Strange Highways

by Dean Koontz

  you’ll get out of this place alive? Look at you—your gun hand isn’t even trembling.”

  “I’ve had more frightening experiences than this,” Frank said tightly. “I’ve been through two tax audits.”

  Skagg did not laugh. He clearly needed a terrified reaction from an intended victim. Murder was not sufficiently satisfying; evidently he also required the complete humiliation and abasement of his prey.

  Well, you bastard, you’re not going to get what you need from me, Frank thought.

  He repeated, “What the hell are you?”

  Clacking the halves of his deadly pincers, slowly taking a step forward, Karl Skagg said, “Maybe I’m the spawn of Hell. Do you think that could be the explanation? Hmmmm?”

  “Stay back,” Frank warned.

  Skagg took another step toward him. “Am I a demon perhaps, risen from some sulfurous pit? Do you feel a certain coldness in your soul; do you sense the nearness of something satanic?”

  Frank bumped against one of the forklifts, stepped around the obstruction, and continued to retreat.

  Advancing, Skagg said, “Or am I something from another world, a creature alien to this one, conceived under a different moon, born under another sun?”

  As he spoke, his right eye receded into his skull, dwindled, vanished. The socket closed up as the surface of a pond would close around the hole made by a pebble; only smooth skin lay where the eye had been.

  “Alien? Is that something of which you could conceive?” Skagg pressed. “Have you sufficient wit to accept that I came to this world across an immense sea of space, carried on galactic tides?”

  Frank no longer wondered how Skagg had battered open the door of the warehouse; he would have made hornlike hammers of his hands—or ironlike pry bars. No doubt he had also slipped incredibly thin extensions of his fingertips into the alarm switch, deactivating it.

  The skin of Skagg’s left cheek dimpled, and a hole formed in it. The lost right eye flowered into existence within the hole, directly under his left eye. In two winks both eyes re-formed: They were no longer human but insectoid, bulging and multifaceted.

  As if changes were taking place in his throat too, Skagg’s voice lowered and became gravelly. “Demon, alien … or maybe I’m the result of some genetic experiment gone terribly wrong. Hmmmm? What do you think?”

  That laugh again. Frank hated that laugh.

  “What do you think?” Skagg insisted as he approached.

  Retreating, Frank said, “You’re probably none of those things. Like you said … you’re stranger and more interesting than that.”

  Both of Skagg’s hands had become pincers now. The metamorphosis continued up his muscular arms as his human form gave way to a more crustacean anatomy. The seams of his shirt sleeves split; then the shoulder seams also tore as the transformation continued into his upper body. Chitinous accretions altered the size and shape of his chest, and his shirt buttons popped loose.

  Though Frank knew he was wasting ammunition, he fired three shots as rapidly as he could squeeze the trigger. One round took Skagg in the stomach, one in the chest, one in the throat. Flesh tore, bones cracked, blood flew. The shapechanger staggered backward but did not go down.

  Frank saw the bullet holes and knew that a man would die instantly of those wounds. Skagg merely swayed. Even as he regained his balance, his flesh began to knit up again. In half a minute the wounds had vanished.

  With a wet cracking noise, Skagg’s skull swelled to twice its previous size, though the change had nothing to do with the revolver fire that the shapechanger had absorbed. His face seemed to implode, all the features collapsing inward, but almost at once a mass of tissue bulged outward and began to form queer insectoid features.

  Frank did not wait to see the grotesque details of Skagg’s new countenance. He fired two more rounds at the alarmingly plastic face, then ran, leaped over an electric cart, dodged around a big forklift, sprinted into an aisle between tall metal shelves, and tried not to feel pain in his side as he ran back through the long warehouse.

