Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  half-devoured by fish, but because cremation would cover wounds that

  would raise unanswerable questions in an unbiased autopsy. She also saw

  reflections of the corruption of local authorities in the physical

  appearance of Ocean Avenue, where too many storefronts were empty and

  too many businesses were suffering, which was inexplicable for a town in

  which unemployment was virtually nil. She had noted an air of solemnity

  about the people she had seen on the streets, as well as a briskness and

  purposefulness that seemed odd in a laid-back northern coastal town

  where the hurly-burly of modern life hardly intruded.

  However, her awareness of the patterns included no explanation of why

  the police would want to conceal the true nature of Janice's killing. Or

  why the town seemed in an economic depression in spite of its

  prosperity. Or what in the name of God those nightmare things in the

  motel had been. patterns were clues to underlying truths, but her

  ability to recognize them did not mean she could find the answers and

  reveal the truths at which the patterns hinted.

  She sat, shivering, in the fluorescent glare and breathed trace fumes of

  detergents, bleaches, fabric softeners, and the lingering staleness of

  the cigarette butts in the two free-standing sandfilled ashtrays, while

  she tried to figure what to do next. She had not lost her determination

  to probe into Janice's death. But she no longer had the audacity to

  think she could play detective all by herself. She was going to need

  help and would probably have to obtain it from county or state

  authorities.

  The first thing she had to do was get out of Moonlight Cove in one

  piece.

  Her car was at Cove Lodge, but she did not want to go back there for it.

  Those . . . creatures might still be in the motel or watching it from

  the dense shrubs and trees and omnipresent shadows that were an integral

  part of the town. Like Cannel, California, elsewhere along the coast,

  Moonlight Cove was a town virtually built in a seaside forest. Tessa

  loved Cannel for its splendid integration of the works of man and

  nature, where geography and architecture often appeared to be the

  product of the same sculptor's hand. Right now, however, Moonlight Cove

  did not draw style and grace from its verdant lushness and artful night

  shadows, as did Carmel; rather, this town seemed to be dressed in the

  thinnest veneer of civilization, beneath which something savage-even

  primal-watched and waited. Every grove of trees and every dark street

  was not the home of beauty but of the uncanny and of death. She would

  have found Moonlight Cove far more attractive if every street and alley

  and lawn and park had been lit with the same plenitude of fluorescent

  bulbs as the Laundromat in which she had taken refuge - 147 Maybe the

  police had shown up at Cove Lodge by now in response to the screams and

  commotion. But she would not feel any safer returning there just

  because cops were around. Cops were part of the problem. They would

  want to question her about the murders of the other guests. They would

  find out that Janice had been her sister, and though she might not tell

  them she was in town to poke into the circumstances of Janice's death,

  they would suspect as much. If they had participated in a conspiracy to

  conceal the true nature of Janice's death, they E)probably wouldn't

  hesitate to deal with Tessa in a firm and final way.

  She had to abandon the car.

  But damned if she was going to walk out of town at night. She might be

  able to hitch a ride on the interstate-perhaps even from an honest

  trucker instead of a mobile psychopath-but between Moonlight Cove and

  the freeway, she would have to walk through a dark and semirural

  landscape, where surely she would be at even greater risk of

  encountering more of those mysterious beasts that had broken down her

  motel-room door.

  Of course, they had come after her in a relatively public and

  well-lighted place. She had no real reason to assume that she was safer

  in this coin-operated laundry than in the middle of the woods. When the

  membrane of civilization ruptured and the primordial terror burst

  through, you weren't safe anywhere, not even on the steps of a church,

  as she had learned in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

  Nevertheless, she would cling to the light and shun the darkness. She

  had stepped through an invisible wall between the reality she had always

  known and a different, more hostile world. As long as she remained in

  that Twilight Zone, it seemed wise to assume that shadows offered even

  less comfort and security than did bright places.

  Which left her with no plan of action. Except to sit in the Laundromat

  and wait for morning. In daylight she might risk a long walk to the

  freeway.

  The blank glass of the dryer windows returned her stare.

  An autumn moth thumped softly against the frosted plastic panels that

  were suspended under the fluorescent bulbs.

  Unable to walk boldly into Moonlight Cove as she had planned, Chrissie

  retreated from Holliwell Road, heading back the way she had come. She

  stayed in the woods, moving ,-, slowly and cautiously from tree to tree,

  trying to avoid making a sound that might carry to the nearer of the

  sentries who had been posted at the intersection.

