“What I’m going to ask is that you just relax and do nothing. There is a sedative kit in the next room that Mr. Drew has been utilizing to keep your grandniece cooperative. If you will allow one of my assistants here to inject you with a modest dose, I promise that your grandniece will be on her way home as soon as the drug takes effect. Your grandniece is evidence that the drug is no more than a powerful sleep-inducer.

“Once this has been accomplished, we can proceed without intemperate words and weapons to a sane conclusion. How about it, Jake? You’ve run these dogs a pretty good race up ’til now, but it’s time for the thoroughbreds to take over the track. There are no more motels to run to, no new places to hide. It’s time children were in bed and adults made the decisions.

“From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Jake, you’re an under-educated but rational man. So please, cooperate. If you don’t, then much as I’d regret the lost opportunities for study, vje’ll be forced to kill you. That means the girl would have to die also. We can hardly allow either of you to go to the police to recite your recent history.”

Jake stood there and listened to this completely confident, self-possessed stranger. Someone was using a heavy fist on his chest. He saw the three guns aimed at him, saw Drew’s ugly hand on his grandniece’s delicate neck. All he wanted just then was for it to be over. Let it be over, no matter what Amanda thought. The important thing was to get her home, back to her mother and father, home safe and away from these horrible people. For himself, he no longer cared.

Maybe Amanda saw the change overcoming her uncle. Maybe she saw it in the way his expression twisted, or maybe it was his mind that was twisting. Regardless, perhaps for some other unknown reason, she suddenly raised up in the bed, pushing back Drew’s hand.

“Don’t do it, Uncle Jake! Don’t go with them. They’ll never let me go because I can tell the police what—!”

Drew’s hand moved from her neck just long enough to crash across her face. Her head slammed back against the pillow, bounced once. Blood began streaming from her nose. Jake took an instinctive step toward the bed, his uncertainty swallowed up by sudden blind, mindless fury.

“Drew, Pickett; hold it!” Jake froze, glaring at Drew, who simply grinned back at the old man. Yeah, sure he’s dangerous, Drew thought. Those guys who went into the motel after him were useless. Abilene, that must’ve been some kind of fluke. The old guy’s not dangerous enough to sneeze about. His hand pressed tighter on the girl’s neck. He wasn’t worried anymore. In fact, the whole tableau was becoming rather amusing.

“That will be quite enough, Mr. Drew,” said Rutherford warningly. Drew shrugged indifferently.

“Please, Jake, you saw what happened to Mr. Huddy when he panicked. I know you have better sense than that.” He nodded to the bodyguard on his right. The man vanished into the sitting room, reappeared a moment later holding his gun in one hand and a loaded syringe in the other.

“I know how tired you must be, Jake,” said Rutherford sympathetically. “All that running for a man your age, with a cardiac condition. I have a few problems myself. You see, I understand, I can commiserate with you.” The man with the hypo started cautiously toward Jake. “It’s time for you to relax. You’ve earned a rest. I know all you want is to lie down and forget about all this.”

Abruptly Jake was completely relaxed. It was almost as if the Chairman’s words had provided the surcease he so desperately wished for. He knew now what he was going to do. He didn’t want to do it, but as before these people seemed disinclined to give him any kind of a choice. The lump returned to his throat. If only they’d give him a choice, but they never did. They kept pushing him, forcing him to do things he’d never dreamed of doing, never wanted to do.

His heart was bothering him quite a lot now. It might worsen at any moment. These people would welcome a blackout on his part. It would save them the trouble of having to use the hypodermic. If he blacked out or had a mild stroke they’d gain everything they were after. They wouldn’t even have to return Amanda.

But Amanda was sure they had no intention of doing that whether he was alive or dead, cooperative or otherwise.

He was almost as frightened as he was angry. His head was starting to hurt like it had several times in the past week, though because of the extreme angina he was experiencing he hardly noticed the other. He was afraid that what the dignified visitor said about him handling all the guns and bullets simultaneously might be true. So he didn’t think about the guns, and he didn’t think about the bullets.

