Warren Murphy Destroyer 131 Wolf's Bane

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There was a reason why she would not allow Owen or anyone else to handle the
formula. There was simply no way she would ever entrust something so important
with one of the others. The compound had to be measured just so.
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Too little would take too long to affect the humans, if it worked at all. Too
much would be a waste. The process would be accelerated to two seconds from
fifteen.
And at the moment she didn't want to waste a drop. She could have more made,
but it would disrupt her plan, which at the moment was proceeding precisely on
schedule.
The intellectual part of her that remained knew that the odds were increasing
in her favor with every passing hour.
"It's nothing personal, mankind," she growled to the whispering woods. "Just
survival of the fittest." Purring, Judith White slapped shut the case lid.
Chapter 10
Dr. Harold W. Smith felt good.
For most people, feeling good was a normal sensation. Oh, sometimes it was
fleeting, sometimes it lingered, but for the world at large it wasn't terribly
unusual to simply feel good. But for the director of the secret agency CURE,
feeling good was a strange, alien sensation.
A dour, lemony man, Smith's moods generally ran the gamut from mildly
concerned to deeply anxious. Sometimes he was peevish; very rarely he was
angry. At times-when his country or agency was threatened-there were moments
of full-blown panic or, more likely, steadfast resolve.
Feeling good was definitely not part of his normal emotional repertoire. So on
this day, as he steered his car onto the street on which he had lived for the
past forty years, he resolved to savor the sensation.
Smith parked his rusted old station wagon in the driveway of his Rye, New
York, home. He grabbed his battered leather briefcase from the seat beside
him. After locking the briefcase in the back compartment alongside the spare
tire, he headed up the front walk.
His wife had heard the sound of the car pulling in the driveway. She was at
the front door to meet him. "Hello, Harold," Maude Smith said. She was wiping
her hands dry on a well-worn dishrag. Mrs. Smith had been in the process of
scrubbing the old copper pots that had been a wedding gift from her
longdeceased mother.
"Hello, dear," Smith said, giving the plump woman a peck on the cheek. He
headed upstairs. Smith generally stayed at work from before sunup until well
after sundown. Seeing Harold home at any other time of day would ordinarily be
cause of great concern to Mrs. Smith. But although it was only eleven o'clock
in the morning, his wife had not been surprised to see her Harold today.
Smith had told her he would be home at this time. And since he said it, she
was confident he would come. Maude's Harold was nothing if not reliable.
In the upstairs bedroom, Smith found his special clothes folded on a chair
just where he'd left them. His normal uniform was a three-piece gray suit,
which he wore now. Smith changed out of the suit, hanging it carefully in the
closet next to six other identical suits. He pulled on the powder-blue
longsleeved jersey and green plaid pants. There were some fabric pills on the
shirt. Smith plucked them off, depositing them in the trash.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he slipped his feet back in his dress shoes.
He was lacing them back up when his wife stuck her head around the corner.
"Are you all right, Harold?" Maude asked, concerned.
"Yes, I'm fine." Smith asked, "Why?"
"That noise you were just making with your mouth. I thought something was
wrong."
Smith frowned. "Noise?" he asked. "I don't believe I was making any noise,
dear."
He picked up a pair of white shoes from the floor under the chair, just where
he'd left them the previous night. Carrying the shoes under one arm, he kissed
his wife on the cheek once more and headed back out into the hallway.
As he stepped down the stairs, he was unaware that he had started making the
same horrible noise once more.
Behind him, Maude Smith watched from the top of the stairs. As he headed
briskly out the door, she saw her husband's lips purse, saw his ashen cheeks
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puff out.
Maude recognized the noise this time. Her Harold was actually whistling. She
shook her head in astonishment
"Will wonders never cease?" she asked the walls with the old white paint that, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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