  When that morning had begun, dreary and rain-swept, with traffic moving through the city’s puddled streets at a crawl, with the palm trees dripping, with the buildings somber in the gray storm light, Frank had thought that the spirit of the day was going to be as soggy and grim as the weather—uneventful, boring, perhaps even depressing. Surprise. Instead the day had turned out to be exciting, interesting, even exhilarating. He just never knew what fate had in store for him next, which was what made life fun and worth living.

  Frank’s friends said that in spite of his hard shell, he had an appetite for life and fun. But that was only part of what they said about him.

  Skagg let out a bleat of rage that sounded utterly inhuman. In whatever shape he had settled upon, he was coming after Frank, and he was coming fast.

  5

  FRANK CLIMBED SWIFTLY AND UNHESITATINGLY IN SPITE OF THE PAIN IN his ribs. He heaved himself onto the top of another three-story-high wall of crates—machine tools, transmission gears, ball bearings—and rose to his feet.

  Six other crates, which were not part of the wall itself, were stacked at random points along the otherwise flat top of those wooden palisades. He pushed one box to the edge. According to the printing on the side, it was filled with twenty-four portable compact-disc players, the kind that was carried by antisocial young men who used the volume of their favorite unlistenable music as a weapon with which to assault innocent passersby on the street. He had no idea what the damn things were doing among the stacks of machine tools and bearings; but the box weighed only about two hundred pounds, and he was able to slide it.

  In the aisle below, something issued a shrill, piercing cry that was part rage, part challenge.

  Frank leaned out past the box that he had brought to the brink, squinted down, and saw that Karl Skagg had now assumed a repulsive insectoid form that was not quite that of a two-hundred-fifty-pound cockroach and not quite a praying mantis but something between.

  Suddenly the thing’s chitin-capped head swiveled. Its antennae quivered. Multifaceted, luminous amber eyes gazed up at Frank.

  He shoved the box over the edge. Unbalanced, he nearly plummeted with it. Wrenching himself back from the brink, he tottered and fell on his butt.

  The carton of portable compact-disc players met the floor with thunderous impact. Twenty-four arrogant punks with bad taste in music but with a strong desire for high-tech fidelity would be disappointed this Christmas.

  Frank crawled quickly to the edge on his hands and knees, looked down, and saw Skagg’s squirming insectoid form struggling free of the burst carton that had briefly pinned him to the floor. Getting to his feet, Frank began to shift his weight rapidly back and forth, rocking the heavy crate under him. Soon half the wall was rocking too, and the column of boxes beneath Frank swayed dangerously. He put more effort into his frantic dance of destruction, then jumped off the toppling column just as it began to tilt out of the wall. He landed on an adjacent crate that was also wobbling but more stable, and he fell to his hands and knees; several formidable splinters gouged deep into his palms, but at the same time he heard at least half a dozen heavy crates crashing into the aisle behind him, so his cry was one of triumph rather than pain.

  He turned and, flat on his belly this time, eased to the brink.

  On the floor below, Skagg could not be seen beneath the ton of debris. However, the shapechanger was not dead; his inhuman screams of rage attested to his survival. The wreckage was moving as Skagg pushed and clawed his way out of it.

  Satisfied that he had at least gained more time, Frank got up, ran the length of the wall of boxes, and descended at the end. He hurried into another part of the warehouse.

  Along his randomly chosen route, he passed the half-broken door by which he and Skagg had entered the building. Skagg had closed it and stacked several apparently heavy crates against it to prevent Frank from making an easy, silent exit. No doubt the shapechanger also had damage
d the controls for the electric garage doors at the front of the warehouse and had taken measures to block other exits.

  You needn’t have bothered, Frank thought.

  He was not going to cut and run. As a police officer, he was duty-bound to deal with Karl Skagg, for Skagg was an extreme threat to the peace and safety of the community. Frank believed strongly in duty and responsibility. And he was an ex-marine. And … well, though he would never have admitted as much, he enjoyed being called Hardshell, and he took pleasure in the reputation that went with the nickname; he would never fail to live up to that reputation.

