Fatherland (Prequel to Primal Shift) Read Online Free Page A

strangled the
boy.”
    “He’s dead?”  The look
on Thomson’s face was far from horror. He was happy and it showed. A strange
sense of peace came over him.
    “Do you remember strangling
Mrs. Kesler?”
    “What?”
    “You killed both of
them Thomson. They found you in the driveway, sitting cross-legged.”
    “I what?” Brooks’ words
weren’t making any sense. “It was only the boy I...”
    Brooks was shaking his
head.
    The cops were gonna
throw the book at him. Thomson could see that clearly now, but somehow the
thought of saving the human race from extermination was a price he’d been willing
to pay.
    Beside Thomson’s bed
was a hand mirror. He wanted to see the extent of the damage Mrs. Kesler had inflicted
on him before he had... before he had made her stop.
    Thomson reached for the
mirror, felt the cuffs dig into his wrists. He used his fingers to inch the
handle into his grasp. The bandages were the first things he saw, wrapped
around the top of his head like a turban. Then the dried blood at the top of
his skull and knew that was where his laptop must have cracked his head open.
But it was the mark on his cheek that caught his eye. A long patch of
discolored skin, pink and smooth it looked like a burn mark. The same one he
had seen on Donald’s face. The room started to spin and suddenly Thomson became
aware of something dark writhing inside his guts. He wasn’t alone anymore. He
had thought by strangling the boy that he could beat the grim reaper, but he
had been wrong, terribly wrong. That thing had been right all along. There was
no way to stop it and now, when the world died, Thomson knew that he would be
the one who pulled the trigger.