Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  did not have to use the guns for more than intimidation. In their only

  previous encounter with a regressive-Jordan Coombs on the fourth of

  September-they had not been prepared for its ferocity and had been

  forced to blow its head off to save their own lives. Shaddack had been

  left with only a carcass to examine. He'd been furious at the lost

  chance to delve into the psychology-and the functioning physiology-of

  one of these metamorphic psychopaths. A tranquilizer gun would be of

  little use, unfortunately, because regressives were New People gone bad,

  and all New People, regressive or not, had radically altered metabolisms

  that not only allowed for magically fast healing but for the rapid

  absorption, breakdown, and rejection of toxic substances like poison or

  tranquilizers. The only way to sedate a regressive would be to get him

  to agree to be put on a continuous IV drip, which wasn't very damn

  likely.

  Mike Peyser's house was a one-story bungalow with front and rear porches

  on the west and east sides respectively, nicely maintained, on an acre

  and a half, sheltered by a few huge sweet gums that had not yet lost

  their leaves. No lights shone at the windows.

  Loman sent one man to watch the north side, another the south, to

  prevent Peyser from escaping through a window. He stationed a third man

  at the foot of the front porch to cover that door. With the other two

  men-Sholnick and Penniworth-he circled to the rear of the place and

  quietly climbed the steps to the back porch.

  - Now that the fog had been blown away, visibility was good. But the

  huffing and swirreling wind was a white noise that blocked out other

  sounds they might need to hear while stalking Peyser.

  Penniworth stood against the wall of the house to the left of the door,

  and Sholnick stood to the right. Both carried semiautomatic 20-gauge

  shotguns.

  Loman tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped

  back.

  His deputies entered the dark kitchen, one after the other, their

  shotguns lowered and ready to fire, though they were aware that the

  objective was to take Peyser alive if at all possible. But they were

  not going to sacrifice themselves just to bring the living beast to

  Shaddack. A moment later one of them found a light switch.

  Carrying a 12-gauge of his own, Loman went into the house after them.

  Empty bowls, broken dishes, and dirty Tupperware containers were

  scattered on the floor, as were a few rigatoni red with tomato sauce,

  half of a meatball, eggshells, a chunk of pie crust, and other bits of

  food. One of the four wooden chairs from the breakfast set was lying on

  its side; another had been hammered to pieces against a counter top,

  cracking some of the ceramic tiles.

  Straight ahead, an archway led into a dining room. Some of the

  spill-through light from the kitchen vaguely illuminated the table and

  chairs in there.

  To the left, beside the refrigerator, was a door. Barry Shoinick opened

  it defensively. Shelves of canned goods flanked a landing. Stairs led

  down to the basement.

  "We'll check that later," Loman said softly.

  "After we've gone through the house."

  Sholnick soundlessly snatched a chair from the breakfast set and braced

  the door shut so nothing could come up from the cellar and creep in

  behind them after they went into other rooms.

  They stood for a moment, listening.

  Gusting wind slammed against the house. A window rattled. From the

  attic above came the creaking of rafters, and from higher still the

  muffled clatter of a loose cedar shingle on the roof.

  His deputies looked at Loman for guidance. Penniworth was only

  twenty-five, could pass for eighteen, and had a face so fresh and

  guileless that he looked more like a door-to-door peddler of religious

  tracts than a cop. Shoinick was ten years older and had a harder edge

  to him.

  Loman motioned them toward the dining room.

  They entered, turning the lights on as they went. The dining room was

  deserted, so they moved cautiously into the living room.

  Penniworth clicked a wall switch that turned on a chrome and brass lamp,

  which was one of the few items not broken or torn apart. The cushions

  on the sofa and chairs had been slashed; wads of foam padding, like

  clumps of a poisonous fungus, lay everywhere. Books had been pulled

  from shelves and ripped to pieces. A ceramic lamp, a couple of vases,

  and the glass top of a coffee table were shattered. The doors had been

  torn off the cabinet-style television set, and the screen had been

  smashed. Blind rage and savage strength had been at work here.

  The room smelled strongly of urine . . . and of something else less

  pungent and less familiar. It was, perhaps, the scent of the creature

  responsible for the wreckage. Part of that subtler stink was the sour

  odor of perspiration, but something stranger was in it, too, something

  that simultaneously turned Loman's stomach and tightened it with fear.

  To the left, a hallway led back to the bedrooms and baths. Loman kept

  it covered with his shotgun.

  The deputies went into the foyer, which was connected to the living room

  by a wide archway. A closet was on the right, just inside the front

  door. Sholnick stood in front of it, his 20-gauge lowered. From the

  side Penniworth jerked open the door. The closet contained only coats.

