The Green Ripper Read Online Free PDF Page A

been a vegetable. Ternble thing, a strong young woman like that." She had led me out into the corridor. "Who you got to come get you?"
     
     
"I'll manage." I tried to smile. The tears were mnumg down my face. No sobs. No shudders. Just eyes naming. "Where is she now?"
     
     
'They're doing an autopsy."
     
     
"Who said they could!"
     
     
"It's a law, Mr. McGee. When the cause of death is unknown, they have to. There's no way anybody can stop them, and that's a good law. Whatever is killing people, we have to find it out."
     
     
"What finally happened? There was that machine..."
     
     
She shrugged. "Total kidney failure, and then the heart gave out right about the same time." She shook her head. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I don't know. We get so many old ones here.
     
     
The Green Ripper
     
     
Not young strong women like her. Whatever it was, it came and wore her right down to nothing. It took the life right out of her. It ate her up, like it was some hungry thing." She caught herself. "sorry. talk too much. Listen, if you're the only one she had, what you've got to do now, you've got to make the arrangements. She's got to have a burial"
     
     
I wallced on out of their hospital, snuffling from time to time, marveling that I could walk with so little thought and effort. Long strides, heels thudding against the tile door, hand lifting without conscious command to flatten against the push plate on the big glass door, push and let me out into the chill night, spangled with stars that were faint above the security lights of the parking area. I walked to the tall dark shape of Miss Agnes, my ancient Rolls, and leaned against one of her high front fenders, my arms folded, ankles crossed, eyes running again.
     
     
Cessation.. Ending. A stopping of her. I heard the night sounds of country and city. Yawk of a night bird nearby. Faraway eerie pulsing of siren. Whim poring drone of light traffic on University Drive, lights in moving patterns. Grinding whine of trucks moving fast, a mile or so away. Random night wind clattering palm fronds. This was the world, bustling its way on through its allotted four billion more years of ffme, carrying its four ~billicn souls gracelessly onward. A lot of them had stopped tonight, some in blood and terror. I tried to comprehend the enormity the obscenity of the fact that Gretel Howard had been one of them, just as dead as the teenagers who impacted a tree at a hundred and ten miles an hour near Tulsa, the llying dentist who didn't see the power lines, the Muslim children dead by fire in Bangladesh, the three hundred elderly in Florida who would not make it through the night in their nursing-home beds.
     
     
I could not fit my mind around the realization of finality. There seemed to be more that would happen for the two of us, more of life to be consumed and completed. My body knew with a dreadful precision all the contours of her, the shapes and fittings, the sighs and turnings, gasps and pressures.
     
     
I sought refuge in a child's dreaming. They had spirited her away, mended her, and would soon spring the great surprise upon me. She would come running, laughing, half crying, saying, "Darling, we were just fooling you a little. That's an. Mid we scare you too much? I'm sorry, Tray, dear. So sorry. Take me home."
     
     
And on the way home she would explain to me how she had outwitted the green ripper. I had read once about a little kid who had overheard some adult conversation and afterward, in the night, had terrible nightmares. He kept telling his people he dreamed about the green ripper coming to get him. They finally figured out that he had heard talk
     
     
The Green Ripper about the grim reaper. I had told Grets about it, and it had found its way into our personal lan- guage. It was not possible that the green ripper had gotten her.
     
     
Not possible.
     
     
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Meyer took care of practically everything. I couldn't have managed. I was