RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King Read online

  His keys were on the desk and he grabbed them on his way to the door, stopping to pull the trash from the bin and pushing his greasy pizza box on top of a discarded hospital gown. He exited the morgue, locked the door behind him and deposited the trash in a dumpster behind the building. Trying to remember on the way to his car, who had come in during his shift. There were no hospital gowns in the trash when he opened this morning. One of the doctors must have come through when he’d been in the restroom.

  Chapter 39

  Marion, West Virginia

  A wind had picked up outside the hospital, shaking leaves on white poplars, spreading low ground fog that rolled across the grassy circle in front of the entrance. An ambulance sat at the doors, red lights sweeping through the mist.

  Night was approaching from the east, dark clouds racing across an orange harvest moon. The air was damp and cool and fragrant.

  The ambulance beacon swept across his face, then across his arm and his leg and the knapsack as he climbed the embankment above County General and hurried for the cover of the trees.

  The pants were too tight and too long, and the boots were too large, but the air was fresh and he filled his lungs with it, taking aim for a constellation in the southern sky. He ripped the Band-Aid from his arm and reached for a tree branch, snapping off a twig, mashing it gratefully between his teeth, muscle rippling over bone, flexing, stretching, repairing.

  About the author

  George D Shuman was raised on a cattle farm in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania. He worked for a time in the steel mills as a riveter before moving to Washington DC and joining the Metropolitan Police Department.

  Mr. Shuman held positions as a narcotics detective and was for a time commander of the training operations branch, retiring as a lieutenant from the Public Integrity Division responsible for investigating government corruption.

  For the next decade Mr. Shuman held executive positions in the luxury resort business in both Montauk New York and Nantucket Massachusetts.

  He now lives in Georgia where he writes full time.

  To learn more about George D. Shuman, visit his website at:

  http://georgedshuman.com