Dean Koontz - (1989)
Page 40
aliens as anyone else.
On the other hand . . . would a bunch of aliens have an enlightened
view of disabled people? Wasn't that a bit much to expect? After all,
they were aliens. Their values weren't supposed to be the same as those
of human beings. If they went around planting seeds-or spoors or slimy
baby slugs or what - 295 expected to treat disabled people with the
proper respect any In than they would help old ladies to cross the
street.
Harry Talbot.
The more she thought about him, the more certain Chrissie became that he
had thus far been spared the horrible attention of the aliens.
After she called him Dr. Doom, he sprayed the Jenn-Air griddle with
Pam, so the pancakes wouldn't stick.
She turned on the oven and put a plate in there, to which she could
transfer the cakes to keep them warm as she made them.
Then, in a tone of voice that immediately clued him to the fact that she
was bent on persuading him to reconsider his bleak assessment of life,
she said, "Tell me-Can't you leave it alone yet?"
"No.
He sighed.
She said, "If you're this damned glum, why not .
"Kill myself'.)Why not?"
He laughed bitterly.
"On the drive up here from San Francisco, I played a little game with
myself-counted the reasons that life was worth living. I came up with
just four, but I guess they're enough, because I'm still hanging
around."
"What were they?"
"One-good Mexican food."
"I'll go along with that."
"Two-Guinness Stout."
"I like Heineken Dark myself."
"It's okay, but it's not a reason to live. Guinness is a reason ever-in
people, and if they ate people, surely they couldn't be to live."
"What's number three?"
"Goldie Hawn. You know Goldie Hawn?"
"Nope. Maybe I don't want to, 'cause maybe I'd be disappointed. I'm
talking about her screen image, the idealized Goldie Hawn."
"She's your dream girl, huh?"
"More than that. She . . . hell I don't know . . . she seems
untouched by life, undamaged, vital and happy and innocent and n.
" 'Think you'll ever meet hersYou've got to be kidding."
She said, "You know what?"
"What?"
"If you did meet Goldie Hawn, if she walked up to you at a party and
said something funny, something cute, and giggled in that way she has,
you wouldn't even recognize her."
"Oh, I'd recognize her, all right."
"No, you wouldn't. You'd be so busy brooding about how unfair, unjust,
hard, cruel, bleak, dismal, and stupid life is that you would not seize
the moment. You wouldn't even recognize the moment. You'd be too
shrouded in a haze of gloom to see who she was. Now, what's your fourth
reason for living?"
He hesitated.
"Fear of death."
She blinked at him.
"I don't understand. If life's so awful, why is death to be feared? I
underwent a near-death experience. I was in surgery, having a bullet
taken out of my chest, and I almost bought the farm. Rose out of my
body, drifted up to the ceiling, watched the surgeons for a while, then
found myself rushing faster and faster down a dark tunnel toward this
dazzling light-the whole screwy scenario.
She was impressed and intrigued. Her clear blue eyes were wide with
interest.
"And?"
"I saw what lies beyond."
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"Damned serious."
"You're telling me that you know there's an afterlife?"
"Yes. A God?"
"Yes.
Astonished, she said, "But if you know, there's a God and that we move
on from this world, then you know life has purpose, meaning,So?
,Well, it's doubt about the purpose of life that lies at the root of
most people's spells of gloom and depression. Most of us, if we'd
experienced what you'd experienced well, we'd never worry again. We'd
have the strength to deal with any adversity, knowing there was meaning
to it and a life beyond. So what's wrong with you, mister? Why didn't
you lighten up after that?
Are you just a bullheaded dweeb or what?"
" Dweeb? Answer the question."
The elevator kicked in and ascended from the first-floor hall.
"Harry's coming," Sam said.
"Answer the question," she repeated.
"Let's just say that what I saw didn't give me hope. It scared the hell
out of me."
"Well? Don't keep me hanging. What'd you see on the Other Side? If I
tell you, you'll think I'm crazy."
"You've got nothing to lose. I already think you're crazy."
He sighed and shook his head and wished that he'd never brought it up.
How had she gotten him to open himself so completely?
The elevator reached the third floor and halted.
Tessa stepped away from the kitchen counter, moving closer to him, and
said, "Tell me what you saw, dammit."
"You won't understand."
"What am I-a moron?Oh, you'd understand what I saw, but you wouldn't
understand what it meant to me."
