by Dean Koontz
Vince Penn, an army tank on legs, wearing night-vision goggles, leads the way through the meadow, as insects sing to the moon.
Carrying the Medexpress container, Paloma Sutherland is second in the procession. Egon Gottfrey is third, and the remaining four members of the team follow single-file behind him.
At this late hour, the road is so devoid of traffic that it seems no longer to lead anywhere that man or machine still exists. Broken lane-dividing lines glow softly like some coded message to be deciphered.
The team doesn’t approach the house on the private lane, which might invite discovery. They climb the fence and continue overland.
The wind that sprang up at sundown has blown away to the west, leaving a stillness in its wake.
The two-story white-clapboard main residence stands under old, canopied oaks. Lights glow at downstairs and upstairs windows.
The Hawks are evidently up late in spite of Ambien and Scotch.
Ancel’s Ford F-550 truck stands in a graveled parking area.
The stables and barn are dark, as is the residence of the ranch manager, a barely visible geometric form three hundred yards to the northwest.
The silence is deeper than elsewhere, bereft of insect song.
They take positions all around the house, except for Paloma, who stands aside with the Medexpress container.
Rupert and Chris climb the back porch steps, while Vince and Gottfrey move on the front. They have LockAid lock-release guns that defeat the deadbolts with little noise.
There is no alarm, for the Hawks believe themselves to be self-sufficient in matters of self-defense. They are Texans, after all, and they are ranchers; if they weren’t born with full knowledge of firearms, they were born with a predisposition to learn. Any of Gottfrey’s team could be shot dead, including Egon himself.
Guns drawn, Egon and Vince venture into the lighted foyer as Rupert and Chris enter by the kitchen door.
Earlier, they memorized the layout of the house from plans imported to their laptops.
Rupert and Chris will clear the ground floor. Vince and Gottfrey move directly to the stairs and ascend.
The house is solidly constructed, but they make some noise. Yet they arrive in the upstairs hallway without encountering anyone.
Every open door is a danger, every closed door yet a greater threat, if you believe you are a physical being and can therefore die. Vince has a fine sweat on his brow. Egon Gottfrey remains dry. They clear the second floor room by room, but they find no one.
Returning to the stairs, Gottfrey sees Rupert and Chris in the foyer below. Chris shrugs, and Rupert looks disgusted.
Then to the enormous barn. Click on the lights. Dust motes like galaxies spiraling. The scent of hay. In one corner, the Hawks keep two other vehicles, a Chevy sedan and a Ford SUV; both are here.
Vince Penn is big and powerful and stalwart, but the Unknown Playwright has chosen to make him the slowest intellect on the team. He blathers his way to a conclusion that is instantly obvious to everyone else: “Hey, you think maybe they left on horseback? Could be, huh? If they went on horseback, you know, they could escape overland. Then Pedro and Alejandro wouldn’t know they slipped out.”
Onward to the stables. As light blooms, horses swing their heads over stall doors and nicker. Eight stalls. Just three horses.
“How damn many horses do they have?” Gottfrey wonders. “If they rode out on horseback, the ranch manager will know where they went.”
The manager’s residence is reached by a single lane of blacktop cracked by weather and crumbling along the edges.
Dark without and within, the Craftsman-style bungalow shelters under another oak.
Gottfrey intends to invade it as they did the previous house. However, when they are still about fifteen yards from the place, every window brightens, and exterior lamps shed cones of light as well. They halt as the front door opens.
Recognizable from the photographs in the NSA’s Jane Hawk file, Juan and Maria Saba step out of the bungalow. He is holding what might be a .22 rifle, and she grips a long-bladed machete.
Gottfrey is familiar with the concept of humor, though he doesn’t find much that is humorous in his scripted existence. He’s amused, however, by this couple’s intention to stand off seven heavily armed professionals with these pathetic weapons.
From the door behind the Sabas appear two, four…eight other men and women, all with more impressive weaponry.
And from around each side of the bungalow come others, male and female, a few teenagers, all bearing firearms, some also outfitted with machetes in scabbards. About half of them seem to be Hispanic.
Among this solemn little army of citizen soldiers, none appears to be amused, and in fact Gottfrey can’t maintain his own smile.
How long has this crowd gathered in silence, so that Pedro and his brother, monitoring the premises, have heard not a word spoken?
“We want no trouble,” Juan Saba says. “Leave now.”
“FBI,” Gottfrey declares, rather than flashing his Homeland credentials. FBI has more history, more glamour, and is taken more seriously than Homeland Security. “We’re here with arrest warrants.”
