'Game!' Monty shouted. 'This is a
'I'm afraid it is,' Father Le Moyne spoke. 'Although some of my collegues would argue that. It is a game that is as old as time and earth itself; perhaps as old as the worlds we know exist in the galaxies, and those we can only speculate about.'
'Lordy, Lordy,' Joe said. 'I gotta go to the bathroom.'
Late afternoon in Upstate New York. Already the shadows were darkening pockets of landscape, creating gloom. Street lamps were coming on, and motorists were turning on headlights.
The chief medical examiner of McGray County was surprised to see his assistant enter the room. 'I thought you were going home, Max.'
'Changed my mind,' the young assistant replied.
'My wife is out of town and I thought I'd try to catch up on the backlog of work we have piled up.'
'Ah, youth,' the M.E. said, leaning back in his chair. 'I keep forgetting how it is to be young.'
'Fannnntastic!' Max grinned.
The M.E. laughed. 'I said young, Max, not over the hill.' He stood up, found his topcoat, and shrugged his way in it. 'Ridiculous to be working on Saturday. I'm going home.'
'See you Monday, John,' Max said.
The door hissed. The room was silent, sterile. Max worked at paperwork for a time, but found his mind kept wandering back to the paramedics. Something very odd about them. Very strange. He could not concentrate for thinking about them. So pale and seemingly bloodless. Max finally tossed his ballpoint to the desk in frustration and walked into the cooler room.
Max looked at the vaults containing the backlog of cadavers and then walked to the center vault, pulling it open. He pulled out the sliding tray and stood looking for a moment at the sheet-covered paramedic. Max flipped back the sheet. He leaned closer to get a better look at the marks on the man's neck. Max remained in position, in numb shock, as the man's eyes opened. Hands suddenly grabbed the young doctor's neck and face, pulling him forward. Max struggled for footing on the tile floor, his leather-soled shoes slipping. He could not yell, for his mouth was held tightly together by hands that seemed to possess superhuman strength. Max felt the hands that gripped him pulling his face closer, closer. The paramedic's breath stank of the dead, the breath putrid and evil- smelling.
Max cut frantic eyes downward. He could see the red gaping mouth of the dead man, opening and closing as if in anticipation of the bloodless lips touching living flesh.
Max tried to scream as the hps pulled back, exposing fangs where there were once normal teeth. The undead pulled the living closer, then lunged upward, his mouth closing on Max's neck, fangs sinking into the young M.E.'s neck. He drank and sucked greedily, while Max slowly felt life—as he knew life—leave him. His heart began to strain and convulse in his chest as life-sustaining blood was pulled from him.
The paramedic staggered from the coolness of the mat and allowed Max to slump, still alive, to the tile floor. He opened the cooler containing the body of his friend. The dead man opened his eyes and smiled, looking up into the pale face of living death. He was helped from the mat and the two men lurched toward Max. There, the second paramedic drank thirstily, draining the blood from the young M.E.
Both men smacked their lips and grinned grotesquely at each other.
The paramedic named Dan Golden pointed to the dead—more or less—young doctor. 'Can't leave him here.' His words were pushed from his mouth, slurred while moving around the swollen tongue.
'I know,' his friend, Jerry replied.
Their voices were hollow-sounding, and their breath left the odor of decaying flesh hanging in the sterile room.
The men then spoke silently to one another, the thoughts of the dead yet living transmitted from out of dead brains. They began searching for clothing. They found surgical jackets and pants in a closet and hurriedly dressed. They placed the young M.E. on a rolling gurney and covered him with a blanket. They would get out of the hospital proper first, worry about transportation when that was accomplished. A sense of homing told them they must return to Clark County. To Logandale. To the Master.
No one stopped them in the busy hospital. The shift that had seen the dead men come in had already gone home. The new ground floor shift were busy, and gave the pale-looking men pushing the gurney only a brief glance.
The paramedics found an ambulance with the keys in it, loaded the young M.E. into the back, and drove off. Toward Logandale. Home. To the Master.
Fully dressed, if a bit rumpled, Jon and Patsy walked slowly out of the woods by the river. Patsy had responded even more the second time, with Jon's being much more gentle with her. She had bitten her lips as one shivering climax followed on the heels of another. She could not understand the strange new feelings within her. But she found she did not possess either the will or the strength to fight them.
'I'll pick you up at your house at seven,' Jon told her. 'We'll go to my house where we can be alone.'
'All right, Jon,' Patsy said. Whatever the boy ordered her to do, she felt compelled to obey.
'You will not go to your house,' a voice spoke to Jon. He knew who it was; all the pieces were falling into place. Everything that had happened to him over the past few months now added up. Jon was a very intelligent young man, and he had silently suspected something of this nature all along. He didn't care.
'You and your recently deflowered young lady friend will come to the Giddon house. You will be there at nine o'clock. Do not be early, do not be late.'
'As you command,' Jon replied. He glanced at Patsy. She was hearing none of the conversation.
'You do not seem to be overly concerned about silent messages, young man.'
'I'm not. I don't care.'
