“That was great, Guida! How far before the next one?” Shouts of agreement from the other women followed her question and made Laura’s smile widen.
Guida’s hair was plastered to her head like a dark, shining cap. A large Italian woman, her skin was tanned and glowed with an attractive outdoorsy health that Laura—who had red hair and fragile, fair skin that had to be lathered constantly with sunblock-—envied. Her return smile showed teeth that were a perfect, bright white against the bronzed skin of her face. “About two miles,” she called. “You folks’ll have time to relax and you’d better appreciate it. The next set’s a big one, with three smaller ones right after.” She laughed heartily and swung the raft around until the front followed the Colorado’s gentle curve to the west. “After we get your stomachs all shook up, we’ll break for lunch along a nice little stretch of beach. Be nice to the sand, ’cause if Glen Canyon Dam keeps running as a peaking unit, there may not be any beaches left pretty soon.”
The woman seated behind Laura started to ask a question about Guida’s statement, but her shouted words were cut off, swallowed abruptly by a thunderous chopping. The water around them grew turbulent again and Laura saw Guida’s face turn toward the sky; she scowled helplessly with the rest of the women at the Huey helicopter descending skillfully toward them, deftly lowering itself between the jutting walls of the canyon. Dismayed, Laura saw a flock of frightened birds take flight from the foliage spreading up the rock face to the west; so much for the undisturbed tranquillity of her vacation. The whole thing was starting to give her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The sleek black copter now hovered close enough above the raft for the women to see the helmeted face of the pilot and copilot. As they watched, the latter leaned out of the open door and hung over the water, pressing a loudspeaker to his mouth. Laura thought sourly that he looked like a monkey, dangling in the air with a misshapen banana.
“Dr. Laura Baker,” the loudspeaker boomed, “please raise your hands.” Laura jumped and nearly slid off the side of the tube and into the wind-whipped water as the knot in her gut abruptly burgeoned into outright pain. “I repeat—Dr. Laura Baker, if you are on this raft, please raise your hands. Your expertise is needed immediately in a matter of utmost importance.”
“Crap,” Laura muttered as the annoyed gazes of the other women turned toward her. “Two years of planning to get back to nature, and I still can’t take a decent vacation.” No one else heard her, though, and it was just as well. Resigned, she tightened her legs around the float tube of the raft to brace herself, then raised her hands. It was just too damned sad that she’d told the divisional secretary where she was going on vacation.
“Are they still teasing you at work, Dan? The men from the passport identification department?”
Dan Smithson smiled softly. The question was a hard one and while he didn’t really want to answer it, he liked the smooth sound of Dr. Roth’s voice and wanted to hear it more. Every time he went in for a session, Dr. Roth made him feel calmer, relieved—like letting out his breath when he’d been holding it too long. He opened his mouth to answer, then felt the muscles in his neck and back tense when someone knocked on the door to the office. It couldn’t be time for the session to end, could it? He’d only been here a few minutes—they’d just started.
“I won’t answer that,” Dr. Roth said evenly, noting the look on Dan’s face. “Whoever it is can come back at the end of the hour.” He paused to reconstruct his thoughts, then continued. “This teasing makes others feel better. If someone else is less, it makes them feel more.”
The knocking came again, louder, and Dan felt the answer that had been forming in his thoughts sift away, like the powdered sugar falling off the doughnut he’d had for breakfast. He struggled to answer, to ignore the steady rapping on the other side of the fine wooden door to Dr. Roth’s office. “They aren’t afraid of me. They, uh, they know I won’t fight back.”
“Dr. Roth, please open the door immediately. It’s an emergency.” The words were muffled but understandable; with an apologetic glance at Dan, the doctor rose and turned the lock. A man dressed in a dark suit and tie stood patiently on the other side, holding out a wallet bearing an identification card. Dan could see the gold seal shining underneath the plastic sheeting.
