Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  Although Mike Peyser's problem could have been related to some glitch in

  the technology on which conversion from Old to New Person was based,

  Loman suspected that Peyser still possessed the power to reshape

  himself, that he could become a man if he wanted to badly enough, but

  that he lacked the desire to be fully human again. He had become a

  regressive because he found that altered state appealing, so maybe he

  found it so much more exciting and satisfying than the human condition

  that now he did not truly want to return to a higher state.

  Peyser raised his head and looked at Loman, then at Penniworth, then at

  Sholnick, and finally at Loman again. His horror at his condition was

  no longer apparent. The anguish and terror were gone from his eyes.

  With his twisted muzzle he seemed to smile at them, and a new

  wildness-both disturbing and appealing-appeared in his eyes. He raised

  his hands before his face again and flexed the long fingers, clicked the

  claws together, studying himself with what might have been wonder.

  . . . hunt, hunt, chase, hunt, kill, blood, blood, need, need "How

  the hell can we take him alive if he doesn't want to be taken?"

  Penniworth's voice was peculiar, thick and slightly slurred.

  Peyser dropped one hand to his genitals and scratched lightly,

  absentmindedly . He looked at Loman again, then at the night pressing

  against the windows.

  "I feel . Sholnick left the sentence unfinished.

  Penniworth was no more articulate "If we . . . well, we could .

  The pressure in Loman's chest had grown greater. His throat was

  tighter, too, and he was still sweating.

  Peyser let out a soft, ululant cry as eerie as any sound Loman had ever

  heard, an expression of longing, yet also an animal challenge to the

  night, a statement of his power and his confidence in his own strength

  and cunning. The wail should have been harsh and unpleasant in the

  confines of that bedroom, but instead it stirred in Loman the same

  unspeakable yearning that had gripped him outside of the Fosters' house

  when he had heard the trio of regressives calling to one another far

  away in the darkness.

  Clenching his teeth so hard that his jaws ached, Loman strove to resist

  that unholy urge.

  Peyser loosed another cry, then said, "Run, hunt, free, free, need,

  free, need, come with me, come, come, need, need. . .

  " Loman realized that he was relaxing his grip on the 12-gauge. The

  barrel was tilting down. The muzzle was pointing at the floor instead

  of at Peyser.

  run, free, free, need .

  From behind Loman came an unnerving, orgasmic cry of release.

  He glanced back at the bedroom doorway in time to see Sholnick drop his

  shotgun. Subtle transformations had occurred in the deputy's hands and

  face. He pulled off his quilted, black uniform jacket, cast it aside,

  and tore open his shirt. His cheekbones and jaws dissolved and flowed

  forward, and his brow retreated as he sought an altered state.

  When Harry Talbot finished telling them about the Boogeymen, Sam

  leaned forward on the high stool to the telescope eyepiece. He swung

  the instrument to the left, until he focused on the - 207 vacant lot

  beside Callan's, where the creatures had most recently put in an

  appearance.

  He was not sure what he was looking for. He didn't believe that the

  Boogeymen would have returned to, that same place at precisely this time

  to give him a convenient look at them. And there were no clues in the

  shadows and trampled grass and shrubs, where they had crouched only a

  few hours ago, to tell him what they might have been or on what mission

  they had been embarked. Maybe he was just trying to anchor the

  fantastic image of ape-dog-reptilian Boogeymen in the real world, tie

  them in his mind to that vacant lot, and thereby make them more

  concrete, so he could deal with them.

  In any event Harry had another story besides that one. As they sat in

  the darkened room, as if listening to ghost stories around a burnt-out

  campfire, he told them how he'd seen Denver Simpson, Doc Fitz, Reese

  Dorn, and Paul Hawthorne overpower Ella Simpson, take her upstairs to

  the bedroom, and prepare to inject her with an enormous syringeful of

  some golden fluid.

  Operating the telescope at Harry's direction, Sam was able to find and

  draw in tight on the Simpsons' house, on the other side of Conquistador

  and just north of the Catholic cemetery. All was dark and motionless.

  From the bed where she still had the dog's head in her lap, Tessa said,

  "All of it's got to be connected somehow these 'accidental' deaths,

  whatever those men were doing to Ella Simpson, and these . . .

  Boogeymen.

  "Yes, it's tied together," Sam agreed.

  "And the knot is new Wave Microtechnology."

  He told them what he had uncovered while working with the VDT in the

  patrol car behind the municipal building.

  "Moonhawk?" Tessa wondered.

  "Conversions? What on earth are they converting people into? I don't

  know."

  "Surely not into . . . these Boogeymen?

