Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  door by which they entered, the first thing Sam noticed was that the

  town was silent. The shrill cries of the shape-changers no longer

  carried across the fogbound town.

  The keys were in the van's ignition.

  "You drive," he told Tessa.

  His wrist was swollen worse than ever. It was throbbing so hard that

  each pulse of pain reverberated through every fiber in him.

  He settled in the passenger seat.

  Chrissie curled in his lap, and he wrapped his arms around her. She was

  uncharacteristically silent. She was exhausted, on the verge of

  collapse, but Sam knew the cause of her silence was more profound than

  weariness.

  Tessa slammed her door and started the engine. She didn't have to be

  told where to go. On the drive to Harry's place, they discovered that

  the streets were littered with the dead, not the corpses of ordinary men

  an women but-as their headlights revealed beyond a doubt creatures out

  of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, twisted phantasmagorical forms. She

  drove slowly, maneuvering around them, and a couple of times she had to

  pull up on the sidewalk to get past a pack of them that had gone down

  together, also evidently felled by the same unseen force that had

  dropped the policeman back at Central.

  Shaddack's dead. His heartbeat isn't being broadcast Any more, so Sun

  is even now putting the final program into effect. . . .

  - 449 After a while Chrissie lowered her head against Sam's chest and

  would not look out the windshield.

  telling himself that the fallen creatures were phantasms Sam kept

  telling himself that no such things could have actually come into

  existence either by the application of the highest of high technology or

  by sorcery. He expected them to vanish every time a shroud of fog

  briefly obscured them, but when the fog moved off again, they were still

  huddled on the pavement, sidewalks, and lawns.

  Amid all that horror and ugliness, he could not believe do he nau ucen

  so foolish as to pass years of precious life in unwilling to see the

  beauty of the world. He'd been a fool. When the dawn came he would

  always thereafter be able to look upon a flower and appreciate the

  wonder of it, the unity that was beyond man's abilities of creation.

  "Tell me now?" Tessa asked as they pulled within a block of Harry's

  redwood house.

  "Tell you what?"

  "What you saw. Your near-death experience. What did you see on the

  Other Side that scared you so?"

  He laughed shakily.

  "I was an idiot."

  "Probably," she said.

  "Tell me and let me judge.

  "Well, I can't tell you exactly. It was more an understanding than a

  seeing, a spiritual rather than visual perception.

  "So what did you understand?"

  "That we go on from this world," he said.

  "That there's amother life for us on another plane, one life after

  another on an endless series of planes . . . or that we live again on

  this plane, reincarnate. I'm not sure which, but I felt it deeply, knew

  it when I reached the end of that tunnel and saw the light, that

  brilliant light.

  " She glanced at him.

  "And that's what terrified you?"

  "Yes.That we live again?"

  "Yes. Because I found life so bleak, you see, just a series of lies,

  just pain. I'd lost the ability to appreciate the beauty of life, the

  joy, so I didn't want to die and have to start in all Over again, not

  any sooner than absolutely necessary. At least in this life I'd become

  hardened, inured to the pain, which gave me an advantage over starting

  out as a child again in some new incarnation.

  "So your fourth reason for living wasn't technically a fear of death,"

  she said "I guess not."

  "It was a fear of having to live again."

  "Yes.And now?"

  He thought a moment. Chrissie stirred in his lap. He stroked her damp

  hair. At last he said, "Now, I'm eager to live again, 35 Harry heard

  noises downstairs-the elevator, then someone in

  the third-floor bedroom. He tensed, figuring two miracles would be one

  too many to hope for, but then he heard Sam calling to him from the

  bottom of the ladder.

  "Here, Sam! Safe! I'm okay."

  A moment later Sam climbed into the attic.

  "Tessa? Chrissie?" Harry asked anxiously.

  "They're downstairs. They're both all right."

  "Thank God." Harry let out a long breath, as if it had be pent up in

  him for hours.

  "Look at these brutes, Sam."

  "Rather not."

  "Maybe Chrissie was right about alien invaders after all."

  "Something stranger," Sam said.

  "What?" Harry said as Sam knelt beside him and pushed Worthy's mutated

  body off his legs.

  "Damned if I know," Sam said.

  "Not even sure I want to know.

  "We're entering an age when we make our own reality, are we? Science is

  giving us that ability, bit by bit. Used to be only madmen could do

  that."

  Sam said nothing.

