Strangers

by Dean Koontz

  Using the telephone on Schellenhof’s desk, Father Wycazik placed a collect call to Michael Gerrano in Chicago and told him about Parker and about the closing of 1-80. Then, when Schellenhof popped out of the room again, Wycazik said something that startled Parker: “Michael, maybe something’ll happen to us, so you call Simon Zoderman at the Tribune the minute I hang up. Tell him everything. Blow it wide open. Tell Simon how Brendan ties in with Winton Tolk, the Halbourg girl, Calvin Sharkle, all of it. Tell him what happened out here in Nevada two summers ago, what they saw. If he finds it hard to believe, you tell him I believe it. He knows what a hard-headed customer I am.”

  When Father Wycazik hung up, Parker said, “Did I understand you right? My God, you know what happened to them on that July night?”

  “I’m almost certain I do, yes,” Father Wycazik said. Before the priest could say more, Schellenhof returned in a gray blur of polyester. Now that his commission seemed real to him, he was obviously determined not to exceed Parker’s time limit.

  “You’ve got to tell me,” Parker said to the priest.

  “As soon as we’re on our way,” Father Wycazik promised.

  Ned drove Jack’s Cherokee eastward across the snowswept slopes, moving at a crawl. Sandy and Faye rode up front with him, leaning forward, peering anxiously through the windshield, helping Ned spot the obstacles in the chaotic whiteness ahead of them.

  Riding in back—crowded in with Brendan and Jorja, with Marcie on her mother’s lap—Ernie tried to convince himself that he would not succumb to panic when the last light of the storm-dimmed dusk gave way to darkness. Last night, when he’d snuggled under the covers in bed, staring at the shadows beyond the reach of the lamp’s glow, his anxiety had been only a fraction of what he’d come to expect. He was improving.

  Ernie also took hope from Dom’s resurrected memory of jets buzzing the diner. If Dom could remember, so could Ernie. And when the memory block crumbled away, when at last he recalled what he’d seen that July night, he would stop being afraid of darkness.

  “County road,” Faye said as the Jeep came to a stop.

  They had indeed reached the first county road, the same one that ran past the Tranquility and under 1-80. The motel lay about two miles south, and Thunder Hill lay eight miles north along that ribbon of blacktop. It had been plowed already, and recently, because the federal government paid the county to keep the approach to the Depository open at all times.

  “Quickly,” Sandy urged Ned.

  Ernie knew what she was thinking: Someone going from or to Thunder Hill might appear and accidentally discover them.

  Gunning the engine, Ned drove hurriedly across the empty road, into the foothills on the other side, traversing a series of ruts with such haste that Brendan and Jorja were thrown repeatedly against Ernie, who sat between them. Once more, they took cover in the snow which fell like a storm of ashes from a coldly burning sky. Another north-south county artery—Vista Valley Road—lay six miles east, and that was where they were headed. Once there, they would turn south and go to a third county road that paralleled 1-80 and that would carry them into Elko.

  Ernie suddenly realized twilight was falling to the shadow armies of the night. Darkness had nearly stolen up on them. It was standing just a little way off, not in distance but in time, only a few minutes away, but he could see it watching them from billions of peepholes between billions of whirling snowflakes, creeping closer each time he blinked, soon to leap through the curtains of snow and seize him....

  No. There were too many other things worth fearing to waste energy on a nonsensical phobia. Even with a compass, they could get lost at night in this shrieking maelstrom. With visibility reduced to a few yards, they might drive off the edge of a ridge crest or into a rocky chasm, unaware of the hole until it swallowed them. Driving blindly to their own destruction was such a real threat that Ned could make no speed but could only nurse the Cherokee forward at a cautious crawl.

  I fear what’s worth fearing, Ernie told himself adamantly. I don’t fear you, Darkness.

  Faye looked over her shoulder from the front seat. He smiled and made an OK sign—only slightly shaky—with thumb and forefinger.

