retraced his path through the apartment to the motel office and out into
the courtyard. From the corner of his eye, he saw movement down at the
end of the first wing.
Rachael. Even in the gloom, there was no mistaking her.
She came out of one of the motel rooms, moving fast, and with immense
relief Ben called her name. She looked up, then ran toward him along
the awning-covered promenade. At first he thought her attitude was one
of ordinary excitement or perhaps joy at the sight of him, but almost at
once he realized she was propelled by terror.
“Benny, run!” she shouted as she approached. “Run, for God’s sake,
run!”
Of course, he would not run because he could not abandon Whit out there
against the wall of the weedchoked flower bed, and he could not carry
Whit and run at the same time, so he stood his ground. However, when he
saw the thing that came out of that motel room behind her, he wanted to
run, no doubt of that, all courage fled him in an instant, even though
the darkness allowed him to see only a fraction of the nightmare that
pursued her.
Genetic chaos, Whit had said. Devolution. Moments ago, those words had
meant little or nothing to Ben.
Now, on his first glimpse of the thing that Eric Leben of its throat,
and its other arm bent in an impossible fashion until it had put its
other hand against the back of its neck.
“Again, again!” Rachael urged.
He pumped the sixth and final shot into the kneeling creature, and it
pitched backward on the concrete, flopped onto its side, lay silent,
motionless.
The Combat Magnum had a roar only slightly less impressive than a
cannon’s. In the comparative stillness that followed the dwindling echo
of the last gunshot, the drumming rain sounded hardly louder than a
whisper.
“Do you have more bullets?” Rachael demanded, still in a state of acute
terror.
“It’s all right,” Ben said shakily. “It’s dead, it’s dead.”
“If you have more cartridges, load themf’ she shouted.
He was not shocked by her tone or by the panic in her voice, but he was
shocked when he realized that she was not really hysterical-scared, yes,
damn scared, but not out of control. She knew what she was talking
about, she was terrified but not irrational, and she believed he would
need to reload quickly.
This morning-an eternity agcon the way to Eric’s cabin above Lake
Arrowhead, Ben had stuffed some extra rounds into his pockets along with
a few spare shells for the shotgun. He had discarded the shotgun ammo
when he had left the 12-gauge in the Merkur along 1-15. Now, checking
his pockets, he turned up only two revolver cartridges where he had
expected to find half a dozen, and he figured that the others had
spilled out with the shotgun shells when he had discarded those.
But it was all right, everything was okay, nothing to fear, the creature
on the promenade had not moved and was not going to move.
“Hurry,” Rachael urged.
His hands were shaking. He broke out the revolver’s cylinder and
slipped one cartridge into a chamber.
“Benny,” she said warningly.
He looked up and saw the beast moving. It had gotten its huge hands
under itself and was trying to push up from the concrete.
“Holy shit,” he said. He fumbled the second round into the gun, snapped
the cylinder back into place.
Incredibly, the beast had already risen to its knees and reached out to
another awning post.
Ben aimed carefully, squeezed the trigger. The Combat Magnum boomed
again.
The thing was jolted as the slug tore into it, but it held fast to the
post, emitting an ungodly screech. It turned luminous eyes on Ben, and
in them he thought he saw a challenge and an indestructible hatred.
Ben’s hands were shaking so bad that he was afraid he was going to miss
with the next-and last-shot. He had not been this rattled since his
first combat mission in Nam.
It clawed for handholds on the post and heaved onto its feet.
His confidence shattered, but unwilling to admit that a weapon as