Free The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford Page B

wearing a white cotton shirt with ruffles down the front, and thin leather bands with silver buckles wrapped around her forearms. Danny cut away the shirt front with scissors. He cut off the straps, too, so he didn't have to look at them.

    There was a hole near the heart, another on the left flank, by the floating ribs, a third in the abdomen—when had that happened? He was impressed that the Ellyll had gone so far with those wounds. The wonderful silver hair was matted and vile. McCain's shot to the forehead seemed like overkill, unless it was something to do with the pale girl. . . . There were a couple of long bluish marks around the throat that didn't make any medical sense, but he put the question aside.
    He had seen plenty worse, riding the van, in the County ER. learning the trade. Shotguns. Traffic accidents; a little bullet had nothing on a pickup truck for kinetic energy. And farm machinery-was hell on muscle and bone.
    Death made a difference, too. A dead body didn't move or pulse or clutch or moan. When the life had faded out under you. after you'd pounded and stuck, breathed and fought for it, you felt something. You couldn't let it last, because there'd be another run any minute, but it was bad while it held on. A body you just found, though—when the bullets or the truck bumper or the tons of corn falling down the silo had finished the job before you got there— there was nothing but the taxi ride to the morgue. Meat delivery some of the guys called it.
    Retractor, probe. He thought he heard a click, but there wasn't enough light. He tossed the probe down and opened drawers until he found a headband light. Yeah, there the little bastard was. Dissecting knife. Forceps. He examined the slug: it hadn't deformed much, looked like an ordinary hardball. At home, people had mostly used hollowpoints on each other. He tossed it into a steel basin, where it gave a rolling clang.
    The other chest shot had gotten behind a rib. Danny got a spreader on the bone, cracked it out. Hemostat, to pull back the mangled heart wall; it was tough and kept slipping. Light on metal. Clang.
    "Coffee's on," Stagger Lee said, and put a big china mug on the counter.
    "Thanks. Halfway there." The coffee was muddy-looking, and had a sharp, sweet smell. It burned the back of his throat, not with heat.
    "What's in this?"

    "Irish. Just drink it slow. The comfort of mankind."
    There was brown sugar in it, and thick cream. It did taste good. Danny took a long sip of it, then noticed his glove left a bloody print and wrapped the mug in a towel.
    The bullet in the lower thorax was deep. He undid the woman's belt, started to unfasten the fly buttons, then just got the shears and cut his way in. It wasn't anything like undressing her. Meat forgave everything. He made a Y-shaped cut, pulled back the points and got retractors and elastic on them. The liver was a strange coppery color, and he didn't see a spleen.
    Stagger Lee said, "You know what you're doing. I just dug like Fred C. Dobbs."
    "You do this often?"
    "When it needed doing."
    Danny thought about objecting to the answer, but didn't. "What's it for?"
    "Mr. Patrise didn't talk to you about this?"
    "No."
    "The body goes back to the Ellyllon. Sometimes they take it over Division to Elfland, sometimes not. It's their fancy Borgia politics, nothing to do with us." He looked down at the deep incision. "We take all of our stuff back."
    The third bullet went into the pan.
    Stagger said, "Do you need help?"
    "No."
    "I'll be in the other room. I quit being curious about brains a while ago."
    "Go to bed if you want."
    "No, I'll wait."
    The knife went around the forehead, the scalp peeled back. The electric skull saw buzzed right through the bone. The brain didn't look any different from a human's, not that Danny's job had involved much neurosurgery. He was getting tired. He used the long-bladed knife and cut out a wedge, as from a watermelon, pried out the bullet and shoved the section back. He put