No, he thought, as he opened the door wide and stepped into the hall, quickly.
He made his way to the door at the end of the hall, pressing his ear to it. There was a sound from the other side, a low and constant humming, and occasionally something rising above it.
He pushed at the door's lever with his elbow, found it unlocked. Slowly he pushed it the rest of the way down, opened the door, slipped quietly in.
It was different inside from when he had last been there. The walls were in the process of being redone, covered with sheetrock that wasn't yet taped or painted. The varnish of the floor, especially near the door, was blistered and scorched. Borchert's simple pallet had been replaced by a hospital bed, identical to the one Kline himself had occupied. The humming was coming from a machine beside the bed, from which a tube ran, connecting to a breathing mask covering Borchert's mouth and nose. He was lying in the bed, swathed in gauze. What Kline could see of his skin was red and peeling and puckered, his hair all gone save for a ragged, ravaged clump. Beside him, sitting in a wheelchair, her back toward Kline, was a legless nurse in a starched white uniform, her back very straight, in the process of replacing the dressings around Borchert's foot.
Kline moved slowly forward. The nurse, still working on the foot, chatting idly, didn't hear him. But Borchert cocked his head.
"Who is it?" he said, into the mask, his breath fogging the plastic. His voice was flatter than normal, Kline noticed, not quite Borchert's voice, something seriously wrong with it. It was, he realized, the voice he'd heard on the telephone in the hospital.
"There's no one," the nurse was saying. "It's just me."
Borchert opened his eyes and Kline saw that both eyes were opaque and dull, seemingly without pupil. Blind. He took another step forward.
"There's someone here," said Borchert. "I can feel it."
The nurse turned slightly and caught sight of Kline out of the corner of her eye, froze. Kline pointed the gun at her.
"You're right," she said.
"Who is it?" Borchert asked.
"It's him," said the nurse.
They stayed like that for a moment then the nurse turned back, finished winding the dressing. Kline came quickly behind her and struck her hard on the head with the pistol butt. She slumped, the top half of her collapsing onto Borchert. Borchert winced. Kline dragged her back into the wheelchair, wheeled her to face against the wall, where he could see her, and set the brakes.
"So we haven't managed to kill you after all, Mr. Kline," said Borchert. "Not, I must say, for lack of trying. You seem to live a charmed life."
"What happened to your eyes?" asked Kline.
Borchert smiled, the movement distorting his face terribly. "Always wanting to know, Mr. Kline. You'd think you'd have learned your lesson. Did you come here just to ask me that?"
"Not exactly," said Kline.
"Not exactly," said Borchert. "Always holding something back, Mr. Kline. Intimacy issues, perhaps?" And he smiled wider, the damaged skin just beside his mouth cracking, growing moist with a pinkish fluid in the cracks, leaking.
"What did you do with the girl?" asked Borchert. "Kill her?"
"No," said Kline. "Unconscious."
"Ah," said Borchert. "Still pretending to be human, are we?" Kline watched his smile tighten further, then slowly die. "Where were we?" he asked.
"Your eyes," said Kline.
"I thought we'd sidled our way past that," said Borchert. "What happened to my eyes, Mr. Kline, was you. You are also what happened to my face, my body, my voice. And now I imagine you've come to finish the job."
"Yes," said Kline.
"I don't suppose you could be convinced to give this one a pass?"
"I don't suppose so," said Kline.
"Say I call off the hunt, Mr. Kline? Say I solemnly swear not to pursue you, grant you immunity as it were?"
Kline hesitated.
"No," he said finally. "I can't trust you."
"I hear the hesitation in your voice, Mr. Kline. Why not give in to it?"
Should I? he wondered. And then he thought of each of the men he had killed, seven, unless it was eight, unless it was nine, the way they had each fallen. What did he owe them, now that he was here? Owe them? he thought. No, that was just him pretending to be human again. He didn't owe them anything. But they were a part of a velocity that still carried him forward and he didn't know how to stop without killing Borchert.
"Well, Mr. Kline?" said Borchert. "How about it?"
But then Kline caught out of the corner of his eye the nurse, still pretending to be unconscious, slowly lifting something out of the seat of her wheelchair, and he realized with a start that it was a gun. As she suddenly came alive and tried to turn it toward him he shot her twice in the head.
Borchert sighed in the bed. "I see you found her gun. Worth a try," he said. And then said, still inflectionless, "Hardly gentlemanly to shoot a lady. You could have simply disarmed her, Mr. Kline. What's happening to you?"
What indeed? wondered Kline.
"Well," said Borchert, "what are we waiting for? Get it over with."
"Not quite yet," said Kline.
"Not yet?" said Borchert.
"First," said Kline, "there are a few things I want to know."
Borchert smiled again, this time so wide Kline thought fleetingly his face was coming asunder. "Ah, Mr. Kline," he said. "We never seem to learn, do we."
"Shall we say twenty questions, Mr. Kline?"
"What?" said Kline.
"Nineteen questions then?" said Borchert. "And then you can kill me?"
"Suits me," said Kline.
"Always game for a game, Mr. Kline? But what am I to receive for my cooperation? Perhaps my life?"
"No," said Kline.
"Not my life? Then what, Mr. Kline? What's my so-called motivation?"
"Your motivation?"
"Eighteen," said Borchert. "You should be more careful. Simply this: Why should I answer your questions? I'm dead either way."
"True," said Kline.
"Perhaps. ." said Borchert. "It's not much, but perhaps I might be allowed to choose the manner of my own death?"
The nurse, Kline noticed, was apparently still alive, her hand quivering against the floor and sending ripples through the pooling blood. He went over to her, prodded her with his foot, turned her face up. She seemed dead, except for her eye, which, unblinking, followed each of his movements.
"Well, Mr. Kline?"
"What about paralysis?" asked Kline.
"Excuse me?" said Borchert. "Seventeen."
He moved his hand slowly, the gun in it, watched her eye follow it. Was there any sign of intelligence in the eye's movement? In the eye itself? Was she still human? More human than he?
"Have I lost you, Mr. Kline?"
"No," said Kline. "I'm right here."
"What are you doing over there?"
"Nothing," said Kline, watching the nurse's eye. "What about paralysis? Does it count the same as amputation?"
"Sixteen and fifteen, Mr. Kline. Is it religious instruction you're hoping for? Paralysis is a shadow and a type of amputation, a next best thing. We do not accept paralytics among us, but we look kindly on them. You have to draw the line somewhere, Mr. Kline."
"I see," said Kline. He watched the eye until he couldn't bear it anymore and then struck her hard on the forehead with the pistol. Immediately the pupil rolled back and was gone.
"But we have yet to reach an agreement, Mr. Kline, and you've already expended a quarter of your questions. I must ask again: Will I be allowed to choose the manner of my own death?"