Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

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

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