He thought he felt a patch of… scales.
Revulsion made his teeth chatter.
He quickly stopped examining himself.
He wanted to know what he was becoming.
Yet he didn't want to know.
He needed to know.
And he couldn't bear knowing.
Dimly he suspected that, having intentionally edited a small portion of his own genetic material, he had created an imbalance in unknown — perhaps unknowable — life chemistries and life forces. The imbalance had not been severe until, upon his death, his altered cells had begun to perform as they had never been meant to perform, healing at a rate and to an extent that was unnatural. That activity — the overwhelming flood of growth hormones and proteins it produced — in some manner released the bonds of genetic stability, threw off the biological governor that ensured a slow, slow, measured pace for evolution. Now he was evolving at an alarming rate. More accurately, perhaps, he was devolving, his body seeking to re-create ancient forms still stored within the tens of millions of years of racial experience in his genes. He knew that he was fluctuating mentally between the familiar modern intellect of Eric Leben and the alien consciousnesses of several primitive states of the human race, and he was afraid of devolving both mentally and physically to some bizarre form so remote from human experience that he would cease to exist as Eric Leben, his personality dissolved forever in a prehistoric simian or reptilian consciousness.
She had done this to him — had killed him, thereby triggering the runaway response of his genetically altered cells. He wanted vengeance, wanted it so much he ached, wanted to rip the bitch open and slash her steaming guts, wanted to pull out her eyes and break open her head, wanted to claw off that pretty face, that smug and hateful face, chew off her tongue, then put his mouth down against her spurting arteries and drink, drink..
He shuddered again, but this time it was a shudder of primal need, a quiver of inhuman pleasure and excitement.
After the fuel tank was filled, Rachael returned to the highway, and Eric was lulled into his trancelike state once more. This time his thoughts were stranger, dreamier than those that had occupied him previously. He saw himself loping across a mist-shrouded landscape, barely half erect; distant mountains smoked on the horizon, and the sky was a purer and darker blue than he had ever seen it before, yet it was familiar, just as the glossy vegetation was different from anything he had ever encountered as Eric Leben but was nevertheless known to some other being buried deep within him. Then, in his half-dreams, he was no longer even partially erect, not the same creature at all, slithering now on his belly over warm wet earth, drawing himself up onto a spongy rotting log, clawing at it with long-toed feet, shredding the bark and mushy wood to reveal a huge nest of squirming maggots, into which he hungrily thrust his face…
Transported by a dark savage thrill, he drummed his feet against the sidewall of the trunk, an action that briefly roused him from the tenebrous images and thoughts that filled his mind. He realized that his drumming feet would alert Rachael, and he stopped after — he hoped — only a few hard kicks.
The car slowed, and he fumbled in the dark for the screwdriver in case he had to pop the latch and get out fast. But then the car accelerated again — Rachael had not understood what she had heard — and he fell back into the ooze of primordial memories and desires.
Now, mentally drifting in some far place, he continued to change physically. The dark trunk was like a womb in which an unimaginable mutant child formed and reformed and re-formed again. It was both something old and something new in the world. Its time had passed — and yet its time was still coming.
Ben figured they would expect him to remember the line of parked cars along the western shoulder of the state route and would be waiting for him to steal one. Furthermore, they would probably count on him making his way north on the road itself, using the ditch along the eastern berm for cover when he heard traffic coming. Or they might think he'd stay on the eastern slope, on the highland side of the road, cautiously following the blacktop north but using the trees and brush for cover. However, he did not think they would expect him to cross the road, enter the woods on the western side of it — the lake side — and then head north under the cover of those trees, eventually coming up on the parked cars from behind.
He figured correctly. When he had gone north some distance with the highway on his right and the lake on his left, he cut up the slope to the state route, cautiously crawled up the final embankment, peered over the top, and looked south toward the parked cars. He saw two men slumped in the front seat of the dark green Chevy sedan. They were tucked behind a Dodge station wagon, so he would not have been able to see them if he'd approached from the south instead of circling behind. They were looking the other way, watching geometrically framed slices of the two-lane highway through the windows of the cars parked in front of theirs.
Easing down from the top of the embankment, Ben lay on the slope for a minute, flat on his back. His mattress was composed of old pine needles, withered rye grass, and unfamiliar plants with variegated caladiumlike leaves that bruised under him and pressed their cool juice into the cloth of his shirt and jeans. He was so dirty and stained from the frantic descent of the mountainside below Eric's cabin that he had no concern about what additional mess these plants might make of him.
The Combat Magnum, tucked under his waistline, pressed painfully against the small of his back, so he shifted slightly onto one side to relieve that pressure. Uncomfortable though it was, the Magnum was also reassuring.
As he considered the two men waiting for him on the road above, he was tempted to head farther north until he found untended cars elsewhere. He might be able to steal a vehicle from another place and leave the area before they decided he was gone.
On the other hand, he might walk a mile or two or three without discovering other cars parked beyond the view of their owners.
And it was unlikely that Sharp and his fellow agent would wait here very long. If Ben did not show up soon, they would wonder if they had misjudged him. They would start cruising, perhaps stopping now and then to get out and scan the woods on both sides of the road, and though he was better at these games than they were, he could not be sure that they would not surprise him somewhere along the way.
Right now, he had the advantage of surprise, for he knew where they were, while they had no idea where he was. He decided to make good use of that advantage.
First, he looked around for a smooth fist-sized rock, located one, and tested its weight in his hand. It felt right — substantial. He unbuttoned his shirt part of the way, slipped the rock inside against his belly, and rebuttoned.
With the semiautomatic Remington twelve-gauge in his right hand, he stealthily traversed the embankment, moving south until he felt that he was just below the rear end of their Chevrolet. Edging up to the top of the slope again, he found that he had estimated the distance perfectly: The rear bumper of their sedan was inches from his face.
Sharp's window was open — standard government cars seldom boasted air-conditioning — and Ben knew he had to make the final approach in absolute silence. If Sharp heard anything suspicious and looked out his window, or if he even glanced at his side-view mirror, he would see Ben scurrying behind the Chevy.
A convenient noise, just loud enough to provide cover, would be welcome, and Ben wished the wind would pick up a bit. A good strong gust, shaking the trees, would mask his—