He's lying on his side, on the floor except the floor is weirdly soft; someone's bending over him, someone's pulling away his coat, his boots.
Oh. He must be dead, then, for real this time, and they're salvaging his clothes.
Maybe everything after the death-blow was a dream, compressed into the last few split seconds of his life. That would make sense. More sense than any of it really happening: flowers and grass, steak and greens and crusty bread, new clothes, sunlight. Singing mice. Taming a Martian monster. Screaming at Curtis.
His mouth is abruptly full of blood, hot and salty. He swallows, and swallows again, and realizes somewhere in the middle of his third swallow that it's broth and not blood.
And then there's something warm and heavy around his shoulders, like someone much bigger than himself carrying him, rocking him to sleep. The shivering that he's barely noticed for some time now is lessening. Stopping.
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Oh. He must be dead, then, for real this time, and they're salvaging his clothes.
Maybe everything after the death-blow was a dream, compressed into the last few split seconds of his life. That would make sense. More sense than any of it really happening: flowers and grass, steak and greens and crusty bread, new clothes, sunlight. Singing mice. Taming a Martian monster. Screaming at Curtis.
His mouth is abruptly full of blood, hot and salty. He swallows, and swallows again, and realizes somewhere in the middle of his third swallow that it's broth and not blood.
And then there's something warm and heavy around his shoulders, like someone much bigger than himself carrying him, rocking him to sleep. The shivering that he's barely noticed for some time now is lessening. Stopping.
If this is death, it's not so terrible after all.