Strangers

by Dean Koontz

  But Monday’s and Tuesday’s editions were emblazoned with urgent headlines: TOXIC SPILL CLOSES 1-80, and ARMY ESTABLISHES QUARANTINE ZONE, and NERVE GAS LEAKING FROM DAMAGED TRUCK?, and ARMY SAYS EVERYONE EVACUATED FROM DANGER ZONE, and WHERE ARE EVACUEES?, and SHENKFIELD ARMY TESTING GROUNDS: WHAT REALLY GOES ON THERE?, and 1-80 CLOSURE ENTERS FOURTH DAY, and CLEAN-UP ALMOST FINISHED; HIGHWAY OPEN BY NOON.

  For both Dom and Ginger, it was eerie to read about these events that had transpired during days when they remembered nothing more than relaxing quietly at the Tranquility Motel. As Dom read about the crisis, he became convinced Ginger’s theory was correct; it seemed obvious that the mind-control technicians would have needed an extra week or two in order to have incorporated this elaborate toxic-spill cover story into the phony memories of both Elko County locals and passers-through, and there was no way they could have kept the highway closed and the area sealed tight for that long.

  The edition of Wednesday, July 11, continued the saga: I- 80 OPENS!, and QUARANTINE REMOVED: NO LONG-TERM CONTAMINATION, and FIRST EVACUEES LOCATED: THEY SAW NOTHING.

  Editions of the Sentinel, distinctly a small-town paper, averaged between sixteen and thirty-two pages. During those days in July, most of its news space was given to reports of the toxic crisis, for this event had drawn reporters from all over the country, and the low-key Sentinel found itself at the center of a big story. Poring over that wealth of material, Dom and Ginger discovered a lot that was pertinent to their quest and that would help them plan their next move.

  For one thing, the degree of security imposed by the United States Army was soberly instructive of the lengths to which they would go to keep the lid on the truth. Although it was not strictly within their authority to do so, Army units attached to Shenkfield had established roadblocks and closed a ten-mile stretch of I-80 immediately after the accident; they had not even informed the Elko County Sheriff or the Nevada State Police of the crisis until they had secured the quarantine zone. That was a startling breach of standard procedure. Throughout the emergency, the sheriff and state police complained with increasing vehemence that the Army was freezing them out of every aspect of crisis management and usurping civilian authority; state and local police were neither included in the maintenance of the quarantine line nor consulted on essential contingency planning for the possibility that increased winds or other factors might spread the nerve gas beyond the initial area of danger. Clearly, the military trusted only its own people to keep the secret of what was actually happening in the quarantine zone.

  Following two days of frustration, Foster Hanks, the Elko County Sheriff, had complained to a Sentinel reporter that: “This here’s my bailiwick, by God, and the people elected me to keep peace. This is no military dictatorship. If I don’t get some cooperation from the Army, I’ll see a judge first thing tomorrow and get a court order to make them respect the legal jurisdictions in this matter.” The Tuesday Sentinel reported that Hanks had, indeed, gone before a judge, but before a determination could be made, the crisis was drawing to an end and the argument about jurisdiction was moot.

  Huddling over the newspaper with Dom, Ginger said, “So we don’t have to worry that all authorities are aligned against us in this. The state and local police weren’t part of it. Our only adversary is—”

  “The United States Army,” Dom finished, laughing at the unconscious element of graveyard humor in her assessment of the enemy.

  She also laughed sourly. “Us against the Army. Even with state and local police out of the battle, it’s hardly a fair match, is it?”

  According to the Sentinel, the Army kept sole and iron control of the roadblocks on I-80, the only east-west artery through forbidden territory, and also closed eight miles of the north-south county road. Civilian air traffic was restricted from passing over the contaminated area, necessitating the rerouting of flights, while the Army maintained continuous helicopter patrols of the perimeter of the proscribed land. Obviously, substantial manpower was required to secure eighty square miles, but regardless of expense and difficulty, they were determined to stop anyone entering the danger zone on foot, on horseback, or in four-wheel-drive vehicles. The choppers flew in daylight and after dark, as well, sweeping the night with searchlights. Rumors circulated that teams of soldiers, equipped with infrared surveillance gear, were also patrolling the perimeter at night, looking for interlopers who might have slipped past the big choppers’ searchlights.

