Shadowfires

modern world that I didn't want to admit I'd
learned, which is why
I've spent so much time immersed in the past. But the very fact that I've
kept in shape and kept practicing my fighting skills is proof of the
lesson. Tip-top shape, Rachael. And
I'm well armed.” He hushed her when she tried to object. “We have no choice, Rachael. That's
what it comes down to. No other choice. If we just kill him, blast
the sucker with twenty or thirty rounds from the shotgun, kill him so
bad he stays dead for good this time-then we have no proof of what he
did to himself. We just have a corpse. Who could prove
he'd been reanimated? It'd look as if we stole his body from the
morgue, pumped it full of buckshot, and concocted this crazy story,
maybe concocted it to cover the very crimes the government is
accusing us of.”
    “Lab tests of his cell structure would prove something,” Rachael
said. “Examination of his genetic material-”
    “That would take weeks. Before then, the government would've found a way to claim the body, eliminate us, and doctor the test results to show nothing out of the ordinary.”
    She started to speak, hesitated, and stopped because she was
obviously beginning to realize that he was right. She looked more
forlorn than any woman he had ever seen.
    He said, “Our only hope of getting the government off our backs is
to get proof of Wildcard and break the story to the press. The only
reason they want to kill us is to keep the secret, so when the secret
is blown, we'll be safe. Since we didn't get the Wildcard file from
Eric's office safe, Eric himself is the only proof we have a chance of putting our hands on. And we need him alive. They need to see him breathing, functioning, in spite of his staved-in head. They need to see the change in him that you suspect there'll
be-the irrational rages, the sullen quality of the living dead.”
    She swallowed hard. She nodded. “All right. Okay. But I'm so scared.”
    “You can be strong; you have it in you.”
    “I know I do. I know. But…”
    He leaned forward and gave her a kiss.
    Her lips were icy.
Eric groaned and opened his eyes.
    Evidently he had descended once more into a short period of
suspended animation, a minor but deep coma, for he slowly regained
consciousness on the floor of the living room, sprawled among at
least a hundred sheets of typing paper. His splitting headache was
gone, although a peculiar burning sensation extended from the top of
his -skull downward to his chin, all across his face, and in most of
his muscles and joints as well, in shoulders and arms and legs. It
was not an unpleasant burning, and not pleasant either, just a
neutral sensation unlike anything he had felt before.
    I'm like a candy man, made of chocolate, sitting on a sun-washed table, melting, melting, but melting from the inside.
    For a while he just lay there, wondering where the weird thought
had come from. He was disoriented, dizzy. His mind was a swamp in
which unconnected thoughts burst like stinking bubbles on the watery
surface. Gradually the water cleared a bit and the soupy mud of the
swamp grew somewhat firmer.
    Pushing up to a sitting position, he looked at the papers strewn
around him and could not remember what they were. He picked up a few
and tried to read them. The blurry letters would not at first resolve
into words; then the words would not form coherent sentences. When at
last he could read a bit, he could understand only a fraction of what
he read, but he could grasp enough to realize that this was the third
paper copy of the Wildcard file.
    In addition to the project data stored in the Geneplan computers,
there had been one hard-copy file in Riverside, one in his office
safe at the headquarters in Newport Beach, and a third here. The
cabin was his secret retreat, known only to him, and it had seemed
prudent to keep a fully updated file in the hidden basement safe, as
insurance against the day when Seitz and Knowls-the money men behind
his work-tried to take the corporation away from him through clever
financial maneuvering. That anticipated treachery was unlikely
because they needed him, needed his genius, and would most likely
still need him when Wildcard was perfected. But he was not a man who
took chances. (Other than the one big chance, when he had injected
himself with the devil's brew that was turning his body into pliable clay.) He had not wanted to risk being booted out of Geneplan and finding himself cut