Dead and Alive

pleasure center in its forebrain as intense sex might thrill it if it were capable of sexual activity. Slaughter and only slaughter stimulates its orgasm. Chameleon dreams of war, because for it, war is continuous ecstasy.
    Suddenly, on the desktop computer and on an eight-by-six-foot screen embedded in a wall, images appear.
    The screens show a broad avenue, tens of thousands of people, dressed alike and ordered into precise ranks, marching in cadence to loud music.
    In every fifth row of the stiff-legged marchers, every person carries a flag. The flag is red with a white circle. In the circle is a man’s face.
    The face is familiar to Chameleon. It has seen this man a long time ago, has seen him often and in this very lab.
    The camera pulls back to reveal colossal structures flanking the twelve-lane avenue. They are all of bold design unlike any of the scores of typical-building layouts programmed into Chameleon to assist it in navigating an average office high-rise or church, or shopping mall.
    On some of these immense edifices are portraits. The face of the man on the flags is rendered in paint or in mosaic tile, or is etched in stone.
    None of these images is smaller than ten stories high. Some are thirty stories.
    The music swells, swells, then recedes to a background level. Words are being spoken now, but Chameleon is not interested in what is being said.
    The marching hordes on the screens are not real people, merely images. They cannot be killed.
    Crawling among the many machines, Chameleon seeks what lives only to be killed.
    For a while it smells nothing but the lingering pheromones of the TARGET that was recently here but has gone. Then a new scent.
    Chameleon turns its head left, right. Its two ripping claws scissor with anticipation, and its crushing claw opens wide to grip. Its stinger extrudes from under its carapace.
    The scent is that of a TARGET. In the hallway but approaching.

CHAPTER 44
    ABRUPTLY THE RAIN FELL AWAY behind them and the two-lane blacktop state route lay dry ahead. By driving out of the storm, seemingly swifter than nature in a rampage, Carson enjoyed the illusion of even greater speed than she had actually managed to squeeze out of the Honda.
    She raised the bottle of never-sleep-again cola from between her thighs and took another swig. She recognized the signs of noncritical dehydration caused by caffeine: dry mouth, dry lips, a faint ringing in the ears.
    In the passenger seat, playing imaginary drums with imaginary drumsticks, Michael said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have exceeded the recommended dose for the caffeine tablets. Already I have NoDoz nostrils.”
    “Me too. My nasal passages are so dry, it’s like I’m breathing air that came out of a furnace, it has just a little burn to it.”
    “Yeah. Feels dry. But this is still Louisiana, so at a minimum it has to be ninety percent humidity by state law. Hey, you know how much of the human body is water?”
    “If it’s the time of month I retain it, I’d say ninety percent.”
    “Sixty percent for men, fifty percent for women.”
    She said, “There’s proof—women have more substance than men.”
    “It was an answer
on Jeopardy!”
    “I can’t believe you watch TV game shows.”
    “They’re educational,” he said. “Half of what I know, I learned from game shows.”
    “That I
do
believe.”
    Moss-draped live oaks on both sides of the road formed a tunnel, and the headlights flared again and again off what might have been colonies of phosphorescent lichen on the fissured bark.
    “Do you have to drive so fast?”
    “Fast? This heap of Vicky’s isn’t good for driving anywhere except in funeral processions.”
    Carson’s cell phone rang, and she fished it out of an inside coat pocket.
    “O’Connor,” she said.
    “Detective O’Connor,” a woman said, “this is Erika Helios.”
    “Good evening, Mrs. Helios.”
    When he heard the name, Michael popped up in his seat as if he were a slice of bread in a toaster.
    Erika Helios said, “I believe you may be aware ofwho my husband really is. At least I think he suspects you know.”
    “He
knows
we know,” Carson said. “He sent two of his New Race assassins after us yesterday. Cute couple. Looked like dancers. We called them Fred and Ginger. They blasted their way through my house, nearly killed my brother.”
    “Sounds like Benny and Cindi Lovewell,” Erika Helios said. “I’m of the New Race, too. But I don’t know about Benny and Cindi being sent