  “Nerve gases rate among the deadliest substances known to man,” Ginger said as Dom turned a page of the newspaper they were currently perusing. “But even so, this much security seems excessive. Besides, though I’m no expert on chemical warfare, I can’t believe any nerve gas would pose a threat at such a distance from a single point of release. I mean, according to the Army, it was only one cylinder of gas, not an enormous quantity, not a whole tanker truck as Ernie and Faye remembered it. And it’s the nature of gas to disperse, to expand upon release. So by the time the stuff spread a couple of miles, it would’ve been diluted to such a degree that surely the air would’ve contained no more of it than a few parts per billion. In three miles ... not even one part per billion. Not enough to endanger anyone.”

  “This supports your idea that it was biological contamination.”

  “Possibly,” Ginger said. “It’s too early to say. But it was certainly more serious than the nerve-gas story they put out.”

  By Saturday, July 7, less than one day after the interstate was closed, an alert wire-service reporter had noted that the uniforms of many of the soldiers in the quarantine operation bore—in addition to rank and standard insignia—an unusual company patch: a black circle with an emerald-green star in the center. This was different from the markings on the uniforms of the men from Shenkfield Testing Grounds. Among those wearing the green star, the ratio of officers to enlisted men was high. When questioned, the Army identified the green-star soldiers as a little-known, super-elite company of Special Forces troops. “We call them DERO, which stands for Domestic Emergency Response Organization,” an Army spokesman was quoted by the Sentinel. “The men of DERO are superbly trained, and they’ve all had extensive field experience in combat situations, and all of them carry top-security clearances, as well, which is essential because they may find themselves operating in highly classified areas, witness to sensitive sights.”

  Dom translated that to mean DERO men were chosen, in part, for their ability and willingness to keep their goddamn mouths shut.

  The Sentinel quoted the Army spokesman further: “They’re the cream of our young career soldiers, so naturally many have attained the rank of at least sergeant by the time they qualify for DERO. Our intention is to create a superbly trained force to deal with extraordinary crises, such as terrorist attacks on domestic military installations, nuclear emergencies on bases housing atomic weapons, and other unusual problems. Not that there’s any aspect of terrorism involved in this case. And there’s no nuclear emergency here, either. But several DERO companies are stationed around the country, and since one was near when this nerve-gas situation arose, it seemed prudent to bring in the best we had to insure public safety.” He refused to tell reporters where this DERO company had been stationed, how far they had been flown, or how many were involved. “That’s classified information.” Not one of the DERO men would speak with any member of the press.

  Ginger grimaced and said, “Shmontses!”

  Dom blinked. “Huh?”

  “Their whole story,” she said, leaning back in her chair and rolling her head from side to side to work out a cramp in her lovely neck. “It’s all just shmontses.”

  “But what’s shmontses?” “Oh. Sorry. Yiddish word, adapted from German, I guess. One of my father’s favorites. It means something of no value, something foolish, absurd, nonsense, worthy of contempt or scorn. This stuff the Army put out is just shmontses.” She stopped rolling her head, leaned forward in her chair, and stabbed one finger at the newspaper. “So this DE
RO team just happened to be hanging around here in the middle of nowhere precisely when this crisis arose, huh? Too damned neat.”

  Dom frowned. “But, Ginger, according to these stories, although the roadblocks on I-80 were set up by men from Shenkfield, the DERO team took over little more than an hour later. So if they didn’t just happen to be nearby, the only way they could’ve gotten here so quickly was if they were airborne and on their way before the accident ever happened.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re saying they knew in advance there’d be a toxic spill?”

  She sighed. “At most, I’m willing to accept a DERO team might’ve been at one of the nearest military bases ... in western Utah or maybe up in southern Idaho. But even that’s not near enough to make the Army’s scenario work. Even if they dropped everything and flew in here the moment they heard about the spill, they couldn’t have been manning those roadblocks within an hour. No way. So, yeah, it sure looks to me as if they had a little advance warning that something was going to happen out at the western end of Elko County. Not much warning, mind you. Not days. But maybe a one-or two-hour advance notice.”

  “Which means the toxic spill couldn’t have been an accident. In fact, probably wasn’t a spill at all, neither chemical nor biological. So why in hell were they wearing decontamination suits when they were treating us?” Dom was frustrated by the elaborate maze of this mystery, which twisted and turned inward but not toward a solution, toward nothing but twistier and more complex pathways that led into ever deeper puzzlement. He had the irrational urge to tear the newspapers to shreds, as if, by ripping them to pieces, he would also be ripping apart the Army’s lies and would somehow find the truth revealed, at last, in the resultant confetti.

