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The woman leans back, satisfied

But, Temple continues, that don’t mean I can stay here and be your pet You can keep old Moses--he ain’t nothin but trouble anyway But Maury and I, we got places to be

To everyone else they’s a curse, the woman says with a wave of her chalky crusted ar about? The ue, we cohtful homes And the shells of the lost, the for us as kno to pluck it out Our family, we’s nourished on the blood of God and the foolishness of the past--and we grow as giants on the earth

Okay, Teot it already

The wo its bony claws around her throat The fingers are huge and encircle her neck coles to breathe, but Royal holds her arirl, the woet you kilt

She releases her grip, and Teaze falls on Maury

Bodie, she says, there’s soht in the firmament Blank as any child of God lookin for a home You look you can observe that pureness in his eyes, sure as anything I wanna see what the fa does for him Get Doc

THEY ARE returned to their cells, and she blinks her eyes to adjust theain to the dark

How’s Ma white lobster

So what’s the story?

They’re the inheritors of the earth Used to be they were just hillbillies Now they’re the inheritors of the earth

And what else?

And we best get ourselves out of here, toot sweet Whether they like you or hate you, it seeht culured out what they’re shootin up

At that s open and Bodie and Royal come in followed by anotherwisps of hair circling the crown of his bald head He has a peevish, sneering expression on his face, as of a man who dislikes the company he keeps

This time I want me a full dose, he says to the other two

Come on, Doc, Bodie says You know it ain’t our choice Mama don’t like you messin round with your fine motor skills You’re the only one kno to harvest the stuff Froet it just by squeezin their heads like leot nothin

The one called Doc sneers and exa over one another in the cell

That one, he says, pointing to a woman with dried blood caked on her chin in a way that makes her look like a ventriloquist’s dummy I reckon she looks fresh

Good choice, Doc, Royal says, unlocking the cage We just picked her up day before yesterday

He leads her out and pushes the others back and swings the door of the cage shut Then, while Doc sorts through a bunch of instruins to play with her, offering his ar her around the rooes at hihs shrilly

Come on, he says I know you want a taste of Royal in yer belly, dontcha?

Having led her around the rooets her to the foot of the autopsy table and with a quick movement takes her by the back of the neck and twists her around and pushes her back onto theto rise Then he takes the leather belt straps and flings theht so she can’t , ain’t you? Hey, Doc, you ready to go yet?

Gioddaery

It’s okay--this one’s a downright pretty one Seeet started

He looks at her lasciviously with his one rolling eyeball, and then Te to do with

TEMPLE’S PERSPECTIVE is obscured, but fro the slug’s head open and extracting soht between his hands while Doc gingerlyan electric bone saw Temple wonders why they don’t just kill her first and not have to contend with a wriggling body--but then she deter is active or not when they do the operation They take pains to go only so far into the slug’s head, and only in a particular place near the base of the skull It isn’t until after the procedure is over that Doc says, Okay, and then Bodie takes a long blade, a butcher’s knife, and drives it up into the hole they

Doc holds in his hand the little gray piece they removed from the woman’s brain and takes it to the table, where he looks at it under a lalass Then he puts it into a little machine with some kind of chemical and turns it into a thick liquid that can be poured into a beaker and lights a bunsen burner underneath it