7 Steps to Midnight by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

think—?”
    “After the way he treated you?” she cut him off. “All right, give yourself up to the authorities. But
not them
. Maybe out of Arizona.”
    He felt hapless and inept as he stared at her. Then she smiled and stroked his cheek. “You’re up to anything,” she added. “You know that.”
    He embraced her.
    “Be careful now,” she said. “Use every skill.”
    He nodded. “Love you, Mom.”
    “I love you too. Now hurry.”
    Their embrace tightened as the front doorbell rang. Chris kissed her on the cheek, crossed to the back door and opened it, glancing back at her. “You’ll be all right,” she said.
    He nodded and went outside, closing the door. He jumped off the porch and ran across the yard, scaled the fence and ran across the next yard.
Man in flight
, he thought. Was that the title of some book he’d read? He scowled.
    This wasn’t any book.
    He crossed another fence and kept on running. Was Mom talking to them now? Was she up to pretending? Or would they sense that she was nervous? Would the antennae of their trade immediately pick up that she was lying?
    The old woman looked at him incredulously from her back window.
Yeah, I’m back
, he thought,
mashing down your back lawn; sorry.
He would have been amused by the look on her face if things weren’t so grim. This was probably the most thrilling thing to happen to her in a month of Sundays.
    He ran around the corner of the old woman’s house and started down the alley. Were the men alone or were there teams out searching for him? He kept running, angled across the old woman’sfront lawn and dashed for the Pontiac. How was Scotty Tensdale going to get home? he wondered. Yeah, like that’s important now, he countered irritably.
    He unlocked the car as quickly as he could and slid inside. His hands were shaking so badly, he had to use both of them to get the ignition key in its slot. Twisting it, he heard the motor cough to life;
thank
you, Scotty. He tapped the transmission into gear and pulled away from the curb.
    Not too noisy, not too fast, he told himself. He drew in trembling breath and pressed down slowly on the gas pedal. The small boy was still on his tricycle. Now he’d pull a walkie-talkie from his overalls and call for backup. “
Thuspect fleeing in maroon Pontiac,
” he’d lisp. “
Agent thixty-thix. Over and out.
”
    “Oh,
shut up
,” he told his brain.
    At the corner, he turned left and headed downtown. Now what? he thought. Where was he supposed to go? He’d really considered turning himself in until Mom had told him not to. That frightened him as much as anything that had happened. What made her think he shouldn’t, in Arizona anyway? What difference did it make where he did it? This had to be a federal thing; his work was for the government.
    And why did Mom suggest that Veering was part of the conspiracy?
    He felt a sense of vague amorphous dread building inside him, his mind jumping back again to the start: his missing car, his talk with Veering, the couple in his house, Meehan manhandling him, the call to Louise, Meehan showing up again with the other man.
Did
it all fit together? And was it all connected to the project? Were they all trying to make him doubt his sanity to prevent him from working on it? If they only knew, he thought.
    His brain was already out of sync.
    Anyway, he reversed himself once more, why such a complicated plot? Why not just run him off the road and shoot him if they wanted to delay the project?
    Is that what they still planned to do?
    “God,” he muttered. He was really frightened now.
    What in the name of God was he going to do?

7
    First of all, he needed gas. He’d managed to reach Tucson on the one tankful that Scotty Tensdale had thoughtfully, and unintentionally, provided for him. But now the gauge needle was almost down to zero. There was a Texaco station three blocks ahead; he’d stop there. Should he use his credit card? he wondered. Would it be a clue they could