by Dean Koontz
When on his third try he brought the clock into harmony with true time, a great tide of relief swept through him, and his distress rapidly abated—until he noticed the condition of the stainless-steel counters, the cooktop, the griddle, the grill, the deep-fryer wells, the floor. Crumbs littered and grease spattered this place as much as they had the kitchen at the mayor’s home. Perhaps it was not a culinary catastrophe, not so bad as to be an inexorable magnet for rats and roaches, but it was far from perfect, and perfection must be the standard of cleanliness for all machines, tools, and devices if they were to deliver high performance for a long time.
If the original Mayor Erskine Potter was an example of an average human being, if they all shared his lack of attention to detail, then they would succumb to the Community much faster than even the Creator expected. The death they deserved would overtake their entire species, continent after continent, with such rapidity as to give new meaning to the word blitzkrieg.
The new mayor didn’t have time to clean the kitchen, especially not on this first day of the war, but he couldn’t dissuade himself from going into the walk-in refrigerator to assess its condition. Even if one disregarded the need for a good scrubbing, this still qualified as a mess. As in the refrigerator at the mayor’s home, nothing here was arranged in a logical fashion. With more than one hundred churchfolk to kill this evening, Erskine must not spend any time scrubbing these wire and glass shelves; but he did rearrange the contents, putting associated items together in such a way as to make the cooks and their assistants considerably more efficient than they could possibly have been previously.
He had no memory of returning to the long mahogany bar in the main room. Perhaps he had gone there to double-check the time on the lighted clock. When he realized where he stood and in what task he was engaged, he had rearranged half of the hundreds of bottles of liquor, mixers, and liqueurs on the backbar shelves. The previous lack of order had surely prevented maximum bartender efficiency.
With some surprise, he discovered that most of the afternoon had slipped away.
chapter 50
Carson didn’t know if Addison Hawk thought they might be foreign agents or radicals of one kind or another, but to overcome his sudden suspicion, she gave him the number of a detective with whom they once worked in New Orleans and who was now the chief of detectives in the NOPD.
In the process of finding that number, she also produced from the mysteries of her purse photographs of doggy Duke, of brother Arnie, and of Scout being as cute as Scout knew how to be. In fact, she produced eleven photos of Scout, each of them more smile-inducing than the one before it.
Either she had misjudged the depth of Hawk’s suspicion or her pride of parenthood struck him as so sincere that he found it hard to believe her motives in asking about the End Times Highway could be anything but honorable. With the sixth of the eleven photos, she realized that she was gushing shamelessly, and a glance at Michael—who gaped at her as if he had just seen Dirty Harry morph into Mother Hubbard—confirmed that her Scout rap had escalated into Scout babble. Hawk’s interest in the photos seemed real, and by the time that she showed him the last of the eleven snapshots, he didn’t find it necessary to call the chief of detectives in New Orleans.
As Carson returned to her chair, Hawk said, “Anyway, nothing I could tell you about End Times Highway could reveal any national secrets, because I don’t know any. What I do know is that the road was graded and built at breakneck speed in just two years, between 1964 and 1966, which was before my time. It was a federal-government project, and speed clearly trumped budget. A lot of the labor came from here in Montana. But there was other construction going on at the same time, lots of it, and the labor was brought in. Many of them were military personnel, and I assume the others had security clearance of the highest order. They worked out there, at points all along the new highway, from 1964 through 1968.”
“Wasn’t that about when the Cold War started to get downright icy?” Michael asked.
“Just so,” said Hawk. “Now, the outside labor that did all the building other than the highway—they had their own temporary town out there, facilities for a couple thousand of them. And nobody ever knew one of them to come into Rainbow Falls for R and R or for anything else. We think they were working under a security quarantine. The road was closed to the public until 1969, and when it opened, it was just a road to nowhere, and you couldn’t see a trace of whatever else it was they constructed along those twenty-four miles. Some good old local boys tramped a lot of hours through those woods and fields, doing some hunting but doing more snooping, and none of them could ever find a trace of what must have been stuck underground.”
“Missile silos,” Carson suggested.
“There were definitely a few of those,” Hawk confirmed, “because sometime after the Soviet Union collapsed, the government declared three silo complexes out there obsolete, decommissioned them, and offered them for sale to corporations that might want to use them as low-humidity, highly secure storage vaults for sensitive records. I believe they were all sold, though I don’t know that they’ve all been used. I hear maybe the Mormon church keeps duplicates of their national genealogy-project files out there, but I’ve never been able to confirm that.”
In Erika’s kitchen, Deucalion had told them about his experience with the flock of bats and about the intuitive insight they inspired, leaving him certain that Victor would be found this time not in any equivalent of the Hands of Mercy, but deep underground.
Hawk said, “Most folks in these parts don’t believe the silos were the whole of it. They think there must be other facilities out there along the End Times Highway.”
“Like what?” Michael asked.
