Gradually he became aware of the sound of rain. After losing half of its force during the morning, it was now falling harder than at any time since the storm had first broken the previous night. No thunder shook the day, but the furious drumming of the rain itself—and the insulated walls of the house—had probably muffled the gunfire enough to prevent it being heard by neighbors. He hoped to God that was the case. Otherwise, they were coming even now to investigate, and they would prevent his escape.
Blood continued to trickle down from the wound on his forehead, and some of it got into his right eye. It stung. He wiped at his eye with his sleeve and blinked away the tears as best he could.
His wrist hurt like hell. But if he had to, he could hold the revolver with his left hand and shoot well enough in close quarters…
When the .38 was reloaded, Sam edged back into the room, to the smoking computer on the worktable along the west wall, where Harley Coltrane’s mutated body was slumped in a chair, trailing its bone-metal arms. Keeping one eye on the dead man-machine, he took the phone off the modem and hung it up. Then he lifted the receiver and was relieved to hear a dial tone.
His mouth was so dry that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak clearly when his call got through.
He punched out the number of the Bureau office in Los Angeles.
The line clicked.
A pause.
A recording came on “We are sorry that we are unable to complete your call at this time.”
He hung up, then tried again.
“We are sorry that we are unable to complete—”
He slammed the phone down.
Not all of the telephones in Moonlight Cove were operable. And evidently, even from those in service, calls could be placed only to certain numbers. Approved numbers. The local phone company had been reduced to an elaborate intercom to serve the converted.
As he turned away from the phone, he heard something move, behind him. Stealthy and quick.
He swung around, and the woman was three feet away. She, was no longer connected to the ruined computer, but one of those organic-looking cables trailed across the floor from the base of her spine and into an electrical socket.
Free-associating in his terror, Sam thought: So much for your flimsy kites, Dr. Frankenstein, so much for the need for storms andd lightning; these days we just plug the monsters into the wall, them a jolt of the juice direct, courtesy of Pacific Power & Light.
A reptilian hiss issued from her, and she reached for him. Instead of fingers, her hand had three multiple-pronged plugs similar to the couplings with which the elements of a home computer were joined, though these prongs were as sharp as nails.
Sam dodged to the side, colliding with the chair in which Harley Coltrane still slumped, and nearly fell, firing at the woman-thing as he went. He emptied the five-round .38.
The first three shots knocked her backward and down. The other two tore through vacant air and punched chunks of plaster out of the walls because he was too panicked to stop pulling the trigger when she fell out of his line of fire.
She was trying to get up.
Like a goddamn vampire, he thought.
He needed the high-tech equivalent of a wooden stake, a cross, a silver bullet.
The artery-circuits that webbed her naked body were still pulsing with light, although in places she was sparking, just as the computers themselves had done when he had pumped a couple of slugs into them.
No rounds were left in the revolver.
He searched his pockets for cartridges.
He had none.
Get out.
An electronic wail, not deafening but more nerve-splintering than a thousand sharp fingernails scraped simultaneously down a blackboard, shrilled from her.
Two segmented, wormlike probes burst from her face and flew straight at him. Both fell inches short of him—perhaps a sign of her waning energy—and returned to her like splashes of quicksilver streaming back into the mother mass.
But she was getting up.
Sam scrambled to the doorway, stooped, and snatched up the ‘two cartridges he had dropped when he had reloaded the gun. He broke open the cylinder, shook out the empty brass casings, Jammed in the last two rounds.
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