  "No, I don't see the purpose of that, and besides, from what I turned

  up, I gather almost two thousand people in town have been . . . given

  this treatment, put through this change, whatever the hell it is. If

  there were that many of Harry's Boogeymen running loose, they'd be

  everywhere; the town would be crawling with them, like a zoo in the

  Twilight Zone."

  "TWo thousand," Harry said.

  "That's two-thirds of the town. And the rest by midnight," Sam said.

  "Just under twenty-one hours from now."

  "Me, too, I guess?" Harry asked.

  "Yeah. I looked you up on their lists. You're scheduled for conversion

  in the final stage, between six o'clock this coming evening and

  midnight. So we've got about fourteen and a half hours before they come

  looking for you."

  "This is nuts," Tessa said.

  "Yeah," Sam agreed.

  "Totally nuts."

  "It can't be happening," Harry said.

  "But if it isn't happening, then why's the hair standing up on the back

  of my neck?"

  "Sholnick!"

  Throwing aside his uniform shirt, kicking off his shoes, frantic to

  strip out of all his clothes and complete his regression, Barry Sholnick

  ignored Loman.

  "Barry, stop, for God's sake, don't let this happen," Penniworth said

  urgently. He was pale and shaking. He glanced from Sholnick to Peyser

  and back again, and Loman suspected that Penniworth felt the same

  degenerate urge to which Sholnick had surrendered himself.

  ". . . run free, hunt, blood, blood, need .

  Peyser's insidious chant was like a spike through Loman's head, and he

  wanted it to stop. No, truthfully, it wasn't like a spike splitting his

  skull, because it wasn't at all painful and was, in fact, thrilling and

  strangely melodic, reaching deep into him, piercing him not like a shaft

  of steel but like music. That was why he wanted it to stop because it

  appealed to him, enticed him; it made him want to shed his

  responsibilities and co
ncerns, - 209 retreat from the too-complex life

  of the intellect to an existence based strictly on feelings, on physical

  pleasures, a world whose boundaries were defined by sex and food and the

  thrill of the hunt, a world where disputes were settled and needs were

  met strictly by the application of muscle, where he'd never have to

  think again or worry or care.

  ". . . need, need, need, need, need, kill .

  Sholnick's body bent forward as his spine re-formed. His back lost the

  concave curvature distinctive of the human form. His skin appeared to

  be giving way to scales "come, quick, quick, the hunt, blood, blood.

  -and as Sholnick's face was reshaped, his mouth split impossibly wide,

  opening nearly to each ear, like the mouth of some ever-grinning

  reptile.

  The pressure in Loman's chest was growing greater by the second. He was

  hot, sweltering, but the heat came from within him, as if his metabolism

  was racing at a thousand times ordinary speed, readying him for

  transformation.

  "No." Sweat streamed from him. "No!" He felt as if the room were a

  cauldron in which he would be reduced to his essence; he could almost

  feel his flesh beginning to melt.

  Penniworth was saying, "I want, I want, I want, want," but he was

  vigorously shaking his head, trying to deny what he wanted. He was

  crying and trembling and sheet-white.

  Peyser rose from his crouch and stepped away from the wall. He moved

  sinuously, swiftly, and although he could not stand entirely erect in

  his altered state, he was taller than Loman, simultaneously a

  frightening and seductive figure.

  Sholnick shrieked.

  Peyser bared his fierce teeth and hissed at Loman as if to say, Either

  join us or die.

  With a cry composed partly of despair and partly of joy, Neil Penniworth

  dropped his 20-gauge and put his hands to his face. As if that contact

  had exerted an alchemical reaction, both his hands and face began to

  change.

  Heat exploded in Loman, and he shouted wordlessly, but without the joy

  that Penniworth had expressed and without Sholnick's orgasmic cry. While

  he still had control of himself, he raised the shotgun and squeezed off

  a round point-blank at Peyser.

  The blast took the regressive in the chest, blowing him backward against

  the bedroom wall in a tremendous spray of blood. Peyser went down,

  squealing, gasping for breath, wriggling on the floor like a

  half-stomped bug, but he was not dead. Maybe his heart and lungs had

  not sustained sufficient damage. If oxygen was still being conveyed to

  his blood and if blood was still being pumped throughout his body, he

  was already repairing the damage; his invulnerability was in some ways

  even greater than the SUPERNATURAL imperviousness of a werewolf, for he

  could not be easily killed even with a silver bullet; in a moment he

  would be up, strong as ever.

  Wave after wave of heat, each markedly hotter than the one before it

  washed through Loman. He felt pressure from within, not only in his

  chest but in every part of his body now. He had only seconds left in

  which his mind would be clear enough for him to act and his will strong

  enough to resist. He scuttled to Peyser, shoved the muzzle of the

  shotgun against the writhing regressive's chest, and pumped another

  round into him.

