“Except this Larry Bollinger didn’t see it that way,” Tina said bitterly. She was having difficulty wrapping Danny securely in the blanket because he wouldn’t let go of her. With smiles, murmured assurances, and kisses planted on his frail hands, she finally managed to persuade him to tuck both of his arms close to his body.
“Bollinger snapped. He just went right off the rails,” Dombey said, obviously embarrassed that one of his colleagues would lose control of himself under those circumstances. Dombey began to pace as he talked. “Bollinger knew how fast Wuhan-400 claims its victims, and he just panicked. Flipped out. Apparently, he convinced himself he could run away from the infection. God knows, that’s exactly what he tried to do. He didn’t turn in an alarm. He walked out of the lab, went to his quarters, dressed in outdoor clothes, and left the complex. He wasn’t scheduled for R and R, and on the spur of the moment he couldn’t think of an excuse to sign out one of the Range Rovers, so he tried to escape on foot. He told the guards he was going snowshoeing for a couple of hours. That’s something a lot of us do during the winter. It’s good exercise, and it gets you out of this hole in the ground for a while. Anyway, Bollinger wasn’t interested in exercise. He tucked the snowshoes under his arm and took off down the mountain road, the same one I presume you came in on. Before he got to the guard shack at the upper gate, he climbed onto the ridge above, used the snowshoes to circle the guard, returned to the road, and threw the snowshoes away. Security eventually found them. Bollinger was probably at the bottom gate two and a half hours after he walked out of the door here, three hours after he was infected. That was just about the time that another researcher walked into his lab, saw the cultures of Wuhan-400 broken open on the floor, and set off the alarm. Meanwhile, in spite of the razor wire, Bollinger climbed over the fence. Then he made his way to the road that serves the wildlife research center. He started out of the forest, toward the county lane, which is about five miles from the turnoff to the labs, and after only three miles—”
“He ran into Mr. Jaborski and the scouts,” Elliot said.
“And by then he was able to pass the disease on to them,” Tina said as she finished bundling Danny into the blanket.
“Yeah,” Dombey said. “He must have reached the scouts five or five and a half hours after he was infected. By then he was worn out. He’d used up most of his physical reserves getting out of the lab reservation, and he was also beginning to feel some of the early symptoms of Wuhan-400. Dizziness. Mild nausea. The scoutmaster had parked the expedition’s minibus on a lay-by about a mile and a half into the woods, and he and his assistant and the kids had walked in another half-mile before they encountered Larry Bollinger. They were just about to move off the road, into the trees, so they would be away from any sign of civilization when they set up camp for their first night in the wilderness. When Bollinger discovered they had a vehicle, he tried to persuade them to drive him all the way into Reno. When they were reluctant, he made up a story about a friend being stranded in the mountains with a broken leg. Jaborski didn’t believe Bollinger’s story for a minute, but he finally offered to take him to the wildlife center where a rescue effort could be mounted. That wasn’t good enough for Bollinger, and he got hysterical. Both Jaborski and the other scout leader decided they might have a dangerous character on their hands. That was when the security team arrived. Bollinger tried to run from them. Then he tried to tear open one of the security men’s decontamination suits. They were forced to shoot him.”
“The spacemen,” Danny said.
Everyone stared at him.
He huddled in his yellow blanket on the bed, and the memory made him shiver. “The spacemen came and took us away.”
“Yeah,” Dombey said. “They probably did look a little bit like spacemen in their decontamination suits. They brought everyone here and put them in isolation. One day later all of them were dead… except Danny.” Dombey sighed. “Well… you know most of the rest.”
Chapter Forty
The helicopter continued to follow the frozen river north, through the snow-swept valley.
The ghostly, slightly luminous winter landscape made George Alexander think of graveyards. He had an affinity for cemeteries. He liked to take long, leisurely walks among the tombstones. For as long as he could remember, he had been fascinated with death, with the mechanics and the meaning of it, and he had longed to know what it was like on the other side — without, of course, wishing to commit himself to a one-way journey there. He didn’t want to die; he only wanted to know. Each time that he personally killed someone, he felt as if he were establishing another link to the world beyond this one; and he hoped, once he had made enough of those linkages, that he would be rewarded with a vision from the other side. One day maybe he would be standing in a graveyard, before the tombstone of one of his victims, and the person he had killed would reach out to him from beyond and let him see, in some vivid clairvoyant fashion, exactly what death was like. And then he would know.
“Not long now,” Jack Morgan said.
Alexander peered anxiously through the sheeting snow into which the chopper moved like a blind man running full-steam into endless darkness. He touched the gun that he carried in a shoulder holster, and he thought of Christina Evans.
To Kurt Hensen, Alexander said, “Kill Stryker on sight. We don’t need him for anything. But don’t hurt the woman. I want to question her. She’s going to tell me who the traitor is. She’s going to tell me who helped her get into the labs even if I have to break her fingers one at a time to make her open up.”
* * *
In the isolation chamber, when Dombey finished speaking, Tina said, “Danny looks so awful. Even though he doesn’t have the disease anymore, will he be all right?”
