either calling to one another or challenging the young moon that floated
above the wrung-out clouds.
Loman hurried to the back of the patrol car and opened the trunk. His
unit, like every other, carried a 20-gauge riot gun for which he'd never
had use in peaceable Moonlight Cove. But New Wave, . which had
generously equipped the force, did not stint equipment even if it was
perceived as unnecessary. He pulled the gun from its clip mounting on
the back wall of the trunk.
him, Amberlay said, "You telling me they've regressed? All of them,
everyone on the force, except you and me?" Just listen," Loman repeated
as he leaned the 20-gauge against the bumper.
But that's crazy!" Amberlay insisted.
"Jesus, God, you mean this whole thing is coming down on us, the whole
damn thing?
" Loman grabbed a box of shells that was in the right wheelwell of the
trunk, tore off the lid.
"Don't you feel the yearning, "No!" Amberlay said too quickly.
"No, I don't feel it, I don't feel anything.
"I feel it, " Loman said, putting five rounds in the 20-guage in the
chamber, four in the magazine.
"Oh, Paul, I sure as hell feel it. I want to tear off my clothes and
change, change, and just run, be free, go with them, hunt and kill and
run with "Not me, no, never," Amberlay said.
"Liar," Loman said. He brought up the loaded gun and fired at Amberly
point-blank, blowing his head off.
He couldn't have trusted the young officer, couldn't have his back on
him, not with the urge to regress so strong and those voices in the
night singing their siren songs. As he stuffed more shells into his
pockets, he heard a shotgun from inside the school.
He wondered if that gun was in the hands of Booker or Shaddack
struggling to control his raging terror, fighting off AM- easy in the
movies and on the boob tube when, in fact, the gun jumped in your hands
as if it was alive.
He knew better now, and he was going to brace himself when he fired,
spread his legs and brace himself, so his shots wouldn't be blowing
holes in the ceiling or bouncing off the floor any more and He would
nail them cold the next time he got a whack at them and they'd be sorry
for making him chase them, for not lying down and being dead when he
wanted them to be dead.
The door out of the band room had led into a hall that served to
soundproofed practice rooms, where student musicians could play fine
music for hours at a time without disturbing anyone. at the end of that
narrow corridor, Tessa pushed through another door and coaxed just
enough out of the flashlight to see they were in a chamber as large as
the band room. It also had tiered platforms rising to the back. A
student-drawn one wall, complete with winged angels singing, prothis the
home of The World's Best Chorus.
Chrissie and Sam followed her into the room, a shotgun in the distance.
It sounded as if it was outside. But even when the door to the corridor
of practice rooms swung shut behind them, another shotgun discharged,
closer than the first, probably beck at the door to the band room. Then
a second blast from the same location.
Just like in the band room, two more doors led out of the chamber, but
the first one she tried was a dead end; it led into the chorus
director's office.
They dashed to the other exit, beyond which they found a door
illuminated only by a red, twenty-four-hour-a-day emergency
sign-STAIRS-immediately to their right. NOt EXIT, Tommy Shaddack heard
another shotgun, but he didn't think much about that because, after all,
they were in a war now. You could hear what a war it was by just
stepping out in the street and listening to the shrieks of the
combatants echoing down through the hills to the sea. He was more
focused on gettingShaddack hideous and powerful urge to shed his human
form, Loman went inside to find out.
Booker, the woman, and the girl he'd seen in the hall, because, he knew
the woman must be the Lockland bitch and the girl must be Chrissie
Foster, though he couldn't figure how they had joined up.
War. So he handled it the way soldiers did in the good movies kicking
the door open, firing a round into the room before entering. No one
screamed. He guessed he hadn't hit anyone he fired again, and still no
one screamed, so he figured they were already gone from there. He
crossed the threshold, fumbled for the light switch, found it, and
discovered he was in the deserted band room.
Evidently they had left by one of the two other doors, when he saw that,
he was angry, really angry. The only time in his life that he had fired
a gun was in Phoenix, when he shot the Indian with his father's
revolver, and that had been close-up, where he could not miss. But
still he had expected he would be good with a gun. After all, Jeez, he
had watched a lot of war movies, cowboy movies, cop shows on television,
it didn't look hard, not hard at all, you just pointed and pulled the
trigger. But it hadn't been that easy, Tommy was angry, furious,
because they shouldn't 21 jUSt STAIRS, which meant this was an interior
well with no ac to the outside.
