Walkers (47 page)

‘Supposing he gets caught?’ Lloyd
wanted to know.

Gil turned back and looked at him.
‘Then, my friend, we are well and truly fucked.’

But it was only a minute before the
brown door abruptly clicked open Gil and Lloyd looked quickly all around them,
and then dodged inside, pulling the door to behind them, but not quite closing
it. Inside the corridor, it was white and fluorescent and smelled of
institutional floor polish. There were framed photographs on the walls of
dolphins and narwhals and squids.

Their sneakers squeaking on the
polished floor, Gil and Lloyd hurried to the broom-cupboard, and let themselves
in. Gil tripped over a bucket, and a mop slid sideways down the wall and
clattered on to the tiles, but they held their breath for what seemed like
minutes on end, and nobody came to investigate.

‘Next time, why don’t you just yell
out, “we’re over here!” ‘ Lloyd whispered.

‘It was an accident, for Christ’s sake.’

They waited for only a few minutes
more, and then the cupboard door suddenly opened again, and Henry came in,
gasping and out of breath. He nearly knocked over the mop, but Gil managed to
catch it before it fell.

‘Security guard was taking a look
around,’ Henry panted. ‘I had to jog around the building and come up behind
him.’

‘Man, you’re not fit at all,’ said
Lloyd.

‘You don’t need to be an Olympic
athlete to teach Kant,’ Henry retorted, with a small show of bad temper.
Exertion always made him bad tempered.

They stayed in the broom cupboard
for almost half an hour. They heard doors being slammed and feet squeaking on
the corridor floors and people calling goodnight.

Eventually, the corridor lights were
dimmed, and Henry eased open the door and looked out.

‘It’s all right now. It looks like
just about everybody’s gone home.’

The three of them walked as softly
as they could along the corridor until they reached a short staircase on their
left with a notice that read
Marine
Biology
Laboratory – Spectator
Seating.

‘We’ll go up there,’ said Henry. He
remembered Gil’s words about always taking charge, and so he added, ‘If you
agree that it’s a good idea, that is. There’s a balcony there, overlooking the
main laboratory. We’ll be able to see exactly where the creature is being kept,
and where the police guard is situated. Then we can discuss how we’re going to
take the creature out.’

‘Sounds okay to me,’ said Gil.

‘Me too,’ Lloyd agreed; and so the
three of them crept up the stairs, until they reached the swing doors which led
out on to the balcony. Through the small wired-glass windows in the top of the
doors, they could see that the laboratory was still brightly lit. Henry held them
back for a moment, and then eased one of the swing doors open, so that he could
see the laboratory’s main floor. Gil and Lloyd crowded closely behind him.

Below the railing of the balcony,
the laboratory was about fifty feet square, white and tiled and gleaming. There
were three long varnished benches, stocked with test-tubes and chemicals and
pipettes and flickering bunsen burners. At the far end of the room an IBM
computer terminal flickered and glowed, next to a microfiche retrieval display.
To the right, up against the wall, there were rows of steel shelving on which
stood scores of aquarium tanks. Most of the tanks were empty, but in some of
them there were shoals of tropical fish swimming backwards and forwards like
showers of brightly coloured needles, and turtles dipping and diving in search
of food.

In the centre of the laboratory
floor stood a large dissection table, flooded by bright overhead spotlights. On
this table, face down, a sinewy black creature lay, its face turned towards
Henry and Gil and Lloyd, its eyes closed, its scaly body shining in the
lamplight. Andrea was standing over the creature, peering up at an X-ray
transparency. She was wearing her spectacles, and looked tired and drawn. A
little further away, sitting on the edge of a tilted laboratory stool, talking
quietly to a uniformed police officer from the San Diego police department, sat
Salvador Ortega.

Henry very carefully let the swing
door close again. He turned to face Gil and Lloyd and said, ‘Well? What do you
think?’

Lloyd shook his head. ‘We don’t have
a chance, the way things stand. If we came down that balcony, waving a gun,
those cops would waste us before we could make it anywhere near enough to make
sure of that beast.’

‘I agree,’ said Gil. ‘We daren’t
risk using the gun until the police are out of the way.’