"Do you understand what it meant to you?
"Oh, yes," he said solemnly.
"Are you going to tell me willingly, or do I have to take a meat fork
from that rack and torture it out of you? The elevator had started down
from the third floor.
He glanced toward the hall.
"I really don't want to discuss it."
"You don't, huh?"
" No.
" You saw God but you don't want to discuss it."
a "That's right."
"Most guys who see God-that's the only thing they ever want to discuss.
Most guys who see God-they form whole religions based on the one meeting
with Him, and they tell millions of people about it."
"But l-Fact is, according to. what I've read, most people who undergo a
near-death experience are changed forever by it. And always for the
better. If they were pessimists, they become optimists. If they were
atheists, they become believers. Their values change, they learn to
love life for itself, they're goddamned radiant! But not you. Oh, no,
you become even more dour, even more grim, even more bleak."
The elevator reached the ground floor and fell silent.
"Harry's coming," Sam said.
"Tell me what you saw."
"Maybe I can tell you," he said, surprised to find that he was actually
willing to discuss it with her at the right time, in the right place.
"Maybe you. But later."
Moose padded into the kitchen, panting and grinning at them, and Harry
rolled through the doorway a moment later.
Good morning," Harry said chipperly. m with a gen Did you steep well?"
Tessa asked, favoring him nine smile of affection that Sam envied.
Harry said, "Soundly, but not as soundly as the dead-thank God.
"
"Pancakes?" Tessa asked him.
'Stacks, please.
'Eggs?
"Dozens."
"Toast? Loaves.
"I like a man with an appetite."
Harry said, "I was running all night, so I'm famished."
"Running?"
"In my dreams. Chased by Boogeymen
."
While Harry got a package of dog food from under one of t - 299 counters
and filled Moose's dish in the corner, Tessa went to the griddle,
sprayed it with Pam again, told Sam that he was in charge of the eggs,
and started to ladle out the first of the pancakes from the bowl of
batter. After a moment she said, "Patti ca La Belle, 'Stir It Up,' "
and began to sing and dance in place again.
"Hey," Harry said, "I can give you music if you want music.
" He rolled to a compact under-the-counter-mounted radio that neither
Tessa nor Sam had noticed, clicked it on, and moved the tuner across the
dial until he came to a station playing "I Heard it Through the
Grapevine" by Gladys Knight and the Pips.
"All right," Tessa said, and she began to sway and pump and grind with
such enthusiasm that Sam couldn't figure out how she poured the pancake
batter onto the griddle in such neat puddles.
Harry laughed and turned his motorized wheelchair in circles, as if
dancing with her.
Sam said, "Don't you people know that the world is coming to an end
around us?"
They ignored him, which he supposed was what he deserved.
rain and mist and By a roundabout route, cloaking herself in the
whatever shadows she could find, Chrissie reached the al ley to the east
of Conquistador. She entered Talbot's backyard through a gate in a
redwood fence and scurried from one clump of shrubbery to another, twice
nearly stepping in dog poop-Moose was an amazing dog, but not without
faults-until she reached the steps to the back porch.
She heard music playing inside. It was an oldie, from the days when her
parents had been teenagers. And in fact it had been one of their
favorites. Though Chrissie didn't remember the title, o she did recall
the name of the group-Junior Walker Stars. and the AR.
Figuring that the music, combined with the drumming rain, would cover
any sounds she made, she crept up the steps onto the redwood porch and,
in a crouch, moved to the nearest window. She hunkered below the sill
for a while, listening to the people in there. They were talking, often
laughing, sometimes singing, along with the songs on the radio.
They didn't sound like aliens. They sounded pretty much like ordinary
people.
Were aliens likely to enjoy the music of Stevie Wonder and the Four Tops
and the Pointer Sisters? Hardly. To human ears, alien music probably
sounded like knights in armor playing bag.
pipes while simultaneously falling down a lo-g set of stain amidst a
pack of baying hounds. More like Twisted Sister than like the Pointer
Sisters. Eventually she rose up just far enough to peer over the sill
through a gap in the curtains. She saw Mr. Talbot in his wheel.
chair, Moose, and a strange man and woman. Mr. Talbot was beating time
with his good hand on the arm of his wheelchair, and Moose was wagging
his tail vigorously if out of synch with the music. The other man was
using a spatula to scoop eggs out of a couple of frying pans and shift
them onto plates, glowering, at the woman now and then as he did so,
maybe not approving of the way she abandoned herself to the song, but
still tapping his right foot to the music. The . woman was making
flapjacks and transferring them to a warming platter in the oven, and as
she worked she shimmied and swayed and dipped; she had good moves.
