He stood up without untying her. "No," he said. "It's the boy.
How could I have forgotten the boy?" Perplexed, he turned away from the bed and started for the door.
"Don't hurt him!" she cried. "For God's sake, leave him alone!"
Leland did not hear her. He was able to fully perceive and think about only one thing at a time. Right now, that was the boy. He had to find the boy and kill him, eliminate this last obstacle between himself and Courtney.
He left the master bedroom, went down the hall to the stairs.
When Alex heard the glass shattering downstairs, he thought that Colin must have brought help. But then he remembered that the front door was standing open. Why would anyone not use it?
He knew, at once, that Colin had not gone for help. Instead, the boy had taken the pistol from the glove compartment, the pistol Doyle had not remembered at the right time. Colin had distrusted the open front door and had gone around to the back of the house to find a way in. He was coming to the rescue all by himself. It was a very brave thing to do.
it would also get him killed.
Doyle pushed away from the wall just as Courtney screamed, and he nearly tripped over his own feet in surprise. She was alive!
Of course, he had been telling himself that she would be okay-but he had not believed it. He had expected to find a corpse.
He turned toward the door to the hall just in time to see the madman reach the top of the stairs and start down.
in the master bedroom down the hall, Courtney screamed again.
"Don't hurt him!
Don't kill my brother too!"
Too? Then she believes that I'm already dead, Doyle thought.
"Courtney!" He did not care if the man downstairs heard him.
"I'm okay. Colin will be okay."
"Alex? Is that you?"
"It's me," he said. Holding the crude weapon tightly in his good hand, he went across the landing and down the steps, hurrying after the madman.
Twenty-six Colin tried the kitchen door. it was locked. He did not want to waste time trying all the windows, and he was not about to walk through the front entrance which had so completely swallowed Alex. He hesitated only a second, then reversed the pistol, held it by the barrel, and used the butt to smash in one of the large panes of glass in the door.
He thought he ought to be able to get inside quickly enough to find a good hiding place before the madman reached the kitchen. Then he would come out of concealment and shoot the man in the back.
But he could not find the latch. He thrust one arm through the empty windowpane, scratching it on the remaining shards of glass, and he felt around on the inside of the door. But the lock mechanism escaped his fingers. There did not seem to be a lock switch.
He looked at the other end of the well-lighted kitchen, at the door the man would come through.
Precious seconds passed while he fumbled noisily, desperately for the unseen latch.
And, suddenly, he found it. He cried out, twisted it, and pushed the door open, stumbling into the kitchen with the .32 held out in front of him.
Before he could look for a place to hide, George Leland came through the other door. Colin recognized the man at once, though he had not seen him in two years. But the recognition did not freeze him.
He pointed the gun at Leland's chest and pulled the trigger.
The recoil numbed his arms clear up to the elbows.
Leland moved in like an express train, roaring wordlessly. He swung one open hand and sent the boy sprawling on the shiny tile floor.
Colin's pistol clattered among the table and chair legs, out of reach. And the boy knew, as he watched the gun spin away, that his first and only shot had missed the mark.
Alex was halfway through the dining room, closing in on the stranger's unprotected back while the man was still unaware of him, when the shot exploded in the kitchen. He heard the madman shout, saw him leap forward. He heard Colin squeal and something overturn an instant later.
But he did not know who had shot whom.
Running the last few feet into the kitchen, he raised the spiked board over his head.
On the floor by the refrigerator, Colin was trying to get to his feet. Two yards away, the stranger raised his pistol . . .
Crying out in terror and a sort of savage glee, Alex brought his club down, swung it with all his strength. The three spikes raked the back of the other man's skull.
The stranger howled, dropped his gun, grabbed at his head with both hands. He staggered two steps and was brought up by the heavy butcher-block table.
Alex struck again. The spikes pierced the man's hands this time, briefly nailing them to his skull before Doyle jerked the board away.
The madman came around to face his attacker, his bleeding hands thrown up to ward off the next blow.
Alex met the wide blue eyes, and he thought that there was definitely more than a trace of sanity in them now, something clean and rational. The madness had temporarily fallen away.
Alex did not care about that. He swung the club again. The spikes grazed the stranger's face, furrowed the flesh, drew three red streaks across one cheek.
"Please," the man said, leaning back over the table, crossing his arms in front of his face. "Please! Please stop!"
But Doyle knew that if he stopped now, the insanity might well return to those eyes quickly and with a vengeance. The big man might lunge forward and regain the advantage. And then he would show no mercy.
Doyle thought of what the sonofabitch might have done to Courtney, what he would have done to Colin. He struck again. And again. He struck harder and faster each time, ripping the nails into the man's arms, neck, the sides of his skull . . . Doyle whimpered, painfully aware that he was now the maniac and that the man on the table had become the right man. But he went on anyway, slashing and tearing with all of his strength.
The stranger fell to the floor and cracked his head on the tiles. He looked sadly up at Doyle and tried to say something.
Blood ran from a hundred cuts and, suddenly, it poured out of his nose like water from a set of faucets. He died.
For a full minute Alex stood over the corpse, staring down at his handiwork. He was numb. He felt nothing: not anger, shame, pity, sorrow, not anything at all. It did not seem right to have killed a man and feel no remorse.
Waves of pain spread out again from his wounded shoulder. He realized that he had been using both hands to hold the club, that he had put both of his shoulders into each brutal swing of it. He dropped the board on top of the corpse and turned away from both of them.
Colin was standing in the corner by the refrigerator. He was sheet-white and trembling. He looked smaller and skinnier than ever.
"Are you okay?" Doyle asked.
The boy looked at him, unable to speak.
"Colin."
The boy only shook.
Doyle took a step toward him.
Suddenly crying out, Colin ran forward, flung himself against Doyle, hugged the man around the waist. He was sobbing hysterically. He looked up, eyes glistening behind the thick glasses, and said, "You won't ever leave us, will you?"
"Leave you? Of course not," Doyle said. He grabbed the boy under the arms, lifted him and held him tightly.
"Say you won't leave us!" Colin demanded. Tears streamed down his face. He was shaking so hard that he could not be settled no matter how firmly Doyle held him. "Say it! Say it!"
"I'll never leave you," Doyle said, squeezing him even tighter.
"Oh, God, Colin, the two of you are all I have now. I've lost everything else now."
The boy cried against his neck.
Carrying Colin, he went out of the kitchen and through the dining room, out to the main steps. "We'll go see how Courtney is," he told the boy, hoping his voice would calm him.
it did not.
They were halfway up the steps toward the second floor when the boy began to shake worse than ever in Doyle's arms. "Are you telling the truth? You
really won't leave us?"
"Truth." Doyle kissed the boy's tearstained nose.
"Not ever?"
"Never. I told you . . . The two of you are all that's left.
I've just lost everything else."
Holding the boy against his chest as he went to see about Courtney, Alex thought that one of the things he had lost was the ability to cry as freely as a child. And right now, more than anything, he wanted to cry.
Dean Koontz - (1973) Page 16
