Dean Koontz - (1989)
Page 61
Somewhere along the way he stopped thinking about' much of anything, but
he started walking more briskly.
He was not alone. Others at the roadblock, fully half the two hundred
who had been waiting there, turned almost as one and walked east into
the fields with sudden deliberation, neither the l' hesitating along the
way nor wandering in parabolic paths, but cutting straight up across a
sloped meadow, over scrub-covered hills, and through a stand of trees.
The walkers startled those who had not felt the abrupt call to go for a
stroll, and some reporters tagged along for a while asking questions,
then shouting questions. None of the walkers answered.
Joel was possessed by a feeling that there was a place he had to go to,
a special place, where he would never again have to worry about
anything, a place where all would be provided, where he would have no
need to worry about the future. He didn't know what that magic place
looked like, but he knew he'd recognized it when he saw it. He hurried
forward excitedly, compelled, drawn.
Need.
The protean thing in the basement of the Icarus Colony was in the grip
of need. It had not died when the other children of Moonhawk had
perished, for the microsphere computer within it - 463 had dissolved
when it had first sought the freedom of utter mindlessness; it had not
been able to receive the microwaved death order from Sun. Even if the
command had been received, it would not have been acted upon, for the
cellular creature had no heart to stop.
Its need was so intense that it pulsed and writhed. This need D .
'. Need.
mouths had opened all over its surface. The thing called out to the
world around it in a voice that seemed silent but was not, it was a
voice that spoke not to the ears of its prey but to their minds. And
they were coming.
its needs would soon be fulfilled.
Colonel Lewis Tarker, commanding officer at the Army field headquarters
in the park at the eastern end of Ocean Avenue, received an urgent call
from Sergeant Sperlmont, who was in charge of the county-route
roadblock. Sperlmont reported losing six of his twelve men when they
just walked off like zombies, with maybe a hundred reporters who were in
the same strange condition.
"Something's up," he told Tarker.
"This isn't over yet, sir.
Tarker immediately got hold of Oren Westrom, the Bureau man who was
heading the investigation into Moonhawk and with whom all of the
military aspects of the operation had to be coordinated.
"it isn't over," Tarker told Westrom.
"I think those walkers are even weirder than Sperlmont described them,
weird in some way he can't quite convey. I know him, and he's more
spooked than he thinks he is. Westrom, in turn, ordered the Bureau's
JetRanger into the air. explained the situation to the pilot, Jim
Lobbow, and said, "Sperlmont's going to have some of his men track them
on the ground, see where the hell they're going-and why. But in case We
VU difficult, I want you spotting from the air."
.0" MY way," Lobbow said.
the police checkpoint north of Holliwell, basking in a surpdm world more
profound than mere desire, more terrible than any "You filled up on fuel
recently?"
"Tanks are brimming."
"Good.
Nothing worked for Jim Lobbow but flying a chopper.
He had been married three times, and every marriage had ended in
divorce. He'd lived with more women than he could count; even without
the pressure of marriage weighing him dow4 he could not sustain a
relationship. He had one child, a son, by his second marriage, but he
saw the boy no more than three times a year, never for longer than a day
at a time. Though he been brought up in the Catholic Church, and though
all his brothers and sisters were regulars at Mass, that did not work
for Jim. Sunday always seemed to be the only morning he could sleep in,
and when he considered going to a weekday service it seemed like too
much trouble. Though he dreamed of being an entrepeneur, every small
business he started seemed doomed to failure he was repeatedly startled
to find how much work went with a business, even one that seemed
designed for absentee management and sooner or later it always became
too much trouble.
But nobody was a better chopper pilot than Jim Lobbow. He could take
one up in weather that grounded everyone else, and he could set down or
pick up in any terrain, any conditions.
He took the JetRanger up at Westrom's orders and swung over the
county-route roadblock, getting there in no time b cause the day was
blue and clear, and the roadblock was just a mile and a quarter from the
park where he kept the chopper.
On the ground, a handful of regular Army troops, still at the ban
baracade, were waving him due east, up into the hills.
Lobbow went where they told him, and in less than a min he found the
walkers toiling busily up scrub-covered hills, scraping their shoes,
tearing their clothes, but scrambling forward in a frenzy. It was
definitely weird.