  - 451 Sam said, "Maybe making our own reality isn't wise. Maybe natural

  order is the best one."

  maybe. On the other hand, the natural order could do with some

  perfecting here and there. I guess we've got to try. We just have to

  hope to God that the men who do the tinkering aren't Shaddack - You

  okay, Harry?"

  Pretty good, thanks." He smiled.

  "Except, of course, I'm a cripple. See this hulking thing that was

  Worthy? He was trying in to rip my throat out, I had no more bullets,

  he had his claws at my neck, and then he just fell dead, bang. Is that

  a miracle or what?"

  "There's Been a miracle all over town," Sam said.

  "They all seemed to have died when Shaddack died . . . linked

  somehow. Come on, let's get you down from here, out of this mess."

  "They killed Moose, Sam."

  "The hell they did. Who do you think Chrissie and Tessa are fussing

  over downstairs?"

  "He was stunned.

  "But I heard-Looks like maybe somebody kicked him in the head. He's got

  this bloody, skinned-up spot along one side of his skull.

  He's been knocked unconscious, but he doesn't seem to've suffered a

  concussion."

  36 Chrissie rode in the back of the van with Harry and Moose, with Sam's

  good arm around her and Moose's head in her lap. Slowly she began to

  feel better. She was not herself, no, and maybe she never would feel

  like her old self again, but she was better.

  They went to the park at the head of Ocean Avenue, at the end of town.

  Tessa drove right up over the curb, bouncing around, and parked on the

  grass.

  Sam opened the rear doors of the van so Chrissie and Harry could sit

  side by side in their blankets and watch him and Tessa at work.

  Braver than Chrissie would have been, Sam went into nearby residential

  areas, stepping over and around the things, and jump-started cars that

  were parked along the street. One by one, he and Tessa drove them into

  the park and arranged them in a huge ring, with the engines running and

  the headlights pointing in toward the middle of the
circle.

  Sam said that people would be coming in helicopters, even in the fog,

  and that the circle of light would mark a pro pad for them. With twenty

  cars, their headlights all on high beam, the inside of that ring was as

  bright as day and Chrissie liked the brightness.

  Even before the landing pad was fully outlined, a few people began to

  appear in the streets, live people, and not weird loo4 altogether

  normal, judging by appearances. Of course, Chrissie had learned that

  you could never confidently judge anyone by appearances because they

  could be anything inside; they could be something inside that would

  astonish even the editors of National Enquirer. You couldn't even be

  sure of your own parents.

  But she couldn't think about that.

  She didn't dare think about what had happened She knew that what little

  hope she still held for them was probably false hope, but she wanted to

  hold it a while longer, anyway.

  The few people who appeared in the streets began to gravitate toward the

  park while Tessa and Sam finished pulling the few cars into the ring.

  They all looked dazed. The closer t approached, the more uneasy

  Chrissie became.

  "They're all right," Harry assured her, cuddling her with his one good

  arm.

  "How can you be sure?"

  "You can see they're scared shitless. Oops. Maybe I shouldn't say

  shitless,' teach you bad language."

  " 'Shitless' is okay," she said.

  Moose made a mewling sound and shifted in her lap.

  He probably had the kind of headache that only karate experts really got

  from smashing bricks with their heads.

  - 453 Harry said, "look at them-they're scared plenty which probably

  tags them as our kind. You never saw one of the others acting scared,

  did you?"

  Chrissie thought about it a moment.

  "Yeah. I did. That cop who killed Shaddack at the school. He was

  scared. He had more fear in his eyes,

  a lot more, than I've ever seen in anybody or in these people are all

  right,

  anyway," Harry told her as the dazed stragglers approached the van.

  "They're some of the people who were scheduled to be converted before

  midnight, but they never got around to them. Must be others in their

  houses, baracaded in there, afraid to come out, think the whole world's

  crazy, probably think aliens are on the loose, like you Besides, if

  these people were more of those shape-changers, they wouldn't be

  staggering up to us so hesitantly. They'd at all, without fangs and

  stingers and claws, standing fully er"W.. We loped right up the hill,

  leaped in here, and eaten our noses, plus whatever other parts of us

  they consider to be delicacies."

  That explanation appealed to her, even made her smile thinly, - she

  relaxed a little.

  But just a second later, Moose jerked his burly head off her lap,

  yapped, and scrambled to his feet.

  Outside, the people approaching the van cried out in surprise and fear,

  and Chrissie heard Sam say, "What the blazing hell?"

