Roanne recovered her composure quickly. She faced the monstrous figure in the doorway without flinching.
“Hello, Eddie.”
A half growl, half moan spilled out of the ravaged mouth.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you, Eddie. Not anymore.”
The bloody thing raised a hand toward her.
Roanne extended her own hand and walked forward.
Still on the floor, fighting to regain control of his limbs, Zachry found his voice. “No!”
The girl ignored him. She took another step toward the thing that had been Eddie Gault. Zachry could hear its ragged breathing, smell the stink of blood and body waste. He saw the pistol lying on the low bookcase. It might as well have been in Milwaukee.
“Get away from him!” he cried.
Too late. As Roanne came close to him, Eddie drew back the hand he had extended and put all his maniacal strength into a backhand blow that knocked her onto the bed and across it to the floor.
Eddie took a step toward the bed. Roanne unsteadily tried to rise, holding her jaw where the skin had been laid open by the blow. For the first time her eyes showed real fear.
With an effort of will, Zachry got his legs under him and, gripping the windowsill, pulled himself upright. Eddie swiveled the ghastly head so that he was looking at him. He stood maddeningly between Zachry and the gun.
With a gurgling sound in his throat, Eddie returned his attention to Roanne, who was standing against the wall, her hands up in a useless pantomime of defense.
Lou Zachry pushed off from the windowsill and lumbered toward the bloody figure advancing on Roanne. He lowered his shoulder and hit Eddie in the chest with a sodden smack. The force of his rush backed Eddie up but did not knock him off-balance.
Zachry stayed close to him. He turned his head to shout back at the girl, “Get out!” When she did not move, he shouted roughly, “Go, damn it! Move!”
Without warning, Eddie’s arms wrapped around Zachry and locked onto his body like steel clamps.
“Get out, Jenny!” The words were squeezed out of him as Eddie applied pressure.
Roanne snatched up the backpack and stepped past the struggling men to the doorway. There she lingered just for a moment and looked into the pain-filled eyes of Lou Zachry. Then she was gone.
Zachry concentrated all his strength on trying to break the punishing bear hug Eddie held him in. He could see the gun, tantalizingly close, yet not quite within reach. Eddie’s rank breath stung his nostrils. The leaking sores dripped down the front of both men.
He could not get air into his constricted lungs. His visior clouded. Zachry fancied he could feel the microscopic eggs of the brain eaters filtering in through his pores, entering his bloodstream and hatching like malignant tadpoles, then swimming, swimming to his brain, there to chew away his sanity and his life.
A rib snapped. The white-hot pain momentarily restored Zachry’s consciousness. Struggling was useless. The crazy strength of the ruined man holding him was more than any normal being could overcome.
Zachry rolled his eyes back up into his head so the whites showed. He forced his straining muscles to relax and went limp in the terrible embrace. Darkness closed in as real oblivion threatened to overtake the sham.
Another rib broke with a muffled crack. And a third. Zachry had no breath left to cry out with. Red flashes pin-wheeled through the thickening black before his eyes. Would this crazy bastard never let go?
Something soft burst inside of Lou Zachry. He felt it go with a sickening sense of doom. His abdominal cavity began to fill.
Abruptly, Eddie Gault released his hold. Zachry folded to the floor like a half-filled bag of laundry. After ten seconds that seemed an eternity, he managed to pull in a tiny breath. The broken ribs stabbed him like flaming arrows. The soft thing that had burst inside him was loose.
Eddie turned slowly one way, then the other. His leaking eyes searched the room.
Zachry bit into and through his lower lip to keep from screaming as he dragged himself six inches at a time across the bare floor toward the bookcase. Six inches. Six more. Six more. Now he almost had it.
Eddie saw him.
With mucus and blood dribbling from his mouth, Eddie stumbled toward the fallen man. Zachry made an agonized lunge for the gun. Eddie dropped to his knees and grabbed his arm just above the wrist.
While Zachry writhed in wordless agony, Eddie squeezed the arm. The radius bone snapped under the madman’s grip, then the ulna. Zachry’s hand flopped on his wrist like a dying fish.
With an effort that blinded him for a second, Zachry twisted his body around. While Eddie still squeezed the useless right arm, he lunged with his left hand for the gun. The tips of his fingers grazed the gnurled grip, his nails dug in, the pistol clattered to the hardwood floor.
With Eddie intent on mashing his shattered bones, Zachry scooped up the pistol with his left hand. He jammed the muzzle into the oozing face and pulled the trigger. The explosion was muffled by the bloated flesh. Zachry continued to pull the trigger until all five bullets carried by the Chief’s Special had blasted into the sick man’s brain.
Incredibly, it took several more seconds for Eddie’s grip to loosen. Finally, he let go and toppled sideways, slowly, as though lying down for sleep. And at last he was still.
Lou Zachry sat panting in shallow breaths, each one bringing a crunch from his shattered ribs. He tossed the empty gun at Eddie. It thumped to the floor and lay there, dead as the man. Zachry folded his one working arm across his stomach, trying to hold himself together. He felt his in-sides coming up, and there was nothing he could do about it. The bloody vomit spewed out of him, and he fell forward into blackness alongside Eddie Gault.
Chapter 32
The sunlight flowed in through the window of Dena Falkner’s room in the Appleton Physicians Hospital. She stretched luxuriously, then suddenly sat up in bed and blinked at Corey Macklin, who sat in a chair by the bed eating an apple.
“About time you woke up,” he said.
“How long have I been asleep?”
Corey looked at his watch. “Three days. Ever since they gave you the brain-eater antidote.”
“Of course, the antidote. Then it … worked?”
“You don’t have a headache, do you?”
“No. God, I never want to hear headache again.”
“While you were out, they took a sample of your blood. Pure as a mountain spring. The only reason you’re in bed is because you worked yourself into exhaustion at Biotron.”
“We almost had it, you know. The antidote. The formula turned out to be ridiculously simple. In a few more days …” She smiled ruefully. “But then that would have been too late for some of us, wouldn’t it.”
“It’s great stuff,” Corey said. “Cures anybody who’s got the things in his bloodstream and gives everybody permanent immunity. It works orally, the way you took it, and it’s effective sprayed from the air. That’s how they immunized Russia when the government dumped the project over there.”
“Sprayed,” Dena repeated.
“Uh-huh. Helicopters have been up for two days over all populated areas. They’ll keep it up until there isn’t a square foot of the country where the brain eaters can live. Kind of ironic, considering that’s the way they got loose in the first place.”
Dena reached out, and Corey took her hand. In a near whisper she said, “How many people …?” and could not finish.
“A lot,” Corey said. “The estimate is four million. It was bad, but in just a few more days it could have been so much worse.”