double safeties on her pistol.
Eric used the electric opener to take the lid off a large can of
Progresso minestrone, realized he needed a pot in which to heat it, but
was shaking too badly to wait any longer, so he just drank the cold soup
out of the can, threw the can aside, wiping absentmindedly at the broth
that dripped off his chin. He kept no fresh food in the cabin, only a
few frozen things, mostly canned goods. so he opened a family-size
Dinty Moore beef stew, and he ate that cold, too, all of it, so fast he
kept choking on it.
Me chewed the beef with something akin to manic glee, taking a strangely
intense pleasure from the tearing and rending of the meat between his
teeth. It was a pleasure unlike any he had experienced before-primal,
savageand it both delighted and frightened him.
Although the stew was fully cooked, requiring only reheating, and
although it was laden with spices and preservatives, Eric could smell
the traces of blood remaining in the beef. Though the blood content was
minuscule and thoroughly cooked, Eric perceived it not merely as a vague
scent but as a strong, nearly overpowering odor, a thrilling and
thoroughly delicious organic incense, which caused him to shudder wijh
excitement. He breathed deeply and was dizzied by the blood fragrance,
and on his tongue it was ambrosian.
When he finished the cold beef stew, which took only a couple of
minutes, he opened a can of chili and ate that even more quickly, then
another can of soup, chicken noodle this time, and finally he began to
take the sharp edge off his hunger. He unscrewed the lid from a jar of
peanut butter, scooped some out with his fingers, and ate it. He did
not like it as well as he liked the meat, but he knew it was good for
him, rich in the nutrients that his racing metabolism required. He
consumed more, cleaned out most of the jar, then threw it aside and
stood for a moment, gasping for breath, exhausted from eating.
The queer, painless fire continued to burn in him, but the hunger had
substantially abated.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his uncle Barry Hampstead sitting
in a chair at the small kitchen table, grinning at him. This time,
instead of ignoring the phantom, Eric turned toward it, took a couple of
steps closer, and said, “What do you want here, you son of a bitch?”
His voice was gravelly, not at all like it had once been. “What’re you
grinning at, you goddamn pervert?
You get the hell out of here.
Uncle Barry actually began to fade away, although that was not
surprising, He was only an illusion born of degenerated brain cells.
Unreal flames, feeding on shadows, danced in the darkness beyond the
cellar door, which Eric had evidently left open when he had come back
upstairs with the Wildcard file. He watched the shadowflres. As
before, he felt some mystery beckoning, and he was afraid.
However, emboldened by his success in chasing away Barry Hampstead’s
shade, he started toward the flickering red and silver flames, figuring
either to dispel them or to see, at last, what lay within them.
Then he remembered the arinchaiw in the living room, the window, the
lookout he had been keeping. He had been distracted from that important
task by a chain of events, the unusually brutal headache, the changes he
had felt in his face, the macabre reflection in the mirror, the Wildcard
file, his sudden crippling hunger, Uncle Barry’s apparition, and now the
false fires beyond the cellar door. He could not concentrate on one
thing for any length of time, and he cried out in frustration at this
latest evidence of mental dysfunction.
He moved back across the kitchen, kicking aside an empty Dinty Moore
beef stew can and a couple of soup cans, heading for the living room and
his abandoned guardpost.
Reeeeee, reeeeee, reeeeee . . . The one-note songs of the cicadas,
monotonous to the human ear but most likely rich in meaning to other
insects, echoed shrilly yet hollowly through the high forest.