In the distance, he could see that the road had an everso gentle downwards slope. He just had to reach the apex of the road, and thenit was all easy street, at least until he got to the bottom. The rain continuedto fall. His head steamed in the night, and he knew this feeling... thisfeeling of having to escape or die. He had known it from the day he was born.It was what he was good at, escaping. If only these creatures had existedalways, then he would be a god among men. But in a way, they had existed...except they had voices, smiling promising voices. In the end, they all wantedhim dead, the ones with voices and the ones without.
Mort reached the precipice of the hill and hopped ontothe bottom bar of the cart again. The acceleration was slow, but he simplycouldn't use his knee anymore; at this point, he doubted if he would ever beable to use it normally again. The creatures gained on him, snarling, their wetshirts clinging to their bodies. Just as he thought they were going to outrunhis cart and ruin his glorious escape plans, he began to pick up speed. Theclosest creature made a last grasp for him, and clawed at the air beforehitting the ground face first in its exuberance.
Mort screamed in exultation as he gained even moreground. The wind on his face and every inch of distance made him forget aboutthe raw fire that was crawling up his leg. He laughed loudly at the idea that ahomeless man like him would save his own life by riding away on a stolen shoppingcart.
He was almost to the bottom of the hill, when he noticedthe truck from before had plowed into another car at an intersection. He washeaded right for it. The shopping cart was going too fast for him to jump offwithout hurting himself even worse than he was. Mort clenched his jaw and rodethe cart into the wreckage.
Chapter 27: The Mortician
Somethingbad must be happening up top. That's how Jim Jenks thought of the hospitalabove when he was stuck in the morgue. Twenty years, and he had never seen thisamount of carnage in such a short amount of time. Thank God the city wasn't anattractive spot for terrorism. He hoped he would never have to deal with one ofthose situations. Though he was used to death and familiar with its many ugly faces,it still bothered him deep down in that part of him that he kept buried awayduring work. A body or two a night was something that he could digest... morethan that, and the soft middle of his brain began to feel it.
Whenhe was at work, the cold, calculating scientist part of his brain took over.Amid the smells of formaldehyde and decaying bodies, the part of him that was afather and a loving husband went away, saved from the horrors of a modern worldwhere one wrong turn could turn you into an unrecognizable load of hamburger ona stainless steel metal slab. His stomach grumbled.
Fora second, he thought longingly of his lunch. He didn't know where thestereotype of the creepy mortician with a sandwich hanging out of his mouthcame from, but at the moment, he wished it was something that he could actuallypull off. He hadn't been able to grab breakfast on the way into work. That wasabout four hours ago, and he had steadily been receiving and cataloguingdeliveries all day. That's how Mortician Jim thought of them, as justdeliveries to be prodded and then filed.
Hislatest was a man that had been ravaged in the Hospital's E.R. room by his ownwife. At least that's what the orderly had said after they wheeled the bodydown here. The blooming red stain on the sheets let him know that what wasunderneath was going to be pretty gruesome. He sighed deeply and preparedhimself for another round of "Things I Hope I Don't Dream OfTonight."
Hepulled the sheet back. The first thing that hit him was the smell of fecalmatter. The second thing that hit him was the sight of the man grimacing inpain, his intestines piled on his midriff where a hole has been torn.
Jimpulled a fresh set of powdered latex gloves from a box. He snapped them on andthen grabbed his trusty scissors from the metal tray next to the gurney the manwas lying on. He began cutting the man's clothes free. The T-shirt was easy,but the jeans took a little work. When he was done, the wrinkled old man laynaked on the examination table, his white skin standing out in stark contrastto the blood that covered his destroyed abdomen.
Nowit was time for his favorite part of the examination process... the writing ofnotes. Jim pulled his trusty pen from his pocket and walked over to his desk,where he kept the various forms of his vocation organized. He pulled out athick form and began writing the required information down. His scrawl wasalmost unintelligible, but it was really the only way to do the job. Hechuckled again about all of the public's misconceptions about his job.
Ifthis were a movie, he would be speaking into a microphone while he begandelicately carving on the corpse in front of him. Autopsies took time... in amovie, a recorder might seem handy, but sitting down to transcribe hours ofrecordings would be an egregious waste of time, especially since all of hisreports were read, summarized, and distributed to multiple agencies throughoutthe city. Of course, in the movies, he would be examining something moreexciting than a dead old man who was obviously the victim of some sort offever-inspired cannibalism.
Afterhe finished the preliminary work on the form, Jim pulled open his drawer andpulled a toe-tag out. He filled in the patient's name based upon theinformation that was found in the man's wallet. He walked over to the corpseand placed it over the man's big toe.
Hescreamed out loud when the old man sat up,