Addison Hawk shrugged. “It’s all speculation, and most of it less real than your average sci-fi show on TV. Not worth repeating, because no one really knows anything. Maybe the silo complexes were the sum of it.” He leaned forward in his chair. “What does the End Times Highway have to do with this nameless man whose photo you showed me? No, wait, forgive my newshound curiosity. I’m sure that would be some violation of your client’s privacy.”
Carson said, “If a day comes when we can talk about the case, Mr. Hawk, you’ll be high on our list. You’ve been most helpful.”
As she and Michael got to their feet, the publisher rose from his chair and asked, “How long do you expect to be in town?”
“We don’t really know,” Michael said. “It could be a while.”
“Mind telling me where you’re staying—in case I spot this quarry of yours?”
“From here, we’re going straight to Falls Inn to get a room.”
As Hawk walked them out to the reception area, he said, “I know Rafe and Marcia Libby, they own the inn. If you’d like, I can call ahead, make sure they give you the best they’ve got for a price that’s right.”
“That’s kind of you, Mr. Hawk.”
“Happy to oblige. Be sure to show Marcia that photo of Scout and Duke. She’s crazy for kids and dogs.”
At the front door, the publisher reached up to tip his cowboy hat to them, but smiled as he realized that he had left it on the desk in his office.
Outside, with less than an hour before twilight, the day cooled fast. Behind the clouds that darkened the heavens, a deeper darkness was slowly rising.
chapter 51
Under the closed lids, his eyes move ceaselessly.
His intelligence is of such a high order that no pleasures of this world can seduce him. The universe within his mind is more vivid and alluring than anything external reality offers.
The room in which he sits is large and windowless. The lighting is soft. The walls are bare concrete. The floor matches the walls.
He has no interest in art, for his imagination teems with far more beautiful images than any ordinary man or woman could create.
Near the center of the room stands one armchair, unoccupied. In front of the armchair is a futon. He requires no other furnishin
gs.
He sits on the futon, legs crossed, hands turned palms-up on his knees. Although his eyes are closed, his inner eyes are always wide open.
He is and is not Victor Frankenstein. He is not anything as simple as a clone of the great man, but rather an enhanced clone.
During the eight years this Victor lay in suspended animation, waiting to be called to full consciousness, the original Victor daily downloaded his memories into the clone who would replace him if he died. This Victor knows everything the other Victor knew—and more.
In that quasi-comatose state, his mind had remained sharp and agile. Eight years with virtually no stimulation of his five senses, eight years of an entirely internal existence, had been a singular opportunity to think about the problems of creating new life forms.
That intense period of isolation guaranteed that he would not be merely Victor in a new body. He is a reduction of the essence of Victor, purified and repurified into a more potent spirit. Victor’s lifelong determination has become, in his clone, a fierce resolution.
No music plays in this facility. Ever. To him, music is merely an inefficient kind of mathematics. He hears exquisite symphonies of maths in his mind.
As much of the day as possible, he lives in a silence almost as hushed as an airless void between two galaxies. He dislikes being distracted from the wonders of himself.
He knows why the original Victor, for all his brilliance, failed. And he knows why he cannot fail.
The first Victor had been too human. He was a man too much of the flesh. In spite of his contempt for humanity, he wanted most things that ordinary men wanted. In fact, he wanted them to excess.
This Victor, who thinks of himself as Victor Immaculate, has no hunger for those things after which ordinary men chase.
The first Victor considered himself a gourmet and a wine connoisseur. He believed that his taste was exquisitely refined.
The new Victor has no patience for the rituals of fine dining. He eats only the simplest food, quickly and without fuss, only what is necessary to maintain the meat machine that is his body. He does not have time for wine or other spirits.
The first Victor relished status symbols: immense mansions, the finest automobiles, hundred-thousand-dollar wristwatches, handmade suits cut and sewn by the finest British tailors ….
The clone of Victor has no interest in status or luxuries. His wardrobe consists entirely of clothes bought for him by the social secretary of the admirer who is financing the current project. Her taste may be unrefined and at times even tacky. Victor Immaculate doesn’t care; he wears what he is sent.
The first Victor frequently indulged his lust, which had a sadistic edge. He spent much time growing his Erikas in his creation tanks and then brutally using them. His desire not only interfered with his work but muddied his thinking in all areas.
Shortly after leaving New Orleans with a fortune in a briefcase, the night when the first Victor died, this Victor had traveled to a private clinic in a country where any medical procedure could be had for the right price, including even organ transplants from well-matched if often unwilling donors. There, he paid handsomely to be neutered.
He can never be distracted from his momentous work by lust and the power fantasies that arise from it.
Power. That was a primary goal of the first Victor. Authority, command, dominion, iron rule. He wanted every knee to bend to him, every heart to fear him.
Victor Immaculate has no interest in creating a world of slaves who sway obediently to each wave of his hand.
One thing and one thing only matters to him: the fulfillment of his mission. Absolute dominion is not an end in itself. The sole purpose of having total power is to achieve his two-part goal: First, erase all humanity and its history; second, then relinquish power forever, thereby denying the value of both power and creation.