  In a couple of hundred yards, when she was beyond those men's sight and

  hearing, she moved more aggressively. Eventually she came to one of the

  houses that lay along the county route. The single-story ranch home was

  set behind a large front lawn and sheltered by several pines and firs,

  barely visible now that the moon was waning. No lights were on inside

  or out, and all was silent.

  She needed time to think, and she wanted to get out of the cold, dampish

  night. Hoping there were no dogs at the house, she hurried to the

  garage, staying off the gravel driveway to keep from making a lot of

  noise. As she expected, in addition to the large front door through

  which the cars entered and exited, there was a smaller side entrance. It

  was unlocked. She stepped into the garage and closed the door behind

  her.

  "Chrissie Foster, secret agent, penetrated the enemy facility by the

  bold and clever use of a side door," she said softly.

  The secondhand radiance of the sinking moon penetrated the panes in the

  door and two high, narrow windows on the west wall, but it was

  insufficient to reveal anything. She could see only a few darkly

  gleaming curves of chrome and windshield glass, just enough to suggest

  the presence of two cars.

  She edged toward the first of those vehicles with the caution of a blind

  girl, hands out in front of her, afraid of knocking something over. The

  car was unlocked. She slipped inside be - 149 hind the wheel, leaving

  the door open for the welcome glow of the interior lamp. She supposed a

  trace of that light might be visible at the garage windows if anyone in

  the house woke up and looked out, but she had to risk it.

  She searched the glove compartment, the map-storage panels on the doors,


  and under the seats, hoping to find food, because most people kept candy

  bars or bags of nuts or crackers or something to snack on in their cars.

  Though she had eaten midafternoon, while locked in the pantry, she'd had

  nothing for ten hours. Her stomach growled. She wasn't expecting to

  find a hot fudge sundae or the fixings for a jelly sandwich, but she

  certainly hoped to do better than a single stick of chewing gum and one

  green Lifesaver that, retrieved from beneath the seat, was furry with

  dirt, lint, and carpet fuzz.

  As if reading tabloid headlines, she said, "Starvation in the Land of

  Plenty, A Modern Tragedy, Young Girl Found Dead in Garage, 'I Only

  Wanted a Few Peanuts' Written in Her Own Blood."

  In the other car she found two Hershey's bars with almonds.

  "Thank you, God. Your friend, Chrissie."

  She hogged down the first bar but savored the second one in small bites,

  letting it melt on her tongue.

  While she ate, she thought about ways to get into Moonlight Cove. By the

  time she finished the chocolate CHOCOHOLIC YOUNG GIRL FOUND DEAD IN

  GARAGE FROM terminal CASE OF GIANT ZITS -she had devised a plan.

  Her usual bedtime had passed hours ago, and she was exhausted from all

  the physical activity with which the night had been filled, so she just

  wanted to stay there in the car, her belly full of milk chocolate and

  almonds, and sleep for a couple of hours before putting her plan into

  effect. She yawned and slumped down in the seat. She ached all over,

  and her eyes were as heavy as if some overanxious mortician had weighted

  them with coins.

  That image of herself as a corpse was so unsettling that she immediately

  got out of the car and closed the door. If she dozed off in the car,

  she most likely wouldn't wake until someone found her in the morning.

  Maybe the people who kept their cars in this garage were converted, like

  her own parents, in which case she'd be doomed.

  Outside, shivering as the wind nipped at her, She headed back to the

  county road and turned north. She passed two more dark and silent

  houses, another stretch of woods, and came to a fourth house, another

  single-story ranch-style place with shake-shingle roof and redwood

  siding.

  She knew the people who lived there, Mr. and Mrs. Eulane. Mrs. Eulane

  managed the cafeteria at school. Mr. Eulane was a gardener with many

  accounts in Moonlight Cove. Early every morning, Mr. Eulane drove into

  town in his white truck, the back of which was loaded with lawnmowers

  and hedge clippers and rakes and shovels and bags of mulch and

  fertilizer and everything else a gardener might need; only a few

  students had arrived by the time he dropped Mrs. Eulane off at school,

  then went about his own work. Chrissie figured she could find a place

  to hide in the back of the truck-which had board sides-among Mr.

  Eulane's gardening supplies and equipment.

  The truck was in the Eulanes' garage, which was unlocked, just as the

  other one had been. But this was the country, after all, where people

  still trusted one another-which was good except that it gave invading

  aliens an extra edge.

