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  “Geez, Louise,” Dallas whispered in delight. Coco was inhaling Sonny rather than food. With an expert movement, Sonny flipped Coco across his arm, supporting her as he dipped her down for the finale of the kiss. It was a bad moment to interrupt, but if she didn’t break them up soon, it might be too late. Gathering her purse, she rose, smoothed out her skirt, and pounded on the door loudly. “Coco, Coco,” she called.

  The door was thrown open and Coco, cheeks flushed and eyes gleaming, reached out and hugged Dallas. “Sonny is going to publish my book! He loves the photographs! He loves my cooking!”

  “Looks to me like he loves everything about you,” Dallas offered. It occurred to her that Sonny would not be a bad man to have at a beefalo ranch. He probably didn’t know a damn thing about livestock, but it was a given that he’d have a gun.

  She instantly changed her plans. “Why don’t you take Sonny with you to the beefalo ranch?”

  “What’s up?” He came toward the door, agreeable as long as Coco was within touching distance. His hands stroked her arm.

  She drew away from him. “He has to know the truth.”

  Dallas grasped Coco’s slender wrist and pulled her down three steps. “Zip it, Coco,” she whispered. “Men don’t have to know anything you don’t want to tell them. They have their own set of secrets.”

  “No.” Coco gripped the banister at the last step and held. It was as if she’d suddenly developed strength. Before Dallas could stop her, she looked up at Sonny. “I used to be really fat,” Coco said. “There’s a chance I might get fat again.” When he didn’t say anything, she held her hands far out from her lean hips. “I mean really fat.”

  Sonny shrugged. “I knew that.” He came down the steps. “When you donated your skin, it was my cousin Vinny that got some. He got a bad burn when he was torching a … when he got caught in an accidental fire.” Sonny brushed the backs of his fingers across Coco’s cheek. “Now he’s got the smoothest skin in the world. But I got to say, it looks better on you. He can’t even grow peach fuzz now, and it drives him wild.”

  “You knew?” Coco wavered as if she might faint. “You knew I used to be fat and you want to publish my cookbook anyway?”

  Sonny looked at Dallas as if he’d missed some important point. “Sure. The food is great. The photos are terrific. What’s the problem?”

  “But I could get fat again.” Coco couldn’t think of a way to make him understand.

  “Hey, the world could blow up. A hurricane could

  destroy the casino. Listen, Coco, lots of things could happen. Who can foretell the future?” He put his arm around her. “And besides, if you put on a few pounds there’ll just be more of you to love.”

  The rhythms of Bonita Avenue were familiar to Mona. Through the last hours of the afternoon, she’d watched the residents, several of them elderly and moving carefully, as they unloaded groceries, set out their garbage, or turned on the kitchen lights and began to prepare dinner. Mona watched the scenes of domesticity with a new eye. The routines were there, buried beneath many layers of experience. She had once set the table and chopped onions for a meal. She had once checked the clock to time a roast as she waited for her father to return.

  How long had it been since she’d cooked for someone? Not long enough. She’d abandoned that lifestyle as easily as a snake sheds its summer skin. She had come out new and glistening and supple, with only an itch or two to remind her of what her hide had once looked like.

  From her car she had a clear view of Marvin’s apartment. The small light still burned behind the seafoam curtains, and the driveway was as empty as it had been when she’d first arrived. He’d be back, though. This was his base. They’d established that much. Marvin Lovelace always returned to the apartment on Bonita Avenue.

  The sun slipped behind a large red oak, and through the window of her car, Mona could hear the Sound. All of her life the water had been just a short walk from her door. It was especially beautiful at dusk, and she would miss it.

  She picked up her wire cutters and gloves and hurried across the leaf-covered lawn. She couldn’t leave this job to Dallas. By her estimations, Dallas was almost seasoned enough to deal with Marvin, but not quite. In order to go to Washington and leave WOMB behind, Mona required Dallas to be in good health and ready to take over the reins of the writers’ group. That meant she, Mona d’la Quirt, would deal with Marvin. She snapped the wire cutter in her hand, a tiny click, click, click sound. There were indeed certain procedures she could perform that would bring the old codger to his knees.

  Footsteps echoing on the wooden stairs, she raced up them and paused at the door. A moan of dismay greeted her. It had to be Robert. There was no time now for finesse. She kicked the door, using all the strength of her thighs and back, and felt it give. In a moment she was inside.

  The creature huddled over in a chair was hardly recognizable as the man she’d seen in magazines and television interviews.

  “Robert?”

  “Un-huh!” He nodded his head.

  “This does not look like fun. When I tie a man up, I like to hear an occasional cry of pleasure.” She bent to the task, glad she’d brought the wire cutters to get through the plastic-coated clothesline that Marvin had used. The thin wire was effective but cruel. She’d quit using it years before, preferring silk stocking or scarves. They could be tied as tightly, but didn’t destroy the tissue.

  As she cut the bonds away, she wondered if the scientist would ever regain use of his hands.

  “Thank you,” he nearly wept when the gag was removed. “I don’t know who you are, but thank you.”