A funny buzzing filled his head. He thought something Was wrong with
his radio headphones, and he pulled them off for a moment, but that
wasn't it. The buzzing didn't stop. It actually wasn't a buzzing at
all, not a sound, but a feeling.
And what do I mean by that? he wondered.
He tried to shrug it off.
The walkers were circling east-southeast as they went, and - 465 Jim
went ahead of them, looking for some landmark, anything unusual toward
which they might be headed. He came almost at once to the decaying
Victorian house, the tumbledown barn, and collapsed outbuildings.
Something about the place drew him. He circled it once, twice.
it was a complete dump, he suddenly had the crazy thought he would be
happy there, free, with no worries any Wore, no ex-wives nagging at him,
no child-support to pay.
Over the hills to the northwest, the walkers were coming, all hundred or
more of them, not walking any more but running. They stumbled and fell
but got up and ran again.
And Jim knew why they were coming. He circled over the scene again, and
it was the most appealing place he had ever been. The house was a
source
of surcease. He wanted that freedom, that release, more than he had
ever wanted anything in his life. He took the JetRanger up in a steep
climb, leveled out, swooped south, then west, then north, then east,
coming all the way around again, back toward the house, the wonderful
house, he had to be there, had to go there, had to go, and he took the
chopper straight in '.through the front porch, directly at the door that
hung open and half off its hinges, through the wall, plowing straight
into the heart of the house, burying the chopper in the heart Need.
The creature's many mouths sang of its need, and it knew that
momentarily its needs would be met. It throbbed with excitement.
Then vibrations. Hard vibrations. Then heat.
It did not recoil from th
e heat, for it had surrendered all the nerves
and complex biological structures required to register pain.
the heat had no meaning for the beast-except that heat was not food and
therefore did not fulfill its needs.
Burning, dwindling, it tried to sing the song that would draw what it
required, but the roaring flames filled its mouths and and silenced it.
Joel Ganowicz found himself standing two hundred feet from a ramshackle
house that had exploded in flames. It was a tremendous blaze, fire
shooting a hundred feet into the clear sky, black smoke beginning to
billow up, the old walls of the place colapsing in upon themselves with
alacrity, as if eager to give the pretense of usefulness. The heat
washed over him, forcing him to squint and back away, even though he was
not particularly close to it. He couldn't understand how a little dry
wood could burn that intensely.
He realized that he could not remember how the fire had started. He was
just suddenly there, in front of it.
He looked at his hands. They were abraded and filthy.
The right knee was torn out of his corduroys, and his Rock.
ports were badly scuffed.
He looked around and was startled to see scores of people in' his same
condition, tattered and dirty and dazed. He couldn't remember how he
had gotten there, and he definitely didn't recall setting out on a group
hike.
The house sure was burning, though. Wouldn't be a stick of it left,
just a cellarful of ashes and hot coals.
He frowned and rubbed his forehead.
Something had happened to him. Something . . . He was a reporter,
and his curiosity was gradually reasserting itself Something had
happened, and he ought to find out what. Something disturbing. Very
disturbing. But at least it was over now.
He shivered.
41 When they entered the house in Sherman Oaks, the music from Scott's
stereo, upstairs, was turned so loud that the windows were vibrating.
Sam climbed the steps to the second floor, motioning for Tessa and
Chrissie to follow. They were reluctant, probably embarrassed - 467
feeling out of place, but he was not certain he could do what had to be
done if he went up there alone.
The door to Scott's room was open.
The boy was lying on his bed, wearing black jeans and a black shirt. His
feet were toward the headboard, his head at the end of the mattress,
propped up on pillows, so he could stare it an of the posters on the
wall behind the bed black-metal oaers wearing leather and chains, some
of them with bloody jods, some with bloody lips as if they were vampires
who had all fed, others holding skulls, one of them french-kissing a
another holding out cupped hands filled with glistening swots- scott
didn't hear Sam enter. With the music at that volume, he wouldn't have
heard a thermonuclear blast in the adjacent room At the stereo Sam
hesitated, wondering if he was doing the right thing. Then he listened
to the bellowed words of the number on the machine, backed up by iron
slabs of guitar chords - It was about killing your parents, about
drinking their blood, it was a song then "taking the gas-pipe escape."
Nice. Oh, very nice stuff. That decided him. He punched a button and
cut off the CD in midplay.
Startled, Scott sat straight up in bed.