“Sorry I have to interrupt,” the man said levelly. He didn’t bother to introduce himself as he stepped past the befuddled psychiatrist. His face was expressionless but somehow reassuring. “We need your help again, Dan.”
Dan sat up and smoothed his shirt self-consciously, unable to mask his grateful smile. Someone needed him for a change, not the other way around.
Boy, that felt good.
“Thanks for looking after my cat.” Press Lennox dropped his travel bag on the steps and handed his pet to Mrs. Morris, the elderly woman who lived in the town house next door. Mrs. Morris started cooing over Lorca immediately, rubbing the tabby’s neck and ears until it purred with satisfaction. Press had to force himself to smile in her direction as he locked his front door. It wasn’t that he took her pet-sitting for granted or disliked his older neighbor. Quite the contrary—he appreciated the hell out of it every time she watched Lorca, and thought she was charming company on the rare occasions she stopped to chat. He just knew what was coming, and for some reason it drove him nuts every time she did it.
“We’ll take good care of you, won’t we, Lorca?” Mrs. Morris rubbed her cheek against the feline’s ear and Lorca made an odd noise that was half purr and half mewl. The thing was horribly spoiled to begin with and would be impossible for a week after Press got home.
There was a short, double honk from the gray sedan idling at the curb and Press picked up his bag without turning. “I shouldn’t be away long. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.” He strolled to the car and climbed in the passenger side, reluctantly lifting his hand to wave. Now came the part he hated. It just seemed like such a stupid thing to have his big, old tabby do, and it mucked up Press’s mood each time he had to watch it happen.
Mrs. Morris smiled cheerily and waved good-bye with Lorca’s paw.
10
Dreaming again, another train station, like but not like the one at Brigham. Not nearly as crowded, and no men at all. Only Sil . . . and several more females, all of whom looked just like her. Were they staring at her? She wasn’t sure. She might be looking at reflections, some kind of multifaceted mirror—that could be why they all seemed to return her gaze so fixedly. It was so strange, like being everywhere at once and seeing where you’d just come from at the same time, instantaneously bouncing around another dimension.
The ground rumbled beneath her feet as a train shot from a tunnel at the other end of the station with a cloud of smoke. But the train looked wrong—not like it was a train at all, but a series of skulls, five in a row, chugging and gnashing their murderous way into the station. Horrified, Sil and her look-alikes bolted, but not fast enough to elude the crablike arms that erupted from the sides of each skull and scooped them up like so much easy fodder. She screamed but it was useless; she neither heard her voice nor knew which Sil she was as she was hurled into the air, flying through the smoke belching from the train’s smokestack and into a container behind the last of the giant skulls. She landed with a bone-jarring thump and felt herself knocked senseless, pushed out of real-time sequence. Now she could see the train again but not herself, and she wished desperately for a voice with which to scream as the teeth of each huge skull began chewing in rhythm with the piston’s throbbing within the locomotive’s engine, each singsong vibration causing a mass of wet, red matter to pulse between the skulls’ teeth.
Hissing and spewing steam, the train began to move into a different tunnel, its gleaming yellowish skull segments undulating one at a time in a caterpillarlike motion, stretching and closing until it pulled itself out of sight after a final, malevolent belch of white-hot vapor.
Another nightmare. Slumped on one of the chairs in her sleeping comp
artment, Sil opened her eyes unwillingly. She didn’t feel well . . . overeating? No, not that . . . nothing about her stomach or body hurt. She didn’t even feel bloated or full. She was . . . exhausted for some reason. The hunger that had overwhelmed her earlier was gone, replaced by a fatigue so deep that even glancing out the window was an effort.