"Take her up," Sam urged Tessa.
" But- Up! They're probably coming in the ground floor by level
entrance, anyway.
"What're you-Gonna make a little stand here," he said.
A door crashed open and a shotgun exploded back in the chorus room.
"Go!" Sam whispered.
23 Harry heard the closet door open in the bedroom below.
The attic was cold, but he was streaming sweat as if in a sauna. Maybe
he hadn't needed the second sweater.
Go away, he thought. Go away.
Then he thought, Hell, no, come on, come and get it.
think I want to live forever?
24 Sam went down on one knee in the hall outside the chorus room, taking
a stable position to compensate somewhat for his right wrist. He held
the swinging door open six inches - 435 the gun thrust through the gap,
the .38 gripped in his right hand, his left hand clamped around his
right wrist.
He could see the guy across the room, silhouetted in the lights from the
band-room corridor behind him. He was Tall. Sam Couldn't see his face,
But something about him struck a chord of familiarity.
The gunman didn't see Sam. He was only being cautious, laying down a
spray of pellets before he entered. He pulled open the door. The click
was loud in the silent room. He pumped the gun. Clackety-clack. No
ammo.
That meant a change in Sam's plans. He surged to his feet through the
swinging door, back into the chorus room, no longer able to wait for the
guy to switch on the overhead lights or step farther across the
threshold, because now was the time to get him, before he reloaded.
Firing as he went, Sam squeezed off the four remaining rounds in the
.38, trying his damnedest to make every slug count. On the second or
third shot, the guy in the doorway squealed, God, he squealed like a
kid, his voice high-pitched and quaverous, as he thr
ew himself back into
the chorus-room corridor, out of sight.
Sam kept moving, fumbling in his jacket pocket with his left hand,
grabbing at the spare cartridges, while with his right hand he snapped
open the revolver's cylinder and shook out the expended brass casings.
When he reached the closed door to the inner hall that connected chorus
room to band room, the door through which the tall man had vanished, he
pressed his back to the wall and jammed fresh rounds into the Smith
Wesson, snapped the cylinder shut.
He kicked the door open and looked into the hall, where the overhead
fluorescents were lit.
It was deserted.
No blood on the floor.
Damn. His right hand was half numb. He could feel his wrist swelling
tight under the bandage, which was now soaked with fresh blood. At the
rate his shooting was deteriorating, he was going to have to walk right
up to the bastard and ask him to bite On the muzzle in order to make the
shot count.
The doors to the ten practice rooms, five on each side, were closed. The
door at the far end, where the hall led into the band room, was open,
and the lights were on there. The tall guy could be there or in any of
the ten practice rooms. But wherever he was, he had probably slipped at
least a couple of shells into the shotgun, so the moment to pursue him
had passed.
Sam backed up, letting the door between the hall and chorus room slip
shut. Even as he let go of it, as it was swinging back into place, he
glimpsed the tall man stepping through the open door of the band room
about forty feet away.
It was Shaddack himself.
The shotgun boomed.
The soundproofed door, gliding shut at the crucial moment was thick
enough to stop the pellets.
Sam turned and ran across the chorus room, into the hall, and up the
stairs, where he had sent Tessa and Chrissie.
When he reached the top flight, he found them waiting on him in the
upper hall, in the soft red glow of another stair sign.
Below, Shaddack entered the stairwell.
Sam turned, stepped back onto the landing and descended the first step.
He leaned over the railing, looked down, glimpsed part of his pursuer,
and squeezed off two shots.
Shaddack squealed like a boy again. He ducked back against the wall,
away from the open center of the well, where he could not be seen.
Sam didn't know whether he'd scored a hit or not. Maybe, What he did
know was that Shaddack wasn't mortally wounded.
he was still coming, easing up step by step, st, outer wall. And when
that geek reached the landing he would take the turn suddenly, firing
the shots at whoever waited above.
Silently Sam retreated from the upper landing, into the hall once more.
The scarlet light of the STAIRS sign fell on Chrissie and Tessa's faces
. . . an illusion of blood.
25 O k. A scraping sound.
-,Clink-scrape. Clink-scrape.
Harry knew what he was hearing. Clothes hangers sliding on the rod.
could they have known? Hell, maybe they had smelled him here. He was
sweating like a horse, after all. Maybe the conversion improved their
senses.
The clinking and scraping stopped.