They possess no warrants, but a lie is not a lie when there’s no such thing as truth. Words are merely words, used like tools.
He holds his ID high for them to see. “Put down your weapons.”
“FBI,” Saba says. “Yes, FBI, we are supposed to believe.”
Interesting. Saba seems to be expressing the doubt of one who, like Gottfrey, embraces radical philosophical nihilism. This would appear to suggest that his mind is as real as Egon’s.
“Some here are brave uncles, aunts, cousins,” Juan Saba says. “Some are neighbors, brave friends of Mr. and Mrs. Hawk—and friends of Jane.”
“Jane Hawk,” Gottfrey declares, “is guilty of multiple murders and treason. Anyone who assists her now is an accessory after the fact and will be charged and brought to trial.”
There are maybe thirty people arrayed in front of the house, not one face clouded with either anger or fear, all expressionless, as if they mean to convey that their resistance isn’t driven by emotion, which might wane under pressure, that it is motivated by loyalty or justice or some equally noble virtue.
Into their challenging silence, Gottfrey says, “If you insist on standing with a traitor and murderer, if you won’t help us find Ancel and Clare, I’ll call for backup. You can’t outlast a federally imposed siege of this property. Get real, Mr. Saba.”
After half a minute of silence perhaps intended to establish that he is unmoved by this threat, Juan Saba says, “You don’t want a big, loud thing here. You come with your needles to make slaves of Ancel and Clare. Such devil’s work can be done only in the quiet dark. They aren’t here anymore. You can’t force us to help you find them. We’ll make much noise and shine the light of justice on you.”
This is a twist that Egon Gottfrey hasn’t seen coming. Jane has told her in-laws about the brain implants, and they have shared this with Juan Saba, who shared it with these others. And they are all credulous enough to believe this mind-control story to be a fact.
Rupert Baldwin has little patience for the pretensions of common folk like this, who believe in the myth of constitutional rights. Loud enough for Saba to hear, he says, “We’re not going to allow this bunch of shitkickers to push us around, are we?”
Gottfrey has no objection to a shootout. His physical existence is an illusion; he can’t be killed. It would be interesting to see how such a close-quarters pitched battle might turn out.
However, just as he can somehow see, hear, feel, taste, and smell with this illusion of a physical body, he can also experience pain.
Gottfrey has no copy of the script. It always seems that the Unknown Playwright trusts him to intuit what he is expected to say and do
. Gottfrey has come to believe that when his intuition isn’t keen enough to discern what is wanted of him, the Unknown Playwright inflicts pain, in one form or another, to encourage him to try harder to be true to the narrative in the future.
Gottfrey and his crew are not clad head to foot in Kevlar. A lot of pain can be inflicted with a leg wound, with an arm wound.
In Gottfrey’s experience, clandestine action is what is usually expected. He isn’t likely to be rewarded for instigating a shootout.
Saba says, “These friends will be with Maria and me while we do chores and oversee the day workers, and while we sleep. We won’t be taken by surprise. We won’t be easy.”
“Even if they went on horseback,” Gottfrey says, “we have ways of tracking them, ways of finding them.”
“Then go to your ways,” Saba advises.
“You’ll live to regret this.”
“There is no regret in doing right. Go to your ways.”
“Arrogant shitkicker,” Rupert Baldwin snarls.
Before the situation might spiral out of control, Gottfrey orders his people to concede and return to the grove of cottonwoods.
When they are with Pedro and Alejandro, wrapped in the fabric of cottonwood shadows threaded by moonlight, he takes the Medexpress container from Paloma and sends his people back to their motels.
Only Rupert Baldwin is given a task, which it is hoped he can complete before noon. Rupert is brilliant at tracking quarry through the millions of tearless, blinkless eyes that monitor the country’s buildings and streets, that observe from security cameras in reeking alleyways and from satellites in airless orbit. Furthermore, Rupert is reliably quick and vicious in the face of any threat.
They will find Ancel and Clare soon enough. And in time the Sabas, Juan and Maria, will be humbled and cruelly used.
And why not? Like everyone else, the Sabas are merely concepts that can’t be proven real. Symbols that can never be deciphered, figments, meaningless distortions of light.
13
CORNELL JASPERSON KNEW MANY THINGS. Such as, he knew thousands of books, because he had devoted his life to reading.
On his five-acre property stood a shabby little blue stucco house with a white metal roof shaded by unkempt queen palms. Set back from the house, a forbidding ramshackle barn seemed to tremble on the verge of collapse.
Cornell Jasperson knew, as few people did, that the barn was structurally sound and that within it, accessible only through steel doors with electronic locks, was a library for the end of the world.