From the original Victor, he inherited a vision of the world without humanity. But Victor Immaculate understands this vision more completely than did his namesake.
The original Victor had labored to create a New Race, a stronger version of humankind, apostles of reason, without either superstition or free will, obedient soldiers of materialism who would relentlessly liquidate all who were born of man and woman, unify the planet, and spread out to the stars with the ultimate goal of claiming the entire universe.
That was the grandest mission the first Victor had been able to envision. But Victor Immaculate realized that it merely replaced one kind of human animal with another, and thus suggested that humanity was not a failure but might be a potential success needing only to be redesigned.
Eradicating every human being from Earth is a momentous achievement only if he does not replace them with a new kind of man. When the members of the Community have hunted down the last man, the last woman, and the last child, Victor Immaculate will within one day cause all the creatures he has made to fall dead.
He alone will remain alive on Earth for a few days, perhaps seven, to bear witness to the emptiness of the world. Then he will kill himself, and with his death reduce Genesis to a single chapter with only twenty-five verses, and the entire so-called sacred book to one page.
He is the ultimate annihilator, who will not only put an end to history but obliterate it.
Now, from a speaker somewhere overhead comes the synthesized voice of a computer, androgynous in character: “Twilight.”
Victor opens his eyes.
The first night of the first war day will soon begin.
He rises to the occasion.
chapter 52
In the hospital lobby, near the front entrance, Chief Rafael Jarmillo discussed the situation with the four deputies who would deal with friends and relatives of patients who arrived at the hospital during evening visiting hours.
As he finished giving instructions, he was approached by Ned Gronski, head of Memorial’s small security staff. Gronski was of course a replicant of the real man, who had earlier been given to a Builder in the basement.
Holding out a coiled rope made from a bedsheet, Gronski said, “A nurse found this tied to the window post in a patient’s room.”
“When?”
“Half an hour ago. We’ve searched the grounds.”
Nobody would climb out a window and down a rope unless he knew he would not be allowed to walk out a door.
“What patient?” Jarmillo asked.
“Bryce Walker, the Western writer.”
“What does he know? How does he know it?”
Gronski shook his head. “No idea. There’s a kid missing, too. Travis Ahern. Nurse says he and Walker visited a lot this afternoon, in the boy’s room.”
When earlier it had been learned that Nummy O’Bannon and the vagrant, Conway Lyss, escaped the jail after having seen a Builder at work, Jarmillo had decided that the breach of secrecy didn’t warrant the immediate lockdown of the whole town. Nummy was well liked, but no one would be quick to believe such a fantastic story coming from a boy who treated a stuffed animal as if it were a real dog. Lyss, booked on a charge of burglary the previous day, was wanted for several crimes in Nevada and Idaho. He would most likely want nothing more than to put as much distance between himself and Rainbow Falls as he could. Considering Lyss’s appearance, crackpot demeanor, and ripe stench, most people would tune out the grizzled vagrant or keep their distance from him. Even if they listened to him, he would seem irrational; he apparently wasn’t a dead-end drunk, but he looked like one.
The longer Jarmillo could avoid putting roadblocks on the two exits from town and the longer he could restrict the interruption of phone service to one or two venues at a time—currently only the hospital—the less likely that people would realize something out of the ordinary might be occurring. The farther into the operation they got without arousing widespread curiosity or suspicion, the more certain they were to have eliminated everyone in town and to have transformed Rainbow Falls into the first Community stronghold by Friday morning.
Nine-year-old Aher
n wouldn’t be a much better witness than Nummy O’Bannon, but Bryce Walker couldn’t be easily dismissed. A lifetime resident, personable, and articulate, he had many friends who trusted him and would believe almost anything he said.
Ned Gronski had the same concern. “It’s Walker that worries me. He’s an institution in this town.”
Whatever Bryce Walker knew or suspected about what was happening at the hospital, he most likely would come to the police to tell his story—and they would deal with him. In the unlikely event that he had some reason to worry that the department was not to be trusted, what would he do then? Organize some citizen militia to inspect the hospital for nefarious activity? Let the inspection occur. When they carried their search to the basement, they would be more fodder for the Builders.
Jarmillo decided to take no drastic action. To Gronski, he said, “I’ll alert every officer in the department and all other replicants currently among the population to be on the lookout for Walker and Ahern. I’ll send their photos to everyone’s cell phone. They should be subdued on sight by any means necessary and at once returned to the hospital for execution and processing.”
As he finished winding the bedsheet rope into a ball, Gronski pointed to the glass doors of the lobby. “Speaking of execution and processing, here come the first visitors of the evening.”
chapter 53
The stairs led up to an unlocked door that opened into a ten-foot-square room. Bryce switched on the overhead fluorescent panel and switched off the stair light behind them. A second door stood directly opposite the first. On the walls hung shovels, push brooms, and other implements.
Bryce examined the door through which they had just come, to be sure that, as he recalled, it did not automatically lock, and then he eased it shut behind them.
