by Jack Martin
It kept coming.
Another shot.
The shape raised its scalpel like a sword.
Another shot. Another.
Its black heart spouted blood. It dropped to its knees.
Why won't you die? thought
Loomis. Then he knew.
It had died. Tonight.
How many times in the past?
It was dying now.
It dies, and is reborn. It raises itself from the darkness.
The Lord of the Dead.
For the moment, only for the moment, it was on its knees.
Loomis sighted straight as an arrow and pumped off his last shot.
It blew the shape over backwards. The scalpel remained erect, then fell slowly.
The air rang.
"Don't," said Loomis, as the marshal went to the body.
"He's dead."
"No, he's not! Look at him! He's still breathing!"
Loomis called for Marion. "Miss Chambers, there's a two-way radio in the marshal's car. I want to you go outside, get on that radio and get Hunt!"
She nodded obediently.
"Now wait a minute," objected the marshal. "I'm the only one authorized to use that."
"Move!" shouted Loomis, shoving her around the body.
He found Laurie weaving in the shadows.
"Are you all right?" I should have taken care of her, before, he thought, and not left her to these educated fools. He touched her protectively. "I—I'm sorry I left you."
She seemed not to comprehend his words. "It's all right," he told her.
Laurie's face tilted, observing him. She shook her head once.
No.
She looked over his shoulder.
As Marion went to the car outside, the marshal bent down to feel Michael Myers' pulse.
"Get away from him!" warned Loomis.
The marshal turned his back on the body.
"He's stopped breathing."
"No!"
Too late.
The shape sat up, scalpel in hand. And slashed the marshal's jugular with a single blow.
Loomis yanked Laurie behind him.
His gun was empty now!
The shape got to its feet. It grew up from the floor to a new height.
Loomis jerked the girl into a side corridor.
He half-carried her with one arm, running from door to door.
The green letters of an EXIT sign. Across from it, a door that swung wide.
It wouldn't lock.
Heavy footsteps pounded the floor.
Loomis dragged Laurie through a second, inner door, a wood door with a glass inset. It had a lock.
They were in an operating room, piercingly bright in the center. A silver reflector hung over a surgery table like a bisected moon.
Loomis flung her ahead of him. She staggered to a wall, where she sank down the tiles like a bloody doll. The white tiles were hard-glazed porcelain, seamless.
There was no other door out.
Loomis ransacked the room for a weapon.
Beds, oxygen tents. Towels. Supplies.
No tools.
Footsteps hammered the corridor, entering the outer room of the operating theatre.
Loomis patted himself down. There must be something—!
The marshal's gun. He had taken it in the car. It was still in his coat pocket.
He took Laurie's face in his hands and spoke directly to her, enunciating every syllable so she would understand.
"Not a sound now. Do you understand?"
He felt the smooth, delicate skin of her face, the wisp of down behind her ear, the warm pulsing of her carotid. He noted her cheekbones, the fine line of her nose, her eyes and the intelligence that still lived there. It would stand her in good stead for another sixty or seventy years. If only it could survive.
He saw the broad forehead, the brain that was growing within, the very pores of her skin, each one a miracle in itself.
She looked back into his eyes.
It was as if he was seeing all the generations that had conspired to bring forth this latest and most perfect image of humanity. Everything he had given his life to preserving and nurturing, here in its purest form. The which than which there is no whicher.
She must not die, he thought. I will not have it.
He placed the marshal's gun in her hands.
"Here," was all that came out of his mouth. "Use it if you have to."
Behind them, a mighty force pounded the door.
"Don't listen to that," he said. "It's only the dark."
The pounding splintered wood.
Staring back into his eyes, a calm came over her. It was as if he already knew all that she felt, those things which made up the core of her being, the pure flame that burned there and from which she had always drawn sustenance. Now, at this instant, it burned purer and truer for her than ever before.
He was only one person.
That was so much.
She took the gun.
"Thank you," she said.
As the shape splintered through, Loomis hit the light switch.
The room was overrun with darkness.
It stood there in the doorway, illuminated from behind. For a second it hesitated.
Then it moved on Loomis.
He raised his revolver one more time, pointed it at the shape's face, and pulled the trigger.
It clicked, empty.
A bloody scalpel came forward. Without hesitation it hooked into Loomis' stomach.
