the black Mercedes suddenly reminded her of a hearse.
Out on the highway, a large truck passed, engine roaring, big tires
making a slushy sound on the wet pavement.
Rachael reached the Mercedes, jerked open the driver’s door, saw no one
inside. She fumbled under the seat for the pistol. Found it. While
she still had the courage to act, she went around to the back of the
car, hesitated only a second, pushed on the latch button, and lifted the
trunk lid, prepared to empty the clip of the thirty-two into the
Eric-thing if it was crouching there.
The trunk was empty. The carpet was soaked, and a gray puddle of rain
spread over the center of the compartment, so she figured it had
remained open to the elements until an especially strong gust of wind
had blown it shut.
She slammed the lid, used her keys lock it’-iDod’ to the driver’s door,
and got in behind the wheel. She put the pistol on the passenger’s
seat, where she could get it quickly.
The car started without hesitation. The windshield wipers flung the
rain off the glass.
Outside, the desert beyond the concrete-block comfort station was
rendered entirely in shades of slate, grays, blacks, browns, and rust.
In that dreary sandscape, the only movement was the driving rain and the
windblown tumbleweed.
Eric had not followed her.
Maybe the rattlesnakes had killed him, after all. Surely he could not
have survived so many bites from so many snakes. Perhaps his
genetically altered body, though capable of repairing massive tissue
damage, was not able to counteract the toxic effects of such potent
venom.
She drove out of the rest area, back onto the highway, heading east
toward Las Vegas, grateful to be alive. The rain was falling too hard
to permit safe travel above forty or fifty miles an hour, so she stayed
in the extreme right lane, letting the more daring motorists pass her.
Mile by mile she tried to convince herself that the worst was past-but
she remained unconvinced.
Ben put the Merkur in gear and pulled onto the highway again.
The storm was moving rapidly eastward, toward Las Vegas. The rolling
thunder was more distant than before, a deep rumble rather than a
bone-jarring crash. The lightning, which had been striking perilously
close on all sides, now flickered farther away, near the eastern
horizon. Rain was still falling hard, but it no longer came down in
blinding sheets, and driving was possible again.
The dashboard clock confirmed the time on Ben’s watch, 5,15. Yet the
summer day was darker than it should have been at that hour. The
storm-blackened sky had brought an early dusk, and ahead the somber land
was fading steadily in the embrace of a false twilight.
At his current speed, he would not reach Las Vegas until about
eight-thirty tonight, probably two or three hours after Rachael had
gotten there. He would have to stop in Baker, the only outpost in this
part of the Mojave, and try to reach Whitney Gavis again. But he had
the feeling he was not going to get hold of Whit. A feeling that maybe
his and Rachael’s luck had run out.
31
FEEDING FRENZY Eric remembered the rattlesnakes only vaguely. Their
fangs had left puncture wounds in his hands, arms, and thighs, but those
small holes had already healed, and the rain had washed the bloodstains
from his sodden clothes.
His mutating flesh burned with that peculiar painless fire of ongoing
change, which completely masked the lesser sting of venom. Sometimes
his knees grew weak, or his stomach churned with nausea, or his vision
blurred, or a spell of dizziness seized him, but those symptoms of
poisoning grew less noticeable minute by minute. As he moved across the
storm-darkened desert, images of the serpents rose in his
memory-writhing forms curling like smoke around him, whispering in a
language that he could almost understand-but he had difficulty believing
that they had been real. A few times, he recalled biting, chewing, and
swallowing mouthfuls of rattler meat, gripped by a feeding frenzy. A
part of him responded to those bloody memories with excitement and
satisfaction. But another part of him-the part that was still Eric