sitting in the back.
The instant that the pickup halted in the intersection, two men vaulted
over the tailgate. One of them went to the wooded point at the
northwest corner of the intersection and slipped into the trees, no more
than a hundred feet south of the pine from which Chrissie was watching
him. The other crossed to the southeast corner of the junction and took
up a position in weeds and chaporral.
The pickup turned south on the county road and sped away.
Chrissie suspected that the remaining men in the truck would be let off
at other points along the eastern perimeter of Moonlight Cove, where
they would take up watch positions. Further - 129 more, the truck had
been big enough to carry at least twenty men, and no doubt others had
been dropped off as it had come eastward along Holliwell from the New
Wave building in the west. They were surrounding Moonlight Cove with
sentries. She was quite sure they were looking for her. She had seen
something she had not been meant to see-her parents in the act of a
hideous transformation, shucking off their human disguise-and now she
had to be found and "converted"-as Tucker had put it-before she had a
chance to warn the world.
The sound of the black truck receded.
Silence settled in like a damp blanket.
Fog swirled and churned and eddied in countless currents, but the
overriding tidal forces in the air pushed it relentlessly toward the
dark and serried hills.
Then the breeze abruptly ratcheted up until it became a real wind again,
whispering in the tall weeds, soughing through the evergreens. It
produced a soft and strangely forlorn thrumming from a nearby road sign.
Though Chrissie knew where the two men had gone to ground, she could not
see them. They were well hidden.
Fog flew past the patrol car and eastward through the night, driven
by a breeze that was swiftly becoming a full wind, and ideas flew
through Sam's mind with the same fluidity. His thoughts were so
disturbing that he would have preferred to have sat in mindless
stupefaction.
From considerable prior computer experience, he knew that part of a
system's capabilities could be hidden if the program designer simply
deleted some choices from the task menus that appeared on the screen. He
stared at the primary menu on the car's display-A, DISPATCHER; B,
CENTRAL FILES; BULLETIN BOARD; 0. OUTSYSTEM MODEM-and he pressed E,
though no E task was offered.
Words appeared on the terminal HELLO, OFFICER DORN.
There was an E. He'd entered either a secret data base requiring ritual
responses for access or an interactive information system that would
respond to questions he typed on the keyboard. If the former was the
case, if passwords or phrases were required, and if he typed the wrong
response, he was in trouble; the computer would shut him out and sound
an alarm in police headquarters to warn them that an impersonator was
using Dorn's number.
Proceeding with caution, he typed HELLO.
MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?
Sam decided to proceed as if this was just what it seemed to be-a
straightforward, question-and-answer program. He tapped the keyboard
MENU.
The screen blanked for a moment, then the same words reappeared MAY I BE
OF ASSISTANCE?
He tried again PRIMARY MENU.
MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?
MAIN MENU.
MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?
Using a system accessed by question and response, with which one was
unfamiliar, meant finding the proper commands more or less by trial and
error. Sam tried again FIRST MENU.
At last he was rewarded.
CHOOSE ONE A. NEW WAVE personnel B. PROJECT MOONHAWK C.Shaddack He had
found a secret connection between New Wave, its founder Thomas Shaddack,
and the Moonlight Cove police. But he didn't know yet what the
connection was or what it meant.
He suspected that choice C might link him to Shaddack's personal
computer terminal, allowing him to have a dialogue with Shaddack that
would be more private than a conversation conducted on police-band
radio. If that was the case, then Shaddack - 131 and the local cops
were indeed involved in a conspiracy so criminal that it required a very
high degree of security. He did not punch C because, if he called up
Shaddack's computer and got Mr. Big himself on the other end, there was
no way he could successfully pretend to be Reese Dorn.
Choice A probably would provide him with a roster of New Wave's
executives and department heads, and maybe with codes that would allow
him to link up with their personal terminals as well. He didn't want to
talk with any of them either.
Besides, he felt that he was on borrowed time. He surveyed the parking
lot again and peered especially hard at the deeper pools of shadow
beyond the reach of the sodium-vapor lamps. He'd been in the patrol car
for fifteen minutes, and no one had come or gone from the
municipal-building lot in that time. He doubted his luck would hold
much longer, and he wanted to learn as much as possible in whatever
minutes remained before he was interrupted.
PROJECT MOONHAWK was the most mysterious and interesting of the three
choices, so he pushed B, and another menu appeared.