A strange gurgling came from the man holding the syringe. His expression went sort of blank. Then it was gone altogether, along with his face. So was the face of his counterpart, and the sadistic face of Mr. Drew waiting tensely on the bed. They were all gone.

From their faces it spread to encompass their skulls, and then traveled down their whole bodies. They came apart in comparative silence. There were no ripping, tearing noises, no violent eruptions of blood and flesh. The three of them just melted from the top down. Most of the human body, after all, is water, and if you make the watery combinations inside the body slipt as Jake Pickett instinctively, fearfully did, there isn’t much left and what is left isn’t very solid. So everyone in the room stood paralyzed as three skeletons collapsed in on themselves atop a reddened, jelly-like mass. Unsupported clothing came folding down on top of former bodies until, under the tremendous surge of disassembling energy from Pickett, even they began to come apart.

Now Amanda was screaming on the bed. The Chairman of the Board stood alone by the doorway, a lifetime of assurance dissolving as rapidly as his henchmen. At last there were only two piles of sticky, maroon-colored sludge spreading out across the floor, mixed with some powdered bone and loose rags. The third mass of slime extended from Amanda Ramirez’s throat down to her legs.

“Stop it, Uncle Jake! That’s enough, stop it!”

Jake Pickett heard her only faintly. The pain in his chest threatened to double him over any second now. It was worse than any pain he could remember. Still he didn’t reach for his pills. There weren’t safe yet, weren’t free. The agony in his chest had progressed to the point where the pills might not have done him much good anyway.

He didn’t care. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except making certain that Amanda would be alright. If he heard her pleas for him to stop, he didn’t react to them.

Rutherford was trying to back out the doorway while keeping the old man in sight. Pickett seemed to be in considerable pain. The Chairman’s foot slid on something; a damp, viscous blob of jelly. He looked down at what had once been half of his personal bodyguard. A partially disintegrated skull grinned whitely up at him. There was only a jellied smear where the right eye had been. The left one hadn’t slipt, had just fallen out of the socket. Now it dangled loosely by an organic thread, hanging against half a cheekbone. Rutherford found he was shaking badly.

“I’m sorry…. We can work it out. I’m going, see? I’ll leave you alone. Nobody will bother you anymore, I swear it. Just stop….” He reached out a hand, trying to protect himself from something unseen. “Please don’t….”

He never finished the sentence. It dissolved in his throat, along with everything else.

Rutherford didn’t scream as he slipt. None of them had screamed. Maybe that meant it wasn’t painful. That made Jake feel a little better. No, the Chairman of CCM didn’t appear to be in any pain as his face slowly melted off his skull, as the hands that reached out became skeleton hands, as the flesh melted and ran down the white bone.

Slowly Rutherford slipt, sliding into his clothes, his body running like pudding out through the legs of his expensive pants. Something moved behind him and Jake half-turned his head. Powder stung his cheeks and he blinked as a few grains caught his eyes. The powdered bullet didn’t have enough force to break the skin, however.

In the far doorway the receptionist-guard who’d first encountered Jake outside the elevators stared in terror as the gun slipt in her hands. It wasn’t like the other times, not like in Benson or Abilene when cylinders had fallen away from their mounts and triggers and barrels had come apart. This time the handgun simply turned to dust along with the bullets, sifting through the woman’s clutching fingers. Jake had spotted her just in time.

Then she noticed the mounds of ooze on the floor which had once been human beings, living creatures. Her hand went to her mouth and she disappeared down the hall. Soon the paralyzing hysteria would give way to screaming.

Jake wasn’t sure why he didn’t make her slipt. A lifetime of being courteous to the opposite sex, perhaps. Speaking of which…. He turned to regard the last of his tormentors.

Ruth Somerset was sitting on the floor on the far side of the room, her back against the wall. She was alternately laughing and crying. Then she noticed Jake staring at her. She didn’t scream, didn’t beg or plead, but there was a naked, helpless terror in her eyes which made Jake cringe. He was responsible for that, he knew, and he didn’t want to be. All he wanted was to get along. That’s all he’d ever wanted out of life.

