Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

along with afederal advisory that the fitgiflves are armed and

dangerous.”

Sam and the fisherman reached the cash register, where Ben turned his

attention back to the government form.

The newscaster had moved on to another story.

Ben was startled and delighted to hear Rachael launch smoothly into a

line of bubbly patter, engaging the fisherman’s attention. The guy was

tall, burly, in his fifties, wearing a black T-shirt that exposed his

beefy arms, both of which featured elaborate blue-and-red tattoos.

Rachael professed to be simply fascinated by tattoos, and the angler,

like most men, was flattered and pleased by the gushy attention of a

beautiful young woman. Anyone listening to Rachael’s charming and

slightly witless chatter-for she assumed the attitude of a California

beach girl airhead-would never have suspected that she had just listened

to a radio reporter describe her as a fugitive wanted for murder.

The same slightly pompous-sounding reporter was currently talking about

a terrorist bombing in the Mideast, and Sam, the clerk, clicked a knob

on the radio, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “I’m plain sick of

hearing about those damn A-rabs,” he said to Ben.

“Who isn’t?” Ben said, completing the last line of the form.

“Far as I’m concerned,” Sam said, “if they give us any more grief, we

should just nuke ’em and be done with it.”

“Nuke ’em,” Ben agreed. “Back to the Stone Age.”

The radio was part of the tape deck, and Sam switched that on, popped in

a cassette. “Have to be farther back than the Stone Age. They’re

already living in the damn Stone Age.”

“Nuke ’em back to the Age of Dinosaurs,” Ben said as a song by the Oak

Ridge Boys issued from the cassette player.

Rachael was making astonished and squeamish sounds as the fisherman told

her how the tattoo needles embedded the ink way down beneath all three

layers of skin.

“Age of the Dinosaurs,” Sam agreed. “Let ’em try their terrorist crap

on a tyrannosaurus, huh?”

Ben laughed and handed over the completed form.

The purchases had already been charged to Ben’s Visa card, so all Sam

had to do was staple the charge slip and the cash-register tape to one

copy of the firearms information form and put the paperwork in the bag

that held the four boxes of ammunition. “Come see us again.”

“I’ll sure do that,” Ben said.

Rachael said good-bye to the tattooed fisherman, and Ben said hello and

good-bye to him, and they both said good-bye to Sam. Ben carried the

box containing the shotgun, and Rachael carried the plastic sack that

contained the boxes of ammunition, and they moved nonchalantly across

the room toward the front door, past stacks of aluminum bait buckets

with perforated Styrofoam liners, past furled minnow-seining nets and

small landing nets that looked like tennis rackets with badly stretched

strings, past ice chests and thermos bottles and colorful fishing hats.

Behind them, in a voice that he believed to be softer than it actually

was, the tattooed fisherman said to Sam, “Quite a woman.

You don’t know the half of it, Ben thought as he pushed open the door

for Rachael and followed her outside.

Less than ten feet away, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy was

getting out of a patrol car.

off the green and white to reveal every hideous Fluorescent light

bounced ceramic tile, bright enough detail, too bright.

The bathroom mirror, framed in brass, was unmarred by spots or yellow

streaks of age, and the reflections it presented were crisp and sharp

and clear in every detail, too clear.

Eric Leben was not surprised by what he saw, for while sitting in the

living-room armchair, he had already hesitantly used his hands to

explore the startling changes in the upper portions of his face. But

visual confirmation of what his disbelieving hands had told him was

shocking, frightening, depressing-and more fascinating than anything

else he’d seen in his entire life.

A year ago, he had subjected himself to the imperfect Wildcard program

of genetic editing and augmentation.

Since then, he had caught no colds, no flu, had been plagued by no mouth

ulcers or headaches, not even acid indigestion. Week by week, he had

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