night-walk by Unknown

Author:Unknown [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-11T09:16:14.312000+00:00

Tallon reselected Seymour's eyes, oriented himself, and ran for the nearer wall. He burst out of a door, ran between two empty trucks, crossed a roadway, and went into a building like the one he had left. There were more lines of storage racks here, but this hangar was brightly lighted and stacker trucks were whining their way down several of the aisles. Tallon forced himself to walk slowly across the building. None of the truck drivers seemed to notice him, and he got to the other side and out into the cool evening air without any difficulty.

The next building was as deserted as the first. When he emerged from it Tallon judged that he was far enough from the center of activity to abandon cover. He went down the separating alley, moving away from the front boundary of the industrial complex. At the corner, the failing eyeset provided him with a misty view of scattered small buildings, stockyards, cranes, pylons, lights. To the northwest, the curving snouts of two furnaces reared up into the indigo sky. Factory whistles were hooting, great doors were slamming shut, cars with bright headlights were streaming toward the entrances.

Tallon realized he had been lucky to have the sprawling industrial nightmare close by when he had to run. He was aware of a warm stream of blood trickling down his back; and he realized that his legs were folding under him, and that he was on the verge of blindness.

The obvious thing to do now, Tallon thought, is to give myself up - except that I've given up giving myself up.

He angled off across the factory area, staggering a little, leaning against walls when walking became too difficult. Tallon knew he would present a ludicrous picture to anyone who looked at him, but two things were in his favor: in big state-owned projects the employees tend to see only what concerns their own work, and at the end of a shift they see even less.

An hour or two went by; then he found himself in the vicinity of the giant furnace stacks. Aware that he would have to lie down very soon, he picked his way across treacherously sliding piles of fuel and reached the rear of the furnaces, seeking a place of warmth. The fence marking the rear perimeter of the area loomed up above a jungle of climbing weeds. Tallon guessed he was about as far as he could get from the searching policemen and security guards, and he looked for a place to rest.

Between the furnaces and the fence, the climbing weeds and grasses were growing over untidy scrap heaps of packing cases and rusting metal framework, which looked like discarded assembly jigs. The big fires were quiescent in their ceramic ovens, but the heat from the stacks warmed the whole area. Tallon investigated several of the vegetation-shrouded heaps before he found a hole big enough to hide in. He slid wearily into the dusty little hole and pulled a screen of grass back over the entrance.

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