  Besides, though he was beginning to tire of the game, he was still having fun.

  6

  IRON STEPS ALONG THE SOUTH WALL LED UP TO A HIGH BALCONY WITH A metal-grid floor. Off the balcony were four offices in which the warehouse’s managerial, secretarial, and clerical staffs worked.

  Large, sliding glass doors connected each office with the balcony, and through the doors Frank could see the darkish forms of desks, chairs, and business equipment. No lamps were on in any of the rooms, but each had outside windows that admitted the yellow glow of nearby streetlamps and the occasional flash of lightning.

  The sound of rain was loud, for the curved ceiling was only ten feet above. When thunder rolled through the night, it reverberated in that corrugated metal.

  At the midpoint of the balcony, Frank stood at the iron railing and looked across the immense storage room below. He could see into some aisles but by no means into all or even a majority. He saw the shadowy ranks of forklifts and electric carts among which he had encountered Skagg and where he had first discovered his adversary’s tremendous recuperative powers and talent for changing shape. He also could see part of the collapsed wall of crates where he had buried Skagg under machine tools, transmission gears, and CD players.

  Nothing moved.

  He drew his revolver and reloaded. Even if he fired six rounds pointblank into Skagg’s chest, he would succeed only in delaying the shapechanger’s attack for a minute or less while the bastard healed. A minute. Just about long enough to reload. He had more cartridges, although not an endless supply. The gun was useless, but he intended to play the game as long as possible, and the gun was definitely part of the game.

  He no longer allowed himself to feel the pain in his side. The showdown was approaching, and he could not afford the luxury of pain. He had to live up to his reputation and become Hardshell Shaw, had to blank out everything that might distract him from dealing with Skagg.

  He scanned the warehouse again.

  Nothing moved, but all the shadows in the enormous room, wall to wall, seemed to shimmer darkly with pent-up energy, as if they were alive and, though unmoving now, were prepared to spring at him if he turned his back on them.

  Lightning cast its nervous, dazzling reflection into the office behind Frank, and a bright reflection of the reflection flickered through the sliding glass doors onto the balcony. He realized that he was revealed by the sputtering, third-hand electric glow, but he did not move away from the railing to a less conspicuous position. He was not trying to hide from Karl Skagg. After all, the warehouse was their Samarra, and their appointment was drawing near.

  However, Frank thought confidently, Skagg is sure going to be surprised to discover that the role of Death in this Samarra belongs not to him but to me.

  Again lightning flashed, its image entering the warehouse not only by way of the offices behind Frank but through the narrow panes high in the eaves. Ghostly flurries of storm light fluttered across the curve of the metal ceiling, which was usually dark above the shaded security lamps. In those pulses of queer luminosity, Skagg was disclosed at the highest point of the ceiling, creeping along upside down, as if he were a spider with no need to be concerned about the law of gravity. Although Skagg was visible only briefly and not in much detail, he currently seemed to have cloaked himself in a form that was actually less like a spider than like a lizard.

  Holding his .38 in both hands, Frank waited for the storm’s next bright performance. During the dark intermission between acts, he estimated the distance Skagg would have traveled, slowly tracking the unseen enemy with his revolver. When again the eave windows glowed like lamps and the spectral light glimmered across the ceiling, his gunsights were aimed straight at the shapechanger. He fired three times and was certain that at least two rounds hit the target.

  Jolted by the shots, Skagg shrieked, lost his grip, and fell off the ceiling. But he did not drop stone-swift to the warehouse floor. Instead, healing and undergoing metamorphosis even as he fell, he relinquished his spider-lizard form, reverted to his human shape, but sprouted batlike wings that carried him, with a cold leathery flapping sound, through the air, across the railing, and onto the metal-grid balcony only twenty feet from Frank. His clothes—even his shoes—having split at the seams during one change or another, had fallen away from him, and he was naked.

