Green Eyes Page 0,46

where Richmond had failed. A second shot took him in the face, and he flew backward along the aisle, ending up curled beneath a booth. His hand scrabbled the floor, but that was all reflex. And then, with the awful, ponderous grace of a python uncoiling from a branch, Sealey slumped off the grill; the grease clinging to his trousers hissed and spattered on the tiles. Everything was quiet. The jukebox clicked, the air conditioner hummed. The cop's hamburgers started to burn on the grill, pale flames leaping merrily.

Jocundra dropped to her knees and began peeling shreds of cloth from Richmond's wound. 'Oh, God,' she said. 'His whole hip's shot away.'

Donnell knelt beside her. Richmond's head was propped against the rear of a booth; his eyelids fluttered when Donnell touched his arm and his eyebrows arched in clownish curves with the effort of speech. 'Oh...' he said; it didn't have the sound of a groan but of a word he was straining to speak. '... ooh,' he finished. His eyes snapped open. The bacteria had flooded the membrane surfaces, and only thready sections of the whites were visible, like cracks spreading across glowing green Easter eggs. 'Oh...'he said again.

'What?' Donnell put his ear to Richmond's mouth. 'Jack!'

'He's dead,' said Jocundra listlessly.

Richmond's mouth stayed pursed in an O shape, but he was not through dying. The same slow reverberation shuddered Donnell as had when Magnusson had died, stronger though, and whether as a result of the reverberation or because of stress, Donnell's visual field fluctuated. White tracers of Richmond's magnetic field stitched back and forth between the edges of his wound, and flashes erupted from every part of his body. Donnell got to his feet. Jocundra remained kneeling, shivering, blood smeared on her arms. The night was shutting down around them, erecting solid black barriers against the windows, sealing them in with the three dead men.

A car whizzed past on the highway.

The light switches were behind the register, and Don-nell's cane pocked the silence as he moved to them. He had a glimpse of Sealey open-mouthed on the floor, his chest red and ragged, and he quickly hit the switches. Moonlight slid through the windows and shellacked the formica tables, defining tucks and pleats in the vinyl. The cash drawer was open. He crumpled the bills into his pocket, turned, and was brought up short by the sight of Richmond's corpse.

Richmond was still propped against the booth, his legs asprawl. He should have been a shadow in the entranceway, half his face illuminated by the moonlight, but he was not. A scum of violent color coated his body, a solarized oil slick of day-glo reds and yellows and blues, roiling, blending, separating, so bright he looked to be floating above the floor: the blazing afterimage of a man. Even the spills of his blood were pools of these colors, glowing islands lying apart from him. Black cracks appeared veining the figure, widening, as if a mold were breaking away from a homunculus within, and prisms were flitting through the blackness like jeweled bees. The reverberation was stronger than ever; each pulsed skewed Donnell's vision. Something was emerging, being freed. Something inimical. The colors thickened, hardening into a bright sludge sloughing off the corpse. Donnell's skin crawled, and the tickling sensation reawakened in his head.

He took Jocundra by the arm; her skin was cold, and she flinched at his touch. 'Come on,' he said, pulling her toward the door. He stepped over the writhe of color that was Richmond and felt dizzy, a chill point of gravity condensing in his stomach, as if he were stepping over a great gulf. He steadied himself on the door and pushed it open. The air was warm, damp, smelling of gasoline.

'We can't go,' said Jocundra, a lilt of fear in her voice.

'The hell we can't!' He propelled her across the parking lot. 'I'll be damned if I'm going to wait for the police. You get the ledger, the clothes. Clean everything out of the cabin. I'll check the office and see if Sealey wrote anything down.'

He was startled by his callousness, his practicality, because he did not recognize them to be his own. The words were someone else's, a fragmentary self giving voice to its needs, and he did not have that other's confidence or strength of purpose. Any icy fluid shifted along his spine, and he refused to look back at the restaurant for fear he might see a shadow standing in the door.