‘That means a diversion,’ said
Henry. ‘Something to get them out of the laboratory just long enough for one of
us to nip in there and blow that creature’s brains out.’

Lloyd said, ‘I hate to raise this at
a time like this, man, but what happens after we’ve blown that creature away?
Those cops are going to run us in, right? I mean if we kill that thing, isn’t
that murder?’

‘Not murder, no,’ Henry assured him.
‘The creature isn’t human, after all. The worst they can get us for is illegal
possession of a firearm, and tampering with police evidence.’

‘Those are still offences, right?
They can still lock us up?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Henry,
uncomfortably. ‘I suppose they can.’

‘In that case, I pass,’ said Lloyd.
‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not going to be locked up in no cell for
nobody, and especially not the ex-wife of somebody I don’t hardly know.’

Gil said, ‘Henry, he may be talking
sense. This may not be the right way of doing it.’

Henry looked from one to the other,
thoughtfully. ‘We have to destroy that creature some way,’ he said.

‘Well, listen, I’ve got an idea,’
said Lloyd. ‘If you can get everybody out of that laboratory for just about a
minute – your wife, the cops, everybody – then maybe I can jump down of f the
balcony and hit it with something, crack it on the head.’

‘How about setting fire to it?’ Gil
suggested. ‘There are bunsen burners down there, and bottles of methylated
spirit. Maybe we could make it look like an accident.’

Henry went back to the window in the
swing door, and angled his head so that he could peer down into the laboratory.
‘You may have a good idea there, Gil,’ he remarked. ‘There are two bottles of
pure alcohol on the actual examination table itself. All you would have to do
is knock one of them over, make sure the creature was drenched with it, and set
it alight. It may not seem a very
likely
accident,
but there’s a good chance that nobody would be able to prove anything
different,’

He turned around.’ It won’t be as
quick and as effective as a gun.’

Gil lowered his head. ‘Well, I know;
but I guess I wasn’t too keen on using the gun anyway. I know that it was my
idea, but if my dad found out that I’d borrowed it – well, he wouldn’t trust me
again, with anything. Especially if I used it to shoot somebody, or something.’

Henry nodded. ‘l understand. Let’s
see if we can’t burn it.’

Five minutes later, Henry knocked at
the door of the laboratory.
‘Andrea!’
he
shouted. ‘Andrea, are you in there?
Andrea!
‘
The doors were opened immediately by Salvador Ortega. ‘Professor Steinway
– what are you doing here? This building is all closed up for the night.’

Henry tugged at his sleeve. ‘I have
to see Andrea – to warn her...’

‘Come on, Henry,’ Salvador cajoled
him. ‘This isn’t the way to behave.’

Henry seized Salvador’s lapels, and
stared wildly into his face. ‘Salvador, listen to me. You have to listen to me!
Andrea’s going to die! Andrea’s going to die, do you understand me? You mustn’t
let her touch that creature any more! It’s going to kill her!’

‘Who’s that?’ called Andrea. ‘Henry,
is that you?’

‘Oh, Andrea,’ Henry babbled.
‘Andrea! Andrea! I always loved you, didn’t you know that? You mustn’t touch
that creature any more! You must run, flee! I loved you when I was married to
you, Andrea, and I love you now!’

‘You’re drunk,’ said Andrea, coldly.

‘I’m not! I’m sober! I’m stone-cold
sober! Smell my breath! Go on, smell my breath!

Smell it!
Haahhhhhhhhh!
Did you smell that?
Haaaahhhhhh!
There you are, nothing but garlic, and that came from
two baloney sandwiches.’

Andrea came out into the corridor
with Salvador. ‘Henry, listen,’ she said, ‘I don’t care whether you’re drunk or
not. I’m a very busy person, and I have four skin-tests to complete tonight
before I go home. So would you please be good and go back to your cottage and
submerge your senses in whatever brand of distilled grain you happen to be
favouring this month.’

Henry gripped Andrea’s lab coat, and
wound his hands around it. ‘Andrea, I love you!

Haven’t I always said so? You
mustn’t touch that creature any more! Promise me!

Promise!’

