Free Decay Inevitable by Conrad Williams Page B

aiming for the top of the road. Will could see there was no way they would make it before the woman caught them. What was wrong with her? Was it leprosy ?
    “Maybe you should talk to her?” Elisabeth gasped. She was clutching the side of her stomach, fighting a stitch. “Maybe she needs help.”
    “Fuck that. She’s not after a cup of sugar, I assure you.”
    The woman – if she could be called that – continued to gather pace and form. Now Will saw that she was only able to observe them since coins of flesh had peeled away from her face, allowing vague smears of colour to resolve themselves as eyes. Her targets locked, she arrowed towards them.
    God , Will thought. She sniffed us out .
    She was almost upon them when Will jinked left, hauling Elisabeth down a narrow alleyway. Up ahead, Hampstead Heath rolled away from them, raked by mist.
    Will glanced back; her cornering wasn’t too clever. The effort to right herself meant she lost control of her substance. When she hove into view once more, her extremities were knitting themselves back into true.
    In this fashion, he was able to put some distance between them. On the main road, he chanced upon a taxi pulling away from its rank.
    “Anywhere. Drive,” he ordered, as they spilled into the back seat. She came for them out of the lane like a greyhound from a trap. Will watched her receding through the back window as she gamely attempted to pursue. As soon as it was evident she could not catch them, she switched off and set a new course instantly, never once reciprocating Will’s interest in her.
    “So,” Elisabeth said. “Who’s she?” Her hands were covering her face and he could see her lower lip trembling. Nevertheless, some of the sass was creeping back into her voice now they were safe. “Jealous girlfriend?”

 
    C HAPTER T EN: T ORPOR
     
     
    C HEKE INVADED A house and fed on the woman who lived there. She found a dark room underneath the building and slowed her heart, hoping that wisdom would creep into her and show her how to plan her next move. Sleeping, she allowed the flux of a new code to infuse her, amalgamating, refreshing her with otherness.
    She was losing her hold over her own identity, the original that had mapped out her character from the start, although she could no longer remember enough about that being to gauge whether or not that was a good thing. The mirror was showing a woman where there’d been a girl the day before. When her mind wasn’t distracted by the fizzing of synapses as new thoughts – too complex for her to even begin to unravel – started to bloom, she considered the circumstances of her birth. All that diabolical screaming. And, just before the shock of the real, a feeling of being invaded with freshness, of being augmented with substance. The man who had wrapped her in a towel and warmed her – the thought of him made her shiver with love. She would do anything for him. Anything. Although a tiny part of her wondered why, when she regarded him with nothing but affection and respect, she saw all others as nothing more than meat.
    She resisted going into the street in case she brought attention upon herself – and also because her transition was incomplete – so she was only tangentially aware of what was happening outside. The murmur of traffic, a skitter of shoes on the pavement. At night, through a grille in the ceiling, she saw the houses lose their shape to the darkness, squares of pale colour dotting their invisibility: people who could not sleep. An hour later, her breathing decreased to one inhalation every four minutes; as she felt the bones of her pelvis dissolve and re-knit into a broader shape, she heard a telephone ringing on one of the floors above her. An answer machine cut in and she heard giggling voices tell the woman she was becoming when they would arrive. Same time tomorrow night. She recognised the voice. The person who owned it was called... Susan... Suzanne... Susannah. Susannah.
    What is