  “No time for the niceties, Robert, let’s move!” She grabbed his arm and propelled him up, covering his scream of pain with her hand. “One more noise like that, and I’ll have to leave you.” She felt his jaws clamp shut beneath her hand. At least Dallas had trained him to believe it when a woman spoke.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Sheltered by the video store awning, Marvin stared across the street and into Bo’s Electronics. He half-expected to see Driskell flitting about in the shadows, hard at work on appliances that numbed American society into a state of total malleability. In a sense Driskell and Bo would be responsible for what happened to themselves. And soon.

  The evening was balmy, though it was growing late. Marvin sauntered down the street and came back, his attention never wavering from the television shop. Driskell and Lucille were gone. Bo and Iris were in the apartment. Marvin’s teeth clicked loudly as he bit down on the irony of the situation at hand.

  Perfect. He’d get what he wanted from Bo, finish him off, contact the feds, and make his demand for money. Lucille he’d deal with over a more lengthy span of time. The Hares did not have to be alive for his extortion to be effective. It was not who they were in life, but what they were in history. With the money he obtained from his blackmail scheme, he and his associates would be able to complete their research and carry on the great work of a superior society too long suppressed. A half a century had been wasted, but now the target was in focus, and the work far more necessary than it had ever been in the past. The world was being over-run by inferior specimens. It was time to take control, to halt the degradation of the human race.

  Marvin slipped stealthily across the street and shoved the electronic keyer into the lock. He was inside.

  “Bo, did you hear the front bell?” Iris called out from the apartment in back.

  Marvin ducked behind a wall of televisions. “Yeah, I’ll check.”

  The apartment door opened. A golden rectangle of light stretched across the cement floor with Bo’s shadow in the center of it. Bo walked forward, right into the barrel of Marvin’s German luger.

  “Have a seat, Bo,” Marvin said as he stepped out of the shadows. “And call your wife up here. Unless you’d rather change your marital status to widower.”

  Bo took in the shadowy form of the lean old man, the steady hand on the gun, the glint of evil in his eyes, and he
called out, “Baby, there’s a crazy man up here with a gun.”

  Marvin nodded his approval. “Tell her to have a seat. This can be quick and easy, or very, very painful and long.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got until midnight. After that, I want to find that nasty Peter Hare and that sister of yours and put an end to the possibility that another Hare might ever reproduce.”

  Lucille crouched in the high Johnson grass that lined the ditch beside the ornate iron fence. She was somewhere in the godforsaken wilderness of north Harrison County. The sun had set half an hour before, and darkness was complete. Driskell had gone inside the gate to scope out the terrain. He had left her to gather the members of WOMB as they arrived.

  In the darkness she stumbled over a clump of dirt and realized she’d knocked the top off a huge mountain of fireants. Backing away, she heard the approach of a large truck coming down the narrow farm-to-market road.

  Lucille stood up to signal. When the lights turned suddenly on her, she was blinded for a moment. It was the smell of burning diesel that alerted her to the danger. The smell was one of childhood mixed with fear and sweat, panic and the burn of lungs desperate for oxygen after running and running and running. Somewhere in the potent mixture was the whisper of the corn husks and the see-saw laughter of her uncle. Peter had come for her.

  With every ounce of strength, she ran. The open road was stupid. He’d squash her like a fat toad if she stayed where the footing was easy. As if her body had decided the direction long before her brain could make a choice, she ran down the ditch and straight toward the gate. Scrabbling, tugging, and kicking with both back feet, she managed to wiggle through just before the big truck barreled onto the drive.

  The headlights illuminated the narrow dirt driveway and Lucille rolled to her feet already running. She was down the path a good fifty yards when she heard the tortured skre-etch of the iron gate as the big cement truck blasted it to bits. Peter slowed inside the gate, laughing aloud as he searched left and right as far as the headlights would illumine.

  “Lucille!” Peter called. “Lucille, I’ve got a present for you.”

  Lucille kept running. Somewhere to her right came the angry snort of a very large creature, and too late, she remembered the buffalo. The big animal began to run parallel to her with only the pines separating them. She could feel the weight of the animal as the soft, moist soil quaked. Behind her the gears of the truck protested as Peter Hare came after her.

  Out of the darkness a slender form sprang straight at her. A forearm locked around her throat as black silk swept over her head. Lucille yielded totally to the power of Driskell LaMont as he swept her off the path just before the glaring lights of the cement truck struck the spot where she’d stood. Together they cowered in the pine needles as Peter drove the cement truck past them, still laughing as he searched for his niece.

  “Stay quiet,” Driskell warned Lucille. “There are soldiers all over the woods, not to mention cows.”

  Safely pressed against Driskell, Lucille felt no need to talk. Except to ask one question. “What kind of soldiers?”

  “I don’t know. They’re in uniform and they’re making beer. Case after case of beer.” Driskell was still amazed at the sight he’d discovered deep in the woods. “There’s a large factory, and two old men in white doctor’s smocks are supervising. Big machines are bottling the beer, and the soldiers are casing it and loading it onto trucks. It’s some operation.”

  “I thought it was a beefalo ranch.” Lucille distinctly recalled the photo and Andromeda’s comments about crossbreeds.

