Shadowfires

for he had identified himself too closely with the operation in expectation of taking full credit for its success.
    Then he got a break. Jerry Peake called to report that Sarah Kiel,
Eric
Leben's underage mistress, had been located in a Palm Springs hospital. “But the damn medical staff,” Peake explained in his earnest but frustratingly wimpy manner, “isn't
cooperative.”
    Sometimes Anson Sharp wondered if the advantages of surrounding
himself with weaker-and therefore unthreatening-young agents were
outweighed by the disadvantage of their inefficiency. Certainly none
of them would pose a danger to him once he had ascended to the
director's chair, but neither were they likely to do anything on their own hook that would reflect positively on him as their mentor.
    Sharp said, “I'll be there before she shakes off the sedative.”
    The investigation at the Geneplan labs could proceed without him
for a while. The researchers and technicians had arrived for the day
and had been sent home with orders not to report back until notified.
Defense Security Agency computer mavens were seeking the Wildcard
files hidden in the Geneplan data banks, but their work was so highly
specialized that Sharp could neither supervise nor understand it.
    He made a few telephone calls to several federal agencies in
Washington, seeking-and obtaining-information about Desert General
Hospital and Dr. Hans Werfell that might give him leverage with them,
then boarded his waiting chopper and flew back across the desert to
Palm Springs, pleased to be on the move again.
Rachael and Benny taxied to the Palm Springs
airport, rented a clean new Ford from Hertz, and drove back into town
in time to be the first customers at a clothing store that opened at
nine-thirty. She bought tan jeans, a pale yellow blouse, thick white
tube socks, and Adidas jogging shoes. Benny chose blue jeans, a white
shirt, tube socks, and similar shoes, and they changed out of their
badly rumpled clothes in the public rest rooms of a service station
at the north end of Palm Canyon Drive. Unwilling to waste time
stopping for breakfast, partly because they were afraid of being
spotted, they grabbed Egg McMuffins and coffee at McDonald's, and ate as they drove.
    Rachael had infected Benny with her premonition of oncoming death
and her sudden-almost clairvoyant-sense that time was running out,
which had first struck her at the motel, just after they had made
love for the second time. Benny had attempted to reassure her, calm
her, but instead he had grown more uneasy by the minute. They were
like two animals independently and instinctively perceiving the
advance of a terrible storm.
    Wishing they could have gone back for her red Mercedes, which
would have made better time than the rental Ford, Rachael slumped in
the
passenger's seat and nibbled at her take-out breakfast without enthusiasm, while Benny drove north on State Route 111, then west on Interstate 10. Although he squeezed as much speed out of the Ford as anyone could have, handling it with that startling combination of recklessness and ease that was so out of character for a real-estate salesman, they would not reach Eric's
cabin, above Lake Arrowhead, until almost one o'clock in the afternoon.
    She hoped to God that would be soon enough.
    And she tried not to think about what Eric might be like when-and
if-they found him.

----
18 ZOMBIE
BLUES
    The dark rage passed, and Eric Leben regained
his senses-such as they were-in the debris-strewn bedroom of the
cabin, where he had smashed nearly everything he could get his hands
on. A hard, sharp pain pounded through his head, and a duller pain
throbbed in all of his muscles. His joints felt swollen and stiff.
His eyes were grainy, watery, hot. His teeth ached, and his mouth
tasted of ashes.
    Following each fit of mindless fury, Eric found himself, as now,
in a gray mood, in a gray world, where colors were washed out, where
sounds were muted, where the edges of objects were fuzzy, and where
every light, regardless of the strength of its source, was murky and
too thin to sufficiently illuminate anything. It was as if the fury
had drained him, and as if he had been forced to power down until he
could replenish his reserves of energy. He moved sluggishly, somewhat
clumsily, and he had difficulty thinking clearly.
    When he had finished healing, the periods of coma and the gray
spells would surely cease. However, that knowledge did not