“I think so,” Dombey said. “He just needs to be fattened up. He couldn’t keep anything in his stomach because recently they’ve been reinfecting him, testing him to destruction, like I said. But once he’s out of here, he should put weight on fast. There is one thing…”
Tina stiffened at the note of worry in Dombey’s voice. “What? What one thing?”
“Since all these reinfections, he’s developed a spot on the parietal lobe of the brain.”
Tina felt ill. “No.”
“But apparently it isn’t life-threatening,” Dombey said quickly. “As far as we can determine, it’s not a tumor. Neither a malignant nor a benign tumor. At least it doesn’t have any of the characteristics of a tumor. It isn’t scar tissue either. And not a blood clot.”
“Then what is it?” Elliot asked.
Dombey pushed one hand through his thick, curly hair. “The current analysis says the new growth is consistent with the structure of normal brain tissue. Which doesn’t make sense. But we’ve checked our data a hundred times, and we can’t find anything wrong with that diagnosis. Except it’s impossible. What we’re seeing on the X-rays isn’t within our experience. So when you get him out of here, take him to a brain specialist. Take him to a dozen specialists until someone can tell you what’s wrong with him. There doesn’t appear to be anything life-threatening about the parietal spot, but you sure should keep a watch on it.”
Tina met Elliot’s eyes, and she knew that the same thought was running through both their minds. Could this spot on Danny’s brain have anything to do with the boy’s psychic power? Were his latent psychic abilities brought to the surface as a direct result of the man-made virus with which he had been repeatedly infected? Crazy — but it didn’t seem any more unlikely than that he had fallen victim to Project Pandora in the first place. And as far as Tina could see, it was the only thing that explained Danny’s phenomenal new powers.
Apparently afraid that she would voice her thoughts and alert Dombey to the incredible truth of the situation, Elliot consulted his wristwatch and said, “We ought to get out of here.”
“When you leave,” Dombey said, “you should take some files on Danny’s case. They’re on the table closest to the outer door — that black
box full of diskettes. They’ll help support your story when you go to the press with it. And for God’s sake, splash it all over the newspapers as fast as you can. As long as you’re the only ones outside of here who know what happened, you’re marked people.”
“We’re painfully aware of that,” Elliot acknowledged.
Tina said, “Elliot, you’ll have to carry Danny. He can’t walk. He’s not too heavy for me, worn down as he is, but he’s still an awkward bundle.”
Elliot gave her the pistol and started toward the bed.
“Could you do me a favor first?” Dombey asked.
“What’s that?”
“Let’s move Dr. Zachariah in here and take the gag out of his mouth. Then you tie me up and gag me, leave me in the outer room. I’m going to make them believe he was the one who cooperated with you. In fact, when you tell your story to the press, maybe you could slant it that way.”
Tina shook her head, puzzled. “But after everything you said to Zachariah about this place being run by megalomaniacs, and after you’ve made it so clear you don’t agree with everything that goes on here, why do you want to stay?”
“The hermit’s life agrees with me, and the pay is good,” Dombey said. “And if I don’t stay here, if I walk away and get a job at a civilian research center, that’ll be just one less rational voice in this place. There are a lot of people here who have some sense of social responsibility about this work. If they all left, they’d just be turning the place over to men like Tamaguchi and Zachariah, and there wouldn’t be anyone around to balance things. What sort of research do you think they might do then?”
“But once our story breaks in the papers,” Tina said, “they’ll probably just shut this place down.”
“No way,” Dombey said. “Because the work has to be done. The balance of power with totalitarian states like China has to be maintained. They might pretend to close us down, but they won’t. Tamaguchi and some of his closest aides will be fired. There’ll be a big shake-up, and that’ll be good. If I can make them think that Zachariah was the one who spilled the secrets to you, if I can protect my position here, maybe I’ll be promoted and have more influence.” He smiled. “At the very least, I’ll get more pay.”
“All right,” Elliot said. “We’ll do what you want. But we’ve got to be fast about it.”
They moved Zachariah into the isolation chamber and took the gag out of his mouth. He strained at his ropes and cursed Elliot. Then he cursed Tina and Danny and Dombey. When they took Danny out of the small room, they couldn’t hear Zachariah’s shouted invectives through the airtight steel door.
As Elliot used the last of the rope to tie Dombey, the scientist said, “Satisfy my curiosity.”
“About what?”
“Who told you your son was here? Who let you into the labs?”
Tina blinked. She couldn’t think what to say.
“Okay, okay,” Dombey said. “You don’t want to rat on whoever it was. But just tell me one thing. Was it one of the security people, or was it someone on the medical staff? I’d like to think it was a doctor, one of my own, who finally did the right thing.”
Tina looked at Elliot.
Elliot shook his head: no.
She agreed that it might not be wise to let anyone know what powers Danny had acquired. The world would regard him as a freak, and everyone would want to gawk at him, put him on display. And for sure, if the people in this installation got the idea that Danny’s newfound psychic abilities were a result of the parietal spot caused by his repeated exposure to Wuhan-400, they would want to test him, poke and probe at him. No, she wouldn’t tell anyone what Danny could do. Not yet. Not until she and Elliot figured out what effect that revelation would have on the boy’s life.
