Flesh in the Furnace by Dean Koontz Page B

crotch in a frenzy to be free.
        He could not operate the controls with her in his hands. But if he let go of her to start the truck and move out, she would call for the other man and report the murder of Pertos. And they would find out about Ben Samuels. And then the small room, the torture, the meager meals and the boards to sleep on.
        The lorry driver connected ten cables to his line of batteries, moving with the expertise of a man long in his business.
        Sebastian did not know what to do. He thought that he might wait it out, even if the stranger decided to have a hot meal and let his batteries charge at a slower rate. His hand was bleeding quite a bit, and her teeth made deep gouges into his flesh. He felt dizzy, as if be would pass out.
        Then he saw that the stranger was looking over at him. The man waved and started across, kicking snow with his knee-length boots. It must get lonely for a man on the deserted northern highway, and companionship must be taken whenever it is available.
        Bitty Belina's muffled cries grew louder, for Sebastian's hands were too weak and torn to hold her firmly any longer.
        The lorry driver was halfway to Sebastian's truck.
        Soon he would hear the desperate struggle, for the falling snow made no sounds to mask it.
        Sebastian snapped her neck and killed her instantly. He dropped her on the floor between his legs. His profusely bleeding hand was afire, and he was seeing stars all about him, even though the sky was cloudy and even though it was not yet night.
        He let the brake off, turned the wheel sharply toward the road, and shot forth, leaving that place. Clouds of snow obscured the stranger and the long cargo van attached to the charging cables.
        He struck a mileage post and sheared it off. It clattered in the rotars several seconds before it was kicked loose. He bounced across the curb and whooshed down the highway, seeking oblivion in the gray and the white of the chiaroscuro North.
        Between his feet, Bitty Belina groaned as a bubble of gas escaped her stomach and rumbled through her corpse, popping her dead lips—
        
        In the Vonopoen Book of Wisdom, the Rogue Saint Eclesian tells us: "Saint Zenopau had previously shown us that God's offspring usurp their father's throne every generation, so that we are constantly under the supervision of a new diety, each of us a slave to several masters in our lifetime. Let me extend this Truth a bit further. In the early days of the new God's reign, he is more sympathetic to his charges, we humble mortals, than he will be later. Having deposed his father, he is determined to correct the injustice done his charges. It is during this period, before he becomes as cynical as his father, that we must arise and crush him. It is then that we will become our own masters" Later, Eclesian indulges in an altogether unsaintly discourse on the sexuality of fanatically religious females, then returns to the rhetoric of revolution with: "Perhaps as God's creations, we can never hope to have greater physical power than he does, for he is born with omnipotence, with thunder in his voice and lightning in his hands and all that other mystical claptrap that is nonetheless formidable for its mysticism. But we can and will one day be more cunning and clever than he. God is the mark. We are the con men. One day we will pull the shuffle on him, and then history will really begin my brothers-and my sisters. Then history will begin with fury!"
        
        She was subdued, sitting on her blankets, re-created with the full memory of how easily he had destroyed her. She spoke very little, and even what she did say was offered in a tone of deference.
        At night, in the back of the truck, as he sat drinking black wine, she danced for him, and she spoke lines from her old story which neither of them had forgotten. He would call out the start of a favourite speech to her