Slippin' into Darkness

11:59 P.M.

Steve Austin pushed Bat Bautista’s corpse out of the way and leaned against the bloodstained tombstone.

He was finished. He couldn’t take another step. He wasn’t The Six Million Dollar Man, after all. Blood leaked from his shoulder, not transmission fluid, and he had lost a lot of it. The blood that was left in him seemed to be pounding in his temples, and he couldn’t stand the racket. And while Shutterbug’s slugs hadn’t penetrated his Kevlar vest, they had busted him up pretty thoroughly. Every time he moved, one of a couple dozen fishhooks caught in his ribs ripped at his insides.

At least that was the way it felt. Certainly several ribs were broken. If Todd Gould hadn’t come right to him, practically running into his revolver… That had been lucky. Still, the trip from the mortuary to the cemetery hadn’t done him any good. Broken ribs could cut like knives. He knew full well the damage they could do.

But he had gone ahead anyway.

He was past that now. Thank God. He was just going to sit here for a while. He wasn’t a superhero. He wasn’t The Six Million Dollar Man.

But he was The Great and Powerful Oz. A great and powerful humbug. A ghost. He had to laugh at that. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Marvis Hanks dropping his shotgun and running into the night.

That was funny.

And that was that. The end of his career as a humbug. Steve Austin only wanted to sit here and rest. The night would pass soon enough. When they found him tomorrow, they would look at his driver’s license and see that his name was Steve Austin. Just some guy with a brain locked in his skull that had never worked quite right.

Thought patterns running on a scale outside acceptable parameters.

That was him, all right.

They’ll find me, he told himself. And then Ernest Kellogg can drag my body through the mud, tumble me into a grave, and stand there in his yellow boots watching Royce Lewis shovel mud in my face.

Steve’s pulse slowed. He wasn’t sweating anymore.

The bloodstained tombstone didn’t make a half-bad bed.

If only it was warmer.

Steve wished that the tombstone was warmer. He wished the drums in his head would stop pounding. The graveyard wasn’t a bad place, really. Take away the drums, warm up the tombstone, and it would be fine. It was empty, for one thing. And it was green. The flowers that sprouted from the grass were plastic and ugly, but the stone monuments were beautiful.

Steve could see across the road, to the drive-in. The silhouettes of the dying pines that rimmed the theatre pressed into view above the cemetery fence. He knew he was looking at the crowns of the trees, but he stuck with the illusion that persisted in his imagination, that these were young trees, green, reaching for the heavens.

The trees. The grass. The stone flowers. This was so like the place he had always wanted to visit-the meadow in his dreams.

If only his head would stop pounding. If only the tombstone was warmer.

He sucked a deep breath and smelled the minty fragrance of the eucalyptus grove a few hundred feet away.

And then he knew very suddenly that it wasn’t the grove that he was smelling, because something sat at his side.

A paw made of twigs scratched his right arm. Homer Price licked Steve’s face with a tongue as rough as eucalyptus bark.

Homer barked, the sound of boards clapping together. Ran to the open grave. Whimpered at the precipice like Rin Tin Tin, like Lassie.

Steve realized that the pounding wasn’t in his head.

It was in April’s coffin.

He slid through the mud, his ribs on fire, tasting his own blood as it streamed inside him.

The coffin lid shuddered. Anguished thumps cascaded through the air.

Steve whispered, “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.” His left arm wouldn’t work, but his right arm worked just fine as long as he didn’t bang his ribs with his elbow. He reached out, fingers clearing gritty soil, and the cold water that pooled in the bottom of the grave felt good in his boots.

He opened the coffin.

April was there.

He said, “If this is a dream…”

Her hands were bound, thumbs black and bloody from pounding the lid. He took a knife from his pocket and sliced the ropes. In the dim light he saw that her forehead was bruised, as well.

She had pounded the coffin with her skull.

His fingers caressed her bruises.

Something was wrong. Her hair was short. His fingers traveled the length of her eyebrows. He moved closer. Green eyes found gray eyes in the darkness.

“April,” he said, suddenly pulling away. “April?”

Her fingers covered his lips. He tried to say something else, but she gently pinched his mouth closed. And when her fingers moved away, it was only to peel the duct tape from her mouth.

She did not scream.

His voice trembled. “A-April?”

And now her lips were on his. And when her lips pulled away, she whispered, “Shhhh…be quiet. Shhh.”

She pulled him to her breast in the cold hole that was the last bed April Destino had ever known. She held him close. He fell asleep in her arms. And he dreamed.