  Driskell signaled her to silence, and in the stillness of the piney night, they heard the sounds of crisp military commands coming from the direction of the factory. “Peter’s made it to the beer.”

  Lucille recognized her uncle’s voice raised in anger, but there was another voice. A harsh order was barked in some foreign language. Automatic gunfire sounded a short blast, and then there was silence. “Maybe they shot him.” The idea was pleasant.

  “Listen!” Another noise caught Driskell’s interest, this one from the gate area. Someone was coming down the drive. Gravel scrunched closer and closer.

  Driskell gently pulled Lucille deeper into the shadows. “If you want to leave here alive, don’t so much as breathe,” he whispered.

  Lucille was intently aware of the feel of Driskell against her back. Though she’d never faced such danger, she’d never felt happier. He was behind her, solid as a pine sapling. His arms held her protectively, but there was something more. Something wonderful. She had no intention of uttering a sound that would interrupt this intense moment between them.

  “Scatter!” The order came from a female and there was the sound of several people clumping into the brush.

  Lucille recognized Mona instantly. “Here we are,” she called. They had come. The members of WOMB had really come.

  “Lucille?”

  Lucille stepped onto the path. Before her eyes the trees began to shift as bodies stepped from behind them. Coco was easy to recognize, as was Mona. And Andromeda. And some man who held Coco’s arm as if she was his prisoner. Lucille felt the sting of tears. WOMB was there in force.

  Driskell emerged from the trees, his pale face the most visible of all in the soft moonlight that filtered onto the gravel road.

  “Is Marvin here?” Mona asked. “I’ve got a little surprise for him. Robert is free. He’s safe with Dallas.”

  “Congratulations,” Driskell said as he stepped forward to pat her shoulder. “If you ever get tired of writing, there may be a job for you in the government.”

  “I’m considering a position or two. Now, where is Marvin?”

  “I haven’t seen him, but he may be in the beer factory. They’ve got quite an operation going back there in the pines.”

  “Then let’s get him.” Mona started forward, drawing her wire clippers from her bosom. “He has some questions to answer, and I know a little game that will make him inclined to talk.”

  The sound of light footsteps on the gravel made them all stop. “Wait. Wait. Wait.” Jazz was running down the drive toward them, a sheaf of papers flapping against her side. In the dark she didn’t see Andromeda and collided against her with such force that her bee-hive finally tumbled in a big curl of surrender. Holding out the pages, she completely ignored the betrayal of her hair-do. “I found medical records at the VA on some of the soldiers stationed on Horn Island. Every single one of them was sterile.”

  From deep in the woods an explosion and a ball of flame lit the night sky. The writers turned to look at it, unaware that something in the woods crept closer to them. A snort behind Jazz made them all freeze.

  “It’s the buffalo,” Andromeda said, taking off her sunglasses and tucking them into her pocket. “No one move.”

  The snort came again, along with the sound of heavy hooves. “It’s the entire herd. We’re going to die,” Jazz said. “We’re going to die, and I haven’t been to confession in three years.” She turned to Driskell. “In that black cloak you look something like a priest. Would you hear my sins?”

  “Tell Lucille,” Mona snapped. “She can use it in Forbidden Words. She’s got everything else under the sun in there.”

  “Do something, Mona,” Lucille countered. “It’s only an overgrown cow and you were a rodeo queen.”

  While the challenge hung in the damp night air, the buffalo moved with blinding speed. A small pine tree snapped before the power of the attack, and Lucille found herself twenty feet away from the massive head of the angry bull. Snorting and pawing, he scored the earth as he took aim.

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!” Mona leaped out from behind a cluster of wild huckleberries. She bounded, deer-like, jumping astride. The beast gave a loud grunt of surprise as she tightened her legs around his sides and dug into his ribs with her heels. “Let’s go, big boy,” she cried. Hanging onto the thick mat of hair, Mona lifted one hand in the air and kicked with all her might. “The Mississippi Rodeo Queen rides ag
ain,” Mona yelled.

  “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” Lucille managed.

  “I’ll try to take them out through the gate and set them free,” Mona called. She was using heels, thighs, hands, and teeth to steer the enraged buffalo toward the open gate.

  Peter Hare held the cigarette lighter up to the spigot of the giant can of roach spray he’d bought especially for his niece-in-law. “I’ll torch you alive until your eyes melt,” he threatened. Behind him the cement truck was a smoldering heap. He’d barely gotten out of it before the soldiers incinerated it.

  Looking left and right, he counted the two old men in white lab coats and about thirty young men with close-cropped hair and lean jaws. They all wore fatigues and boots and carried expensive weapons that sprayed bullets as if they were match sticks. Peter was greatly outnumbered. He’d planned on dealing with Bo, Lucille, Iris, Driskell and that gang of perverted women, not a paramilitary organization run by two old dudes who bore a strange resemblance to Boris Karloff.

  “Give it up, Hare.” One of the older men finally spoke. His tones were guttural, his accent German.

  “I came out here to get my niece. All I want is Lucille Hare.”

  The old man smiled and waved the soldiers to lower their guns. “Then we have a common goal,” the old man said. “Perhaps we can work out a deal, yes?”