A moment later he heard them lifting the closet rod out of its braces so
they could lower the trap.
26 The fading flashlight kept winking out, and Tessa had to shake it,
jiggling the batteries together, to get a few more seconds of weak and
fluttery light from it.
They had stepped out of the hall, into what proved to be a chemistry lab
with black marble lab tables and steel sinks and stools. Nowhere to
hide.
Itley checked the windows, hoping there might be a roof just under them.
No. A two-story drop to a concrete walk.
At the end of the chemistry lab was a door, through which they Passed
into a ten-foot-square storage room full of chemicals in scaled tins and
bottles, some labeled with skulls and crossbones, some with DANGER in
bright red letters. She supposed there were ways to use the contents of
that closet as a weapon but they didn't have time to inventory the
contents, looking for interesting substances to mix together. Besides,
she'd never been a great science student, recalled nothing whatsoever of
chemistry classes, and would probably blow herself up with the first
bottle she opened. From the expression on Sam's face, Tessa knew that
he saw no more hope there than she did.
A rear door in the storage closet opened into a second room that seemed
to double as a biology classroom. Anatomy clu hung on one wall. The
room offered no better place to hide than had the previous lab.
Holding Chrissie close against her side, Tessa looked at it and
whispered, "Now what? Wait here and hope he can't find us . . . or
keep moving?"
"I think it's safer to keep moving," Sam said.
"Easier to be cornered if we sit still."
She nodded agreement.
He eased past her and Chrissie, leading the way between the lab benches,
toward the door to the hall.
From behind them, either in the dark chemical-storage annex or in the
unlighted chemistry lab beyond it, came a soft but distinct clink.
Sam halted, motioned Tessa and Chrissie ahead of him, and turned to
cover the exit from the storage room.
With Chrissie at her side, Tessa stepped to the hall dol turned the knob
slowly, quietly, and eased the door outward.
Shaddack came from the darkness in the corridor, into the pale and
inconstant pulse of light from her flash, and rammed the barrel of his
shotgun into her stomach.
"You're gonna be sorry now," he said excitedly.
27 They pulled the trapdoor down. A shaft of light from the closet
struck the rafters, but it didn't illuminate the far corner in which
Harry sat with his useless legs splayed out in front of him. His bad
hand was curled in his lap, while his good hand clasped the pistol.
His heart was hammering harder and faster than it had in twenty years,
since the battlefields of Southeast Asia. His stomach was churning. His
throat was so tight he could barely swallow. He was dizzy with fear.
But, God in heaven, he sure felt alive.
With a squeak and clatter, they unfolded the ladder.
28 Shaddack shoved the muzzle into her belly and almost blew her guts
out, almost wasted her, before he realized how beautiful she was, and
then he didn't want to kill her any more, not right away, not until he'd
made her do some things with things to him. She'd have to do whatever
he he told her to do, or he could just the wall, yeah, she was his, and
she better that, or she'd be sorry, he'd make her sorry.
Then he saw the girl beside her, a pretty little girl, only or twelve,
and she excited him even more. He could have her first, and then the
older one, have them any which way he wanted them, make them do things,
all sorts of things, and then kill them, that was his right, they
couldn't deny him, not him.
Because all the power was in his hands now, he had seen the moonhawk
&n
bsp; three times.
He pushed through the open door, into the room, keeping the gun in the
woman's belly, and she backed up to accommodate him, pulling the girl
with her. Booker was behind them, a SI tled expression on his face.
Tommy Shaddack said, "Drop the gun and back away from it, or I'll make
raspberry jelly out of this bitch, I swear I will, you can't move fast
enough to stop me." Booker hesitated.
"Drop it!" Tommy Shaddack insisted.
The agent let go of the revolver and sidestepped away from it.
Keeping the muzzle of the Remington hard against the woman's belly, he
made her edge around until she could reach the light switch and click on
the fluorescents. The room leap of shadows.
"Okay, now, all of you," Tommy Shaddack said, "sit on those three
stools, by that lab bench, yeah, there, and don't do anything funny."
He stepped back from the woman and covered them all with the shotgun.
They looked scared, and that made him laugh.
Tommy was getting excited now, really excited, because he had decided he
would kill Booker in front of the woman and the girl, not swift and
clean but slowly, the first shot in the legs, letting him lie on the
floor and wriggle a while, the second shot in the gut but not from such
Dean Koontz - (1989) Page 57