  Faye started to give him an OK sign of her own, and that was when little Marcie screamed.

  In his office along the wall of The Hub, deep inside Thunder Hill, Dr. Miles Bennell sat in darkness, thinking, worrying. The only light was the wan glow at two windows that faced into the central cavern of the Depository’s second level, illumination insufficient to reveal any details of the room.

  On the desk in front of him lay six sheets of paper. He’d read them twenty or thirty times during the past fifteen months; he did not need to read them again tonight to recall, word for word, what was typed on them. It was an illegally obtained printout of Leland Falkirk’s psychological profile, stolen from the computer-stored personnel records of the elite Domestic Emergency Response Organization.

  Miles Bennell—Ph.D. in biology and chemistry, dabbler in physics and anthropology, musician proficient on the guitar and piano, author of books as diverse as a text on neuro-histology and a scholarly study of the works of John D. MacDonald, connoisseur of fine wine, aficionado of Clint Eastwood movies, the nearest thing to a late-twentieth-century Renaissance man—was among other things a computer hacker of formidable skill. He had begun adventuring through the complex worldwide network of electronic information systems when he had been a college student. Eighteen months ago, when his work on the Thunder Hill project threw him into frequent contact with Leland Falkirk, Miles Bennell had decided that the colonel was a psychologically disturbed individual who would have been declared unfit for military service even as a private—but for one thing: He was apparently one of those rare paranoids who had learned how to use his special brand of insanity to mold himself into a smoothly functioning machine-man who looked and acted normal enough. Miles had wanted to know more. What made Falkirk tick? What stimulus might make him explode unexpectedly? The answers were to be found only at DERO headquarters. So sixteen months ago, Miles began using his personal terminal and modem to seek a route into DERO files in Washington.

  The first time he’d read the profile, Miles had been frightened, though he had developed a thousand rationalizations for staying on the job even if it meant working with a dangerous and violent man like the colonel. There was less chance of trouble if Miles treated Falkirk with the coolness and grudging respect that a controlled paranoid would understand. You dared not be buddy-buddy with such a man—or flatter him—for he would assume you were hiding something. Polite disdain was the best attitude.

  But now Miles was totally in Falkirk’s power, sealed beneath the earth, to be judged and sentenced according to the colonel’s warped view of guilt and innocence. He was scared sick.

  The Army psychologist who’d written the profile was neither very well educated as psychologists went nor too perceptive. Nevertheless, though he had proclaimed the colonel more than fit enough for the elite DERO companies, he had noted peculiarities of the man’s personality that made his report disturbing reading for Miles, who could read not only what was on the paper but what lay hidden between the lines.

  First: Leland Falkirk feared and despised all religion. Because love of God and country were prized in career military men, Falkirk tried to conceal his antireligious sentiments. Evidently, these attitudes sprang from a difficult childhood in a family of fanatics.

  Miles Bennell decided that this fault in Falkirk was especially troublesome because the current undertaking, in which he and the colonel were involved, had a multiplicity of mystical connotations. Aspects of it had undeniable religious overtones and associations that were certain to trigger intense negative reactions in the colonel.

  Second: Leland Falkirk was obsessed with control. He needed to dominate every aspect of his environment and everyone he encountered. This urgent need to control the external world was a reflection of his constant internal struggle to control his own rages
and paranoid fears.

  Miles Bennell shuddered when he thought of the terrible strain this current assignment had put on the colonel, for the thing being hidden here in Thunder Hill could not be controlled forever. Which was a realization that might lead Falkirk to a harmless breakdown—or to an explosion of psychotic anger.

  Third: Leland Falkirk suffered a mild but persistent claustrophobia that was strongest in subterranean places. This fear might have arisen in his childhood as a result of his parents’ unrelenting assertion that he would one day wind up in Hell.

