The Ferryman by Christopher Golden Page B

like that likely meant he either wanted to escape, or just wanted to be outside again, one last time. Both options would have led him down. Outside.
    â€™Course, no way’s he gonna make it all the way down, Shane thought.
    But at the third-floor landing, there was still no sign of the guy. As he started down toward the second floor, he hesitated slightly. It was possible he had chosen the wrong direction; that Mr. Haupt had gone up after all.
    His left foot shifted and dropped down to the fourth step.
    An alarm screamed up from below.
    The emergency exit, Shane thought immediately.
    â€œYou’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He groaned. Then he started to hustle, taking the steps two at a time and leaping the last four or five at each turn of the stairs.
    No more than twenty seconds later he jumped down to the first-floor landing—the red bell above the door screamed furiously—and slammed through the emergency exit. The metal door clanged against the brick exterior of the hospital and Shane stalked out into the parking lot.
    Phillips Memorial Hospital stood on a small hill in the Lions Gate section of Medford, which had been considered swank in the 1940s and still carried a certain air about it despite the faded quality of the Colonials and Victorians that lined the streets. The hospital, though equally faded, also enjoyed a certain reputation, mostly a holdover from earlier days, though with a somewhat well-deserved thanks to its staff.
    One benefit it had over Boston-area hospitals was that it had been built in an age and in a neighborhood where few people were willing to encroach upon the sanctity of a place of healing.
    Which meant that though Phillips Memorial was filled to brimming with patients and staff, the narrow spillover lot at the rear of the hospital was almost always hauntingly empty save for enormous blue Dumpsters and hazardous waste-disposal units, and the vehicles that routinely arrived to empty them.
    A cold wind blew across the empty lot. An empty McDonald’s takeout bag whirled and eddied in a dust devil that swirled beneath a distant lamppost as though performing in the spotlight. The door swung shut behind Shane, muffling the alarm bell within. The light above the door had burned out, but the lamps scattered across the lot gave him enough illumination to see.
    To see nothing.
    But how could there be nothing?
    The thumping bass of a car radio cranked all the way up to “deafen” reached him as he stood in the darkness just outside the door and glanced around the lot, utterly bewildered. The alarm bell still wailed inside—he could hear it as if at a distance, or as if it were his morning wake-up and he had buried his head beneath the pillow. Still, it was tangible testimony to the fact that someone had come out this door. It was certainly possible that it had been someone other than the fugitive from the ICU, but the odds against that were astronomical.
    On the other hand, how far could a guy dying of cancer get minutes after the ICU staff had been convinced he was done for?
    With a sigh, Shane unclipped the two-way radio from his belt. He stepped away from the door and glanced both ways along the length of the back of the hospital. Sanitation containers. That was all he could see. Grimly, and feeling more than a bit absurd, he realized that the old guy might be hiding behind one of them.
    He flicked a button on his radio with his thumb. “Noah, you there?”
    A moment later, the radio’s static was interrupted by his partner’s voice. “Here. What’ve you got? Alarm went off down there. Did the old guy really get that far?”
    â€œEven farther, I think,” Shane replied. “I’m at the back door now and I don’t see a goddamn thing.”
    â€œYou don’t have visual?” Noah asked.
    Shane rolled his eyes, then glared almost angrily at his radio. “You watch too much fucking cable,” he snapped. “No,