  Now the wings transformed into arms, one of which Skagg raised to point at Frank. “You can’t escape me.”

  “I know, I know,” Frank said. “You’re like a cocktail-party bore descended from a leech.”

  The fingers of Skagg’s right hand abruptly telescoped out to a length of ten inches and hardened from flesh into solid bone. They tapered into knifelike points with edges as sharp as razor blades. At the base of each murderous fingertip was a barbed spur, the better to rip and tear.

  Frank squeezed off the last three shots in the revolver.

  Hit, Karl Skagg stumbled and fell backward on the balcony floor.

  Frank reloaded. Even as he snapped shut the cylinder, he saw that Skagg already had risen.

  With an ugly burst of maniacal laughter, Karl Skagg came forward. Both hands now terminated in long, bony, barbed claws. Apparently for the sheer pleasure of frightening his prey, Skagg exhibited the startling control he possessed over the form and function of his flesh. Five eyes opened at random points on his chest, and all fixed unblinking on Frank. A gaping mouth full of rapier teeth cracked open in Skagg’s belly, and a disgusting yellowish fluid dripped from the points of the upper fangs.

  Frank fired four shots that knocked Skagg down again, then fired the two remaining rounds into him as he lay on the balcony floor.

  While Frank reloaded with his last cartridges, Skagg rose again and approached.

  “Are you ready? Are you ready to die, you chickenshit cop?”

  “Not really. I only have one more car payment to make, and for once I’d sure like to know what it’s like to really own one of the damn things.” ,

  “In the end you’ll bleed like all the others.”

  “Will I?”

  “You’ll scream like all the others.”

  “If it’s always the same, don’t you get tired of it? Wouldn’t you like me to bleed and scream differently, just for some variety?”

  Skagg scuttled forward.

  Frank emptied the gun into him.

  Skagg went down, got up, and spewed forth a noxious stream of shrill laughter.

  Frank threw aside the empty revolver.

  The eyes and mouth vanished from the shapechanger’s chest and belly. In their place he sprouted four small, segmented, crablike arms with fingers that ended in pincers.

  Retreating along the metal-grid balcony, past glass office doors that flared with reflected lightning, Frank said, “You know what your trouble is, Skagg? You’re too flamboyant. You might be a lot more frightening if you were more subtle. All these changes, this frenzied discarding of one form after another—it’s just too dazzling. The mind has difficulty comprehending, so the result is more awesome than terrifying. Know what I mean?”

  If Skagg understood, he either disagreed or did not care, for he caused curved, bony spikes to burst forth from his chest, and he said, “I’ll pull you close and impale you, then suck the eyes out of your skull.” To fulfill the second half of his threat, he rearranged his face yet again, creating a protruding tubular orifice where his mouth had
been; fine, sharp teeth rimmed the edge of it, and it made a disgustingly wet, vacuuming sound.

  “That’s exactly what I mean by flamboyant,” Frank said as he backed up against the railing at the end of the balcony.

  Skagg was only ten feet away now.

  Regretting that the game was over, Frank released his body from the human pattern that he had imposed upon it. His bones dissolved. Fingernails, hair, internal organs, fat, muscle, and all other forms of tissue became as one, undifferentiated. His body was entirely amorphous. The darksome, jellied, throbbing mass flowed out of his suit through the bottoms of his sleeves.

  With a rustle, his clothes collapsed in a soft heap on the metal-grid floor of the balcony.

  Beside his empty suit, Frank reassumed his human form, standing naked before his would-be assailant. “That is the way to transform yourself without destroying your clothes in the process. Considering your impetuosity, I’m surprised you have any wardrobe left at all.”

  Shocked, Skagg abandoned his monstrous appearance and put on his human cloak. “You’re one of my kind!”

  “No,” Frank said. “One of your species, but certainly not one of your demented kind. I live in peace with ordinary men, as most of our people have for thousands of years. You, on the other hand, are a repulsive degenerate, mad with your own power, driven by the insane need to dominate.”

