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