infrequently passing cars or trucks.
The chase was short. He dragged her down before she had reached the end
of the parking lot. They rolled through dirty ankle-deep water.
She flailed at him, tried to claw him. He sank his razored talons into
her arms, nailing them to her sides, and she let out a terrible cry of
pain. Thrashing furiously, they rolled one last time, and then he had
her pinned down in the storm runoff, which was chilly in spite of the
warm air around them.
For a moment he was surprised to find his blood subsiding, replaced by
carnal hunger as he looked down upon the helpless woman. But he merely
surrendered to that need as he had surrendered to the urgent need for
blood. Beneath him, sensing his intent, the woman tried desperately to
throw him off. Her screams of pain gave way to shrill cries of pure
terror. Ripping his talons loose of her arm, he shredded her blouse and
put his dark, gnarled, inhuman hand upon her bare breasts.
Her screams faded. She stared up at him emptilyvoiceless, shaking,
paralyzed by dread.
A moment later, having torn open her pants, he eagerly withdrew his
manhood from his own jeans. Even in his frenzy to couple with her, he
realized that the erect organ in his hand was not human, it was large,
strange, hideous.
When the woman’s gaze fell upon that monstrous staff, she began to weep
and whimper. She must have thought that the gates of hell had opened
and that demons had come forth. Her horror and abject fear further
inflamed his lust.
The storm, which had been subsiding, grew worse for a while, as if in
malevolent accompaniment to the brutal act that he was about to
perpetrate.
He mounted her.
The rain beat upon them.
The water sloshed around them.
A few minutes later, he killed her.
Lightning blazed, and as its reflection played across the flooded
parking lot, the woman’s spreading blood looked like opalescent films of
oil on the water.
After he had killed her, he fed.
When he was satiated, his primal urges grew less demanding, and the part
of him that possessed an intellect gained dominance over the savage
beast. Slowly he became aware of the danger of being seen.
There was little traffic on the interstate, but if one of the passing
cars or trucks pulled into the rest area, he would be spotted. He
hurriedly dragged the dead woman across the macadam, around the side of
the comfort station, and into the mesquite behind the building. He
disposed of the dead man there as well.
He found the keys in the ignition of the pickup. The engine turned over
on the second try.
He had taken the cowboy’s hat. Now he jammed it on his head, pulling
the brim down, hoping it wouhi disguise the strangeness of his face.
The pickup’s fuel gauge indicated a full tank, so he would not need to
stop between here and Vegas. But if a passing motorist glanced over and
saw his face. . . He must remain alert, drive well, attract no
notice-always resisting the retrograde evolution that steadily pulled
him into the mindless perspective of the beast. He had to remember to
avert his grotesque face from the vehicles he passed and from those that
passed him. If he took those precautions, the hat-in conjunction with
the early dusk brought on by the storm-might provide sufficient cover.
He looked into the rearview mirror and saw a pair of unmatched eyes.
One was a luminous pale green with a vertical slit-shaped orange iris
that gleamed like a hot coal. The other was larger, dark, and…
multifaceted.
That jarred him as nothing had for a while, and he looked quickly away
from the mirror. Multifaceted? That was far too alien to bear
consideration. Nothing like that had featured in any stage of human
evolution, not even in ancient eras when the first gasping amphibians
had crawled out of the sea onto the shore. Here was proof that he was
not merely devolving, that his body was not merely struggling to express
all the potential in the genetic heritage of humankind, here was proof