  The heart had to have been pulverized by that round. The body leaped

  off the floor as the load tore through it. Peyser's monstrous face

  contorted, then froze with his eyes open and sightless, his lips peeled

  back from his inhumanly large, sharp, hooked teeth.

  Someone screamed behind Loman.

  turning, he saw the Sholnick-thing coming for him. He fired a third

  round, then a fourth, hitting Sholnick in the chest and stomach.

  The deputy went down hard, and began to crawl toward the hall, away from

  Loman.

  Neil Penniworth was curled in the fetal position on the floor by the

  foot of the bed. He was chanting but not about blood and needs and

  being free; he was chanting his mother's name, over and over, as if it

  were a verbal talisman to protect him from the evil that wanted to claim

  him.

  Loman's heart was pounding so hard that the sound of it seemed to have

  an external source, as if someone were thumping timpani in another room

  of the house. He was half-convinced that he could feel his entire body

  throbbing with his pulse, and that with each throb he was changing in

  some subtle yet hideous way.

  - 211 Stepping in behind Sholnick, standing over him, Loman rammed the

  muzzle of the shotgun against the regressive's back, about where he

  thought the heart would be, and pulled the trigger. Sholnick let out a

  shrill scream when he felt the muzzle touch him, but he was too weak to

  roll over and grab the gun away from Loman. The scream was cut off

  forever by the blast.

  The room steamed with blood. That complex scent was so sweet and

  compelling that it took the place of Peyser's seductive chanting,

  inducing Loman to regress.

  He leaned against the dresser and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to

  establish a firmer grip on himself. He clung to the shotgun with both

  hands, clasping it tightly, not for its defensive value-it held no more

  rounds-but because it was an expertly crafted weapon, which was to say

  that it was a tool, an artifact of civilization, a reminder that he was

  a man, at the pinnacle of evolution, and that he must not succumb to the

  temptation to cast away all his tools and knowledge in exchange for the

  more primal pleasures and satisfactions of a beast.

  But the blood smell was strong and so alluring. . . .

  Desperately trying to impress himself with all that would be lost in

  this surrender, he thought of Grace, his wife, and remembered how much

  he once had loved her. But he was beyond love now, as were all of the

  New People. Thoughts of Grace could not save him. Indeed, images of

  their recent, bestial rutting flashed through his mind, and she was not

  Grace to him any more; she was simply female, and the recollection of

  their savage coupling excited him and drew him closer to the vortex of

  regression.

  The intense desire to degenerate made him feel as though he were in a

  whirlpool, being sucked down, down, and he thought that this was how the

  nascent werewolf was supposed to feel when he looked up into the night

  sky and saw, ascending at the horizon, a full moon. The conflict raged

  within him ù . . blood.....

  . . . freedom.....

  -no. Mind, knowledge . . . hunt.....

  . . . kill.....

  -no. Explore, learn . . . eat . . .

  run...

  . . . hunt.....

  . . . tick.....

  . . . kill.....

  -no, no! Music, art, language His turmoil grew.

  He was trying to resist the siren call of savagery with reason, but that

  did not seem to be working, so he thought of Denny, his son. He must

  hold fast to his humanity if only for Denny's sake. He tried to summon

  the love he had once known for his boy, tried to let that love rebuild


  in him until he could shout of it, but there was only a whisper of

  remembered emotion deep in the darkness of his mind. His ability to

  love had receded from him in much the way that matter had receded from

  the center of existence following the Big Bang that created the

  universe; his love for Denny was now so far away and long ago that it

  was like a star at the outer edge of the universe, its light only dimly

  perceived, with little power to illuminate and no power to warm. Yet

  even that glimmer of feeling was something around which to build an

  image of himself as human, human, first and always a man, not some thing

  that ran on all fours or with its knuckles dragging on the ground, but a

  man, a man.

  His stentorian breathing slowed a little. His heartbeat fell from an

  impossibly rapid dubdubdubdubdubdubdub to perhaps a hundred or a hundred

  and twenty beats a minute, still fast, as if he were running, but

  better. His head cleared, too, though not entirely, because the scent

  of blood was an inescapable perfume.

  He pushed away from the dresser and staggered to Penniworth.

  The deputy was still curled in the tightest fetal position that a grown

  man could achieve. Traces of the beast were in his hands and face, but

  he was considerably more human than not. The chanting of his mother's

  name seemed to be working nearly as well as the thread-thin lifeline of

  love had worked for Loman.