CHOOSE ONE A. CONVERTED B. PENDING CONVERSION C, SCHEDULE OF
CONVERSION - LOCAL 0. SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION - SECOND STAGE He punched
choice A, and a column of names and addresses appeared on the screen.
They were people in Moonlight Cove, and at the head of the column was
the notation 1967 NOW CONVERTED.
Converted? From what? To what? Was there something religious about
this conspiracy? Some strange cult? Or maybe "converted" was used in
some euphemistic sense or as a code.
The word gave him the creeps.
Sam discovered that he could either scroll through the list or access it
in alphabetized chunks. He looked up the names of residents whom he
either knew of or had met. Loman Watkins was on the converted list. So
was Reese Dorn. Burt Peckham, the owner of Knight's Bridge Tavern, was
not among the converted, but the entire Perez family, surely the same
that operated the restaurant, was on that roster.
He checked Harold Talbot, the disabled vet with whom he intended to make
contact in the morning. Talbot was not on the converted list.
Puzzled as to the meaning of it all, Sam closed out that file, returned
to the main menu, and punched B, PENDING CONVERSION. This brought
another list of names and addresses to the VDT, and the column was
headed by the words "04 PENDING CONVERSION. On this roster he found
Burt Peckham and Harold Talbot.
He tried C, SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION-LOCAL, and a submenu of three
headings appeared A. MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 600 P.M.
THROUGH TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 600 A.M.
B. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 600 A.M.
THROUGH TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 600 P.M.
C. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 600 P.M.
THROUGH It was now 1239 A.M Wednesday, about halfway times noted in
choice A, so he punch
ed that one another list of names headed by the
notation 380 CONVERSIONS SCHEDULED.
The fine hairs were bristling on the back of Sam's neck, and he didn't
know why except that the word "conversions" unsettled him. It made him
think of that old movie with Kevin McCarthy, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers.
He also thought of the pack that had pursued him earlier in the night.
Had they been . . . converted?
When he looked up Burt Peckham, he found the tavern owner on the
schedule for conversion before 600 A.M. However, Harry Talbot was not
listed.
The car shook.
between the first. It was - 133 Sam snapped his head up and reached for
the revolver holstered under his jacket.
Wind. It was only wind. A series of hard gusts shredded holes in the
fog and lightly rocked the car. After a moment the wind died to a
strong breeze again, and the torn fabric of fog mended itself, but Sam's
heart was still thudding painfully.
As Tessa put down the useless telephone, the doorknob stopped
rattling. She stood by the bed for a while, listening, then ventured
warily into the foyer to press her ear against the door.
She heard voices but not immediately beyond that portal. They were
farther down the hallway, peculiar voices that spoke in urgent, raspy
whispers. She could not make out anything they said.
She was sure they were the same ones who had stalked her, unseen, when
she had gone for ice and a Diet Coke. Now they were back. And somehow
they had knocked out the phones, so she couldn't call for help. It was
crazy, but it was happening that they Such persistence on their part
indicated to Tessa were not ordinary rapists or muggers, that they had
focused on her because she was Janice's sister, because she was there to
look into Janice's death. However, she wondered how they had become
aware of her arrival in town and why they had chosen to move against her
so precipitously, without even waiting to see if she was just going to
settle Janice's affairs and leave. Only she and her mother knew that
she intended to attempt a murder investigation of her own.
Gooseflesh prickled her bare legs, and she felt vulnerable in just a
T-shirt and panties. She went quickly to the closet, pulled on jeans
and a sweater.
She wasn't alone in the motel. There were other guests. Mr.
Quinn had said so. Maybe not many, perhaps only another two or three.
But if worse came to worst, she could scream, and the other guests would
hear her, and her would-be assailants would have to flee.
She picked up her Rockports, in which she had stuffed the white athletic
socks she'd been wearing, and returned to the door.
Low, hoarse voices hissed and muttered at the far end of the hall-then a
bone-jarring crash slammed through the lodge, making her cry out and
twitch in surprise. Another crash followed at once. She heard a door
give way at another room.
A woman screamed, and a man shouted, but the oilier voices were what
brought a chill of horror to Tessa. There were several of them, three
or even four, and they were eerie and shockingly savage. The public
corridor beyond her door was filled with harsh wolflike growls,
murderous snarls, shrill and excited squeals, an icy keening that was
the essence of blood hunger, and other less describable sounds, but
worst of all was that those same inhuman voices, clearly belonging to
beasts not men, nevertheless also spat out a few recognizable words ". .
