by Dean Koontz
He reached the end of the hall, where Falstaff stood trembling and whining.
“Come on, fella,” Toby said.
He pushed past the dog into his bedroom, where the lamps were already bright because he and Mom had turned on just about every lamp in the house before Dad left, though it was daytime.
“Get out of the hall, Falstaff. Mom wants us out of the hall. Come on!”
The first thing he noticed, when he turned away from the dog, was that the door to the back stairs stood open. It should have been locked. They were making a fortress here. Dad had nailed shut the lower door, but this one should also be locked. Toby ran to it, pushed it shut, engaged the dead bolt, and felt better.
At the doorway, Falstaff had still not entered the room. He had stopped whining.
He was growling.
Jack at the ranch entrance. Pausing only a moment to recover from the first and most arduous leg of the journey.
Instead of soft flakes, the snow was coming down in sharp-edged crystals, almost like grains of salt. The wind drove it hard enough to sting his exposed forehead.
A road crew had been by at least once, because a four-foot-high wall of plowed snow blocked the end of the driveway. He clambered over it, onto the two-lane.
Flame flared off the match head.
For an instant Heather expected the fumes to explode, but they weren’t sufficiently concentrated to be combustible.
The parasite and its dead host climbed another step, apparently oblivious of the danger—or certain that there was none.
Heather stepped back, out of the flash zone, tossed the match.
Continuing to back up until she bumped into the hallway wall, watching the flame flutter in an arc toward the stairwell, she had a seizure of manic thoughts that elicited an almost compulsive bark of mad laughter, a single dark bray that came dangerously close to ending in a thick sob: Burning down my own house, welcome to Montana, beautiful scenery and walking dead men and things from other worlds, and here we go, flame falling, may you burn in hell, burning down my own house, wouldn’t have to do that in Los Angeles, other people will do it for you there.
WHOOSH!
The gasoline-soaked carpet exploded into flames that leaped all the way to the ceiling. The fire didn’t spread through the stairwell; it was simply everywhere at once. Instantaneously the walls and railings were as fully involved as the treads and risers.
A stinging wave of heat hit Heather, forcing her to squint. She should at once have moved farther away from the blaze because the air was nearly hot enough to blister her skin, but she had to see what happened to the Giver.
The staircase was an inferno. No human being could have survived in it longer than a few seconds.
In that swarming incandescence, the dead man and the living beast were a single dark mass, rising another step. And another. No screams or shrieks of pain accompanied its ascent, only the roar and crackle of the fierce fire, which was now lapping out of the stairwell and into the upstairs hallway.
As Toby locked the stairhead door and turned from it, and as Falstaff growled from the threshold of the other door, orange-red light flashed through the hall behind the dog. His growl spiraled into a yelp of surprise. Following the flash were flickering figures of light that danced on the walls out there: reflections of fire.
Toby knew that his mom had set the alien on fire—she was tough, she was smart—and a current of hope thrilled through him.
Then he noticed the second wrong thing about the bedroom. The drapes were closed over his recessed bed.
He had left them open, drawn back to both sides of the niche. He only closed them at night or when he was playing a game. He had opened them this morning, and he’d had no time for games since he’d gotten up.
The air had a bad smell. He hadn’t noticed it right away because his heart was pounding and he was breathing through his mouth.
He moved toward the bed. One step, two.
The closer he drew to the sleeping alcove, the worse the smell became. It was like the odor on the back stairs the first day they’d seen the house, but a lot worse.
He stopped a few steps from the bed. He told himself he was a hero. It was okay for heroes to be afraid, but even when they were afraid, they had to do something.
At the open door, Falstaff was just about going crazy.
Blacktop was visible in a few small patches, revealed by the flaying wind, but most of the roadway was covered by two inches of fresh powder. Numerous drifts had formed against the snow walls thrown up by the plow.
Judging by the available signs, Jack figured the crew had made a circuit through this neighborhood about two hours ago, certainly no more recently than an hour and a half. They were overdue to make another pass.
