Ice Claw

“I’ll explain later.” Max hauled him out of bed, with Sayid trying to help. He got him into the wheelchair, raised the leg support and stuffed a blanket around him. Sayid’s head nodded onto his chest. Max tugged Sayid’s hair. His head snapped up again.

“It’s OK! I’m awake!” Sayid slurred.

Max opened the cupboard and dumped Sayid’s clothes and boots onto the bed. He bundled them into the cotton blanket and shoved it onto Sayid’s lap. He realized that if Sayid fell asleep again he’d slide out of the wheelchair. Tearing a length of sheet, he wrapped it beneath Sayid’s armpits, tying him securely.

Max heard the hum of the elevator. Someone was coming.

Grabbing the two crutches, he jammed one down the side of the torn sheet binding and locked the support grip of the other onto Sayid’s arm.

“Sayid, listen. You’ve got to stay awake long enough to shove open all the doors with that crutch, otherwise your foot’s gonna get clobbered when we go through them. Ready?”

Sayid nodded, licked his dry lips. “Water,” he croaked.

Max held the water carafe to Sayid’s lips and let him guzzle a few mouthfuls.

“That’s enough, mate. You’re not a camel and there’re no toilet stops,” Max said.

A quick glance out of the door told him the coast was clear. He pushed the wheelchair into the corridor, turned away from the main elevator and aimed straight for the left-hand side of two big swing doors. He heard the elevator stop and the floor signal ping.

“Here we go! Hold on!”

Sayid gripped the battering-ram crutch. They hit the door. The long corridor on the other side was a cluttered service area. There were a few wheelchairs, a couple of trolleys and a left-hand bend to negotiate. But Max could not get around the corner. Someone had jammed a cleaning wagon full of disinfectant and mops across the corridor, using it as a last place to park its awkward bulk. Max had seen the sign for the service elevator, but this way of escape was blocked.

He looked over his shoulder. Whoever had been on their way up must, by now, be close to Sayid’s room.

“Hang on a minute, Sayid.”

Max ran back to the double doors, peered through the laser-thin crack and saw the approaching figure of the stubble-faced man. His bulk and size looked out of place in the clinical sterility of the hospital. Max reasoned he had convinced the nursing staff to let him in. Maybe he’d told them he was a relative. Whatever ruse he’d used it didn’t matter-he was here. The night nurse accompanied him, and Max heard her say, “The boy has already discharged himself … but his friend is still here.” The man stayed in the corridor as the nurse stepped into Sayid’s room.

The man waited. Max held his breath. He could hear the soft creak of the man’s leather jacket as it strained to hold his muscles. The dark face turned and looked directly at the double doors. Where Max crouched was a darker area than the corridor, but he knew that if he yielded to his instinctive fear of being seen, then that is precisely what would happen. If you’re being hunted, don’t move. It’s movement that gives you away. His dad’s words echoed in his mind. Max dismissed his fear. Stand still, he told himself. Tough it out. Give in to the temptation and it would cause a change of shadow and light. Anyone with a hunter’s eye would spot it immediately. And Max knew that the man in the corridor was more than a hunter. He had the look of a seasoned killer.

Max did not move.

The man turned and stepped towards him. Max readied himself. The best he could hope for was that he could ram the man’s shoulder against the double doors and knock him off his feet. He knew body weight like that wouldn’t go down easily, even if he took the guy by surprise. But he had no choice. There was nothing else he could do. The man was less than half a dozen paces away. Max held his breath and readied himself, the torsion in his body bracing him for a bigger shove than any rugby scrum demanded.

“Monsieur!” the nurse whispered urgently.

The big man stopped and turned to face her.

“He is not here. Perhaps the bathroom? It’s this way. I had better check,” she said quietly.

The cones of light above the man’s head darkened his face, but his eyes penetrated the shadow. Max held his breath, heart banging away in his chest. It was a split-second moment-was the man going to take those extra few paces and push open the door? In less time than it took to think about, the heavyset man turned and followed the nurse.

Max sighed as quietly as he could.

There was nothing else but to jolt Sayid down the flight of steps to the floor below. It was a slow, muscle- straining process, and by the time they got there Max felt his T-shirt clinging to his back with sweat. He prayed he wouldn’t have to do this down every floor. He turned the corner, avoided another cleaning trolley, and, like a welcome sign on a lonely night, the service elevator doors were already open. Max said a silent thank-you to whatever night-cleaning staff had last got out on that floor.

Max wheeled Sayid inside the broad-sided elevator. His finger hovered over the floor buttons. Where had the second man gone? The back of the hospital was most likely. Safest bet for Max and Sayid was the basement. That might offer another hiding place for a while and then a way out. Max pressed the button.

The doors shuddered closed and the creaky elevator graunched its way down. When it finally groaned to a halt, a maze of service corridors faced Max and Sayid. Air-duct pipes ran along the ceiling, and licorice-twisted cables, color-coded red, green and blue, clung to the rough cement roof. A choice had to be made.

“What do you reckon, Sayid? There should be an under-ground parking garage for the ambulances somewhere … left, right or center?”

Sayid’s head nodded onto his chest again.

“I’ll take that as a yes then to all of the above-and take potluck,” Max said.

He pushed the wheelchair straight ahead, towards the darkened end of a corridor-more of a tunnel than anything else-but Max had smelled a slight whiff of car exhaust from somewhere, and he thought it came from that direction.

No sooner had he made the decision than he heard someone push the bar on a fire door a couple of floors above. He waited a second. He listened. Nothing. But then there was an almost inaudible footfall of a rubber sole catching the lip of a step. Someone was moving slowly down the emergency staircase. There were only a dozen steps between Max and the first turn of the stairwell. If whoever was coming down decided to move more quickly, they would see Max and Sayid in no time at all.

Max put his hand over Sayid’s mouth. His friend’s eyes opened.

“We have to hide. Someone’s coming,” Max whispered.

That got Sayid’s attention. A rush of fear pumped adrenaline. He steadied the crutch as Max pushed him towards the nearest door. Gently, they eased through to an older-looking corridor. A fluorescent ceiling light crackled and flickered over a linoleum floor. A different smell here. Not disinfectant. Something else. Max couldn’t put his finger on it. He stopped the door swinging closed behind them from disturbing the air-a sound that would be heard to anyone half listening. And Max’s guess was that whoever was creeping down those stairs would be listening for any sound at all.

There was no time to go farther. A double-tiered trolley stood in the corridor. Neatly folded on top were a rubber under blanket and a cotton sheet. Opposite, a door with a slide bolt and with a transom window above was the only other exit to be seen. A small sign read: MORGUE.

“Hang on a sec,” Max whispered.

He eased the bolt. Inside the room was a wall of stainless-steel refrigerators, each with a door big enough to slide a body in, and there was another trolley, like the one outside. It was obviously used for bringing bodies from the wards or, as Max hoped, from down that other corridor, where he reckoned the underground parking garage was located and where ambulances might arrive to deliver their fatalities.

Max knelt next to Sayid and whispered in his ear, “We’ll go in there. It’s pretty gloomy and there’s a trolley we can hide in like this one. You go underneath; I’ll go on top with a sheet over me. Chances are whoever it is won’t want to go poking around a mortuary. I should be able to hold my breath long enough to fool them.”

Sayid shook his head. “Not a chance.”

“This is no time to be squeamish, mate. Someone’s coming down those stairs and I bet it’s not nursey to tuck you up for the night.”