to hide out until he’s in better condition, until he’s a bit more in
control of himself, and then he’s going to come kill me. He died
furious with me, consumed by such hatred for me that he dashed blindly
out into traffic, and I’m sure that same hatred was seething in him the
moment awareness returned to him in the county morgue. In his clouded
and twisted mind, I’m very likely his primary obsession, and I don’t
think he’ll rest until I’m dead. Or until he’s dead, really dead this
time.”
He knew she was right. He was deeply afraid for her.
His preference for the past was as strong in him now as it had ever
been, and he longed for simpler times. How mad had the modern world
become? Criminals owned the city streets at night. The whole planet
could be utterly destroyed in an hour with the pressing of a few
buttons.
And now… now dead men could be reanimated. Ben wished for a time
machine that could carry him back to a better age, say the early 1920s,
when a sense of wonder was still alive and when faith in the human
potential was unsullied and unsurpassed.
Yet… he remembered the joy that had surged in him when Rachael had
first said that death had been beaten, before she had explained that
those who came back from beyond were frighteningly changed. He had been
thrilled.
Hardly the response of a genuine stick-in-the-mud reactionary. He might
peer back at the past and long for it with smart was, like others of his
age, undeniably attracted to science and its potential for creating a
brighter future.
Maybe he was not such a misfit in the modern world as he liked to
pretend. Maybe this experience was teaching him something about himself
that he would have preferred not to learn.
He said, “Could you really pull the trigger on Eric?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure you could. I suspect you’d freeze up when you were really
confronted with the moral implications of murder.”
“This wouldn’t be murder. He’s no longer a human being. He’s already
dead. The living dead. The walking dead. He’s not a man anymore.
He’s different.
Changed. Just as those mice were changed. He’s only a thing now, not a
man, a dangerous thing, and I wouldn’t have any qualms about blowing his
head off. If the authorities ever found out, I don’t think they’d even
try to prosecute me. And I see no moral questions that would put me on
trial in my own mind.”
“You’ve obviously thought hard about this,” he said.
“But why not hide out, keep a low profile, let Eric’s partners find him
and kill him for you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t bet everything on their success. They
might fail. They might not get to him before he finds me. This is my
life we’re talking about, andby God I’m not trusting in anyone but me to
protect it.
“And me,” he said.
“And you, yes. And you, Benny.”
He came to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, beside her. “So
we’re chasing a dead man.”
“Yes.”
“But we’ve got to get some rest now.
“I’m beat,” she agreed.
“Then where will we go tomorrow?”
“Sarah told me about a cabin Eric has in the mountains near Lake
Arrowhead. It sounded secluded. Just what he needs now, for the next
few days, while the initial healing’s going on.”
Ben sighed. “Yeah, I think we might find him in a place like that.”
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“I will.”
“But you don’t have to.”
“I know. But I will.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Though she was weary, sweaty, and rumpled, with lank hair and bloodshot
eyes, she was beautiful.
He had never felt closer to her. Facing death together always forged a
special bond between people, drew them even closer regardless of how
very close they might have been before. He knew, for he had been to war
in the Green Hell.
Tenderly she said, “Let’s get some rest, Benny.”
“Right,” he said.
But before he could lie down and turn off the lights, he had to break