  The easy part of the search was behind them. Ahead lay the narrow hall

  with three doors off it, one half open and two ajar, dark rooms beyond.

  There was less space in which to maneuver, more places from which an

  assailant might attack.

  Night wind soughed in the eaves. It fluted across a rain gutter,

  producing a low, mournful note.

  Loman had never been the kind of leader who sent his men ahead into

  danger while he stayed back in a position of safety. Although he had

  shed pride and self-respect and a sense of duty along with most other

  Old People attitudes and emotions, duty was still a habit with him-in

  fact, less conscious than a habit, - 201 more like a reflex-and he

  operated as he would have done before the Change. He entered the hall

  first, where two doors waited on the left and one on the right. He

  moved swiftly to the end, to the second door on the left, which was half

  open; he kicked it inward, and in the light from the hall he saw a

  small, deserted bathroom before the door bounced off the wall and swung

  shut again.

  Penniworth took the first room on the left. He went in and found the

  light switch by the time Loman reached that threshold.

  it was a study with a desk, worktable, two chairs, cabinets, tall

  bookshelves crammed full of volumes with brightly colored spines, two

  computers. Loman moved in and covered the closet, where Penniworth

  warily rolled aside first one and then the other of two mirrored doors.

  Nothing.

  Barry Sholnick remained in the hallway, his 20-gauge leveled at the room

  they hadn't investigated. When Loman and Penniworth rejoined him,

  Sholnick shoved that door all the way open with the ba
rrel of his

  shotgun. As it swung wide, he jerked back, certain that something would

  fly at him from the darkness, though nothing did. He hesitated, then

  stepped into the doorway, fumbled with one hand for the light switch,

  found it, said, "Oh, my God," and stepped quickly back into the hall.

  Looking past his deputy into a large bedroom, Loman saw a hellish thing

  crouched on the floor and huddled against the far wall. it was a

  regressive, no doubt Peyser, but it did not look as much like the

  regressed Jordan Coombs as Loman expected. There were similarities,

  yes, but not many.

  Easing by Shoinick, Loman crossed the threshold.

  " Peys---9 The thing at the other end of the room blinked at him, moved

  its twisted mouth. In a voice that was whispery yet guttural, savage

  yet tortured as only the voice of an at least halfway intelligent

  creature could be, it said, Peyser, Peyser, Peyser, me, Peyser, me, me.

  The odor of urine was here, too, but that other scent was now the

  dominant one-sharp, musky.

  Loman moved farther into the room. Penniworth followed. Sholnick

  stayed at the doorway. Loman stopped twelve feet from Peyser, and

  Penniworth moved off to one side, his 20-gauge held ready.

  When they'd cornered Jordan Coombs in the shuttered movie theater back

  on September fourth, he had been in an altered state somewhat resembling

  a gorilla with a squat and powerful body. Mike Peyser, however, had a

  far leaner appearance, and as he crouched against the bedroom wall, his

  body looked more lupine than apelike. His hips were set at an angle to

  his spine, preventing him from standing or sitting completely erect, and

  his legs seemed too short in the thighs, too long in the calves. He was

  covered in thick hair but not so thick that it could be called a pelt.

  "Peyser, me, me, me .

  Coombs's face had been partly human, though mostly that of a higher

  primate, with a bony brow, flattened nose, and thrusting jaw to

  accommodate large, wickedly sharp teeth like those of a baboon. Mike

  Peyser's hideously transformed countenance had, instead, a hint of the

  wolf in it, or dog; his mouth and nose were drawn forward into a

  deformed snout. His massive brow was like that of an ape, though

  exaggerated, and in his bloodshot eyes, set in shadowy sockets deep

  beneath that bony ridge, was a look of anguish and terror that was

  entirely human.

  Raising one hand and pointing at Loman, Peyser said, help me, now, help,

  something wrong, wrong, wrong, help.

  Loman stared at that mutated hand with both fear and amazement,

  remembering how his own hand had begun to change when he had felt the

  call of regression at the Fosters' place earlier in the night. Elongated

  fingers. Large, rough knuckles. Fierce claws instead of fingernails.

  Human hands in shape and degree of dexterity, they were otherwise

  utterly alien.

  Shit, Loman thought, those hands, those hands. I've seen them in the

  movies, or at least on the TV, when we rented the cassette of The

  Howling. Rob Bottin. That was the name of the special effects artist

  who created the werewolf. He remembered it because Denny had been a nut

  about special effects before the Change. More than anything else these

  looked like the goddamn hands of the werewolf in The Howling!