“It was someone on the medical staff,” Elliot lied. “It was a doctor who let us in here.”
“Good,” Dombey said. “I’m glad to hear it. I wish I’d had enough guts to do it a long time ago.”
Elliot worked a wadded handkerchief into Dombey’s mouth.
Tina opened the outer airtight door.
Elliot picked up Danny. “You hardly weigh a thing, kid. We’ll have to take you straight to McDonald’s and pack you full of burgers and fries.”
Danny smiled weakly at him.
Holding the pistol, Tina led the way into the hall. In the room near the elevators, people were still talking and laughing, but no one stepped into the corridor.
Danny opened the high-security elevator and made the cab rise once they were in it. His forehead was furrowed, as if he were concentrating, but that was the only indication that he had anything to do with the elevator’s movement.
The hallways were deserted on the top floor.
In the guardroom, the older of the two security men was still bound and gagged in his chair. He watched them with anger and fear.
Tina, Elliot, and Danny went through the vestibule and stepped into the cold night. Snow lashed them.
Over the howling of the wind, another sound arose, and Tina needed a few seconds to identify it.
A helicopter.
She squinted up into the snow-shipped night and saw the chopper coming over the rise at the west end of the plateau. What madman would take a helicopter out in this weather?
“The Explorer!” Elliot shouted. “Hurry!”
They ran to the Explorer, where Tina took Danny out of Elliot’s arms and slid him into the backseat. She got in after him.
Elliot climbed behind the wheel and fumbled with the keys. The engine wouldn’t turn over immediately.
The chopper swooped toward them.
“Who’s in the helicopter?” Danny asked, staring at it through the side window of the Explorer.
“I don’t know,” Tina said. “But they’re not good people, baby. They’re like the monster in the comic book. The one you sent me pictures of in my dream. They don’t want us to get you out of this place.”
Danny stared at the oncoming chopper, and lines appeared in his forehead again.
The Explorer’s engine suddenly turned over.
“Thank God!” Elliot said.
But the lines didn’t fade from Danny’s forehead.
Tina realized what the boy was going to do, and she said, “Danny, wait!”
* * *
Leaning forward to view the Explorer through the bubble window of the chopper, George Alexander said, “Put us down right in front of them, Jack.”
“Will do,” Morgan said.
To Hensen, who had the submachine gun, Alexander said, “Like I told you, waste Stryker right away, but not the woman.”
Abruptly the chopper soared. It had been only fifteen or twenty feet above the pavement, but it rapidly climbed forty, fifty, sixty feet.
Alexander said, “What’s happening?”
“The stick,” Morgan said. An edge of fear sharpened his voice, fear that hadn’t been audible throughout the entire, nightmarish trip through the mountains. “Can’t control the damn thing. It’s frozen up.”
Eighty, ninety, a hundred feet they soared, soared straight up into the night.
Then the engine cut out.
“What the hell?” Morgan said.
Hensen screamed.
Alexander watched death rushing up at him and knew his curiosity about the other side would shortly be satisfied.
* * *
As they drove off the plateau, around the burning wreckage of the helicopter, Danny said, “They were bad people. It’s all right, Mom. They were real bad people.”
To everything there is a season, Tina reminded herself. A time to kill and a time to heal.
She held Danny close, and she stared into his dark eyes, and she wasn’t able to comfort herself with those words from the Bible. Danny’s eyes held too much pain, too much knowledge. He was still her sweet boy — yet he was changed. She thought about the future. She wondered what lay ahead for them.
AFTERWORD BY DEAN KOONTZ
The book you now hold in your hands —
assuming that you are not quadridexterous and holding it with your feet — was the second book I wrote under the pen name Leigh Nichols. I explained my secret life as Leigh in the afterword to the new edition of Shadowfires. Therefore, I will devote what space I am given here to this novel itself and to the savage, brutal, cruel, maddening, insane, inane, nonsensical, stupid, bewildering, toxic, bloodcurdling, lip-chafing, toenail-curling experience of working with a major television network to adapt this novel, and three others, as part of a program that would have been called The Dean Koontz Theater or Dean Koontz Presents or possibly Here’s Dean! or even Koontzapalooza. The producer, the studio, and the network never could agree on a title, and no one liked my idea—Kickass Koontz Cinema—and probably even realized I was not serious in proposing it.
The Eyes of Darkness is a modest little thriller about a woman, Tina Evans, who lost her child, Danny, when he was in an accident on a trip with his scouting troop. A year later, Tina has reason to believe the accident did not occur as reported — that her son is alive, is being held against his will, and is in desperate need of her. This was one of my early attempts to write a cross-genre novel mixing action, suspense, romance, and a touch of the paranormal. Although The Eyes of Darkness does not have the intensity, the humor, the depth of characterization, the complexity of theme, or the pace of later novels, readers have responded positively to it over the years, most likely because the device of a lost child — and the dedicated mother who will do anything to find out what happened to her little boy — strikes a primal chord in all of us.
The Eyes of Darkness Page 28