Chrissie crouched down again and thought about what she had seen.
Nothing about their behavior was particularly odd if they were people,
but if they were aliens they surely wouldn't be bopping to the radio
while they made breakfast. Chrissie had a real hard time believing that
aliens-like the thing masquerading as Father Castelli-could have either
a sense of humor or rhythm Surely, all that aliens cared about was
taking possession of new hosts and finding new recipes for cooking
tender children.
Nevertheless she decided to wait until she had a chance to watch them
eating. From what she'd heard her mother and Tucker say in the meadow
last night, and from what she had seen at - 301 breakfast with the
Father Castelli creature, she believed that the aliens were ravenous,
each with the appetite of half a dozen men. if Harry Talbot and his
guests didn't make absolute hogs of themselves when they sat down to
eat, she could probably trust them.
Loman had stayed at Peyser's house, supervising the cleanup and
overseeing the transfer of the regressives' bodies to Callan's hearse.
He was afraid to let his men handle it alone, for fear that the sight of
the mutated bodies or the smell of blood would induce them to seek
altered states of their own. He knew that all of them-not least of all
himself-were walking a taut wire over an abyss. For the same reason, he
followed the hearse to the funeral home and stayed with Callan and his
assistant until Peyser's and Sholnick's bodies were fed into the
white-hot flames of the crematorium.
He checked on the progress of the search for Booker, the Lockland woman,
and Chrissie Foster, and he made a few changes in the pattern of the
patrols. He was in the office when the report came in from Castelli,
and he went directly to the rectory at Our Lady of Mercy to hear
firsthand how the girl could have slipped away from them. They were
full of excuses, Mostly fame. He suspected they had regressed in order
to toy with the girl, just for the thrill of it, and while playing with
her had unintentionally given her a chance to escape. Of course they
would not admit to regression.
Loman increased the patrols in the immediate area, but there was no sign
of the girl. She had gone to ground. Still, if she had come into town
instead of heading out to the freeway, they were More likely to catch
her and convert her before the day was done.
At nine o'clock he returned to his house on Iceberry Way to get
breakfast. Since he'd nearly degenerated in Peyser's bloodspattered
bedroom, his clothes had felt loose on him. He had lost a few pounds as
his metabolic processes had consumed his own flesh to generate the
tremendous energy needed to regress and to resist regression.
The house was dark and silent. Denny was no doubt upstairs, in front of
his computer, where he had been last night. Grace had left for work at
Thomas Jefferson, where she was a teacher; she had to keep up the
pretense of an ordinary life until everyone in Moonlight Cove had been
converted.
At the moment no children under twelve had been put through the Change,
partly because of difficulties New Wave technicians had had in
determining the correct dosage for younger converts, Those problems had
been solved, and tonight the kids would be brought into the fold.
In the kitchen Loman stood for a moment, listening to the rain on the
windows and the ticking of the clock.
At the sink he drew a glass of water. He drank it, another, then two
more. He was dehydrated after the ordeal at Peyser's.
The refrigerator was chock full of five-pound hams, roast beef, a
half-eaten turkey, a plate of porkchops, chicken breast
s, sausages, and
packages of bologna and dried beef. The accelerated metabolisms of the
New People required a diet high in protein. Besides, they had a craving
for meat.
He took a loaf of pumpernickel from the breadbox and sat down with that,
the roast beef, the ham, and a jar of mustard." He stayed at the table
for a while, cutting or ripping thick hunks of meat, wrapping them in
mustard-slathered bread, and tearing off large bites with his teeth.
Food offered him less subtle pleasure than when he'd been an Old Person;
now the smell and taste of it raised in him an animal excitement, a
thrill of greed and gluttony. He was to some degree repelled by the way
he tore at his food and swallowed before he'd finished chewing it
properly, but every effort that he made to restrain himself soon gave
way to even more feverish consumption. He slipped into a half-trance,
hypnotized by the rhythm of chewing and swallowing. At one point he
became clearheaded enough to realize he had gotten the chicken breasts