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onto the bed. She struggled with me, but I didn’t expect it to be a contest. I thought she’d burst into tears and curl up and declare exactly what her problem was.
    She did none of those things. Her eyes were determined. Mean.
    I had to climb onto her and hold her wrists by force to keep from being injured. She was all claws and teeth, and she kept slamming her knees into my back. Damn! Those skinny limbs were stronger than they looked.
    “What the hell is wrong with you, Kim?” I demanded, shouting into her face.
    Panting through her bared teeth, she looked around with a crazed expression.
    “He won’t kill me,” she said. “I’ll kill him first. He won’t kill me.” She was almost chanting the words. It was as if she was talking to herself.
    “Listen,” I said. “I can see you’re in a bad mood. I’m willing to leave, no hard feelings. Would that be okay?”
    Her eyes focused on mine for a moment.
    “No,” she said. “Don’t leave yet. I need to kill you.”
    At last, I was beginning to catch on.
    “Kim, listen to me,” I said. “I was wrong before. I think you do have the disease. Whatever it was that came down from space. Whatever Jason found on that bubbling rock at the bottom of the sea, must have infected you. You have to try to control yourself.”
    “No I don’t. I have to kill you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you’ll kill me if I don’t.”
    “How do you know that? Who told you that?”
    She looked around the room. “I don’t know. Something did.”
    “It was the sym,” I said, putting it all together in my head. “They call it a sym. Maybe it’s some kind of symbiotic life form…?” I asked aloud. “Yes, it must be some kind of parasite in your mind.”
    “Why are you talking so much?” she demanded, her voice rising to a wail. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?”
    “I don’t feel it—not like you. Not yet, anyway. I think maybe some people are better able to control it than others. There was this guy named Jones—”
    She began struggling again.
    “Stop that,” I insisted, “you’re bruising up your arms. Let’s call a truce, okay?”
    “No!”
    I heard something then. Something from outside—something bad. It was a single squawk from a cop’s radio. Then I heard footsteps coming from the walkway. We were on the third floor, overlooking the parking lot. The window was cracked open, and the curtains were fluttering slightly in the breeze.
    “You called the cops?” I asked her. “Before you tried to kill me with a lamp?”
    “In case you got the upper hand,” she said. “Insurance.”
    “That’s just great. You’re going to jail. You know that, don’t you?”
    Kim laughed, and kneed me in the back again.
    “Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”
    “Oh, dammit,” I said.
    A hammering began at the hotel door.
    I knew what I had to do, but I sure as hell didn’t want to do it. I got up off Kim and walked toward the door. I took pains to turn my back on her as I reached for the doorknob.
    Before I unlocked and opened it, I counted to three. It was hard to do.
    One… two… three...
    The hammering on the other side became intense. I was trying to time things right. I had to open that door just in time to have the officer see Kim, looking deranged, coming for my back.
    It was a calculation. Lots of things could go wrong. She might not do anything, or she might manage to clock me before I could open the door. The cop might even believe her story. The situation didn’t look good for me, and I knew I was going to have a hard time getting the cops on my side on this one.
    Unfortunately, this was the only move I could think of pulling, so I took the chance.
    On three, I yanked open the door and threw it wide. It was raining hard outside, and the man standing in the doorway was dripping wet. Behind him, the railing above the parking lot ran with beads of water.
    Shock ran through me as I realized the man standing on the walkway outside wasn’t a policeman. He