"Fine," Kesley said savagely. "Pray for me sincerely, father. Pater noster—"
"Don't mock what you don't understand," Santana said. He crossed himself fervently. "Your soul is in danger, Señor Ramon."
"My soul? What about yours, you old windbag?"
Santana squirmed in the saddle, faced Kesley. The plump priest's sad eyes gazed mournfully into Kesley's. "My soul?" Santana repeated. "My soul is long since forfeit, but I pray constantly for my salvation."
Kesley reddened. "What do you mean by—"
He cut himself off in mid-sentence and pointed to the left. "What's that?" he asked hoarsely. "Mutant?"
"Yes," the Archbishop said. "There are many of them in Chicago. I think he plans to make trouble; be ready to defend yourself."
The creature was coming toward them out of a jumble of clumsily-thatched huts strung in a wobbly circle around a gullied heap of slag at the extreme left side of the road. It was tall—nearly seven feet, Kesley estimated—with elongated spidery limbs and a bloated, almost hydrocephaloid skull, devoid of hair. The mutant wore only a rag twisted carelessly about its middle; the body thus revealed was grotesquely piebald in color, blotched and spotted, the purpling skin lying loosely and peeling away in great leprous flakes.
Kesley had seen mutants before: mutant horses, mutant wolves, other products of ravaged genes, but he had never before been this close to a human sport, other than Miguel. Miguel was human in all physical aspects save his life span; the creature shambling toward them now could be called "human" only by the loosest of definitions.
As the mutant approached, a musty odor of decay drifted before him. Kesley shuddered involuntarily.