it was burning with hot desire, and it would not be stopped, not by guns
or doors, not by anything, not until it had taken the female, buried its
aching member inside her, not until it had killed both of them and fed
upon them, it wanted to chew out their soft sweet eyes, bury its muzzle
in their torn and spurting throats, it wanted to feed on the bloody
pulsing muscle of their hearts, wanted to burrow through their
eviscerated corpses in search of their rich livers and kidneys, it felt
that overwhelming hunger beginning to grow within it again, the
changefire within it needed more fuel, a mild hunger now but soon to get
worse, like before, an allconsuming hunger that could not be denied, it
needed meat, and it pushed through the glass door, out into the night
wind and blowing rain, and there was another male, a smaller one, and
fire flashed from something in the smaller male’s hand, and a brief
sharp pain stung its chest, and fire flashed again, and another pain, so
it roared a furious challenge at its pathetic assailant Just this
morning, when he had been at the library doing research related to the
unofficial investigation he intended to conduct with Reese, Julio had
read several magazine and journal articles Eric Leben had written about
genetic engineering and about the prospects for the success of life
extension by means of genetic manipulation. Later, he had spoken with
Dr. Easton Solberg at UCI, had done a lot of thinking since then, and
had just heard Whitney Gavis’s disjointed ramblings about genetic chaos
and mutation.
He was not a stupid man, so when he saw the nightmare creature that
followed Shadway and Mrs. Leben out of the motel office, he quickly
determined that something had gone terribly wrong with Eric Leben’s
experiment and that this monstrosity was, in fact, the scientist
himself.
As Julio unhesitatingly opened fire on the creature, Mrs. Leben and
Shadway-who, judging from the smell of it, was carrying a bucket full of
gasoline-hurried from beneath the cover of the breezeway into the rainy
courtyard. The first two rounds did not faze the mutant, though it
stopped for a moment as if baffled by Julio’s sudden and unexpected
appearance. To his astonishment, he saw that he might not be able to
bring it down with the revolver.
It lurched forward, hissing, and swung one multiplejointed arm at him as
if to knock his head off his shoulders.
Julio barely ducked under the blow, felt the arm brush through his hair,
and fired up into the beast’s chest, which bristled with spines and
strangely shaped lumps of tissue. If it embraced him, he would be
impaled upon those breast spikes, and that realization brought his
finger to bear upon the trigger again and again.
Those three shots finally drove the thing backward until it collided
with the wall by the office door, where it stood for a moment, clawing
at the air.
Julio fired the sixth and final round in the revolver, hitting his
target again, but still it remained standinghurt and maybe even dazed,
but standing. He always carried a few extra cartridges in his jacket
pocket, even though he had never before needed spare rounds in all his
years of police work, and now he fumbled for them.
The creature shoved away from the motel wall, apparently having already
recuperated from the six rounds it had just taken. It cut loose a cry
so savage and furious that Julio turned away from it at once and ran
into the courtyard, where Shadway and Mrs. Leben were standing at the
far end of the swimming pool.
withdrawn one match and had been holding it and the box in her cupped
hands, silently cursing the wind and water that would try to extinguish
the flame the moment it was struck.
From the front of the motel courtyard, backlit by the amber light
spilling through the office windows, the Eric-thing approached in that
frighteningly swift, darkly graceful stride that seemed entirely at odds
with its size and with its cumbersome, gnarled appearance. It emitted a
shrill, ululant cry as it raced toward them. Clearly, it had no fear.