He knew that he was very sick, perhaps dying.
He tried to get up and fell on his knees by Jerry's bed. He shook Jerry's shoulder. The flesh was burning-hot. Jerry muttered something.