Salvador opened the door of the
laboratory, and called out. ‘Officer, would you escort this gentleman out of
the building? I think he’s suffering from nervous strain, not to mention too
many vodkatinis. ‘The uniformed officer came out of the laboratory with a grin,
his thumbs tucked into his leather belt. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said to Salvador, and
then to Henry, ‘Come along, pal, I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.’

Henry glared at him. ‘Pal? I’m no
pal of yours, you uniformed chump! Did you hear that, Salvador? This police
officer claimed that he was a pal of mine – or at least that I was a pal of
his. Do you know what a serious offence that is? Referring to a member of the
public in an overly amicable manner in an attempt to secure his co-operation to
waive his rights under the Constitution.’

Salvador put an arm around Henry’s
shoulder. ‘Come on, Henry, I don’t know what this act is all about, but it’s
time to go. I don’t want to have to take you down to the cooler, do I? It
wouldn’t look good in the papers. “Famous Philosophy Prof in Chokey”.’

Henry melodramatically slapped one
hand against his heart. He arched his head back and rolled his eyes. ‘Aaagh!’
he shouted. ‘Aaagh!’

‘Henry, what is it?’ Andrea asked
him, anxiously. ‘Henry!’

Henry allowed his knees to buckle,
and he took two or three steps around the corridor with his legs bent. As he
came around for the second time, he glimpsed orange flames leaping up inside
the laboratory, and he knew that his diversion had worked. Lloyd had managed to
jump down from the spectator’s balcony and splash the creature with alcohol.

‘Henry -’ said Andrea, but before
she could say anything else she was interrupted by an ear-splitting screech. She
and Salvador both whipped around, and the uniformed officer instantly pushed
open the laboratory door.

‘Oh my God!’ Andrea cried. ‘Oh my
God, the poor thing’s on fire!’

They burst into the laboratory. To
Henry’s horror, the Devil-creature was sitting up on the dissection table, with
flames pouring out of it like a sacrificial Buddhist. Its slanted eyes were
blazing crimson, its double layers of teeth were stretched back in agony, and
it windmilled both arms around so that the flames made a terrible flaring,
roaring noise. Henry glanced up towards the balcony, but Lloyd and Gil had both
disappeared.

‘Fire extinguisher, for Christ’s
sake!’ yelled Salvador. He tore off his jacket and approached the blazing
creature like a matador, trying to avoid its circling arms.

The creature screamed and screamed
and screamed. In every scream, Henry could hear the clashing of hell, the fury
of fire, the agony of torture. The screaming was so piercing that he wasn’t
sure whether it was audible or not; only that it was unwiring his nerves with
the systematic insanity of a lunatic slashing at a telephone cable.

Salvador tried to dance in closer,
but the heat from the burning creature was already unbearable. It was
astonishing that it was still alive and able to scream. Its black flesh
crinkled and crackled like paint being heated by a blowtorch. Flames gushed out
of its chin, so that it grew a beard of fire. Greyish brains began to bubble
and leak out of its ears, and its blood sizzled noisily as the fire burned its
way down through its layers of skin.

‘Where’s that fire extinguisher?’
Salvador roared. He made one pass at the creature, holding out his jacket and
over the smell of charring flesh they could also smell the distinctive odour of
scorched wool.

But before the uniformed officer
could get back to the dissection table with the extinguisher, every fluorescent
light in the laboratory abruptly exploded, showering them with broken glass.
Ghostly flickers of blue light danced momentarily on the ceiling, and then the
laboratory was drowned in darkness – apart from the fiery Devil itself. It rose
up, blackened, on the dissection table, until it was standing on its hind legs,
like a goat or a monkey. Its eyes were burned out, its bare bones gleamed
through its incinerated flesh, but it stood there in front of them, still
blazing, still mocking them, still defying them to come nearer.

With a succession of ear-splitting
crashes, all the aquaria along the wall of the laboratory burst open. Henry
heard water splashing on to the floor, and the desperate flapping of
suffocating fish. Then, one by one, the bunsen burners flared with gas, and
exploded; and immediately afterwards every single test-tube and every single
pipette and every single bottle of chemicals smashed into thousands of pieces
of hurtling glass. ‘Out!’ yelled Salvador. ‘Out!’