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the room, the flashlight dangling from his hand, the beam dancing eerily off the walls of their darkened confines. "Moxie . . . where the hell is Moxie?" he gulped. |
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The searching beam found him. The little man was slouched in the far corner of the room, half-sitting, half-standing, propped against the wall. His emaciated, rotting body looked back at them with pleading, anxious eyes. |
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Linda's scream finally escaped as the little man's body slumped to the floor, his withered, once strong hands clawing desperately for something in life to hold onto. |
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Freeman plunged headlong across the room, banging into tables and bouncing off chairs in the darkness. He knelt beside the tiny man. "Moxie," his own withered voice rasped, "what happened?" |
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Moxie's hollow brown eyes stared emptily up at him, the pleading appeal giving way to an aura of nothingness stealing over them like a thin veil of fog. |
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The doctor bent over and laid his trembling hand on the stilled man's chest. There was nothing. He looked up at Linda with hopelessness mirrored in his eyes. "He's dead," he muttered. |
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"My God . . . what about Bart?" |
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Freeman scrambled to his feet and plunged back through the darkness, this time toward |
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