  With a note of frustration that matched his own, Ginger said, “The only reason the Army called in a DERO company to enforce the quarantine was because the men patrolling the zone would have a view of something highly classified, something absolutely top-secret. The Army felt they couldn’t trust ordinary soldiers who didn’t have the very highest security clearance. That’s the sole reason the DERO team was used.”

  “Because they could be trusted to keep their mouths shut.”

  “Yes. And if it’d been nothing more than a toxic spill out there on I-80, the DERO men wouldn’t have been required for the job. I mean, if it was just a spill, what would there’ve been to see except maybe an overturned truck and a damaged, leaking canister of gas or liquid?”

  Turning their attention once more to the newspapers spread before them, they found additional evidence indicating the Army had had at least some warning that unusual and spectacular trouble would erupt in western Elko County that hot July night. Both Dom and Ginger distinctly remembered that the Tranquility Grille had been filled with a strange sound and shaken by earthquake-like tremors about half an hour after full darkness had settled on the land; and because sunset came later during the summer (even at 41 degrees North Latitude), the trouble must have started approximately at eight-ten. Their memory blocks began at the same time, which further pinpointed The Event. Yet Dom spotted a line in one of the Sentinel’s stories stating that the roadblocks on 1-80 had been erected almost at eight o’clock on the dot.

  Ginger said, “You mean the Army had the highway closed off five or ten minutes before the ’accidental’ toxic spill even happened?”

  “Yeah. Unless we’re wrong about the time of the sunset.”

  They checked the weather column in the July 6 edition of the Sentinel. It painted a more than adequate portrait of that fateful day. The high temperature had been expected to hit ninety degrees, with an overnight low of sixty-four. Humidity between twenty and twenty-five percent. Clear skies. Light to variable winds. And sunset at seven-thirty-one.

  “Twilight’s short out here,” Dom said. “Fifteen minutes, tops. Figure full darkness at seven-forty-five. Now, even if we’re wrong to think it was half an hour after nightfall that trouble hit, even if it came just fifteen minutes after dark, the Army still had its roadblocks up first.”

  “So they knew what was coming,” Ginger said.

  “But they couldn’t stop it from happening.”

  “Which means it must’ve been some process, some series of events, that they initiated and then were unable to control.”

  “Maybe,” Dom said. “But maybe not. Maybe they weren’t really at fault. Until we know more, we’re just speculating. No point to it.”

  Ginger turned the page of the Sentinel’s edition for Wednesday, July 11, which they were currently examining, and her gasp of surprise directed Dom’s attention to a head-and-shoulders photograph of a man in an Army officer’s uniform and cap. Although Colonel Leland Falkirk had appeared in neither Dom’s nor Ginger’s dreams last night, they both recognized him at once because of the description that Ernie and Ned had supplied from their nightmares: dark hair graying at the temples, eyes with an eerie translucency, a beakish nose, thin lips, a face of flat hard planes and sharp angles.

  Dom read the caption under the picture: Colonel Leland Falkirk, commanding officer of the company of DERO troops manning the quarantine line, has been an elusive target for reporters. This first photograph was obtained by Sentinel photographer, Greg Lunde. Caught by surprise, Falkirk was angry about being photographed. His answers to the few questions asked of him were even shorter than the standard “no comment. ”

  Dom might have smiled at the quiet humor in the last sentence of the caption, but Falkirk’s stony visage chilled him. He instantly recognized the face not only because of Ernie’s and Ned’s description, but because he had seen it before, the summer before last. Furthermore, there was a ferocity in that hawklike countenance and in those predatory eyes that was dismaying; this man routinely got what he wanted. To be at his mercy was a frightening prospect.

  Staring at the photograph of Falkirk, Ginger softly said, “Kayn aynhoreh.” Aware of Dom’s puzzlement, she said, “That’s Yiddish, too. Kayn aynhoreh. It’s an expression that’s used to ... to ward off the evil eye. Somehow, it seemed appropriate. ”

  Dom studied the photograph, half mesmerized by it.

  After a moment, he said, “Yes. Quite appropriate.”

  Colonel Falkirk’s sharply chiseled face and cold pale eyes were so striking that it seemed as if he were alive within this photograph, as if he were returning their scrutiny.

  While Dom and Ginger were examining the back-issue files at the Elko Sentinel, Ernie and Faye Block were working in the office of the Tranquility Motel, trying to contact the people whose names were on the guest list for July 6, two summers ago, but who had thus far been unreachable. They were behind the check-in counter, sitting opposite each other at the oak desk, which had kneeholes on both sides. A pot of coffee stood within reach on an electric warming-plate.

