"Yes," Dan whispered. In the light of the flashlight his face had the appearance of a Halloween mask. The automatic was a burnished blue glint at the level of his hip. He raised it in front of him as the door opened a crack.
At first sight the room was empty.
Dan crouched and shone the light under the bed. Nothing there. He turned the beam on the door of the closet, which was closed. Ruth had said it was the double closet farthest from the window. If there had
been anything in the closet, it hadn't come out. Snakes didn't close doors behind them, no matter how well brought up they were.
Nick said, "As soon as I open it--fire." He cleared his throat, trying to muffle the sound. "Ready?"
Dan went down on one knee and held the gun straight in front of him and sighted along the barrel. "Ready."
As if in slow motion Nick bent at the knees and reached out at full stretch. He touched the handle with his fingertips and pushed and the door slid back, rolling silently on polyurethene bearings. Dan's finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn't fire because there was nothing to shoot at. The bulky brown canvas pack, flap unbuckled, stood on the third shelf down with two cartons of cotton swabs beside it, one opened. The rest of the closet remained hidden behind the center and side panels, an unknown quantity.
"Move to the left," Nick murmured. "Shine the light inside."
Still on one knee, Dan sidled around, holding the flashlight in his left hand. His throat felt cramped but he was unable to swallow. Nervously he saw Nick craning forward, trying to see into the shadowy recesses, and wanted to warn him not to go too near, to edge back out of the way, but his tongue was bloated, filling his mouth and tasting of dried leather.
Jagged lightning forked beyond the window. Then came a rolling boom of thunder and with it another sound, that of a sinister warning rattle.
Time stood still.
Dan's blood seemed to freeze in his veins as the rattle ceased, and simultaneously he fired as the reptile struck. A long pointed splinter spun through the flashlight beam, sheared from the center panel. Dan fired again as the broad diamond-backed body recoiled, winding back upon itself, and again, aiming into the heavy curled mass of coils, pumping the trigger until the clip was exhausted and the hammer clicked metallically in the sudden deathly silence.
"Did 1 get it, is the bastard dead?" Dan asked in a rushed whisper.
He shone the light into the spattered closet and saw a quivering mound twitching convulsively. The head, almost severed from the body, was lying on one side, mouth gaping slackly, the extended fangs dripping blood. . . .
Blood?
Dan blinked sweat from his eyes. Couldn't be. Wasn't time. Too quick. He'd fired before . . .
He shone the light down to where Nick was lying, his face obscured by an elephant's trunk with two deep raking marks in it. The trunk ended in a hand, Nick's hand, raised across his forehead to protect himself. The trunk was his arm, huge, gross, puffing up and turning blue-black.
Nick's flesh was warm and yet clammy with a strange mottled pattern underneath the skin. There was no need to check his pulse: The venom had reached his heart in seconds. He was already dead.
Dan stuffed the two cartons of cotton swabs inside and shouldered the medical pack. In the corridor the dense cloying smell of rotting carpets and the fungi growing on the walls made his stomach heave. It was the stench of putrefaction. Of things growing in dank musty darkness and decaying even while they grew. Feeding other things that decayed and died. The evolutionary process spiraling downward into protozoic mush.
His shoes made squelching, sucking sounds as he went along the corridor. In the beam of the flashlight the walls appeared to shimmer whitely, the bell-shaped fungi trembling and exuding tiny white pearls of fluid. He stepped closer. He held the flashlight up close. The pearls were white grubs with rudimentary features and a bifurcated division in the tail. He watched as one of them squirmed over the lip of the bell and dropped to the floor. The floor was alive with them--he swung his flashlight in an arc--thousands, numberless millions.
The carpet seemed to be moving under him, a broad white stream filling the corridor. And they were dropping from the walls by the hundreds, he saw, eager to move out into the world, their world, to seek nourishment.
Dan remembered the white grubs in the tent feeding off his friends. He knew now what they were--and what they would become. These were the larvae of the homunculi, come to inherit the earth.
He walked through them leaving flattened oozing footprints, entered the suite, and shut the door.
Chase stirred and moaned in drug-induced slumber. His shirt and trousers were saturated, the foam mattress soaking up perspiration like a giant sponge.
Ruth sat watching him with her back to the wall, knees drawn up.
