Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  . or he was one of the regressives himself and is off now . . . doing

  whatever they do after a kill, maybe baying at the goddamn moon."

  With growing dismay and agitation, Shaddack listened to the report.

  Perched on the edge of his chair, Watkins finished, blinked, and said,

  "These regressives scare the hell out of me."

  "They're disturbing," Shaddack agreed.

  On the night of September fourth, they had cornered a regressive, Jordan

  Coombs, in the movie theater on main street. Coombs had been a

  maintenance man at New Wave. That night, however, he had been more ape

  than man, although actually neither, but something so strange and savage

  that no single word could describe him. The term "regressive" was only

  adequate, Shaddack had discovered, if you never came face to face with

  one of the beasts. Because once you'd seen one close up, "regressive"

  insufficiently conveyed the horror of the thing, and in fact all words

  failed. Their attempt to take Coombs alive had failed, too, for he had

  proved too aggressive and powerful to be subdued; to save themselves,

  they'd had to blow his head off.

  Now Watkins said, "They're more than disturbing. Much more than just

  that. They're .. . . psychotic."

  "I know they're psychotic," Shaddack said impatiently.

  "I've named their condition myself metamorphic-related psychosis."

  - 169 "They enjoy killing."

  Thomas Shaddack frowned. He had not foreseen the problem of the

  regressives, and he refused to believe that they constituted more than a

  minor anomaly in the otherwise beneficial conversion of the people of

  Moonlight Cove.

  "Yes, all right, they enjoy killing, and in their regressed state

  they're designed for it, but we've only a few of them to identify and

  eliminate. Statistically, they're an insignificant percentage of those

  we've put through the Change."

  "Maybe not so insignificant," Watkins said hesitantly, unable to meet

  Shaddack's eyes, a reluctant bearer of bad tidings.

  "Judging by all the bloody wreckage lately, I'd guess that among those

  nineteen hundred converted as of this morning, there were fifty or sixty

  of these regressives out there."

  "Ridiculous!"

  To admit regressives existed in large numbers, Shaddack would have to

  consider the possibility that his research was flawed, that he had

  rushed his discoveries out of the laboratory and into the field with too

  little consideration of the potential for disaster, and that his

  enthusiastic application of the Moonhawk Project's revolutionary

  discoveries to the people of Moonlight Cove was a tragic mistake. He

  could admit nothing of the sort.

  He had yearned all his life for the nth degree of power that was now

  nearly within his reach, and he was psychologically incapable of

  retreating from the course he had set. Since puberty he had denied

  himself certain pleasures because, had he acted upon those needs, he

  would have been hunted down by the law and made to pay a heavy price.

  All those years of denial had created a tremendous internal pressure

  that he desperately needed to relieve. He had sublimated his antisocial

  desires in his work, focused his energies into socially acceptable

  endeavors-which had, ironically, resulted in discoveries that would make

  him immune to authority and therefore free to indulge his longsuppressed

  urges without fear of censure or punishment.

  Besides, not just psychologically but also in practical terms, he had

  gone too far to turn back. He had brought something revolutionary into

  the world. Because of him, nineteen hundred New People walked the

  earth, as different from other men and women as Cro-Magnons had been

  different from their more primitive Neanderthal ancestors. He did not

  have the ability to undo what he had done any more than other scientists

  and technicians could uninvent the wheel or atomic bomb.

  Watkins shook his head.

  "I'm sorry . . . but I don't think it's ridiculous ;, at all. Fifty

  or sixty regressives. Or more. Maybe a lot more.

  "You'll need proof to convince me of that. You'll have to name them for

  me. Are you any closer to identifying even one of them-other than

  Quinn?"

  "Alex and Sharon Foster, I think. And maybe even your own man, Tucker."

  "Impossible."

  Watkins described what he had found at the Foster place-and the cries he

  had heard in the distant woods.

  Reluctantly Shaddack considered the possibility that Tucker was one of

  those degenerates. He was disturbed by the likelihood that his control

  among his inner circle was not as absolute as he had thought. If he

  could not be sure of those men closest to him, how could he be certain

  of his ability to control the masses?

  "Maybe the Fosters are regressives, though I doubt it's true of Tucker.

  But even if Tucker's one of them, that means you've found four. Not

  fifty or sixty. Just four. Whore all these others you imagine are out

  there?"

  Loman Watkins stared at the fog, which pressed in ever-changing patterns

  against the glass walls of the tower room.