  Ernie composed a telegram to Gerald Salcoe, the man who had rented two rooms for his family on July 6, the summer before last, and who was unreachable by phone because his number in Monterey, California, was unlisted. Meanwhile, Faye went back through last year’s guest book, day by day, looking for the most recent entry for Cal Sharkle, the trucker who had stayed with them on that July 6. Yesterday, Dom had tried the telephone number Cal had printed in the guest registry that night, but it had been disconnected. The hope was that a more recent entry would provide his new address and phone number.

  As they performed their separate tasks, Ernie was reminded of countless other times throughout their thirty-one years of marriage when they had sat facing each other at a desk or, more often, at a kitchen table. In one apartment or another, in one house or another, at one end of the world or another, from Quantico to Pendleton to Singapore, nearly everywhere the Marines sent him, the two of them had spent long evenings at a kitchen table, working or dreaming or worrying or happily planning together, often late into the night. Ernie was suddenly filled with poignant echoes of those thousands of huddled conferences and shared labors. How very fortunate he had been to find and marry Faye.
Their lives were so inextricably linked that they might as well have been a single creature. If Colonel Falkirk or others resorted to murder to terminate this investigation, if anything happened to Faye, then Ernie hoped he would die, too, simultaneously.

  He finished composing the telegram to Gerald Salcoe, called it in to Western Union, and requested immediate delivery—all the while warmed by a love that was strong enough to make their dangerous situation seem less threatening than it really was.

  Faye found five occasions during the past year when Cal Sharkle had stayed overnight, and in every case he had listed the same Evanston, Illinois, address and phone number that he had entered in the registry for July 6 of the previous year. Apparently, he had not moved, after all. Yet, when they dialed this number, they obtained the recording that Dom had gotten yesterday, informing them that the telephone had been disconnected and that no new Evanston listing existed.

  On the chance that Cal had moved out of Evanston into the “Windy City” itself, Faye dialed Area Code 312 Information and asked if there was a number for Calvin Sharkle in Chicago. There was not. Using a map of Illinois, she and Ernie placed calls to Information in the Chicago suburbs: Whiting, Hammond, Calumet City, Markham, Downer’s Grove, Oak Park, Oakbrook, Elmhurst, Des Plaines, Rolling Meadows, Arlington Heights, Skokie, Wilmette, Glencoe.... No luck. Either Cal Sharkle had moved out of the Chicago area, or had dropped off the face of the earth.

  While Faye and Ernie orked in the first-floor office, Ned and Sandy Sarver were already preparing dinner in the kitchen upstairs. This evening, after Brendan Cronin arrived from Chicago, after Jorja Monatella and her little girl flew in from Vegas, there would be nine for dinner, and Ned did not want to leave preparations until the last minute. Yesterday, when all six of them joined forces to prepare and serve the evening meal, Ginger Weiss had observed that the occasion was almost like a family holiday gathering; and indeed, they felt an extraordinary closeness though they hardly knew one another. With the idea that reinforcement of their special affection and camaraderie might give them strength to face whatever lay ahead of them, Ned and Sandy had decided that tonight’s meal ought to be like a Thanksgiving feast. Therefore, they were preparing a sixteen-pound turkey, pecan stuffing, scalloped potatoes, baked corn, carrots with tarragon, pepper slaw, pumpkin pie, and made-from-scratch crescent rolls.

  As they chopped celery, diced onions, cubed bread, and grated cabbage, Ned occasionally wondered if what they were cooking was not only a family feast but also the last hearty meal of the condemned. Each time that morbid thought rose, he chased it away by pausing to watch Sandy as she worked. She smiled almost constantly, and sometimes softly hummed a song. Surely, an event that had induced this radical and wonderful change in Sandy could not ultimately culminate in their deaths. Surely, they had nothing to worry about. Surely.

  After three hours at the Elko Sentinel, Ginger and Dom ate a light lunch—chef’s salads—at a restaurant on Idaho Street, then returned to the Tranquility Motel at two-thirty. Faye and Ernie were still in the office, which was filled with appetizing aromas drifting down from the apartment upstairs: pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, onions fried lightly in butter, the yeasty odor of baking bread dough.

  “And you can’t smell the turkey yet,” Faye said. “Ned just put that in the oven half an hour ago.”

  “He says dinner’s at eight,” Ernie told them, “but I suspect the odors’ll drive us mad and force us to storm the kitchen before then.”

  Faye said, “Learn anything at the Sentinel?”

