John Saul - Creature

Ames, his heart pounding, raised the gun and squeezed the trigger, firing point-blank into Jeff's chest.

Jeff staggered, looking down in surprise as a spurt of blood poured forth from the hole in his chest. Then, his eyes flicking once more to Ames, he bellowed and hurled himself forward.

Ames fired the gun again, then again, but on the next shot the weapon jammed. He hurled it aside and ducked the other way as Jeff pitched forward and crashed to the floor.

For an instant Ames was certain Jeff would heave himself to his feet and renew his attack, but when Jeff didn't move, Ames finally reached out with his foot and carefully rolled the body over.

One of Jeff's eyes was gone, and blood was slowly oozing from the pulpy mass of the empty socket. Ames stared at the body for a moment, then grabbed Marge Jackson by the hand and started dragging her from the room.

Outside, one of theTarrenTech station wagons was approaching, speeding up the road toward the main gates.

Randy Stevens shambled slowly through the maze of corridors. His brain had long since ceased to function with any sort of reason, and now he was moving aimlessly, his nostrils catching first one scent, then another. He turned a corner and saw an open door ahead of him. He passed through the door and began climbing the stairs, clumsily heaving his weight upward by grasping at the metal railing with his deformed fingers. He reached the top at last and stumbled out into the hall. He hesitated, his head swinging back and forth as he sniffed at the air. Then he caught a scent that stirred dim memories deep within his brain.

Vague images floated into his consciousness, images of trees and bushes, the river, and the sky above.

His nostrils sucking thirstily at the odors of fresh air, he turned toward the door to the right, where a bright line of sunlight shone beneath a crack. He fumbled with the door, then threw his weight against it. It burst outward.

He stood still, blinking in the glare of the sun as he breathed deeply, his lungs filling up with the first fresh air they'd tasted in more than a year.

In the distance he could make out the shapes of the mountains rising upward toward the sky, and some deep-seated instinct told him that there, in the mountains, he might find safety. He started toward them, his body lumbering on twisted legs, his knuckles dragging along the ground, half supporting him in the strange, loping stride of a great ape.

Then a movement caught his attention. He paused to swing around and stare dumbly at the car coming around the corner of the building.

Blake Tanner sat between two guards in the backseat of the station wagon. In the front, next to the driver, a third guard was twisted half around, his back to the door as he kept his eyes on Blake. For the first few minutes, after the guards had stopped him at the door to Jerry Harris's office, Blake's mind had gone blank with fear. But as the guards had marched him into the garage at the back of theTarrenTech building and hustled him into the station wagon, he had begun thinking again. He'd slumped in his seat, his eyes half closed, trying to give the guards the impression he'd gone into shock. But as the car left theTarrenTech grounds and moved along the highway toward town-never varying from the posted speed limit-then took the road up the valley toward the sports center, Blake began to understand the hopelessness of his situation.

This wasn't like one of the Robert Ludlum books he'd always enjoyed so much, in which a mild-mannered English professor always managed to overcome five highly trained master spies in a dark alley at midnight, emerging unscathed from a cross fire of bullets, with maybe a knife or two thrown in for good measure.

This was reality. And while Blake was in good condition, and felt sure that he could have taken any one of the guards in a one-on-one fight, he was acutely aware that he wouldn't last a minute against all three of them. Nor did he kid himself that they would delay shooting him if he pressed them. There would be none of the convenient delays James Bond always experienced while the villain toyed with him just long enough to give Bond an opportunity, which he always managed to seize.

No, these men intended to kill him, and while they would just as soon wait until they got him to the privacy of Ames's fenced-off compound, he was certain that if he made so much as a single false move, the guard in the front seat would squeeze the trigger of the.45-caliber pistol in his hand.

It wouldn't come from either of the guards at his side- too much risk of the bullet penetrating him and slicing on into the guard on the other side. But if they lost the rear window of the wagon, who would ever care?

The wagon had slowed as it approached the gates, but the driver pressed a button on a control attached to the visor of the car and the gates swung wide, then immediately began closing again as they passed through. The car sped up, veering to the left to head around to the back of the building.

If he was going to have a chance at all, it would be when the car came to a stop and one of the guards at his sides got out. Unless there was a garage inside the building here, as there was atTarrenTech.

"Jesus!" The word exploded from the mouth of the guard behind the wheel, and the man in the passenger seat jumped with surprise, then glared at the driver.

"Goddamn it," he began, but the driver ignored him, slamming on the brakes, and pointing ahead.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked. "What the hell is that?"

Blake sat up straight, peering between the two guards in the front seat.

Twenty yards ahead, standing in the driveway and staring at the car as if it wasn't certain what it was seeing, was a creature such as Blake had never seen before.

It looked like some kind of strange evolutionary relic, some odd dead-end species that was neither man nor ape. It crouched down on its haunches, its head bobbing back and forth as if it were having difficulty focusing its eyes on the automobile.

The car screeched to a stop, and for a moment, as all five of its occupants stared at the strange half-man half-beast in the driveway, there was dead silence. As the driver started to speak, they heard a shout from the building. Seconds later Marty Ames burst out of one of the side doors, Marjorie Jackson right behind him. The creature in the road swung around, its eyes fixing on Ames. Suddenly it rose to its full height, a howl of fury bursting from its throat.

"Christ," the driver breathed. "It's going for Ames!"

He jammed the emergency brake on, then jerked at the seat belt with one hand as he shoved the front door open with the other. Then he was out of the car, his gun already out of its holster. Dropping to his knee, he grasped the pistol with both hands, braced it against the hood of the car, and squeezed the trigger.

The creature hesitated as the searing-hot bullet sliced through the flesh of its thigh, and then bellowed once more. For a split-second it couldn't seem to make up its mind which way to turn, then it headed toward Ames once more.

"Shoot it!" Ames shouted. "For Christ's sake, kill it!"

Marjorie Jackson had run in the other direction at the creature's approach, and managed to flee around the building. Ames was alone now, pressed against the building. Watching Randy Stevens charging toward him, he recognized the same fury in Randy's eyes that he'd seen only moments ago in JeffLaConner's. He wanted to run, wanted to turn away and flee back into the building, but his legs refused to obey the commands of his brain, and he stood where he was, frozen in panic.

Another shot rang out, and Randy hesitated again, staggering to the left. He dropped to the ground and his head swung around as if looking for some unseen assailant that was jabbing at him with an invisible weapon.