  "Sir, I'm afraid it isn't easy. I mean . . . think about it...If the

  state or federal authorities learned what you've done, if they could

  understand what you've done and really believe it, and if then they

  wanted to prevent us from bringing the Change to everyone beyond

  Moonlight Cove, they'd have one hell of a time stopping us, wouldn't

  they? After all, those of us who've been converted . . . we walk

  undetected among ordinary people. We seem like them, no different,

  unchanged."

  "So?"

  "Well . . . that's the same problem we have with the regressives.

  They're New People like us, but the thing that makes them different from

  us, the rottenness in them, is impossible to see; they're as

  indistinguishable from us as we are from the unchanged population of Old

  People."

  Shaddack's iron erection had softened. Impatient with Watkins's

  negativism, he rose from his armchair and moved to the - 171 nearest of

  the big windows. Standing with his hands fisted in the pockets of his

  sweat-suit jacket, he stared at the vague reflection of his own long,

  lupine face, which was ghostlike in its transparency. He met his own

  gaze, as well, then quickly looked through the reflection of his eye

  sockets and past the glass into the darkness beyond, where vagrant sea

  breezes worked the loom of night to bring forth a fragile fabric of fog.

  He kept his back to Watkins, for he did not want the man to see that he

  was concerned, and he avoided the glass-caught image of his own eyes

  because he did not want to admit to himself that his concern might be

  marbled with veins of fear.

  He insisted on moving to the chairs, so they could not be seen as

  easily from the street. Tessa was leery about sitting beside him. He

  said that he was operating undercover and therefore carried no Bureau

  ID, but he showed her everything else in his wallet driver's license,

  credit cards, library card, video rental card, photos of his son and his

  late
wife, a coupon for a free chocolate-chip cookie at any Mrs. Fields

  store, a picture of Goldie Hawn torn from a magazine. Would a homicidal

  maniac carry a cookie coupon? In a while, as he took her back through

  her story of the massacre at Cove Lodge and picked relentlessly at the

  details, making sure that she told him everything and that he understood

  all of it, she began to trust him. If he was only pretending to be an

  agent, his pretense would not have been so elaborate or sustained.

  "You didn't actually see anybody murdered?"

  "They were killed," she insisted.

  "You wouldn't have any doubt if you'd heard their screams. I've stood

  in a mob of human monsters in Northern Ireland and seen them beat men to

  death. I was filming an industrial in a steel mill once, when there was

  a spill of molten metal that splattered all over workers' bodies, their

  faces. I've been with Miskito Indians in the Central American jungles

  when they were hit with antipersonnel bombs-millions of little bits of

  sharp steel, bodies pierced by a thousand needles-and I've heard their

  screams. I know what death sounds like. And this was the worst I've

  ever heard."

  He stared at her for a long time. Then he said, "You look deceptively

  "Cute?"

  "Yes.

  "Therefore innocent? Therefore naive?"

  "Yes.My curse.

  "And an advantage sometimes?"

  "Sometimes," she acknowledged.

  "Listen, you know something, so tell me What's going on in this town?"

  "Something's happening to the people here."

  "What?

  "I don't know. They're not interested in movies, for one thing. The

  theater closed. And they're not interested in luxury goods, fine gifts,

  that sort of thing, because those stores have all closed too. They no

  longer get a kick from champagne . . .

  " He smiled thinly. "The barrooms are all going out of business. The

  only thing they seem to be interested in is food. And killing."

  Still standing at a tower-room window, Tom Shaddack said, "All right,

  Loman, here's what we'll do. Everyone at New Wave has been converted,

  so I'll assign a hundred of them to you, to augment the police force.

  You can use them to help in your investigation in any way you see

  fit-starting now. With that many at your command, you'll catch one of

  the regressives in - 173 the act, surely . . . and you'll be more

  likely to find this man Booker too - " The New People did not require

  sleep. The additional deputies could be brought into the field

  immediately.

  Shaddack said, "They can patrol the streets on foot and in their

  cars-quietly, without drawing attention. And with that assistance,

  you'll grab at least one of the regressives, maybe all of them. If we

  can catch one in a devolved state, if I've a chance to examine one of

  them, I might be able to develop a test-physical or psychological-with

  which we can screen the New People for degenerates."

  "I don't feel adequate to deal with this."

  "It's a police matter."

  "No, it isn't, really."

  "It's no different than if you were tracking down an ordinary killer,"

  Shaddack said irritably.