  Before Ginger could tell them what she and Dom had uncovered, the front door of the motel office opened, and a slightly pudgy man entered in a burst of cold whirling wind. He had hurried from his car without bothering to put on a topcoat; although he wore gray slacks, a dark blue blazer, a light blue sweater, and an ordinary white shirt, rather than a black suit and Roman collar, his identity was not for a moment in doubt. He was the auburn-haired, green-eyed, round-faced young priest in the Polaroid snapshot that the unknown correspondent had sent to Dom.

  “Father Cronin,” Ginger said.

  She was as immediately and powerfully drawn to him as she’d been to Dominick Corvaisis. With the priest as with Dom, Ginger sensed a shared experience even more shattering than the one which she had shared with the Blocks and Sarvers. Within The Event that they had all witnessed that Friday in July, there had been a Second Event experienced by only some of them. Although it was a frightfully improper way to greet a man who was a virtual stranger and a priest, Ginger rushed to Father Cronin and threw her arms around him.

  But apologies were not required, for Father Cronin evidently sensed the same thing she did. Without hesitation, he returned her hug, and for a moment they clung to each other, not as if they were strangers but brother and sister greeting each other after a long separation.

  Then Ginger stepped back as Dom said, “Father Cronin,” and came forward to embrace the priest.

  “There’s no need to call me ‘Father.’ At the moment I neither want nor deserve to be considered a priest. Please just call me Brendan.”

  Ernie shouted upstairs to Ned and Sandy, then followed Faye out from behind the check-in counter. Brendan shook Ernie’s hand and embraced Faye, obviously feeling great affection for them, though not a closeness as powerful and inexplicable as the tremendous emotional magnetism that pulled him toward Dom and Ginger. When Ned and Sandy came downstairs, he greeted them the same as he had Ernie and Faye.

  Just as Ginger had done last night, Brendan said, “I have a truly wonderful sense of ... being among family. You all feel it, don’t you? As if we’ve shared the most important moments of our lives ... went through something that’ll always make us different from everyone else.”

  In spite of his insistence that he did not deserve the deference accorded a priest, Brendan Cronin had a profoundly spiritual air about him. His somewhat pudgy face, sparkling eyes, and broad warm smile conveyed joy; and he moved among them, touched them, and spoke with an ebullience that was infectious and that somehow lifted Ginger’s soul.

  Brendan said, “What I feel in this room only reassures me that I’ve made the right decision in coming. I’m meant to be with you. Something will happen here that’ll transform us, that’s already begun to transform us. Do you feel it? Do you feel it?”

  The priest’s soft voice sent a pleasant shiver up Ginger’s spine, filled her with an indescribable sense of wonder reminiscent of what she’d felt the first time that, as a medical student, she had stood in an operating room and had seen a patient’s thorax held open by surgical retractors to reveal the pulsing, mysterious complexity of the human heart in all its crimson grandeur.

  “Called,” Brendan said. The softly spoken word echoed eerily around the room. “All of us. Called back to this place.”

  “Look,” Dom said, packing a paragraph of amazement into that one syllable, raising his arms and holding his hands out to show them the red rings of swollen flesh that had appeared in his palms.

  Surprised, Brendan raised his hands, which were also branded by the strange stigmata. As the men faced each other, the air thickened with unknown power. Yesterday, on the telephone, Father Wycazik had told Dom that Brendan was relatively certain no religious element was involved in the miraculous cures and other events that had recently transformed the young priest’s life. Yet the motel office seemed, to Ginger, to be filled with a force that, if not supernatural, was certainly beyond the ken of any man or woman.

  “Called,” Brendan said again.

  Ginger was gripped by breathless expectancy. She looked at Ernie, who stood behind Faye with his hands on her shoulders, and both their faces were full of tremulous suspense. Ned and Sandy, who were by the rack of postcards, holding hands, were wide-eyed.

  Ginger felt the flesh prickling on the back of her neck. She thought, Something’s going to happen, and even as the thought took form, something did.

  Every lamp in the motel office was aglow in deference to Ernie�
�s uneasiness in the presence of deep shadows, but abruptly the place was even brighter than it had been. A milky-white light filled the room, springing magically from molecules of air. It shimmered on all sides but rained mostly from overhead, a silvery mist of luminosity. She realized this was the same light that featured in her unremembered lunar dreams. She turned in a circle, looking around and up through spangled curtains of brilliant yet soft radiance, not in search of the source but with the hope of remembering her dreams and, ultimately, the events of that long-lost summer night that had inspired the dreams.