"I'll stick around here," Kendall continued, "until somebody gets here from the post to relieve me. Besides, I need to be here in the morning to make sure old man Palmer doesn't try to open the store. He won't dare sell anything out of this store until we've made certain that creature back there isn't carrying some kind of disease."
Again Madden nodded. "Standard procedure," he admitted.
With matters pretty well wrapped up for the night, I headed back for the big walk-in cooler to get B.C. She was still busy taking notes. She had borrowed a jacket from one of the men in Madden's sweep crew and had a stocking cap pulled down around her ears. Her exposed hands and face had a rosy glow.
"By now you've probably recorded every vital statistic possible. How about calling it a night?"
She turned, studied me for a moment and curled her finger at me. "Come here a minute," she said solemnly.
"Look!" "Look at what?"
"At these gunshot wounds, at the holes here and here."
"What about them?"
"They look like they've started, to seal over, almost like they're healing."
"Quite natural," I expounded, trying to summon up my most authoritative manner, which was no easy task at three o'clock in the morning. "Your friend there is obviously the proud possessor of a basal metabolism somewhere in the minus one to minus two range. Probably converts oxygen at a rate less than one-tenth the rate of a human. You could tell that by the color and consistency of the stuff being pumped by the heart."
"When I first came in here, those wounds were still weeping," Brenda protested. "Now they're almost sealed over."
"Do you have any idea what the temperature is in here?"
"Twenty, maybe twenty-five degrees?"
"Precisely! That, my dear associate, is below freezing. When things freeze they get a crust over them, a thin layer of ice crystals, but more than enough to make the wounds look less angry."
B.C. continued her appraisal, looking at me, then back again at the creature. A slow smile began to invade her face, and she laid her pencil down. "You're probably right," she admitted.
By the time I crawled into the shower, every bone in my body had filed an official protest. There wasn't a single item in the inventory that wasn't bruised, cold or aching. In recognition of a job well done and as a reward for the long, agonizing hours I had asked the old bod to put in, I stayed in the steamy hot shower an extra five minutes. At the same time, I was convinced that soap, and lots of it, was the only thing that would get the stench of the creature off of me.
Following that, I spent a few minutes mugging in the mirror, inspecting a whole new crop of gray hairs and trimming back a beard that had grown a tad shaggy from several days of out and out neglect. It worked. In a matter of minutes the old gray-green orbs were at half mast. The last thing I remember was sinking down on the edge of the bed.
The next thing I remember was an ungodly, unwelcome and totally uncultured sound. I rolled over and scissored my head between the two pillows, burrowed my shoulder back under the covers and faked a condition known as death.
It didn't work. I heard it again.
Somewhere, off in another land, some asshole was calling me by name. I ignored it. It was too garbled and too far away to be important. Besides, I knew it couldn't be important. After all, they could see I was dead.
"Damn it, Elliott, answer your door."
I reached over and slapped the far side of my bed. It was a woman's voice, and I don't know any women. Go away!
There was the clicking sound of a lock, then midly protesting hinges and muffled voices.
"He's out like a light," a voice said.
I rolled over and squinted one eye open.
They were staring down at me.
"Is he always this hard to wake up?"
"Hey," Brenda protested, "don't ask me. We just work together."
I was still trying to grope my way to the surface. At the moment they were little more than blurry images. My brain was still trying to figure out which button to push. B.C.'s presence was a matter of record. It was the other one I was having trouble cataloging.
"Wake up, Elliott. Jake wants to talk to you."
That did it. That was the button I was looking for. Now I had a reason for coming out of my cocoon and facing what was left of the day. "What time is it?"
"Almost eight-thirty," Brenda hissed.
I propped myself up on one elbow and gave them the evil eye. Brenda was still blurry but the jeans with the knee out gave her away. She was wearing a white turtleneck with some sort of sailing craft emblazoned across her chest and a Detroit Tigers baseball cap.
"We just had a run-in with this guy Keho," Jake announced. "Thought you'd be interested."
My eyes darted around the room, hoping against hope that there was some coffee available. Ever alert B.C. recognized the signal and handed me a lukewarm styrofoam cup. I took a sip and grimaced.
"Let's not hear any grousing," Brenda warned me. "I walked all the way down to the diner in this fog just to get this for you."
The statement was designed to make me feel like a heel, but I didn't. In my finest Cosmo Leach impression I declared it cold and unfit for human consumption.
"I ran into Jake here," B.C. continued, "and he was telling me about what happened with Kelto. We both thought you'd be interested."
"What about Kelto?"
Jake lowered his bulk down on the edge of the bed and picked up the cup of cold coffee. "You're right about that kid," Jake declared. "He sure is strange. When I got down to the market this mornin' he was screamin' at Kendall, tellin' him we had to burn the carcass of that damn thing we shot in the woods last night."
"Burn it? What for?"
Jake shrugged. "How the hell should I know why? I just ran him off, told him we were under strict orders to turn the remains over to the RCMP."
"Then what?"
"Then nothing. He just stood there glarin' at me, tellin' me that if I didn't believe him I better be talkin' to you."
"I hate to sound like a broken record, old buddy, but why should you be talking to me? I don't know any more about all of this than you do."
Madden drained the cup and stared gloomily at the floor. "Under most circumstances I'd figure that this kid was just one more weirdo that drifted into town, keep an eye on him while he was here and be thankful when he drifted out. But there's somethin' different about this one. I want you to talk to him and find out what's goin' on in that screwball mind of his. When I told him we were turnin' this whole affair over to the RCMP, he started screamin' that we were makin' a big mistake. I asked him what he meant by that, but he wouldn't tell me."
"Why didn't you detain him?"
"On what charge? Bein' weird? Hell, everybody in the whole damn village is as nervous as a whore in church." It didn't take Madden more than a microsecond to realize what he had said. He blushed and muttered an apology in Brenda's direction.
B.C. was standing there, taking it all in. It occurred to me that neither of them had any regard for a man's privacy, so I shoved the covers back and crawled out of bed. If they weren't going to be embarrassed, neither was I.
I pulled out the uniform for the day, a pair of fresh wash pants and a faded kelly green golf shirt with the words "Runner Up" stitched above the pocket. In a matter of minutes I had donned them and located my Reeboks. With that accomplished, I headed for the door.
"Hey, where ya goin'?" Madden inquired.
"To find Kelto."
"Just like that?"
"What other way is there? I sure as hell won't find him if I hang around this room."
Jake jacked his frame up off the bed and followed me to the door. "Do ya mind doin' this? I know this ain't your problem, but I know you been talkin' to this kid."
"I'd mind it a whole lot less if I had some hot coffee," I admitted.