Death Rounds by Peter Clement

hear anything more, I felt for the wall on my right, then worked my way back to where the passages intersected, my hand telling me when I was at the corner. I stopped and listened for any sound from the left but again heard nothing. I immediately turned right and felt my way along the wall as quickly and as quietly as I could. I couldn’t see a thing and kept blundering into recessed doorways as I rushed to reach the next corner and the corridor to the elevators. I didn’t think I heard any padding steps coming after me, but I didn’t stop to make sure. I could tell I was getting near the final intersection because I started to smell the damp musty air.
    Had I missed the turn? I wondered in a flash of new panic. Had I blundered straight into the passage where the figure had come from and into God knew what? The odor was cloying in my nostrils. It seemed so much more pungent now than before, like wet earth. Had I missed the turn? Just when I was about to stop and reverse direction, my fingers slipped around the corner I was looking for.
    I paused and listened. Nothing.
    I made the turn and headed for the elevators. I switched the shoes to my right hand and felt along the wall at my left so as not to go by the sliding metal doors in the dark. I kept trying to be quiet but was practically running again as I barreled ahead in the darkness. As I remembered it, there were no obstacles to speak of that I’d crash into.
    Suddenly, way up ahead, there was a break in the blackness—a small round white light set in the wall I was hurriedly feeling along. The elevator button.
    I redoubled my pace, keeping my eyes fixed on that tiny light, still fumbling with my left hand on the wall at my side. I was almost there—another twenty feet—and was about to run for the doors when I felt my fingers slide over the top of another human hand.
    Before I could scream, it had seized my forearm and yanked me forward. I now rocketed toward that tiny light, head first. I felt another hand grab me behind the neck and further propel me straight at it. It got as big as a train light right between my eyes as my head crashed into the metal door frame. After so much darkness the white explosion in my brain was spectacular.
     

Chapter 7
     
    The patient seemed to be doing well, at least that’s what a man’s voice kept saying.
    “...going to be fine, just a concussion...”
    It must be somebody pregnant, because I could hear Janet sounding very worried. “Oh thank God!” she said. “For a second I was even afraid he was dead, finding him lying down there in the dark.”
    No, it couldn’t be Janet’s patient. “He’s” don’t have babies. But I couldn’t get my eyes open to see whom she was talking about. Whom had she found lying in the dark?
    Then it came back in a rush.
    The figure, the padding footsteps—someone had knocked me out.
    My eyes flew open, and I sat up. “What happened!” I demanded, ignoring the ache in my head and trying to focus on the two faces in front of me.
    “Oh, Earl, what a relief!” said the blur on the left. It was Janet’s voice again.
    “Whoa there, Dr. Garnet, lie back,” ordered the man’s voice, and the form on the right moved closer. I could feel his hands pushing gently but firmly on my chest. “You’re okay, but it was quite a hit. You’ve been out more than five minutes, as far as we can figure, and we want to do a CT.”
    “Janet! What happened. Did he hurt you?” I asked anxiously, turning again to the shape on my left. “Who was it?”
    My vision suddenly cleared in time to see her warm smile fade and the concern in her gaze slowly turn to wide-eyed amazement.
    “Pardon?” was all she said.
    “Someone jumped me in the dark and knocked me out,” I explained, puzzled by her response. “It must have been whoever was chasing me. Did he hurt you?”
    “Oh my God,” she exclaimed, suddenly looking alarmed and turning to the young man beside her who I could now see wore a clinical