And she itched terribly, her face, her hands, every inch of her skin under the hobo’s dirty clothes. Her hands were grimy but they looked okay, and as far as she could tell the flesh was clear and free of bites—that ruled out an insect infestation in the stolen clothes. She studied her fingers. Maybe an allergy, something she’d eaten—
Something below the skin began to move. The itching intensified and her mouth dropped open in shock. The flesh on the backs of her hands was alive with motion, as if unseen creatures searched urgently for a way out. She forgot about feeling drained and leaped to her feet, shaking her hands and arms wildly, bumping from wall to wall in the tiny compartment until she tripped over her own feet and fell, frightened tears spilling down her face. Sil moaned when the skin there also abruptly began to prickle and burn and itch. Was it moving, too?
She pulled herself to her feet using the door to the dinky bathroom and staggered inside. Her reflection in the small square of mirror was the most frightening thing she’d ever seen, even more terrifying than watching Kyle back at the compound as he’d opened the valves on the canisters marked HYDROGEN CYANIDE. At least instinct had kicked in and saved her then; alone in the middle of the night on this train with only strangers in the surrounding compartments, she had nothing.
The fluorescent light in the minuscule bathroom was overbright. It hid nothing and Sil nearly shrieked as she saw her own face. It was teeming with movement, hundreds of bumps sliding across her forehead and cheeks, too many dangerously close to her eyes. Panicking, she ripped at one of the bulges, digging a red furrow from the bridge of her nose down her cheek. Terror rocketed through her as a wormlike creature thrust through the scratch, followed promptly by another, then another. Pain blossomed throughout her body as thousands more burst through the fragile skin without assistance, like being stung by a hive full of wasps.
Wailing with fear, she gagged and tried to pull them loose, felt herself retch harder as she realized they were no longer the tiny, maggotlike things she’d first seen. They had stretched and bonded together; now they were long worms, still thin but a pallid white, like nearly translucent ropes twining about her in every direction, growing and slithering from her body on up to the ceiling. She fought uselessly, struggling to free herself as they grew stronger and wrapped around her torso and limbs, melding together in an impossibly sturdy net. Sobbing helplessly, Sil felt her feet lift off the floor as the worm net began to hoist her upward, tugging steadily until she bumped against the ceiling and hung there, twisting in vain as the creatures began to weave a web of shining, sticky threads. Her voice became hoarse and lost its volume as the strands embraced her chest and hindered her breathing, and was cut off completely when the glistening filaments sheathed her mouth and melted together across the rest of her face.
And Sil was silent at last, wrapped in the glasslike sheen of the chrysalis as it dried.
Nothing moved in the sleeping compartment except for the image on the small television, some rerun of a 1968 episode of The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan with the volume going full blast. Not loud enough to make the passengers in the compartments on either side complain, it did catch the attention of Angela Cardoza, the conductor, as she passed through the car. She knocked, not too loudly since she didn’t want to startle the girl. Kids nowadays could fall asleep with the television or stereo blaring right in their ears, but banging on the door in the middle of the night would scare the heck out of anyone.
“Hello?” she called. “You awake in there, honey? A little late for TV, you know.” When no one answered, she automatically tried the door. It swung open without resistance; so much for her earlier instruction to keep it locked. “Hel—oh, for crying out loud. What a mess!”
The only light inside the compartment was the shifting blue white from a little television on one of the seats, the portable kind made for kids and people whom Angela thought were too lazy to read anymore. She picked it up and found its volume wheel, turning it down to a manageable level. If the girl was here, that ought to get her attention. Annoyed, Angela used her feet to shuffle a space through the crumpled food wrappings and empty containers so she could get to the bathroom. Squashed milk cartons and other trash littered every surface of the seats and floor, and if the strange kid had taken off and was hiding in another compartment, guess who’d have to clean everything up?
Already accepting that the girl was gone, Angela nonetheless tilted her head around the wall and through the bathroom door, then pushed all the way in just to see if the girl was lurking in the shower cubicle. The lavatory was half the size of the other room and she almost bumped her head on something hanging over the toilet, plastered in place at the juncture of the wall and ceiling.