  Which was too crazy to contemplate. Life imitating fantasy. The

  fantastic made flesh. As the twentieth century rushed into its last

  decade, scientific and technological progress had reached some divide,

  where mankind's dream of a better life often could be fulfilled but also

  where nightmares could be made real. Peyser - 203 was a bad, bad dream

  that had crawled out of the subconscious and become flesh, and now there

  was no escaping him by waking up; he would not disappear as did the

  monsters that haunted sleep.

  "How can I help you?" Loman asked warily.

  "Shoot him," Penniworth said.

  Loman responded sharply "Not" Peyser raised both of his tine-fingered

  hands and looked at them for a moment, as if seeing them for the first

  time. A groan issued from him, then a thin and miserable wail.

  ". . . change, can't change, can't, tried, want, need, want, want,

  can't, tried, can't . . .

  " From the doorway Sholnick said, "My God, he's stuck like that-he's

  trapped. I thought the regressives could change back at will - They

  can," Loman said.

  "He can't," Sholnick said.

  "That's what he said," Penniworth agreed, his voice quick and nervous.

  "He said he can't change."

  Loman said, "Maybe, maybe not. But the other regressives can change,

  because if they couldn't, then we'd have found all of them by now. They

  retreat from their altered state and then walk among us."

  Peyser seemed oblivious of them. He was staring at his hands, mewling

  in the back of his throat as if what he saw terrified him. Then the

  hands began to change.

  "You see," Loman said.

  Loman had never witnessed such a transformation; he was gripped by

  curiosity, wonder, and terror. The claws receded. The flesh was

  suddenly as malleable as soft wax It bulged, blistered, pulsed not with

  the rhythmic flow of blood in arteries but strangely, obscenely; it

  assumed new form, as if an invisible SCUlptor were at work on it. Loman

  heard bones crunching, splintering, as they, were broken down and

  remade; the flesh melted and resolidified with a sickening, wet sound.

  The hands became nearly human. Then the wrists and forearms began to

  lose some of their rawboned lupine quality. In Peyser's face were

  indications that the human spirit was struggling to banish the savage

  that was now in control; the features of a predator began to give way to

  a gentler and more civilized man. It was as if the monstrous Peyser was

  only a beast's reflection in a pool of water out of which the real and

  human Peyser was now rising.

  Though he was no scientist, no genius of microtechnology, only a

  policeman with a high-school education, Loman knew that this profound

  and rapid transformation could not be attributed solely to the New

  People's drastically improved metabolic .processes and ability to heal

  themselves. No matter what great 'tides of hormones, enzymes, and other

  biological chemicals Peyser's body could now produce at will, there was

  no way that bone and flesh could before-formed so dramatically in such a

  brief period of time. Over days or weeks, yes, but not in seconds.

  Surely it was physically impossible. Yet it was happening. Which meant

  that another force was at work in Mike Peyser, something more than

  biological processes, something mysterious and frightening.

  Suddenly the transformation halted. Loman could see that Peyser was

  straining toward full humanity, clenching his halfhuman yet still

  wolflike jaws together and grinding his teeth, a look of desperation and

  iron determination in his strange eyes, but to no avail. For a moment

  he trembled on the edge of human form. It seemed that if he could just

  push the transformation one step farther, just one small step, then he

  would cross a waters
hed after which the rest of the metamorphosis would

  take place almost automatically, without the strenuous exertion of will,

  as easily as a stream flowing downhill. But he could not reach that

  divide.

  Penniworth made a low, strangled sound, as if he were sharing Peyser's

  anguish.

  Loman glanced at his deputy. Penniworth's face glistened with a thin

  film of perspiration.

  Loman realized he was perspiring too; he felt a bead trickle down his

  left temple. The bungalow was warm-an oil furnace kept clicking on and

  off-but not warm enough to wring moisture from them. This was a cold

  sweat of fear, but more than that. He also felt a tightness in his

  chest, a thickening in his throat that made it hard to swallow, and he

  was breathing fast, as if he'd sprinted up a hundred steps Letting out a

  thin, agonized cry, Peyser began to regress again with the brittle

  splintering noise of bones being remade, the oily-wet sound of flesh

  being rent and re-knit, the savage creature - 205 reasserted itself, and

  in moments Peyser was as he had been when they had first seen him a

  hellish beast.

  Hellish, yes, and a beast, but enviably powerful and with an odd,

  terrible beauty of its own. The forward carriage of the large head was

  awkward by comparison to the set of the human head, and the thing lacked

  the sinuous inward curve of the human spine, yet it had a dark grace of

  its own.

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  Peyser huddled on the floor, head bowed.

  From the doorway, Sholnick finally said, "My God, he is trapped. "