He turned east and hurried toward the Youngblood spread, hopeful of encountering a highway-maintenance crew before he had gone far. Whether they were equipped with a big road grader or a salt-spreading truck with a plow on the front—or both—they would have microwave communications with their dispatcher. If he could persuade them that his story was not just the raving of a lunatic, he might be able to convince them to take him back to the house to get Heather and Toby out of there.
Might be able to persuade them? Hell, he had a shotgun. For sure, he’d convince them. They’d plow the half-mile driveway clean as a nun’s conscience to the front door of Quartermass Ranch, smiles on their faces from start to finish, as jolly as Snow White’s short protectors, singing “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go” if that’s what he wanted them to do.
Impossible as it seemed, the creature on the stairs appeared even more grotesque and frightful in the obscuring embrace of fire, with smoke seething from it, than it had been when she’d had a clear look at its every feature. Yet another step it rose. Silently, silently. Then another. It ascended out of the conflagration with all the panache of His Satanic Majesty on a day trip out of hell.
The beast was burning, or at least the portion of it that was Eduardo Fernandez’s body was being consumed, and yet the demonic thing climbed one more step. Almost to the top now.
Heather couldn’t delay any longer. The heat was unbearable. She’d already exposed her face too long and would probably wind up with a mild burn. The hungry fire ate across the hallway ceiling, licking at the plaster overhead, and her position was perilous.
Besides, the Giver was not going to collapse backward into the furnace below, as she had hoped. It would reach the second floor and open its arms to her, its many fiery arms, seeking to enfold and become her.
Heart thudding furiously, Heather hurried a few steps along the hall to the red can of gasoline. She snatched it up with one hand. It felt light. She must have used three of the five gallons.
She glanced back.
The stalker came out of the stairwell, into the hallway. Both the corpse and the Giver were ablaze, not merely a smoldering gnarl of charred organisms but a dazzling column of tempestuous flames, as if their entwined bodies had been constructed of dry tinder. Some of the longer tentacles coiled and lashed like whips, casting off streams and gobs of fire that spattered against the walls and floor, igniting carpet and wallpaper.
As Toby took one more step toward the curtained bed, Falstaff finally dashed into the room. The dog blocked his path and barked at him, warning him to back off.
Something moved on the bed behind the drapes, brushing against them, and each of the next few seconds was an hour to Toby, as if he had shifted into super-slow-mo. The sleeping alcove was like the stage of a puppet theater just before the show began, but it wasn’t Punch or Judy back there, wasn’t Kukla or Ollie, wasn’t any of the Muppets, nothing you’d ever find on Sesame Street, and this wasn’t going to be a funny program, no laughs in this weird performance. He wanted to close his eyes and wish it away. Maybe, if you just didn’t believe in it, the thing wouldn’t exist. It was stirring the drapes again, bulging against them, as if to say, Hello there, little boy. Maybe you had to believe in it just
like you had to believe in Tinker Bell to keep her alive. So if you closed your eyes and thought good thoughts about an empty bed, about air that smelled of fresh-baked cookies, then the thing wouldn’t be there any more, and neither would the stink. It wasn’t a perfect plan, maybe it was even a dumb plan, but at least it was something to do. He had to have something to do or he was going to go nuts, yet he couldn’t take one more step toward the bed, not even if the retriever hadn’t been blocking his way, because he was just too scared. Numb. Dad hadn’t said anything about heroes going numb. Or spitting up. Did heroes ever spit up? Because he felt as if he was going to spew. He couldn’t run, either, because he’d have to turn his back to the bed. He wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that. Which meant that closing his eyes and wishing the thing away was the plan, the best and only plan—except he was not in a billion years going to close his eyes.
Falstaff remained between Toby and the alcove but turned to face whatever waited there. Not barking now. Not growling or whimpering. Just waiting, teeth bared, shuddering in fear but ready to fight.
