William Brown - The Undertaker

“Ernie, please,” I called to him again. “You can't leave me down here.”

Finally, Ernie snapped out of it. He turned back and saw me. From his expression of shock and horror, perhaps that was the first time he realized I was there. He blinked, but he did come back to the embalming table and unbuckled the strap on my right arm. “My God,” he stammered. “He killed George. Just like that, he killed him. Why?”

I pulled my right arm free. “I don't know, but you and I are getting the hell out of here,” I said as I fumbled with the other buckles and freed my left arm and my legs. I rolled off the table onto the cold tile floor, legs unsteady, still stark naked.

Ernie stood watching me, pale and wooden. “You're bleeding to death. Come here,” I told him. He stepped gingerly over Tinkerton and the growing pool of blood around George as I reached into the equipment cabinet, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around his bleeding hand. “That ought to hold you until we can get you to the hospital, Ernie. Now stay right here while I get my clothes on.”

I grabbed a second towel and pressed it against my abdomen, but the scalpel cut didn't look all that serious. I turned my back on Ernie long enough to grab my clothes. As I pulled on my pants, Ernie stumbled past me, moaning and mumbling, “Hospital, got to go to the hospital,” then he headed for the freight elevator.

“Ernie, no! Wait there, man,” I called to him, but he stepped inside and the doors closed behind him. I hopped after him, pulling on my shoes and shirt, zipping up my pants, and grabbing my other stuff all at the same time, but it was too late. Ernie was gone.

I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He must have come in the ambulance, and I wasn't about to let him drive off and leave me behind. If Dannmeyer did get rid of my Bronco, that ambulance was the last stagecoach out of Dodge and I wasn't going to miss it. When I reached the first floor landing, Ernie was nowhere to be found, so I turned, ran for the rear service exit, and out the door to the loading dock. It was dark outside. The sky was lit with a thousand stars but there was only a thin, quarter moon to see by. The ambulance was still there though, engine running, headlights on, and the dome light burning bright inside the cab. After all those hours on that cold, stainless-steel table, the sticky early-summer night air made me feel like I'd been dipped in a vat of caramel, but I was happy to be outside, upright and alive.

I ran to the ambulance. Ernie was sitting behind the wheel with a vacant, dazed expression, trying unsuccessfully to close the driver's side door. “Ernie, stop!” I called out, but he wasn't listening. I ran around to the passenger side of the truck and jumped inside just as Ernie finally managed to slam the door shut and drop it into gear. The dashboard of the ambulance was cluttered with lights, two radios, a writing pad, and four banks of dials and switches. I looked over at Ernie and saw he was in no condition to walk and chew gum at the same time, much less drive anything as complicated as that big ambulance.

“Ernie, this isn't a good idea. How about letting me drive?” I pleaded with him. I reached for the key to turn the ignition off, but he shoved my hand away and hit the gas. “Ernie, come on,” I tried again as the ambulance speeded up and careened wildly around the parking lot. Ernie was a big man and his good hand had a white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel that he wasn't about to give it up. That was when I looked out through the front windshield and saw Dannmeyer's police cruiser pull into the driveway of the funeral home. In the harsh glare of the ambulance's headlights, I saw the sheriff behind the steering wheel. The dome light was still on inside the ambulance's cab and I could tell from his angry expression that he could see me too.

Dannmeyer immediately swung his car sideways and blocked the funeral home's only driveway exit. As dazed and dim-witted as Ernie was, he knew enough not to hit the cop car. He spun the steering wheel and took the ambulance in a long, wobbly loop around the outer edge of the parking lot. Dannmeyer get out of his car with an excited grin on his face. He pulled that ugly, black, nine-millimeter Glock from his holster, pulled back the slide, and took a casual off-hand shooting position at the side of his car. He pointed it at us and tracked the ambulance around the lot. When Ernie swung around again, Dannmeyer walked quickly to his right toward the funeral home for a better shot, deftly cutting off the arc, forcing Ernie to swing away again. Having marked our erratic orbit, Dannmeyer chose his ground next to the building and waited patiently for us to come back around one last time.

The ambulance's bright headlight beams cut across the front of the funeral home and caught the sheriff in their glare. He dropped into a professional, bent-kneed, two-handed crouch with the Glock extended out in front of him, but the bright headlights suddenly blinded him. He raised his off hand to screen his eyes from the glare, trying desperately to aim at the front of the ambulance as it bore down on him.

“Ernie, no!” I lunged across the seat and grabbed for the steering wheel again, but it was too late. Dannmeyer began shooting. I shot a forty-five automatic in the Army, but I had never had the pleasure of having a big-caliber handgun fired at me before. I ducked below the dash as three nine-millimeter slugs punched holes through the center of the windshield, ripping through the upholstery precisely where my chest had been only moments before and filling the front seat with shards of flying glass. With the ambulance's headlight beams in his eyes, Dannmeyer must have aimed where he thought I was, or where he thought I should be. Whatever, he missed, and that was when I knew that the good sheriff wasn't trying to stop the ambulance, he was trying to kill me.

As the distance closed and the ambulance bore down on him, Dannmeyer finally realized he was the one with the problem and turned his attention to the driver. “Ernie, get down!” I screamed, but it was too late. Three more nine-millimeter slugs shattered the windshield on the driver's side. At least two caught Ernie in the upper chest and punched him backward, bouncing him off the front seat. His body flexed stiff as a board. As it did, his leg straightened and pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor.

Dannmeyer didn't expect that. The ambulance's engine roared and the ex-Marine discovered he wasn't quite as quick as he once was. I caught a glimpse of him over the top of the hood as he squinted into the bright headlights and unloaded his last three rounds into the ambulance's front grill. Typical jarhead. He'd watched too many John Wayne movies and thought his gun and three ounces of lead could stop two tons of onrushing steel. They were too little and way too late.

The ambulance must have been going thirty miles an hour when it slammed into Dannmeyer with its front bumper and grill, crushing him like a bug against the side of the funeral home and caving in the wall. The rear end jumped off the ground and the side doors popped open. The ambulance hung there in mid-air as the bricks began to fall. The top half of the wall wobbled and then it collapsed onto the ambulance's hood, bringing part of the roof with it, burying the sheriff and the front half of the ambulance under a pile of brick and mortar. The last brick bounced off on the hood and other than the sputter and hiss of the radiator, there was nothing left but silence. The engine was dead. So was Dannmeyer. So was poor Ernie. There was no more shouting and no more gunshots, only a cloud of dust and the groan of twisted metal as the ambulance settled down and died.

The crash had pinned Ernie upright in the front seat behind the steering wheel and I found myself lying on the floor, wedged between the dashboard and the seat, covered with broken glass. Every inch of me ached. As my head cleared, I smelled raw gasoline and I knew I had to get out of the cab quickly. Straining, I pushed and crawled my way along the floor of the cab and out the side door until I fell out on the ground.