"Hey!"
Sam took the CD out of the player, dropped it on the floor, and ground
it under his heel.
"Hey, Christ, what the hell are you doing?"
Forty or fifty CDs, mostly black-metal albums, were stored in open-front
cases on a shelf above the stereo. Sam swept them to the floor.
"Hey, come on," Scott said, "what're you, nuts?"
"Something I should've done long ago."
Noticing Tessa and Chrissie, who stood just outside the door, SCott
said, "Who the hell are they?"
Sam said, "They are the hell are friends."
Really working himself into a rage, all lathered up, the boy U,W, "What
the fuck are they doing here, man?"
..SAM laughed. He was feeling almost giddy. He wasn't sure *why. Maybe
because he was finally doing something about this *Won" assuming
responsibility for it. He said, "They're the fuck With me." And he
laughed again.
He felt sorry that he had exposed Chrissie to this, but then looked at
her and saw that she was not only unshaken but giggling. He realized
that all the angry and bad words in t couldn't hurt her, not after what
she had endured. In fact, after what they'd all seen in Moonlight Cove,
Scott's teenage ninjas was funny and even sort of innocent, altogether
ridiculous.
Sam stood on the bed and began to tear the posters off the wall, and
Scott started screaming at him, opening up full volume, a real tantrum
this time. Sam finished with those he could reach only from the bed,
got down, and turned to those on another wall.
Scott grabbed him.
Gently, Sam pushed the boy aside and clawed at the other posters.
Scott struck him.
Sam took the blow, then looked at him.
Scott's face was brilliant red, his nostrils dilated, his eyes bulging
with hatred.
Smiling, Sam embraced him in a bear hug.
At first Scott clearly didn't understand what was happening .
He thought his father was just making a grab for him, to punish him, so
he tried to pull away. But suddenly it dawn on him-Sam could see it
dawn on him-he was being hugged. the old man was for God's sake
embracing him, and in front of people-strangers. When that realization
hit him, the boy began to struggle, twisting and thrashing, pushing hard
on Sam, desperate to escape, because this didn't fit into his being in a
loveless world, especially if he started to respond.
That was it, yes, damn, Sam understood now. That was the reason behind
Scott's alienation. A fear that he'd respond to love, respond and be
spurned . . . or find the responsibility and commitment too much to
bear.
In fact, for a moment, the boy met his father's love with love of his
own, hugged him tight. It was as if the real Scott, the one hidden
under the layers of hipness and cynicism, had peeked
through and smiled. Something good remained in him, good as pure,
something that could be salvaged.
But then the boy began to curse Sam in more explicit 2 colorful terms
than he had used previously. Sam only hugged him harder, closer, and
now Sam began to tell him that he - 469 desperately loved him, told him
not the way that he had told him he loved him on the telephone when he
had called him from Moonlight Cove on Monday night, not with any degree
of be tion occasioned by his own sense of hopelessness for he had no
sense of hopelessness any more. This time, he told Scott that he loved
him, he spoke in a voice crackling with emotion, told him again and
again, demanded that his voice be heard.
Scott was crying now, and Sam was not surprised to find that he was
crying, too, but he didn't think they were crying for the right reason
yet, because the boy was still struggling to get away, his energy
; depleted, but still struggling. So Sam held on to him and talked to him
"Listen, kid, you're going to care about me, one way or the other,
sooner or later. Oh, yes - You're hoping to know that I care about you,
and then you're going to care about me, and not just me, no, you're
going to care about yourself, too, and it's not going to stop there,
either, hell, no, you're going to find out you can care about a lot of
people, that it feels good to care. You're going to care about that
woman standing there in the doorway, and you're going to care about that
little girl, you're going to care about her like you'd care about a
sister, you're going to learn, you're going to get the damn machine out
of you and learn to be loved and to love.
There's's a guy going to come visit us, a guy who's got one good hand
and no good legs, and he believes life is worth living. Maybe he's
going to stay a while, see how he likes it, see how 'cause maybe he can
show you what I was too be feels about it, slow to show you-that it's
good, life's good. And this guy's got a dog, what a dog, you're going
to love that dog, probably the dog first." Sam laughed and held fast to
Scott- "You can't say 'Get outta my face' to a dog and expect him to
listen or care, he won't get out of your face, so you'll have to love