  Falkirk, uncomfortable when underground, would be automatically suspicious of everyone in a place like Thunder Hill. In retrospect, it was frighteningly obvious that the colonel’s growing paranoid suspicion of everyone on the project had been inevitable from the first day.

  Fourth and worst: Leland Falkirk was a controlled masochist. He subjected himself to tests of physical stamina and resistance to pain, pretending these ordeals were necessary to maintain the high level of fitness and superb reflexes required of a DERO officer. His dirty little secret, hidden even from himself, was that he enjoyed the suffering.

  Miles Bennell was more disturbed by that aspect of Falkirk’s character than by anything else in the profile. Because the colonel liked pain, he would not mind suffering along with everyone in Thunder Hill if he decided their suffering was necessary to cleanse the world. He might actually enjoy the prospect of death.

  Miles Bennell sat in darkness, troubled and bleak.

  But it was not even his death or the deaths of his colleagues that most frightened him. What made his gut clench was the fear that, while destroying everyone on the project, Falkirk would also destroy the project itself. If he did, he would be denying mankind the greatest news in history. And he’d also be denying the species its best—perhaps only—chance for peace, immortality, endless plenty, and transcendence.

  Leland Falkirk stood in the Blocks’ kitchen, looking down at the album that lay on the table. When he opened it, he saw photographs and drawings of the moon, all colored red.

  Outside, searching the property end to end, a dozen DERO troops shouted to one another, voices garbled and muffled by the raging wind.

  Doing deep breathing exercises that were supposed to expel a little of his tension with each exhalation, Leland turned a page of the album and saw more scarlet moons: the child’s weird collection.

  The sound of engines rose to the kitchen window from behind the motel as the men drove at least two vehicles around from the front. Leland recognized the souped-up, all-terrain pickup’s distinctive snarl.

  The colonel continued to page through the album, remaining calm, totally in control in spite of the series of set-backs that continued to plague him. He was proud of his control. Nothing could faze him.

  Lieutenant Horner’s quick heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs leading up from the office. A moment later he thumped across the living room, into the kitchen. “Sir, we’ve checked all the motel ropms. No one’s there. They left by the back, overland. Two very vague sets of tire tracks in the snow. Can’t have gone far. Not in this weather, not already.”

  “Have you sent the men to follow them?”

  “No, sir. But I had them pull the pickup and a Wagoneer around back. They’re ready to go.”

  “Move them out,” Leland said in a soft, measured tone.

  “Don’t worry, sir, we’ll get our hands on them.”

  “I’m sure we will,” Leland said, totally in control of himself, showing a firm and steady sense of command to his lieutenant. Homer turned and started to leave, and Leland said, “As soon as you’ve sent the men off, meet me downstairs with a county map. They’ll intend to connect with a county or state road somewhere. We’ll anticipate their next move and be waiting for them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Horner said.

  Alone, Leland calmly turned a page of the album. Red moons.

  Homer’s crashing footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs; then the front door slammed shut behind him, reverberating through the walls.

  Calmly, so calmly, Leland turned a page in the album, and another.

  Outside, Homer was shouting orders to the men.

  Leland turned a page, another, another. Red moons.

  Outside, engines revved. Eight men, in two parties of four, moved out on the trail of the escaped witnesses.

  Leland calmly turned two, three, six pages, saw red moons and more red moons, and calmly picked up the album and threw it across the room. The book slammed into cupboards, bounced off the refrigerator, fell. A score of scarlet moons flew free and fluttered briefly. On a counter, Leland saw a ceramic jar: a smiling bear sitting with forepaws clasped over his tummy. He scooped it up, threw it to the floor, where it exploded in a hundred fragments. Broken chocolate-chip cookies landed atop the album and crumbled across the scattered red moons. He swept a radio off the counter, onto the floor. A canister of sugar. Flow. He pitched a breadbox against the wall and threw a Mr. Coffee machine at the oven.