. need, need . . . get her, get . . . get, get . . . blood,
bitch, blood. . .
" Leaning against the door, holding on to it for support, Tessa tried to
tell herself that the words she heard were from the man and woman whose
room had been broken into, but she knew that was not true, because she
also heard both a man and woman screaming. Their screams were horrible,
almost unbearable, full of terror and agony, as if they were being
beaten to death or worse, much worse, being torn apart, ripped limb from
limb and gutted.
A couple of years ago Tessa had been in Northern Ireland, making a
documentary about the pointlessness of the needless violence there, and
she'd been unfortunate enough to be at a cemetery, at the funeral of one
of the endless series of "martyrs"-Catholic or Protestant, it didn't
matter any more, both had a surfeit of them-when the crowd of mourners
had metamorphosed into a pack of savages. They had streamed from the
churchyard into nearby streets, looking for those of a different faith,
and soon they'd come across two British plain clothes army officers
patrolling the area in an unmarked car. By its sheer size, the mob
blocked the car's advance, encircled it, smashed in the windows, and
dragged the would-be peacekeepers out onto the pavement. Tessa's two
technical assistants had fled, but she had T - 135 waded into the melee
with her shoulder-mounted videotape camera, and through the lens she had
seemed to be looking beyond the reality of this world into hell itself.
Eyes wild, faces distorted with hatred and rage, grief forgotten and
bloodlust embraced, the mourners had tirelessly kicked the fallen
Britons, then pulled them to their feet only to pummel and stab them,
slammed them repeatedly against the car until their spines broke and
their skulls cracked, then dropped them and stomped them and tore at
them and stabbed them again, though by that time- they were both dead.
Howling and shrieking, cursing, chanting slogans that degenerated into
meaningless chains of sounds, mindless rhythms, like a flock of
carrion-eating birds, they plucked at the shattered bodies, though they
weren't like earthly birds, neither buzzards nor vultures, but like
demons that had flown up from the pit, tearing at the dead men not only
with the intention of consuming their flesh but with the hot desire to
rip out and steal their souls. Two of those frenzied men had noticed
Tessa, had seized her camera and smashed it, and had thrown her to the
ground. For one terrible moment she was sure that they would dismember
her in their frenzy. Two of them leaned down, grabbing at her clothes.
Their faces were so wrenched with hatred that they no longer looked
human, but like gargoyles that had come to life and had climbed down
from the roofs of cathedrals. They had surrendered all that was human
in themselves and let loose the gene-encoded ghosts of the primitives
from whom they were descended. "For God's sake, no!" she had cried.
"For God's sake, please!" Perhaps it was the mention of God or just the
sound of a human voice that had not devolved into the hoarse gnarl of a
beast, but for some reason they let go and hesitated. She seized that
reprieve to scramble away from them, through the churning, blood-crazed
mob to safety.
What she heard now, at the other end of the motel corridor, was just
like that. Or worse.
Beginning to sweat even though the patrol car's heater was not on, still
spooked by every sudden gust of wind, Sam called up submenu item B,
which showed the conversions scheduled fr
om 600 this coming morning
until 600 P.m. that evening. Those names were preceded by the heading
450 CONVERSIONS SCHEDULED. Harry Talbot's name was not on that list
either.
Choice C, six o'clock Thursday evening through midnight the same day,
indicated that 274 conversions were scheduled. Harry Talbot's name and
address were on that third and final list.
Sam mentally added the numbers mentioned in each of the three conversion
periods-380, 450, and 274-and realized they totaled 1104, which was the
same number that headed the list of pending conversions. Add that number
to 1967, the total listed as already converted, and the grand total,
3071, was probably the population of Moonlight Cove. By the next time
he clock struck midnight, a little less than twenty-three hours from
now, the entire town would be converted-whatever the hell that meant.
He keyed out of the submenu and was about to switch off the car's engine
and get out of there when the word ALERT appeared on the VDT and began
to flash. Fear thrilled through him because he was sure they had
discovered an intruder poking around in their system; he must have
tripped some subtle alarm in the program.
Instead of opening the door and making a run for it, however, he watched
the screen for a few more seconds, held by curiosity.
TELEPHONE sweep INDICATES FBI AGENT IN MOONLIGHT COVE.
- 137 POINT OF CALL PAY PHONE. SHELL STATION, OCEAN AVENUE.
The alert was related to him, though not because they knew he was
currently sitting in one of their patrol cars and probing the New
Dean Koontz - (1989) Page 18