  "You'll apply the same techniques.

  "But "What is it?"

  "Regressives could be among the men you assign me."

  "There won't be any. .

  "But . . . how can you be sure?"

  "I told you there won't be," Shaddack said sharply, still facing the

  window, the fog, the night.

  They were both silent a moment.

  Then Shaddack said, "You've got to put everything into finding these

  damned deviants. Everything, you hear me? I want at least one of them

  to examine by the time we've taken all of Moonlight Cove through the

  Change."

  " I thought "Yes? Well, I thought "Come on, come on. You thought

  what?"

  "Well . . . just that maybe you'd suspend the conversions until we

  understand what's happening here. Hell, no!" Shaddack turned from the

  window and glared at the police chief, who flinched satisfactorily.

  "These regressives are a minor problem, very minor. What the shit do you

  know about it? You're not the one who designed a new race, a new world.

  I am. The dream was mine, the vision mine. I had the brains and nerve

  to make the dream real. And I know this is an anomaly indicative of

  nothing. So the Change will take place according to schedule."

  Watkins looked down at his white-knuckled hands.

  As he spoke, Shaddack paced barefoot along the curved glass wall, then

  back again.

  "We now have more than enough doses to deal with the remaining

  townspeople. In fact, we've initiated a new round of conversions this

  evening. Hundreds will be brought into the fold by dawn, the rest by

  midnight. Until everyone in town is with us, there's a chance we'll be

  found out, a risk of someone carrying a warning to the outside world.

  Now that we've overcome the problems with the production of the

  biochips, we've got to take Moonlight Cove quickly, so we can proceed

  with the confidence that comes from having a secure home base.

  Understand?"

  Watkins nodded.

  "Understand?" Shaddack repeated.

  "Yes. Yes, sir."

  Shaddack returned to his chair and sat down.

  "Now what's this other thing you called me about earlier, this Vaidoski

  business?

  "

  "Eddie Valdoski, eight years old," Watkins said, looking at his hands,

  which he was now virtually wringing, as if trying to squeeze something

  from them in the way he might have squeezed water from a rag.

  "He was found dead a few minutes past eight.

  in a ditch along the country road. He'd been . . . tortured . . .

  bitten, gutted. "You think one of the regressives did it?"

  "Definitely. Who found the body?"

  "Eddie's folks. His dad. The boy had been playing in the backyard, and

  then he . . . disappeared near sunset. They started searching,

  couldn't find him, got scared, called us, continued to search while we

  were on our way . . . and found the body just before my men got

  there."

  "Evidently the Valdoskis aren't converted?"

  "They weren't. But they are now."

  Shaddack sighed.

  "There won't be any trouble about the boy if they've been brought into

  the fold.

  " The police chief raised his head and found the courage to look

  directly at Shaddack again.

  "But the boy's still dead." His voice was rough.

  Shaddack said, "That's a tragedy, of course. This regressive element

  among the New People could not have been foreseen. But no great

  advancement in human history has been without its victims."

  "He was a fine boy," the policeman said.

  "You knew him?"

  Watkins blinked.

  "I went to high school with his father, George Valdoski. I was Eddie's

  godfather."

  Considering his words carefully, Shaddack said, "It's a terrible thing.

  And we'll find the regressive who did it. We'll find all of them and

  eliminate them. Meanwhile, we can take some comfort in the fact that

  Eddie died in a great cause."

>   Watkins regarded Shaddack with unconcealed astonishment.

  "Great cause? What did Eddie know of a great cause? He was eight years

  old."

  "Nevertheless," Shaddack said, hardening his voice, "Eddie was caught up

  in an unexpected side effect of the conversion of Moonlight Cove, which

  makes him part of this wonderful, historical event." He knew that

  Watkins had been a patriot, absurdly proud of his flag and country, and

  he supposed that some of that sentiment still reposed in the man, even

  subsequent to conversion, so he said "Listen to me, Loman. During the

  Revolutionary War, when the colonists were fighting for independence,

  some innocent bystanders died, women and children, not just combatants,

  and those people did not die in vain. They were martyrs every bit as

  much as the soldiers who perished in the field. It's the same in any

  revolution. The important thing is that justice prevail and that those

  who die can be said to have given their lives for a noble purpose."

  Watkins looked away from him.

  Rising from his armchair again, Shaddack rounded the low cocktail table

  to stand beside the policeman. Looking down at Watkins's bowed head, he

  put one hand on the man's shoulder.