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twisted, or maybe it was his mind that was twisting. Regardless, perhaps for some other unknown
reason, she suddenly raised up in the bed, pushing back Drew s hand.
Don t do it, Uncle Jake! Don t go with them. They ll never let me go because I can tell the police
what !
Drew s hand moved from her neck just long enough to crash across her face. Her head slammed back
against the pillow, bounced once. Blood began streaming from her nose. Jake took an instinctive step
toward the bed, his uncertainty swallowed up by sudden blind, mindless fury.
Drew, Pickett; hold it! Jake froze, glaring at Drew, who simply grinned back at the old man. Yeah,
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sure he s dangerous, Drew thought. Those guys who went into the motel after him were useless. Abilene,
that must ve been some kind of fluke. The old guy s not dangerous enough to sneeze about. His hand
pressed tighter on the girl s neck. He wasn t worried anymore. In fact, the whole tableau was becoming
rather amusing.
That will be quite enough, Mr. Drew, said Rutherford warningly. Drew shrugged indifferently.
Please, Jake, you saw what happened to Mr. Huddy when he panicked. I know you have better sense
than that. He nodded to the bodyguard on his right. The man vanished into the sitting room, reappeared
a moment later holding his gun in one hand and a loaded syringe in the other.
I know how tired you must be, Jake, said Rutherford sympathetically. All that running for a man your
age, with a cardiac condition. I have a few problems myself. You see, I understand, I can commiserate
with you. The man with the hypo started cautiously toward Jake. It s time for you to relax. You ve
earned a rest. I know all you want is to lie down and forget about all this.
Abruptly Jake was completely relaxed. It was almost as if the Chairman s words had provided the
surcease he so desperately wished for. He knew now what he was going to do. He didn t want to do it,
but as before these people seemed disinclined to give him any kind of a choice. The lump returned to his
throat. If only they d give him a choice, but they never did. They kept pushing him, forcing him to do
things he d never dreamed of doing, never wanted to do.
His heart was bothering him quite a lot now. It might worsen at any moment. These people would
welcome a blackout on his part. It would save them the trouble of having to use the hypodermic. If he
blacked out or had a mild stroke they d gain everything they were after. They wouldn t even have to
return Amanda.
But Amanda was sure they had no intention of doing that whether he was alive or dead, cooperative or
otherwise.
He was almost as frightened as he was angry. His head was starting to hurt like it had several times in the
past week, though because of the extreme angina he was experiencing he hardly noticed the other. He
was afraid that what the dignified visitor said about him handling all the guns and bullets simultaneously
might be true. So he didn t think about the guns, and he didn t think about the bullets.
A strange gurgling came from the man holding the syringe. His expression went sort of blank. Then it
was gone altogether, along with his face. So was the face of his counterpart, and the sadistic face of Mr.
Drew waiting tensely on the bed. They were all gone.
From their faces it spread to encompass their skulls, and then traveled down their whole bodies. They
came apart in comparative silence. There were no ripping, tearing noises, no violent eruptions of blood
and flesh. The three of them just melted from the top down. Most of the human body, after all, is water,
and if you make the watery combinations inside the body slipt as Jake Pickett instinctively, fearfully did,
there isn t much left and what is left isn t very solid. So everyone in the room stood paralyzed as three
skeletons collapsed in on themselves atop a reddened, jelly-like mass. Unsupported clothing came
folding down on top of former bodies until, under the tremendous surge of disassembling energy from
Pickett, even they began to come apart.
Now Amanda was screaming on the bed. The Chairman of the Board stood alone by the doorway, a
lifetime of assurance dissolving as rapidly as his henchmen. At last there were only two piles of sticky,
maroon-colored sludge spreading out across the floor, mixed with some powdered bone and loose rags.
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The third mass of slime extended from Amanda Ramirez s throat down to her legs.
Stop it, Uncle Jake! That s enough, stop it!
Jake Pickett heard her only faintly. The pain in his chest threatened to double him over any second now.
It was worse than any pain he could remember. Still he didn t reach for his pills. There weren t safe yet,
weren t free. The agony in his chest had progressed to the point where the pills might not have done him
mueh good anyway.
He didn t care. It didn t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except making certain that Amanda would
be alright. If he . heard her pleas for him to stop, he didn t react to them.
Rutherford was trying to back out the doorway while keeping the old man in sight. Pickett seemed to be
in considerable pain. The Chairman s foot slid on something; a damp, viscous blob of jelly. He looked
down at what had once been half of his personal bodyguard. A partially disintegrated skull grinned
whitely up at him. There was only a jellied smear where the right eye had been. The left one hadn t slipt,
had just fallen out of the socket. Now it dangled loosely by an organic thread, hanging against half a
cheekbone. Rutherford found he was shaking badly.
I m sorry. ... We can work it out. I m going, see? I ll leave you alone. Nobody will bother you
anymore, I swear it. Just stop. . . . He reached out a hand, trying to protect himself from something
unseen. Please don t....
He never finished the sentence. It dissolved in his throat, along with everything else.
Rutherford didn t scream as he slipt. None of them had screamed. Maybe that meant it wasn t painful.
That made Jake feel a little better. No, the Chairman of CCM didn t ap-pear to be in any pain as his face
slowly melted off his skull, as the hands that reached out became skeleton hands, as the flesh melted and
ran down the white bone.
Slowly Rutherford slipt, sliding into his clothes, his body running like pudding out through the legs of his
expensive pants. Something moved behind him and Jake half-turned his head. Powder stung his cheeks
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