A hand slipped between the drapes, reaching out from the alcove. It was mostly bone in a shredded glove of crinkled leathery skin, spotted with mold. For sure, this couldn’t really be alive unless you believed in it, because it was more impossible than Tinker Bell, a hundred million times more impossible. A couple of fingernails were still attached to the decaying hand, but they had turned black, looked like the gleaming shells of fat beetles. If he couldn’t close his eyes and wish the thing away, if he couldn’t run, he at least had to scream for his mother, humiliating as that would be for a kid who was almost nine. But then she had the machine gun, after all, not him. A wrist became visible, a forearm with a little more meat on it, the ragged and stained sleeve of a blue blouse or dress. Mom! He shouted the word but heard it only in his head, because no sound would escape his lips. A red-speckled black bracelet was around the withered wrist. Shiny. New-looking. Then it moved and wasn’t a bracelet but a greasy worm, no, a tentacle, wrapping the wrist and disappearing along the underside of the rotting arm, beneath the dirty blue sleeve. Mom, help!
Master bedroom. No Toby. Under the bed? In the closet, the bathroom? No, don’t waste time looking. The boy might be hiding but not the dog. Must’ve gone to his own room.
Back into the hall. Waves of heat. Wildly leaping light and shadows. The crackle-sizzle-growl-hiss of fire.
Other hissing. The Giver looming. Snap-snap-snap-snap, the furious whipping of fiery tentacles.
Coughing on the thin but bitter smoke, heading toward the rear of the house, the can swinging in her left hand. Gasoline sloshing. Right hand empty. Shouldn’t be empty.
Damn!
She stopped short of Toby’s room, turned to peer back into the fire and smoke. She’d forgotten the Uzi on the floor near the head of the steps. The twin magazines were empty, but her zippered ski-suit pockets bulged with spare ammunition. Stupid.
Not that guns were of much use against the freaking thing. Bullets didn’t harm it, only delayed it. But at least the Uzi had been something, a lot more firepower than the .38 at her hip.
She couldn’t go back. Hard to breathe. Getting harder. The fire sucking up all the oxygen. And the burning, lashing apparition already stood between her and the Uzi.
Crazily, Heather had a mental flash of Alma Bryson loaded down with weaponry: pretty black lady, smart and kind, cop’s widow, and one tough damned bitch, capable of handling anything. Gina Tendero, too, with her black leather pantsuit and red-pepper Mace and maybe an unlicensed handgun in her purse. If only they were here now, at her side. But they were down there in the City of Angels, waiting for the end of the world, ready for it, when all the time the end of the world was starting here in Montana.
Billowing smoke suddenly gushed out of the flames, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, dark and churning. The Giver vanished. In seconds Heather was going to be completely blinded.
Holding her breath, she stumbled along the wall toward Toby’s room. She found his door and crossed the threshold, out of the worst of the smoke, just as he screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
With the Mossberg twelve-gauge gripped in both hands, Jack moved eastward at an easy trot, in the manner of an infantryman in a war zone. He hadn’t expected the county road to be half as clear as it was, so he was able to make better time than planned.
He kept flexing his toes with each step. In spite of two pairs of heavy socks and insulated boots, his feet were cold and getting colder. He needed to keep full circulation in them.
The scar tissue and recently knitted bones in his left leg ached dully from exertion; however, the slight pain didn’t hamper him. In fact, he was in better shape than he had realized.
Although the whiteout continued to limit visibility to less than a hundred feet, sometimes dramatically less, he was no longer at risk of becoming disoriented and lost. The walls of snow from the plow defined a well-marked path. The tall poles along one side of the road carried telephone and power lines, and served as another set of route markers.
He figured he had covered nearly half the distance to Ponderosa Pines, but his pace was flagging. He cursed himself, pushed harder, and picked up speed.
Because he was trotting with his shoulders hunched against the battering wind and his head tucked down to spare himself the sting of the hard-driven snow, looking only at the roadway immediately in front of him, he did not at first see the golden light but saw only the reflection of it in the fine, sheeting flakes. There was just a hint of yellow at first, then suddenly he might have been running through a storm of gold dust rather than a blizzard.
