Remo was lost for an explanation. He shook his head woodenly as he looked down at the screen. He read the words again, hoping they had changed. They had not.
The name on the top of the computer file read simply, "Sheila Feinberg, BGSBS78."
And a terror that he had thought long buried resurfaced in the cold, barren center of Remo Williams's soul.
THEY WOULD BE FOLLOWING HER. If not Remo, others of his species.
She'd been careless. In spite of her best efforts to quell her base urges, she had given herself away. Judith White tried not to make the same mistake as she zipped quickly along Beacon Street. She forced herself to drive the speed limit. Although every animal instinct within her screamed "Run," she resisted the impulse to pound the gas pedal to the floor. She didn't want to attract the attention of the local police.
There were hunters everywhere.
It was funny. She had seen them many times over the years-in real life, on TV-yet they'd never caused her such visceral dread before. Trucks drove rapidly past her, offering fleeting flashes of bright orange.
At the moment, the men in khaki thought they were searching for her BBQs. She would be safe. Safe until word got out that it had been her all along.
They would come after her then. She'd have no problem dealing with a few. She had done that before. But she couldn't possibly handle so many. Humanity would not take kindly to a new, superior species rising up in its midst.
Drive slowly. Not too fast.
She'd been like this for months. Her first meals had been indigents and whores. People decent society wouldn't miss. Their bodies were buried in the soft dirt floor basement of a warehouse off Eastern Avenue in Chelsea.
So many bodies. So many she didn't really know how many there were. Nor did she care. They were only humans after all. Inferior to her in nearly every way. The only concern she'd ever felt as far as that other species was concerned was the fear of being discovered.
Had it been this way for the first in her species? Judith White had mulled that question many times over the past few months. For though she was the first in many years, she was not the first ever.
Dr. Sheila Feinberg, late of the Boston Graduate School of Biological Sciences, had actually been the first. It was the Feinberg Method that Judith had employed to achieve the state of perfection she now enjoyed.
Dr. Feinberg's case had been accidental. She had been a mousy little scientist, a Goody Two-shoes who had never been involved in anything vile or depraved. When she had ingested tiger DNA as proof that it was not harmful to a doubting audience, she'd never anticipated that the chemical reaction between her saliva, the DNA itself and the packing gel around the test tube would cause a change. Judith knew. She had gone into her experiments with both eyes wide open. She wanted the result she had gotten. Craved it.
But although she wanted the result of the experiments, she had not necessarily counted on this particular outcome.
A car came straight toward her. Judith snapped from her reverie, cutting her wheel sharply, swerving back into her own lane.
The driver of the other car leaned on his horn as he sped past her, flinging out his middle finger as the vehicles nearly collided.
Concentrate, concentrate.
She drove out of the city. Out toward I-90. Although technically the first of mankind to change, Sheila Feinberg shouldn't have really counted as the first. She couldn't anticipate nor could she control what she had become. And she would have changed back eventually.
An accident. All just a stupid accident. Accident!
On the highway now, Judith swerved again. She pulled away from the rear bumper of the car ahead of her at the last possible moment.
Think! Think! She fought to stay in the right lane. The effects were temporary in the first experiment. An instability on the microcellular level. Unlike her hapless predecessor, Judith had found a way to stabilize the receptor strands of DNA to eliminate rejection. Using a simple form of bacteria-which was perhaps the first form of life ever to evolve on Earth Judith had piggybacked the new genetic programming onto the old. In this way, the new DNA-bacteria hybrid was able to rewrite the original codes. And unlike Sheila Feinberg, Judith White hadn't settled for mere tiger genes. Although she did largely use them in the earliest stages of her experimentation, she was more than that now.
Much more.
Lights flashing behind her. A state police cruiser. For a moment, she wrestled with the notion of trying to outrun it.
Rational thought fought back irrational desire. To flee would invite more cruisers. They would empty the nearest state police barracks for the high-speed chase. They would catch her eventually. Too many of them then. Better to stop now. Only one officer to deal with. Two at most.
Judith steered the car into the breakdown lane. The cruiser tucked in neatly behind her.
Traffic whizzed by, seemingly at lightning speed. Taillights glowed as the speeding Massachusetts drivers continued the three-mile-long slowdown that began whenever a state police cruiser was spotted.
For a moment, Judith wrestled with the idea of trying to charm her way through, accept the ticket and go on.
The cop stayed in his car. It seemed to take forever.
Did he know? Had Remo alerted them already? Judith licked her lips in nervous anticipation. The officer was talking on his car radio. She could see him clearly in her rearview mirror.
Was he receiving instructions? Waiting for backup?
Judith glanced to her right. A brush-covered hill rose beyond the passenger's-side window. At the top was a thick growth of trees.
Safety. The trees were a haven. The cruiser, the trooper, his fellow officers-if they came-they were a danger. They would do her harm.
A steady hand reached for the keys dangling from the steering column. Judith switched off the idling engine.
The officer seemed to take this as a signal. He got slowly out of his own car. Lights flashed around him as he made his way up to Judith's car. As he walked, he hitched up his belt with practiced arrogance.
His beefy red face was unreadable as he stepped up beside her window.
"Good morning, ma'am," the state policeman said.
They were his last words.
A hand lashed out through the open window, clamping roughly around the lower part of the man's thick neck. Eyes bulged at the sudden, intense pressure.
The officer scrabbled for his gun. Too late.
The other hand was out, grabbing at his jaw, forcing it upward. The wide area from Adam's apple to chin was exposed. Into this opening lunged Judith White, fangs bared.
Growling low, she latched on to a huge portion of flesh. With a jerk of her head, she wrenched it loose. Most of his throat was pulled free of his neck. Part of his tongue was dragged down from his mouth.
Judith forced her hands into both sides of the opening, ripping outward as if tearing at a giftwrapped package. The trooper's neck burst apart. Blood dripped inside the opening like a trickling waterfall at the back of a damp cave.
The officer staggered back, gun long forgotten. He fumbled at his throat, feeling only an enormous wet hollow where it had once been.
As he dropped, Judith sprang from the car. Strong hands wrapped around the remains of the man's neck. Judith twisted savagely. Through the opening, she could see the white spine crack. The man grew limp.
Finishing him off was not a bow to compassion. If the man was alive when backup came, he could in his dying moments point out the direction she'd gone.
She only realized how far her rational mind had gone when she glanced up. The faces of passing motorists were utterly horrified.
They saw her. Clearly.