7 Steps to Midnight
Richard Matheson
Language: English
Pages: 209
ISBN: 0765308371
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Government mathematician Chris Barton lives a routine life—until, at the end of an ordinary workday, he finds his car missing from the employee parking lot. When he finally arrives home, there is a stranger living in his house—a man who claims to be him. Thrust suddenly into a surreal world where the evidence of his senses cannot be trusted and strangers are trying to kill him, Chris must avoid violent assassins while following a trail of cryptic clues to regain his life.
There was something scrawled on the mirror with a Magic Marker. Chris could just make out the writing in the dim light. 7 steps to midnight. PART 2 1 He tried not to think as he walked through the terminal. He asked one question: where were the taxis? The man he asked directed him and he went outside. He looked around for the closest cab, then found it unnecessary to signal as one of the small, square black taxis curved in and stopped in front of him, the driver opening the door. Chris got
to a safe? A waist measurement? “Just shut up, will you?” he addressed his mind. He finished showering, got out and dried himself. Now he’d go into the other room and find Veering sitting on the bed. Or Meehan. Or Nelson’s corpse. Or a Saint Bernard playing a ukulele. He went into the other room and took the clothes out of the overnight bag, laying them out on the bed. He put on the underwear, then the shirt (light blue), the slacks (gray flannel), the sweater (dark blue). Nothing but the best,
him a fierce and animal-like appearance. God! Chris thought. The adventure wasn’t stimulating now. He was terrified. The bottoms of his shoes made tiny singing noises on the paving as he ran, already panting for breath. He looked ahead in desperation, with no idea what to do. If he just kept running, the man would surely overtake him. To die in a Paris alley with a knife thrust in his back? It seemed a nightmare beyond belief and yet there might be only seconds before it happened. “No,” he
dark now. Anyone watching for him should be thrown off a little more by the lack of visibility. No one even glanced at him as he entered the hotel. He walked, using the shuffle again, across the lobby and stood in front of the elevators. A cluster of Japanese tourists were standing there. When the elevator doors opened, they charged in before the occupants—also mostly Japanese tourists—could get out. Banzai, Chris thought as he shouldered himself in among them. He couldn’t resist working up a
slipped and fallen and, as Chris stepped on its handle, it rolled under his shoe and made him lose balance. Abruptly, he was pitching forward, pulling the man with him. The grip on his arm was released as they fell, the man crying out in pain as his knee struck the concrete porch. Chris’s head snapped up; he twisted around to see the man clutching at his knee, his face a mask of agony. The man inside the house was looking at him blankly. The pistol wasn’t in his hand. Chris lunged to his feet