Strange Highways

legs that wouldn't hold him up if he didn't clamp them in metal braces every morning. With her looks, personality, and intelligence, she could have married rich or could have gone off to the big city to make her own fortune. Instead she had settled for the simple life of a teacher and the wife of a struggling writer, passing up mansions for this small house at the edge of the woods, forgoing limousines for a three-year-old Toyota.
     When she bustled into the kitchen with her briefcase, Jack was putting the dishes in the sink. "Do you miss the limousines?"
     She blinked at him. "What're you talking about?"
     He sighed and leaned against the counter. "Sometimes I worry that maybe ..."
     She came to him. "That maybe what?"
     "Well, that you don't have much in life, certainly not as much as you ought to have. Laura, you were born for limousines, mansions, ski chalets in Switzerland. You deserve them."
     She smiled. "You sweet, silly man. I'd be bored in a limousine. I like to drive. It's fun to drive. Heck, if I lived in a mansion, I'd rattle around like a pea in a barrel. I like cozy places. Since I don't ski, chalets aren't any use to me. And though I like their clocks and chocolates, I can't abide the way the Swiss yodel all the time."
     He put his hands on her shoulders. "Are you really happy?"
     She looked directly into his eyes. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"
     "I worry that I can't give you enough."
     "Listen, Jackson, you love me with all your heart, and I know you do. I feel it all the time, and it's a love that most women will never experience. I'm happier with you than I ever thought I could be. And I enjoy my work too. Teaching is immensely satisfying if you really try to jam knowledge into those little demons. Besides, you'll be famous someday, the most famous writer of detective novels since Raymond Chandler. I just know it. Now, if you don't stop being a total booby, I'm going to be late for work."
     She kissed him again, went to the door, blew him another kiss, went outside, and descended the porch steps to the Toyota parked in the gravel driveway.
     He grabbed his cane from the back of one of the kitchen chairs and used it to move more quickly to the door than he could have with only the assistance of his leg braces. Wiping the steam from the cold pane of glass, he watched her start the car and race the engine until, warmed up, it stopped knocking. Clouds of vapor plumed from the exhaust pipe. She drove out to the county road and off toward the elementary school three miles away. Jack stayed at the window until the white Toyota had dwindled to a speck and vanished.
     Though Laura was the strongest and most self-assured person Jack had ever known, he worried about her. The world was hard, full of nasty surprises, even here in the rural peace of Pine County. And people, including the toughest of them, could get ground up suddenly by the wheels of fate, crushed and broken in the blink of an eye.
     "You take care of yourself," he said softly. "You take care and come back to me."

    6

SEED DROVE TEEL PLEEVER'S BATTERED OLD JEEP WAGON TO THE END OF the abandoned logging road and turned right onto a narrow blacktop lane. In a mile the hills descended into flatter land, and the forest gave way to open fields.
     At the first dwelling, Seed stopped and got out of the jeep. Drawing upon its host's store of knowledge, Seed discovered this was "the Halliwell place." At the front door, it knocked sharply.
     Mrs. Halliwell, a thirtyish woman with amiable features, answered the knock. She was drying her hands on her blue-and-white-checkered apron. "Why, Mr. Pleever, isn't it?"
     Seed extruded tendrils from its host's fingertips. The swift, black lashes whipped around the woman, pinning her. As Mrs. Halliwell screamed, a much thicker stalk burst from Pleever's open mouth, shot straight to the woman, and bloodlessly pierced her chest, fusing with her flesh as it entered her.
     She never finished her first scream.
     Seed took control of her in seconds. The tendrils and stalks linking the two hosts parted in the middle, and the glistening, blue-spotted black alien substance flowed partly back into Teel Pleever and partly into Jane Halliwell.
     Seed was growing.
     Searching Jane Halliwell's mind, Seed learned that her two young children had gone to