When he raised his head, he saw a bright glow ahead, intensely yellow at its core. It throbbed mysteriously in the cloaking veils of the storm, the source obscured, but he remembered the light in the trees of which Eduardo had written in the tablet. It had pulsed like this, an eerie radiance that heralded the opening of the doorway and the arrival of the traveler.
As he skidded to a halt and almost fell, the pulses of light grew rapidly brighter, and he wondered if he could hide in the drifts to one side of the road or the other. There were no throbbing bass sounds like those Eduardo had heard and felt, only the shrill keening of the wind. However, the uncanny light was everywhere, dazzling in the sunless day: Jack standing in ankle-deep gold dust, molten gold streaming through the air, the steel of the Mossberg glimmering as if about to be transmuted into bullion. He saw multiple sources now, not one light but several, pulsing out of sync, continuous yellow flashes overlaying one another. A sound above the wind. A low rumble. Building swiftly to a roar. A heavy engine. Through the whiteout, tearing apart the obscuring veils of snow, came an enormous machine. He found himself standing before an oncoming road grader adapted for snow removal, a brawny skeleton of steel with a small cab high in the center of it, pushing a curved steel blade taller than he was.
Entering the cleaner air of Toby’s room, blinking away tears wrung from her by the caustic smoke, Heather saw two blurry figures, one small and one not. She desperately wiped at her eyes with her free hand, squinted, and understood why the boy was screaming.
Towering over Toby was a grotesquely decomposed corpse, draped in fragments of a rotted blue garment, bearing another Giver, aswarm with agitated black appendages.
Falstaff sprang at the nightmare, but the writhing tentacles were quicker than they had been before, almost faster than the eye. They whipped out, snared the dog in mid-leap, and flicked him away as casually and efficiently as a cow’s tail might deal with an annoying fly. Howling in terror, Falstaff flew across the room, slammed into the wall beside the window, and dropped to the floor with a squeal of pain.
The .38 Korth was in Heather’s hand though she didn’t remember having drawn it.
Before she could squeeze the trigger, the new Giver—or the new aspect of the only Giver, depending on whether there was one entity with many bodies or, instead, many individuals—snared Toby in three oily black tentac
les. It lifted him off the floor and drew him toward the leering grin of the long-dead woman, as if it wanted him to plant a kiss on her.
With a cry of outrage, furious and terrified in equal measure, Heather rushed the thing, unable to shoot from even a few steps away because she might hit Toby. Threw herself against it. Felt one of its serpentine arms—cold even through her ski suit—curling around her waist. The stench of the corpse. Jesus. The internal organs were long gone, and extrusions of the alien were squirming within the body cavity. The head turned toward her, face-to-face, red-stipled black tendrils with spatulate tips flickering like multiple tongues in the open mouth, bristling from the bony nostrils, the eye sockets. Cold slithered all the way around her waist now. She jammed the .38 under the bony chin, bearded with graveyard moss. She was going for the head as if the head still mattered, as if a brain still packed the cadaver’s cranium; she could think of nothing else to do. Toby screaming, the Giver hissing, the gun booming, booming, booming, old bones shattering to dust, the grinning skull cracking off the knobby spine and lolling to one side, the gun booming again—she lost count—then clicking, the maddening clicking of the hammer on empty chambers.
When the creature let go of her, Heather almost fell on her ass because she was already straining so hard to pull loose. She dropped the gun, and it bounced across the carpet.
The Giver collapsed in front of her, not because it was dead but because its puppet, damaged by gunfire, had broken apart in a couple of key places and now provided too little support to keep its soft, heavy master erect.
Toby was free too. For the moment.
He was white-faced, wide-eyed. He’d bitten his lip. It was bleeding. But otherwise he seemed all right.
Smoke was beginning to roil into the room, not much, but she knew how abruptly it could become blindingly dense.