  “Live in peace with them?” Skagg said scornfully. “But they’re born to die, and we’re immortal. They’re weak, we’re strong. They’ve no purpose but to provide us with pleasure of one kind or another, to titillate us with their death agonies.”

  “On the contrary,” Frank said, “they’re valuable because their lives are a continuing reminder to us that existence without self-control is only chaos. I spend nearly all of my time locked within this human form, and with but rare exception I force myself to suffer human pain, to endure both the anguish and joy of human existence.”

  “You’re the one who’s mad.”

  Frank shook his head. “Through police work I serve humankind, and therefore my existence has meaning. They so terribly need us to help them along, you see.”

  “Need us?”

  As a roar of thunder was followed by a downpour more vigorous than at any previous moment of the storm, Frank searched for the words that might evoke understanding even in Skagg’s diseased mind. “The human condition is unspeakably sad. Think of it: Their bodies are fragile; their lives are brief, each like the sputtering decline of a short candle; measured against the age of the earth itself, their deepest relationships with friends and family are of the most transitory nature, mere incandescent flashes of love and kindness that do nothing to light the great, endless, dark, flowing river of time. Yet they seldom surrender to the cruelty of their condition, seldom lose faith in themselves. Their hopes are rarely fulfilled, but they go on anyway, struggling against the darkness. Their determined striving in the face of their mortality is the very definition of courage, the essence of nobility.”

  Skagg stared at him in silence for a long moment, then let loose another peal of insane laughter. “They’re prey, you fool. Toys for us to play with. Nothing more. What nonsense is this about our lives requiring purpose, struggle, self-control? Chaos isn’t to be feared or disparaged. Chaos is to be embraced. Chaos, beautiful chaos, is the base condition of the universe, where the titanic forces of stars and galaxies clash without purpose or meaning.”

  “Chaos can’t coexist with love,” Frank said. “Love is a force for stability and order.”

  “Then what need is there for love?” Skagg asked, and he spoke the final word of that sentence in a particularly scornful tone.

  Frank sighed. “Well, I have an appreciation of the need for love. I’ve been enlightened by my contact with the human species.”

  “Enlightened? `Corrupted’ is the better word.”

  Nodding, Frank said, “Of course, you would see it that way. The sad thing is that for love, in the defense of love, I’ll have to kill you.”

  Skagg was darkly amused. “Kill me? What sort of joke is this? You can’t kill me any more than I can kill you. We’re both immortal, you and I.”

  “You’re young,” Frank said. “Even by human standards, you’re only a young man, and by our standards you’re an infant. I’d say I’m at least three hundred years older than you.”

  “So?”

  “So there are talents we acquire only with great age.”

  “What talents?”

  “Tonight I’ve watched you flaunt your genetic plasticity. I’ve seen you assume many fantastic forms. But I haven’t seen you achieve the ultimate in cellular control.”

  “Which is?”

  “The complete breakdown into an amorphous mass that in spite of utter shapelessness remains a coherent being. The feat I performed when I shucked off my clothes. It requires iron control, because it takes you to the brink of chaos, where you must retain your identity while on the trembling edge of dissolution. You haven’t acquired that degree of control, for if total amorphousness had been in your power, you’d have tried to terrify me with an exhibition of it. But your shapechanging is so energetic that it’s frenzied. You transform yourself at a whim, assuming whatever shape momentarily seizes your fancy, with a childish lack of discipline.”

  “So what?” Skagg remained unafraid, blissfully sure of himself, arrogant. “Your greater skill in no way changes the fact that I’m immortal, invincible. For me, all wounds heal regardless of how bad they may be. Poisons flush from my system without effect. No degree of heat, no arctic cold, no explosion less violent than a nuclear blast, no acid can shorten my life by so much as one second.”

  “But you’re a living creature with a metabolic system,” Frank said, “and by