  He stood for a moment, breathing deeply, evenly. Then he turned and walked calmly out of the kitchen, went calmly down the stairs to the office, to calmly study the county map and calmly assess the situation with his lieutenant.

  “The moon!” Marcie cried, then screamed shrilly again. “Mommy, look, look, the moon! Why, Mommy, why? Look, the moon!”

  The girl suddenly tried to pull loose of her mother, wrenched and flailed. Jorja strove to hold on to her but was unsuccessful.

  Startled by the screams, Ned had halted the Jeep.

  Screaming again, Marcie tore loose of her mother, scrambled across Ernie, with no particular destination as far as Ernie could determine, with no intention but to escape from whatever she had seen in memory. She was apparently not aware that she was in the Cherokee but believed herself to be in another place altogether, a scary place.

  Ernie grabbed her before she could scrabble and kick her way into Brendan’s lap. He held the small child tightly in his big arms, held her against his chest, and as she continued to scream, he cooed soothingly to her.

  Gradually, Marcie’s terror subsided. She stopped struggling and went limp in his arms. She stopped screaming, too, and merely chanted softly: “Moon, the moon, moon....” And quietly, but with terrible dread: “Don’t let it get me, don’t let it, don’t let it.”

  “Be still, honey,” Ernie said, patting her, stroking her hair, “be still, you’re safe, I won’t let it get you.”

  “She remembered something,” Brendan said as Ned drove forward again. “A crack opened for just a moment.”

  “What did you see, baby?” Jorja asked her daughter.

  The girl had slipped back into her deep catatonic glaze, unhearing, unheeding ... except that, after a while, Ernie felt her arms tighten around him in a hug. He hugged her in return. She said nothing. She was still not really with them, adrift on a dark inner sea. Evidently, however, she felt safe in Ernie’s bearish embrace, and she held fast to him as the Cherokee rocked and lurched through the snowy night.

  After months of living in fear of every shadow, after regarding each oncoming twilight with despair and horror, Ernie felt indescribably good, delighted that someone needed his strength. It was profoundly satisfying. And as he held her and murmured to her and stroked her thick black hair, he was oblivious of the fact that night now surrounded the Cherokee and pressed its face to the windows.

  Eventually, Jack turned the pickup east and finally connected with the county road to Thunder Hill at a point approximately one mile north of the place where Ned should have already crossed the same lane in the Cherokee. He turned right and headed up toward the Depository, the route that Dom and Ernie had covered this morning.

  He had never seen a storm this bad back East. The higher he went into the mountains, the harder and faster the snow came down. It was as dense as a heavy rainfall.

  “The entrance to the Depository is about a mile ahead,” Dom said.

  Jack cut the headlights and proceed
ed at a slower pace. Until his eyes adjusted to the loss of light, the world seemed composed only of whirling white specks and darkness.

  He could not always tell if he was in his own lane. He expected another vehicle to hurtle out of the night and ram him head-on.

  Evidently Ginger had the same thought, for she shrank down in her seat as if for protection in a crash. She nervously bit her lower lip.

  “Those lights ahead,” Dom said. “The entrance to the Depository.”

  Two mercury-vapor lamps blazed on poles flanking the electric gate. A warmer amber glow shone in the two narrow windows of the guardhouse.

  Even with those lights, Jack could see only a vague outline of the small building on the far side of the fence, for the falling snow masked all details. He felt confident that, with no headlights, the pickup would be invisible to any guard who might happen to look out a window as the truck drifted past on the county lane. Their engine noise would be swallowed by the wind.

  They rolled slowly up the steep slope, deeper into the night and mountains. The windshield wipers were doing a poorer job by the moment, for snow had clogged the blades and turned to ice.

  When they had gone a mile past the entrance to Thunder Hill, Ginger said, “Maybe we could turn the lights on now.”

  Hunching over the wheel, squinting into the gloom ahead, Jack said, “No. We’ll go in darkness all the way.”