His eyes opened all the way, as if to a great light. A moment. Then he plunged backwards into a table, spilling useless instruments over the floor.
The shape turned to Laurie.
Strangely calm, she sat where she was and saw it, saw it all.
She searched out its eyes behind the mask. Eyes which would glint like chips of ice if she could find them.
It crossed the room in three steps.
Laurie spoke.
"Michael," she said.
Its head tilted quizzically,
Then it raised the scalpel, and came on.
"Stop," she said clearly.
She lifted the marshal's .38 and fired.
She fired again.
Blood streamed from the eyesockets where she had aimed.
The shape swung the scalpel wildly, blinded. It snicked the air in a wide circle. It could not find her.
Loomis, blood seeping through his fingers, fell upon the oxygen tanks.
She saw what he was doing. She joined him. Together, without a word, they opened the valves.
The hiss of oxygen filled the room.
When it was done Loomis pulled her away and shoved her through the place where the door had been.
"Go," he said. "Now!"
He confronted the shape alone.
The dark figure danced a blind frenzy in the middle of the room.
Loomis went into his pocket one last time. He gripped the lighter, Hunt's lighter, so that it could not slip out of his hands.
There was only blackness beyond comprehension behind the mask.
"It's time, Michael," he said.
That was all.
He struck the lighter.
There was an explosion like the sun.
Outside, in the hallway, Laurie was thrown down by a firecloud.
The last thing she saw was a figure trying to stand upright, walking through the fire, until he was completely consumed by flames.
Epilogue
In the first gray shining of dawn, people descended on the hospital. They came walking slowly from the treelined avenues and side streets of Haddonfield, materializing out of the lingering mist.
They shuffled forward like sleepwalkers.
A patrolman saw them coming and signaled the trucks to finish up. The fire trucks had gone, but two ambulance crews remained.
Then he went to the doorway of the burned-out building.
Hunt was inside, brooding over the gutted rubble.
"Want
some coffee?" said the patrolman.
"No, but you can come in."
"No thanks."
"What's the count?" asked Hunt mechanically.
"Ten." The patrolman's voice broke from fatigue. "So far."
They walked out to the car, as Laurie was led to a yellow ambulance. Though heavily bandaged, she was refusing to be carried on the stretcher.
Rumpled news photographers elbowed to get a shot. Men in jacket liners with Portapaks.
"First execution I ever covered," one of them said to a member of the other ambulance crew, the cleanup detail.
The attendant sealed a body bag and jumped down before closing the doors.
"Whew!" said the reporter. "Don't that stink, though? Bet you fellas get used to it, huh?"
"Never do," said the attendant.
"Say. Which one was that?"
"Be damned if I know," said the attendant "Burnt to a french fry. All I know is, somebody had themselves a real nice cookout last night."
"I hear there were two of 'em."
"Only one like this. Other one got blown to kingdom come."
"So. What do you do now? Dental records, that sort of thing?"
"If anybody cares. You never know. They might just take their choice. It doesn't much matter. They're both gone."
"Right."
The attendant hauled himself up and into the seat. "Yo," he said to the driver.
The door shut.
He rolled the window down.
"I'll tell you, though. If there's another doctor somewhere wants to know, we better do the best we can with what we've got. If you want to know the truth, we haven't found a damn piece of the other guy. One thing's for sure. Even if they do find the pieces, there's no way in hell he's ever gonna get put back together again. You can count on that."
He waved to the reporter and nodded at his driver.
"Let's go."
The reporter wandered back to the other ambulance.
"Can't I ride in front?" Laurie was saying.
"Sorry," said the attendant. She had never seen him before. "I have to put you in back." He opened the doors. "Ready?"
"Okay," she said. He got in with her.
"Okay," he said to his driver.
The ambulance moved out.
Her attendant started filling out a form on a clipboard.
"Who are your parents?" he asked.
"What?"
"I mean, what's their address?"
The ambulance threaded carefully through the scattered walkers on the road out. A gang of four little kids came out of the mist. They looked pale and drawn.
"What?" said Laurie.
"Your address. Where do you live?"
Her face was set and expressionless against the window. She would not lie down. She felt the pain, but she knew she could bear it. She didn't care where they were going.
She took a long time answering. "I don't know," she said. "I really don't."
Then there was only her face framed in the square of safety glass, on its way out into the cool, blurring mist of that great gray, empty morning.