Angela pulled back in shock. As she did, her shadow passed across the surface of the object, making it seem as though something inside was doing a restless dance. “What the hell is this?” Angela whispered aloud.
Whatever it was, there was nothing small about it; it stretched from one wall to the other, completely obscuring the upper back ceiling of the john. From where she stood, Angela could see bubbles of reddish fluid flowing under its glassy surface, fanning outward in a pattern like broken capillaries. She gawked at it, too awestruck to be frightened. Something indistinguishable shifted beneath its glistening shell and came close to the surface, breaking Angela from her immobility. She stepped closer, trying to get a better look—was she crazy or had she just seen a recognizable face in there?
A hand exploded from its side and seized her face, long alien fingers moving faster and stronger than Angela could have imagined. Her feet left the floor and before she could scream, her head and neck were yanked into the ragged hole. Her body whipped ineffectually in midair as she fought for freedom, then was wrenched sideways from the neck down. She trembled slightly, then was still. After a moment the unseen hold on her released its grip, and Angela Cardoza dropped to the floor. A three-inch laceration in her forehead bled freely, making wide scarlet streaks in the greenish ooze layering her slack face.
Above her cooling body, the chrysalis began to break apart, cracks spidering in all directions along its glossy surface. Within the cavity where Conductor A. Cardoza had found death, there was motion, an unhurried shuffling, then pressure. Like an exquisite butterfly emerging from its cocoon, a new Sil pushed her way free. Headfirst, then arms, reaching up and around to the top of the chrysalis and swinging herself carefully out and down to stand next to Angela’s corpse, reborn a fully grown and beautiful woman.
She sniffed the air and her eyes, steely blue beneath a lovely halo of blond hair, sharpened as she studied her surroundings and the body at her feet. With slow deliberation, Sil bent and began undressing the dead conductor.
11
Press had been here before but he let the aide they’d sent to greet him on the helicopter lead him to Dr. Fitch’s office. The guy was new and Press supposed he was polite enough, but he disliked having a baby-sitter assigned to him when he’d been in and out of the compound more times than—what was the man’s name? Robert—had gone to the bathroom since becoming Fitch’s number-one assistant. Speaking of aides, Press wondered what had happened to Kyle Jacobson. Now he’d been a nice guy, always willing to share a joke to put a lighter side on things. Besides, the main building of the compound was mostly gray glass and metal cylinders connected by causeways, easy enough to get around in once you understood the layout. It was the concrete outer outbuildings that could be a pain in the neck.
Finally, Fitch’s office. The room was as stuffy as the doctor himself, Press thought, nothing but paper and business and ten-pound black binders. Not a touch of warmth in the whole setup—even th
e chairs were uncomfortable. With all the money that got poured into this research center, Fitch could have easily decorated with some wood and an upholstered couch. Stepping into the room, Press stopped short; Robert The Aide hadn’t said anything about anyone being at this meeting besides Press and Fitch, but two other men and a woman—a very pretty woman—were already seated in chairs around Fitch’s desk.
The doctor himself wasn’t there, and there were two more empty chairs. Press headed for the spot next to the woman, but paused before dropping onto it. “Are these seats assigned?” he asked with a facetious grin.
The lady smiled back and shook her head. As he sat Press made a quick, furtive examination of the other two men. One was a hefty young black guy with soft, dark eyes, rounded features, and a quick, childish smile. The other, a dark-haired handsome man hardly older than himself, was watching Press and everybody else and cocked an eyebrow when he met Press’s steady eyes. They looked over at the woman simultaneously; unimpressed by their stares, this time only one side of her mouth curved in a smile that was just a shade short of derisive. There was no graceful way out, so Press sat, feeling self-conscious.
“Hi.” The black man leaned forward, clasping his hands on his knees. His expression was earnest, but bemused. “I’m Dan, Dan Smithson. I . . . don’t know why I’m here, but they said they needed me. That it was very important.”
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