No, of course not. The garage door must be operated electrically, and this button would open it.
Wouldn’t it be nice to push the button and watch the door slide up and then walk into the cozy warm inside of the building? Wouldn’t it?
He pushed on, miserable, freezing. His eyelashes were weighted with ice, it was increasingly hard to see anything. He got to the corner of the building and then stopped and looked back.
Maybe?
Maybe.
He worked his way back again to the door, and studied it more closely. It wasn’t the hinged, faceted type, it was all in one solid piece. When the button was pushed, it would swing up and out while the top part was sliding backward into the building.
He looked up at the second floor. Windows, dark and empty.
Was it possible? There were handles on the door. If he could push the button and then stand on one of the low handles, would it then be possible to ride the door up to the second floor and then get off the damn thing before it slid inside? Get off onto the narrow window sill up there, hang on some way, and get the damn window open. Quietly. With earnest prayers that he would find it unlocked.
A very wild notion, all in all, even if he’d been in the peak of condition, which he wasn’t. But what else did he have going? And if it didn’t work, there was still a chance he could get away into the darkness again before they got here from where they were sitting. A small chance.
Everything was a small chance at the moment, and this was the only thing that looked even remotely possible, so the hell with it. He reached out his numb thumb and pushed the button.
A loud door. The engine whirred and whined like a derrick, while Grofield scrambled to get one foot on the handle and press himself face forward against the rising door. The racket the motor was making, and the slowness of the door’s rising, might both be caused by the addition of his extra weight. But at least the door was going up.
But Grofield wasn’t. His clothing was covered with ice, his body was half-frozen and clumsy, and he just couldn’t get his knees up under himself. He struggled and struggled while the door went up, but the metal surface was slippery under him, and he just wasn’t going to get anywhere.
And the door was headed inside. Squinting up ahead of himself he saw the top of the door frame coming, saw that it would just clear him, and resigned himself to not getting to that second-story window. What was apparently going to happen, assuming he didn’t get caught now, was that he would ride the door into the building and then back out again.
Feeling ridiculous and holding on tight, Grofield rode the door until it jolted to a stop, horizontal, just under the garage ceiling. Footsteps went by beneath him, and it sounded like only one pair. So they were smart, they sent only one man down here to check out the opening of the door, while the other one kept at his post in case it was meant as a distraction.
It was warm in here, in comparison with outside. He could smell the nice oily smell of an electric motor. He could feel how badly his body craved to stay indoors. He was waking up enough to understand just how close to the end he was out there. He wasn’t dressed for that kind of weather, not his feet, not his head, not his hands.
It would take a minute or two for the guard to assure himself that Grofield wasn’t around, and then he’d lower the door again. While waiting, Grofield lifted his head a little and looked around.
Not much to see. Two-by-twelve joists running from left to right, with the upstairs flooring set on them. Just ahead, the motor for the door, mounted on a solid iron framework suspended from the joists. To both sides, the metal tracks for the door.
Without thinking twice about it, Grofield crawled forward over the door, moving as silently as he could, his icy clothing slipping noiselessly over the metal of the door. He reached out and closed his hand around the nearest part of the motor’s framework, and pulled himself forward, off the door and onto the framework. The iron strips were about three inches wide, and when he was done he was lying face down beside the motor, his thighs resting on one strip and his chest resting on the other. He lifted his feet — they were almost too heavy to lift — and wedged them into the angles between joists and upstairs flooring. He tucked his hands inside the front of his overcoat, between the buttons, so his arms wouldn’t dangle down. Nothing dangled down now but his head, and that not very far.
He was now propped into an odd but not really uncomfortable position, face down, hands tucked inside coat, knees bent, feet up behind him and jammed against the flooring above, head drooped forward so he was looking upside down back along the length of himself at the door he’d just crawled off.
That door didn’t move for another three or four minutes, and then suddenly it did, and a man came walking in from outside, stamping snow off his boots. He stood directly under Grofield and called something incomprehensible to his partner down there in the corridor. Then he turned back and watched the door while it finished curving out and down and at last snicked shut, after which he shifted his machine gun from the ready position to the over-the-forearm carrying position and walked away to the corridor, going back to his chair and his partner.
Grofield just lay where he was. It was warm in here, delicious, it must have been fifty-five or sixty up here at the top of the room where the heat collected. It was really beautiful. Grofield lay there, totally relaxed, his position slightly cramped but not too bad, and he felt how beautiful it was to be indoors, and his eyes slowly closed, and very gently he went to sleep.
Twenty
Grofield awoke thinking he was an astronaut. Tendrils of confused dreams ran mistlike through his mind, an image of himself as an astronaut floating in his bulky suit outside the ship, and when he opened his eyes he saw he was really flying. A concrete floor was way below him, he was flying just under the ceiling, flying along...
He started, recoiled, slapped the back of his head against the floorboards above his head. That concrete was real down there! For one awful second he felt himself failing, and he struggled his hands free from his coat, shoving them out ahead of him, splay-fingered, in the instinctive movement of breaking one’s fall.
But then he saw the concrete was getting no closer, and he felt the ache of something pressing against his chest, something else digging into the front of his thighs. He kicked his feet loose from where they’d been wedged, and the knees complained at the movement, shooting pains up and down his legs.
Good God, what a mess. Comprehension was returning to him, coming in with the awareness of his various aches and pains, and a great black feeling of hopelessness washed over him, leaving him bitter and pessimistic.
Look where he was. Hanging from the goddamn ceiling, stuck up here like a butterfly on a drying board. And if he were to try to lower himself to the ground he’d be right in plain view of those two bastards in the hallway.
Could he stay here? No, dammit. In the morning they’d be searching for him, they’d probably be coming in and out of this garage. There were a couple of skimobiles down there, little open scooters with skis in front and treads in back, and they’d probably use them to look for him tomorrow. Sooner or later someone would look up and see him.
But what else could he do? He’d bought himself an extra few hours of life by getting in here, but he’d slept them away. He was warm now, but even more stiff than before. And just as hopeless.
He shifted position, trying to find some fairly bearable way to lie here, but there wasn’t any. In moving around, though, he banged his elbow against the motor, adding one more pain to the catalog. He gave the motor a dirty look, and then gave it a more careful look.