  The only window was small and in the wall that could not be seen from

  the house, so Chrissie risked turning on the overhead light when she

  stepped inside. She quietly scaled the side of the truck and made her

  way in among the gardening equipment, which was stored in the rear

  two-thirds of the cargo bed, nearest the tailgate. Toward the front,

  against the back wall of the truck cab, flanked by fifty-pound bags of

  fertilizer, snail bait, and potting soil, was a three-foot-high stack of

  folded burlap tarps in which Mr. Eulane bundled grass clippings that

  had to be hauled to the dump. She could use some tarps as a mattress,

  others as blankets, and bed down until morning, remaining hidden in the

  burlap and between the piles of fifty-pound bags all the way to

  Moonlight Cove.

  She climbed out of the truck, switched off the garage lights, then

  returned in the dark and carefully climbed aboard once more. She made a

  nest for herself in the tarps. The burlap was a little scratchy. After

  years of use it was permeated with the scent of new-mown grass, which

  was nice at first but quickly palled. At least a few layers of tarps

  trapped her body heat, and in minutes she was warm for the first time

  all night.

  - 151 And as the night deepened (she thought), young Chrissie, masking

  her telltale human odors in the scent of grass that saturated the

  burlap, cleverly concealed herself from the pursuing aliens-or maybe

  werewolves-whose sense of smell was almost as good as that of hounds.

  Sam took temporary refuge on the unlighted playground of Thomas

  Jefferson Elementary School on Palomino Street on the south side of

  town. He sat on one of the swings, holding the suspension chains with

  both hands, actually swinging a bit, while he considered his options.

  He could not leave Moonlight Cove by car. His rental was back at the

  motel, where he'd be apprehended if he showed his face. He could steal

  a car, but he remembered the exchange on the computer when Loman Watkins

  had ordered Danberry to establish a blockade on Ocean Avenue, between

  town and the interstate. They'd have sealed off every exit.

  He could go overland, sneaking from street to street, to the edge of the

  town limits, then through the woods and fields to the freeway. But

  Watkins had also said something about having ringed the entire community

  with sentries, to intercept the "Foster girl." Although Sam was

  confident of his instincts and survival abilities, he had not had

  experience in taking evasive action over open territory since his

  service in the war more than twenty years ago. If men were stationed

  around the town, waiting to intercept the girl, Sam was likely to walk

  straight into one or more of them.

  Though he was willing to risk getting caught, he must not fall into

  their hands until he had placed a call to the Bureau to report and to

  ask for emergency backup. If he became a statistic in this

  accidental-death capital of the world, the Bureau would send new men in

  his place, and ultimately the truth could come out-but perhaps too late.

  As he swung gently back and forth through the rapidly thinning fog,

  pushed mostly by the wind, he thought about those schedules he had seen

  on the VDT. Everyone in town would be "converted" in the next

  twenty-three hours. Although he had no idea what the hell people were

  being converted to, he didn't like the sound of it. And he sensed that

  once those schedules had been met, once everyone in town was converted,

  getting to the truth in Moonlight Cove would be no easier than cracking

  open an infinite series of laser-welded, titanium boxes nested in

  Chinese-puzzle fashion.

  Okay, so the first thing he had to do was get to a phone and call the

  Bureau. The phones in Moonlight Cove were compromised, but he did not

  care if the call was noted in a computer sweep or even recorded word for

  word. He just needed thirty seconds or a minute on the line with the
<
br />   office, and massive reinforcements would be on the way. Then he'd have

  to keep moving around, dodging cops for a couple of hours, until other

  agents arrived.

  He couldn't just walk up to a house and ask to use their phone because

  he didn't know whom he could trust. Morrie Stein had said that after

  being in town a day or two, you were overcome with the paranoid feeling

  that eyes were on you wherever you went and that Big Brother was always

  just an arm's reach away. Sam had attained that stage of paranoia in

  only a few hours and was rapidly moving beyond it to a state of constant

  tension and suspicion unlike anything he'd known since those jungle

  battlegrounds two decades ago.

  A pay phone. But not the one at the Shell station that he had used

  earlier. A wanted man was foolish to return to a place he was known to

  have frequented before.

  From his walks around town, he remembered one or maybe two other pay

  phones. He got up from the swing, slipped his hands in his jacket

  pockets, hunched his shoulders against the chilling wind, and started

  across the schoolyard toward the street beyond.

  He wondered about the Foster girl to whom Shaddack and Watkins referred

  on the computer link. Who was she? What had she seen? He suspected

  she was a key to understanding this - 153 conspiracy. Whatever she had

  witnessed might explain what they meant by "conversion."

  The walls appeared to be bleeding. Red ooze, as if seeping from the

  Sheetrock, tracked down the pale yellow paint in many rivulets.

  Standing in that second-floor room at Cove Lodge, Loman Watkins was

  repelled by the carnage . . . but also strangely excited.

  The male guest's body was sprawled near the disarranged bed, hideously