first. I'm getting my hands back. Five minutes, ten at most. You
want my advice? Go out the window. They're all open. Go out and
take your tail with you.'
The cat stared at him.
Halston tried his hands again. They came up, trembling wildly.
Half an inch. An inch. He let them fall back limply. They slipped
off his lap and thudded to the Plymouth's seat. They glimmered
there palely, like large tropical spiders.
The cat was grinning at him.
Did I make a mistake?, he wondered confusedly. He was a creature
of hunch, and the feeling that he had made one was suddenly
overwhelming. Then the cat's body tensed, and even as it leaped,
Halston knew what it was going to do and he opened his mouth to
scream.
The cat landed on Halston's crotch, claws out, digging.
At that moment, Halston wished he had been paralyzed. The pain
was gigantic, terrible. He had never suspected that there could be
such pain in the world. The cat was a spitting coiled spring of fury,
clawing at his balls.
Halston did scream, his mouth yawning open, and that was when
the cat changed direction and leaped at his face, leaped at his
mouth. And at that moment Halston knew that it was something
more than a cat. It was something possessed of a malign,
murderous intent.
He caught one last glimpse of that black-and-white face below the
flattened ears, its eyes enormous and filled with lunatic hate. It had
gotten rid of the three old people and now it was going to get rid of
John Halston.
It rammed into his mouth, a furry projectile. He gagged on it. Its
front claws pinwheeled, tattering his tongue like a piece of liver.
His stomach recoiled and he vomited. The vomit ran down into his
windpipe, clogging it, and he began to choke.
In this extremity, his will to survive overcame the last of the
impact paralysis. He brought his hands up slowly to grasp the cat.
Oh my God, he thought.
The cat was forcing its way into his mouth, flattening its body,
squirming, working itself farther and farther in. He could feel his
jaws creaking wider and wider to admit it.
He reached to grab it, yank it out, destroy it ...and his hands
clasped only the cat's tail.
Somehow it had gotten its entire body into his mouth. Its strange,
black-and-white face must be crammed into his very throat.
A terrible thick gagging sound came from Halston's throat, which
was swelling like a flexible length of garden hose.
His body twitched. His hands fell back into his lap and the fingers
drummed senselessly on his thighs. His eyes sheened over, then
glazed. They stared out through the Plymouth's windshield blankly
at the coming dawn.
Protruding from his open mouth was two inches of bushy tail ...