  She threw aside her warm blankets and scrambled out of the back of the

  van to see what was happening.

  Behind her, alarmed in spite of the reassurances that he had just given

  her, Harry said, "What is it? What's wrong?"

  For a moment she wasn't sure what had startled everyone, but then she

  saw the animals. They swarmed through the park scores of mice, a few

  grungy rats, cats of all descriptions, half a dozen dogs, and maybe a

  couple of dozen squirrels that had scampered down from the trees. More

  mice and rats and cats were racing out of the mouths of the streets that

  intersected Ocean Avenue, pouring up that main drag, running pell-mell,

  frenzied, cutting through the park and angling over to the county road.

  They reminded her of something she'd read about once, she only had to

  stand there for a few seconds, watching them Pour by her, before she

  remembered lemmings. periodically, when the lemming population became

  too great in a particular area, the little creatures ran and ran,

  straight toward the sea, into the surf, and drowned themselves. All

  these animals were acting like lemmings, tearing off in the same

  direction letting nothing stand in their way, drawn by nothing apparel

  and therefore evidently following an inner compulsion.

  Moose jumped out of the van and joined the fleeing multitudes.

  "Moose, no!" she shouted.

  He stumbled, as if he had tripped over the cry that she flung after him.

  He looked back, then snapped his head toward the county road again, as

  if he had been jerked by an invisible chain. He took off at top speed.

  "Moose!"

  He stumbled once more and actually fell this time, rolled,

  and scrambled onto his feet.

  Somehow Chrissie knew that the image of lemmings was appropriate and

  that these animals were rushing to their graves, though away from the

  sea, toward some other and more hideous death that was part of all the

  rest that had happened in Moonlight Cove If she did not stop Moose, they

  would never see him again.

  The dog ran.

  She sprinted after him.

  She was bone weary, burnt out, aching in every muscle and joint, and

  afraid, but she found the strength and will to follow the Labrador

  because no one else seemed to understand and the other animals were

  running toward death. Tes. Sam, smart as they were, didn't get it.

  They were just staring gaping at the spectacle. So Chrissie tucked her

  arms against her sides, pumped her legs, and ran for all she was worth,

  picturing herself as Chrissie Foster, World's Youngest Olympic marathon

  Champion, pounding around the course, with thousands cheering her from

  the sidelines. ("Chrissie, Chrissie, Chrissie, Chrissie And as she ran,

  she screamed at Moose to stop because every time he heard his name, he

  faltered, hesitated and she gained a little ground on him. Then they we

  the park, and she nearly fell in the deep ditch along the county road,

  leaped it at the last instant, not because she was in time but because

  she had her eye on Moose and saw something. She landed perfectly, not

  losing a stride. The next time Moose faltered in response to his name,

  she was on him, grabbing at him, seizing his collar. He growled and

  nipped 1 - 455 and she said, "Moose," in such a way as to shame him.

  It was the only time he tried to bite her but, Lord, he strained

  mightily to pull loose. Hanging on to him took everything she had and

  he even dragged her, big as she was, about fifty or more feet along the

  road. His big paws scrabbled at the blacktop he struggled to follow the

  wave of small animals that wasof the night and fog.

  ing int By the time the dog calmed down enough to be willing to go back

  toward the park, Tessa and Sam joined Chrissie.

  "What's happening?" Sam asked.

  "They're all running to their deaths," Chrissie said.

  "I just couldn't let Moose go with them.

  "To their deaths? How do you know?"

  "I don't know. But . . . what else?"

  They stood on the dark and foggy road for a moment, looking after the

&nbs
p; animals, which had vanished into the blackness.

  Tessa said, "What else indeed?"

  37 the fog was thinning, but visibility was still no more than about a

  quarter of a mile.

  Standing with Tessa in the middle of the circle of cars, Sam heard the

  choppers shortly after ten o'clock, before he saw their lights. Because

  the mist distorted sound, he could not tell from which direction they

  were approaching, but he figured they were coming in from the south,

  along the coast, staying a couple of hundred yards out to sea, where

  there were no hills to worry about in the fog. Packed with the most

  sophisticated instruments, they could virtually fly blind. The pilots

  would be wearing night-vision goggles, coming in under five hundred feet

  in MPect of the poor weather.

  Because the FBI maintained tight relationships with the armed services,

  especially the Marines, Sam pretty much knew what to expect. This would

  be a Marine Reconnaissance force composed of the standard elements

  required by such a situation.