The shape-changer pulsed and throbbed, towering almost to the ceiling, filling the entire far end of the room.
Lisa clung to Jenny.
A vague but repellent odor laced the air. Slightly sulphurous. Like a draft from Hell.
“There are a host of theories purporting to explain the demise of the dinosaurs,” Flyte said, “But no single theory answers all the questions. So I wondered… what if the dinosaurs were exterminated by another creature, a natural enemy, that was a superior hunter and fighter? It would have to have been something large. And it would have been something with a very frail skeleton or perhaps with no skeleton whatsoever, for we've never found a fossil record of any species that would have given those great saurians a real battle.”
A shudder passed through the entire bulk of tenebrous, churning slime. Across the oozing mass, dozens of faces began to appear.
“And what if,” Flyte said, “several of those amoeboid creatures had survived through millions of years…”
Human and animal faces arose from the amorphous flesh, shimmered in it.
“… living in subterranean rivers or lakes…”
There were faces that had no eyes. Others had no mouths. But then the eyes appeared, blinked open. They were achingly real, penetrating eyes, filled with pain and fear and misery.
“… or in deep ocean trenches…”
And mouths cracked into existence on those previously seamless countenances.
“… thousands of feet below the surface of the sea…”
Lips formed around the gaping mouths.
“… preying on marine life…”
The phantom faces were screaming, yet they made no sounds.
“… infrequently rising to feed…”
Cat faces. Dog faces. Prehistoric reptile visages. Ballooning up from the slime.
“… and even less frequently feeding on human beings…”
To Jenny, the human faces looked as if they were peering out from the far side of a smoky mirror. None of them ever quite finished taking shape. They had to melt away, for there were countless new faces surging and coalescing beneath them. It was an endlessly flickering shadow show of the lost and the damned.
Then the faces stopped forming.
The huge mass was quiescent for a moment, slowly and almost imperceptibly pulsing, but otherwise still.
Sara Yamaguchi was groaning softly.
Jenny held Lisa close.
No one spoke. For several seconds, no one even dared breathe.
Then, in a new demonstration of its plasticity, the ancient enemy abruptly sprouted a score of tentacles. Some of them were thick, with the suction pads of a squid or an octopus. Others were thin and ropey; some of these were smooth, and some were segmented; they were even more obscene than the fat, moist-looking tentacles. Some of the appendages slid back and forth across the floor, knocking over chairs and pushing tables aside, while others wriggled in the air, like cobras swaying to the music of a snake charmer.
Then it struck. It moved fast, gushed forward.
Jenny stumbled back one step. She was at the end of the room.
The many tentacles snapped toward them, whiplike, cutting the air with a hiss.
Lisa could no longer keep from looking. She gasped at what she saw.
In just a fraction of a second, the tentacles grew dramatically.
A rope of cold, slick, utterly alien flesh fell across the back of Jenny's hand. It curled around her wrist.
No!
With a shudder of relief, she pulled loose. It hadn't taken much effort to free herself. Evidently, the thing wasn't interested in her; not now; not yet.
She crouched as tentacles lashed the air above her head, and Lisa huddled with her.
In his haste to get out of the creature's way, Flyte tripped and fell.
A tentacle moved toward him.
Flyte scooted backwards across the floor, came to the wall.
The tentacle followed, hovered over him, as if it would smash him. Then it moved away. It wasn't interested in Flyte, either.
Although the gesture was pointless, Bryce fired his revolver.
Tal shouted something Jenny couldn't understand. He moved in front of her and Lisa, between them and the shape-changer.
After passing over Sara, the thing seized Frank Autry. That was whom it wanted. Two thick tentacles snapped around Frank's torso and dragged him away from the others.
Kicking, flailing with his fists, clawing at the thing that held him, Frank cried out wordlessly, face contorted with horror.
Everyone was screaming now — even Bryce, even Tal.
Bryce went after Frank. Clutched his right arm. Tried to pull him away from the beast, which was relentlessly reeling him in.
“Get it off me! Get it off me!” Frank shouted.
Bryce tried peeling one of the tentacles away from the deputy.
Another of the thick, slimy appendages swept up from the floor, whirled, whipped, struck Bryce with tremendous force, sent him sprawling.
Frank was lifted off the floor and held in midair. His eyes bulged as he looked down at the dark, oozing, changing bulk of the ancient enemy. He kicked and fought to no avail.
Yet another pseudopod erupted from the central mass of the shape-changer and rose into the air, trembling with savage eagerness. Along part of the tentacle's repulsive length, the mottled gray-maroon-red-brown skin seemed to dissolve. Raw, weeping tissue appeared.
Lisa gagged.
It wasn't just the sight of the suppurating flesh that was loathsome and sickening. The foul odor had gotten stronger, too.
A yellowish fluid began to drip from the open wound in the tentacle. Where the drops struck the floor, they sizzled and foamed and ate into the tile. Jenny heard someone say, “Acid!”
Frank's screaming became a desperate, piercing shriek of terror and despair. The acid-dripping tentacle slipped sinuously around the deputy's neck and drew as tight as a garrote.
“Oh, Jesus, no!”
“Don't look,” Jenny told Lisa.
The shape-changer was showing them how it had beheaded Jakob and Aida Liebermann. Like a child showing off.
Frank Autry's scream died in a bubbling, mucous-thick, blood-choked gurgle. The flesh-eating tentacle cut through his neck with startling quickness. Only a second or two after Frank was silenced, his head popped loose and fell to the floor, smashed into the tiles.
Jenny tasted bile in the back of her throat, choked it down. Sara Yamaguchi was sobbing.
The thing still held Frank's headless body in midair. Now, in the mass of shapeless tissue from which the tentacles sprouted, a huge toothless mouth opened hungrily. It was more than large enough to swallow a man whole. The tentacles drew the deputy's decapitated corpse into the gaping, ragged mouth. The dark flesh oozed around the body. Then the mouth closed up tight and ceased to exist.
Frank Autry had ceased to exist, too.
Bryce stared in shock at Frank's severed head. The sightless eyes gazed at him, through him.
Frank was gone. Frank, who had survived several wars, who had survived a life of dangerous work, had not survived this.
Bryce thought of Ruth Autry. His heart, already jackhammering, twisted with grief as he pictured Ruth alone. She and Frank had been exceptionally close. Breaking the news to her would be painful.
The tentacles shrank back into the pulsing glob of shapeless tissue; in a second or two, they were gone.
The formless, rippling hulk filled a third of the room.
Bryce could imagine it oozing swiftly through prehistoric swamps, blending with the muck, creeping up on its prey. Yes, it would have been more than a match for the dinosaurs.