But the train was pulling away, smoke billowing from the stack, floating along the platform, covering the last car, hiding the dream vision of Doc’s wife and children.
“No,” he said so loudly that he woke himself up, finding he was still sitting in the bathroom, trousers crumpled around his ankles.
Doc sighed, then cleaned himself and pulled up his pants. He washed his hands, then left the bathroom section, emerging again into the passage. He was still half-asleep and he turned right instead of left, so tired he was barely able to keep his eyes open, stumbling along toward the dormitory.
He reached what he thought was the correct door, turned the chromed handle and pushed it open. Part of his waking mind was aware that the room was unexpectedly cold. The opening of the door triggered stark overhead lighting, showing him three metal tables, with a sluice drain at the foot of each, and eight rows of labeled steel cabinets. One of them stood partly open, showing Doc that it was big enough to conceal a fully grown man.
It was bitterly cold, his breath pluming out around him like fog.
“By the Three Kennedys!” he exclaimed. “But this is not our sleeping quarters.”
Behind him, the entrance door had been hissing silently closed, shutting with a solid click. Doc spun and found that some kind of internal lock had operated, and he couldn’t open the door from the inside.
At the same moment, he saw the notice above the entrance and the single word Morgue.
Doc began to bang on the door, yelling for help at the top of his voice, feeling the first feather touch of panic.
Chapter Four
Ryan slid the SIG-Sauer into the greased holster, stooping to lace up his steel-toed combat boots. “You’re sure about the sec lock out of this section?”
Jak nodded. “Soon as saw Doc gone, Dean and me went looking. Still locked and bolted from inside. No sign Doc anywhere. Sure would’ve heard if attacked.”
“We’ve got to find him, Dad. There’s no telling what could happen in here!”
Ryan straightened. J.B., Mildred and Krysty were all fully dressed, sitting on beds in the dormitory. By his wrist chron it was nearly five in the morning.
“Don’t worry, son. We’ll find him. He couldn’t get far.” The one-eyed man turned to Krysty.
“You feel him, lover?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not really. You know I can’t properly distinguish one person from another. Not when there’s several of us around.”
“You check the bathroom, Jak?” J.B. asked. “Didn’t have a stroke or heart attack on the John, did he?”
“First place looked. Clean as knife blade in there. Shouted for him. No answer.”
“Are there some locked rooms?” Mildred bit her lip worriedly. “Old fart’s got to be someplace.”
Ryan stood a moment, locked in thought, nibbling at a ragged edge of a torn nail. “Best we stay together,” he decided. “If he hasn’t gotten outside of the section, then there aren’t many places he can be.”
“MORTUARY,” MILDRED SAID, trying the handle. “And the lock’s engaged.”
The friends stood in a silent half circle. They’d checked the outside sec bolts to Section JA 33, confirming what Jak had said. And they’d gone all through the whole section, calling out for Doc, waiting together in the oppressive stillness to try to catch the sound of a possible reply, filtering through the thick concrete walls.
But there was nothing.
Now there was only this one locked door.
Ryan rapped on it with the butt of his blaster, pausing to listen for any noise from behind the gray sec door. He knocked again, shouting out, “Doc! You in there, Doc?”
“Silent as a grave,” Mildred muttered. “Likely to be cold in there, if the power system’s still working. Yeah, likely to be real cold.”
“Best shoot out the lock.” Ryan gestured for the others to move back out of the way. “Shouldn’t be triple vanadium steel, just for a mortuary.”
“Doc used to sing that song,” J.B. said. “Why build a wall around a graveyard, ’cause nobody wants to get in? Why build a wall round a graveyard, ’cause nobody wants to get out?”