  In the motel office, Leland Falkirk and Lieutenant Horner unfolded the county map on the check-in counter. They were still studying it when the men who had gone after the escaping witnesses returned in defeat, only minutes after departing. The search party had followed the tire tracks a couple of hundred yards through a glen running north into the hills, at which point the snow and wind erased the trail. However, there was some evidence that at least one vehicle had turned into another hollow leading east, and since there seemed no reason for the witnesses to split up, it was assumed both the Sarvers’ pickup and the Cherokee were now headed in that general direction.

  Returning his attention to the map, Leland said, “It makes sense. They wouldn’t go west. Nothing’s out there until Battle Mountain, forty miles away, then Winnemucca over fifty miles farther. Neither town’s big enough to hide in for long. And neither’s exactly a transportation hub; aren’t many ways out. So they’ll go east, into Elko.”

  Lieutenant Horner put a cigar-sized finger on the map. “Here’s the road that runs past the motel and up to Thunder Hill. They’ll have crossed that by now and still be heading east.”

  “What’s the next southbound road they’ll come to?”

  Lieutenant Horner bent down to read the small print on the map. “Vista Valley. Looks to be about six miles east of the road to Thunder Hill.”

  A knock sounded, and Miles Bennell said, “Come in.”

  General Robert Alvarado, CO of Thunder Hill, opened the door and entered the dark office in a swath of silvery light that came with him from The Hub and coated a portion of the room in an imitation of frost. He said, “Sitting alone in the dark, huh? Just imagine how suspicious that would seem to Colonel Falkirk.”

  “He’s a madman, Bob.”

  “Not long ago,” Bob Alvarado said, “I’d have argued that he was a fairly good officer, though a bit too by-the-book and much too gung-ho. But tonight, I have to agree with you. The man’s only got one oar in the water. Maybe no oars. I just got a request from him a few minutes ago, by telephone. Supposed to be a request, but it was phrased like an order. He wants the entire staff, all military men and all civilians, to report to their quarters and stay there until further notice. You’ll hear my order on the public address system in a couple minutes.”

  “But why’s he want that?” Miles asked.

  Alvarado sat in a chair near the open door, the frosty swath of light falling across his feet and up to the middle of his chest, leaving his face in darkness. “Falkirk’s bringing in the witnesses and doesn’t want them to be seen by any of our people who don’t already know about them. Or that’s what he claims is behind the request.”

  Astonished, Miles said, “But if the time’s come to put them through another memory-scrub, it’s better to keep them at the motel. Though as far as I know, he’s not called in the damn brain-fuckers.”

  “He hasn’t,” Bob Alvarado confirmed. “He says the cover-up might not be continued. He wants you to study the witnesses, especially Cronin and Corvaisis. He says maybe he’s right, maybe they’re not human any more. But he says he’s been thinking over his conversation with you, wondering if maybe you could be right and maybe he’s too paranoid about this. He says if you decide they’re fully human, if you determine that their gifts are not evidence of an inhuman presence within them, he’ll accept your word; he’ll spare them. Then, so he says, he might decide against another brainwashing session and even recommend to his superiors that the whole story be revealed to the public.”

  Miles was silent a moment. Then he shifted in his chair, more uneasy than ever. “It sounds as if he’s finally got some common sense. Why do I find that so hard to believe? Do you think it’s true?”

  Alvarado reached out from his chair, pushed the door shut, plunging the room into darkness. Sensing Miles reaching for the lamp switch, he said, “Let’s keep it this way, huh? Maybe it’s a little easier to be frank with each other when we can’t see faces.” Miles settled back in his chair, leaving the lamp unlit, and Alvarado said, “Tell me, Miles, was it you who sent the photographs to Corvaisis and the Blocks?”

  Miles said nothing.

  “We’re friends, you and I,” Alvarado said. “At least I’ve felt we are. I never met another guy I could enjoy playing both chess and poker with. So I’ll tell you ... I’m the one who got Jack Twist back here.”