He took a step toward her, planning to reassure her. It had an entirely different effect. Those widened eyes rolled up and she fell over sideways in a dead faint.

Alarms began to sound, hooting loudly through the building, penetrating the soundproofing via the gaping hallway door. It sounded as if they were blaring all over the plant.

The receptionist-guard was responsible for that, Jake knew. Maybe he should have made her slipt anyway. Too late for that now. The important thing was to get Amanda to safety. He turned to the bed, and bent over as something ripped through his chest.

“Uncle Jake?” Amanda was sitting on the side of the bed, still cleaning herself. He fought to regain control of his body.

“It’s okay, princess. It’s okay. Come on. I’m taking you out of here.”

She put her hands around his neck as he reached under her, one hand across the small of her back, the other beneath her thighs. He gritted his teeth and lifted. She came up easily, lighter than she looked because of the thinness of her legs. She wasn’t a big girl to begin with, but that didn’t matter. Suddenly he had a surge of real energy, felt some strength return to his arms and legs. This was Amanda he was carrying, and he’d die before he dropped her.

No one confronted them as they emerged into the hall. There was no sign of the receptionist. Her desk was deserted and so was the opposite hallway. The elevator responded to Jake’s call and when the car arrived it was empty.

On the ground floor, however, a couple of security guards espied them as they exited the elevator. The sight of an old man carrying a nearly naked young woman piqued their interest immediately.

“Hey, who are you?” one of them said sharply. They both started forward.

Jake hesitated before reacting, remembering the goo that covered the bedroom floor upstairs. The memory of it made him queasy. His stomach was no stronger than anyone else’s. So instead of disassembling the two guards he turned his attention to the ceiling, a part of which turned into a shower of wood and plaster. The two men were laid out on the floor, still wearing their bodies.

What am I going to do? he thought worriedly as he tried to hurry toward the entrance. Amanda clung tightly to him, her strong arms locked around his neck. I’ve killed so many people. Self-defense, sure, but those deaths were still on his hands, and literally on his mind. How was he going to be able to live with that?

Outside the Administration Building now, running back down a half-familiar path with his delicate burden. Alarms echoing in his ears. Out through the last gate, onto the paved walk which bordered the bright waters of the Gulf. Another spasm of pain burst behind his sternum. He found himself running while leaning to his left.

The little inboard was waiting for him. He set Amanda inside, wrestled with the rope binding the boat to the dock. A shout sounded behind him and he turned to look landward.

Ruth Somerset was standing by the plant exit, her expression wild with hate and fear. Sophistication had deserted her. It was more than that. The events she’d witnessed during the past half hour had rendered her slightly deranged. Armed security personnel clustered around her.

“There he is!” she screamed, pointing toward the dock. “There he is! Kill him. For God’s sake, kill him!”

Jake climbed into the boat and sat down in the pilot’s seat. The engine turned over immediately, but it took several precious seconds for the boat to pull free of the sand and back out into the bay. As he swung around and gunned it he looked back over his shoulder.

Somerset was still standing by the gate above the beach walk, but the men accompanying her were running down the path and piling into the two other small boats which had been tied up to the dock. A few were firing at the retreating inboard, which was just out of range.

They’d chase him all the way back to Port Lavaca, he thought exhaustedly, maybe all the way to Wendy and Arriaga’s house. Maybe into the house. They might not even make it that far. He didn’t know how fast their boats might be, and there was always the chance of a stray shot hitting him or Amanda. They’d chase him until they both died.

Tired. He was so tired.

So he reached out with the ability he didn’t understand, would never have a chance to understand. Reached out for one of the last times with something he’d wanted to use only to amuse little kids, something which people he despised had forced him to develop to a frightening degree. It was less disciplined, less controlled than anything he’d ever done; the desperate strike of a man in the last stages of hopeless exhaustion. If he’d had more practice, more time, he might have managed it better. Certainly he didn’t mean to produce such a violent sliptage.