of Geneplan-but he had certainly not expected Rachael and Shadway. He
was stunned and could not imagine how she had learned of this place,
though he knew that the answer would be obvious to him if his mind had
been functioning normally.
They were crouched along the bank that flanked the road down there,
fairly well concealed. But they had to reveal a little of themselves in
order to get a good look at the cabin, and what little they revealed was
enough for Eric to identify them in the magnified field of the
binoculars.
The sight of Rachael enraged him, for she had rejected him, the only
woman in his adult life to reject him-the bitch, the ungrateful stinking
bitch!-and she turned her back on his money, too. Even worse, in the
miasmal swamp of his deranged mind, she was responsible for his death,
had virtually killed him by angering him to distraction and then letting
him rush out onto Main Street, into the path of the truck. He could
believe she had actually planned his death in order to inherit the very
fortune on which she’d claimed to have no designs. Yes, of course, why
not? And now there she was with her lover, with the man she had been
fucking behind his back, and she had clearly come to finish the job that
the garbage truck had started.
They pulled back beyond the bend, but a few seconds later he saw
movement in the brush, to the left of the road, and he caught a glimpse
of them moving off into the trees. They were going to make a cautious
indirect approach.
Eric dropped the binoculars and shoved up from the armchair, stood
swaying, in the grip of a rage so great that he almost felt crushed by
it. Steel bands tightened across his chest, and for a moment he could
not draw his breath. Then the bands snapped, and he sucked in great
lungsful of air. He said, “Oh, Rachael, Rachael,” in a voice that
sounded as if it were echoing up from hell.
He liked the sound of it, so he said her name again, “Rachael, Rachael .
From the floor beside the chair, he plucked up the ax.
He realized that he could not handle the ax and both knives, so he chose
the butcher’s knife and left the other blade behind.
He would go out the back way. Circle around. Slip up on them through
the woods. He had the cunning to do it.
He felt as if he had been born to stalk and kill.
Hurrying across the living room toward the kitchen, Eric saw an image of
himself in his mind’s eye, He was ramming the knife deep into her guts,
then ripping it upward, tearing open her flat young belly. He made a
shrill sound of eagerness and almost fell over the empty soup and stew
cans in his haste to reach the back door.
He would cut her, cut her, cut. And when she dropped to the ground with
the knife in her belly, he would go at her with the ax, use the blunt
edge of it first, smashing her bones to splinters, breaking her arms and
legs, and then he would turn the wondrous shiny instrument over in his
hands-his strange and powerful new hands!-and use the sharp edge.
By the time he reached the rear door and yanked it open and went out of
the house, he was in the grip of that reptilian fury that he had feared
only a short while ago, a cold and calculating fury, called forth out of
genetic memories of inhuman ancestors. Having at last surrendered to
that primeval rage, he was surprised to discover that it felt good.
a 22
WAITING FOR THE STONE Jerry Peake should have been asleep on his feet,
for he had been up all night. But seeing Anson Sharp humiliated had
revitalized him better than eight hours in the sheets could have. He
felt marvelous.
He stood with Sharp in the corridor outside Sarah Kiel’s hospital room,
waiting for Felsen Kiel to come and tell them what they needed to know.
Peake required considerable restraint to keep from laughing at his