The hunger wouldn't let him.
At ten thousand feet above sea level he saw something white and low ahead'a car that had stalled out in the rarefied air. He moved in with a little caution, unsure if he was wasting his time. He wasn't. There was someone inside, a woman, a middle-aged woman in pearls and pantsuit. Her hair was like gossamer, like the silken strands of a spider's web. In Dick's altered vision her hair glowed like a fine tracery of gold. He wanted her. The hunger had to have her.
She screamed but he could barely hear her through the safety glass. She tried to get the car moving but failed. He came closer and lunged for her. His face smashed against the glass of her window. Pain sang a single high note in his nose and his cheek but the hunger roared louder. He struck again. She bounced across the front seats of the car and pushed her way out of the passenger door, out into the air.
The smell of her hit Dick like a storm of longing. His jaw stretched wide and his eyes rolled back in his head. She tried to run but she'd already made her fatal mistake. She would have been faster than Dick if she'd been wearing tennis shoes instead of high heels. She could have outrun him at sea level where she could catch her breath. That high up in the mountains she could barely run a dozen yards before she got winded. The air was too thin to properly fill her lungs.
Dick didn't need to breathe at all. He was dead. She would run a ways and have to stop to puff and gasp and wheeze. He just kept coming. It took most of an hour but in the end he closed the gap between them. He got his teeth in her flailing arm and just refused to let go. He couldn't feel any mercy or compassion anymore. To Dick she was just meat, a meal, something to snack on. He couldn't understand her pleas for release.
The hunger filled him up. It didn't leave room for pity.
When he was done with her and her blood had dried on his chin and his vest, when the hunger was sated for a while (just a while, it would come back soon enough) he lay sprawled across her cooling body, his esophagus heaving with peristalsis, and he watched the gold filigree of her hair tarnish and turn dark. When she woke up she joined him, what was left of her. Together they headed up the highway. The hunger pulled her along too, and when they crested the mountain together they saw where it was leading them.
Public transportation is running on a reduced/holiday schedule. It is expected that normal schedules will be resumed shortly. [RTDDenver , CO service announcement, 3/31/05]
The biowarfare people fromFortDetrick called it 'the Bag'. The biosecure research facility the 1157th Engineers Company had built on the site of Florence-ADX comprised a series of interlocked conex shipping containers lined inside with several thicknesses of transparent mylar. These envelopes were kept at varying levels of negative air pressure so that if one was punctured pathogens would be blow inward, not out. The Bag qualified as a Class II Biological Safety Cabinet.
To get inside the Bag you had to pass through a series of flaps that had to be unzipped and then resealed behind you.Clark had already been decontaminated and had his clothing (including his underwear and socks) replaced with disposable paper modesty garments. His name and rank were stenciled on the chest and sleeves. He felt humiliated. What Vikram had to tell him didn't please him either. 'What do you mean, gone?' he demanded as they ducked through yet another flap. 'The entire town? Not just the sheriff's office?'