As he walked through that library now, he knew it remained as precious as he had intended it to be when he had it built, but he also knew it was no longer as safe a refuge as it had seemed before.
The hidden, windowless forty-foot-square library was lined with thirteen hundred linear feet of bookshelves on three walls and part of the fourth. Four intricately figured Persian carpets warmed the polished-concrete floor. Many seating options: chairs and recliners, no two of the same style or period. He knew the layout so well that, when reading, he could move from one sitting place to another that better suited his mood, without taking his eyes from the page. Side tables and footstools. Lamps, lamps, lamps. Table lamps, floor lamps. Shades of stained glass by Tiffany, blown glass, etched glass, colored-and-cut crystal. Cornell loved light filtered and softened by color and texture, and this library lay bejeweled with light.
Cornell knew that civilization was a shaky construct, that many civilizations had collapsed throughout world history. He knew—or at least believed—that the current civilization would collapse. He was what they called a prepper, prepared for the end, ready to ride out thirty months of chaos and violence during which a new civilization might rise out of the ruins of the current one.
Within the six hundred thousand forbidding acres of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, little Borrego Springs was the only town. And at this southern end of Borrego Valley, the residences were few. When the distant cities lost power, water, and access to gasoline, when the food-distribution network collapsed, millions would perish. The desperate survivors might seek fertile, defendable land, but they would have no reason to trek all the way to the parched and barren wastes of the Anza-Borrego. Here, at least, there would be no need to stave off savage hordes.
Anyway, the library was not where he would hunker down during the days of blood and terror. This treasury of books served as his waiting place, hidden away from the world but not as grim as the underground bunker where, at the penultimate moment, he would take refuge via a well-concealed secret passageway, living under the world like the Phantom of the Opera or some troll.
Cornell knew that most people thought he was strange, even creepy. He’d been diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder and various forms of autism. Maybe all those diagnoses were correct or maybe none were. His IQ was very high, and he’d made a lot of money while sitting alone in a room, developing apps that had proved enormously popular. When he was rich, no less than when he’d been poor, people thought he was strange, even creepy.
Six foot nine, long-boned, knob-jointed, with large and ill-set shoulder blades that he thought were reminiscent of the plates on the backs of certain dinosaurs, with strong hands large enough to juggle honeydew melons—or human heads—Cornell knew that over the years he had frightened many people who entered his presence unexpectedly. A few had been unable to fully repress a startled cry of fear.
His cousin Gavin and Gavin’s wife, Jessica, insisted that he had a sweet, round face, like a milk-chocolate-brown baby Jesus, and a few other people told him similar things, but they were probably just being kind. When Cornell looked at himself in a mirror, he couldn’t tell if his reflection might be pleasant or fearsome. His face was his face, so he was too familiar with it to reach a final conclusion. Sometimes he thought he looked like that black actor Denzel Washington, but at other times he thought Frankenstein.
Cornell knew that women would never chase after him like they probably chased Denzel. He would forever be a target of snarky teenage boys and drunkards with something to prove. But that was okay. As part of his personality disorder, or whatever it was, he couldn’t tolerate being touched, anyway; he was happiest alone with a book.
As Mr. Paul Simon had sung, I am a rock, I am an island.
Anyway, Cornell knew all that and a great deal more, but he did not know what he should do about the boy.
He stopped beside the recliner where Travis was lying curled upon himself, sleeping in the golden light of a Tiffany lamp.
Five years old.
Cornell could hardly believe that he had ever been as small as this child. Travis was scarily little, like he could break apart if he just rolled off the recliner.
Now that Gavin and Jessica had gone away and not come back, the boy had no one to take care of him except a shambling, misassembled man who didn’t know how to take care of anyone except himself.
Gavin and Jessica’s dogs, big dangerous-looking dogs, German shepherds, had come with Travis. Now they padded through the library to stand on the farther side of the recliner, watching Cornell as Cornell watched the boy. As if they thought he might try to harm Travis.
Cornell said, “Don’t bite or claw me, please and thank you.”
The dogs said nothing, though their eyes seemed to speak volumes, mostly regarding their distrust for this big, strange man.
“I never had dogs,” he told them. “I never had a son. Can’t have a son if I can’t tolerate being touched, even a woman’s touch.”
The dogs cocked their heads as if considering this revelation.
“I like to be alone.”
The boy murmured in his sleep.
“Or I thought I did,” Cornell said.
14
EGON GOTTFREY BEHIND THE WHEEL of the huge Rhino GX, headlights cleaving the prairie dark ahead, infinite blackness to both sides of t
he county road, the soft glow of the instrument panel and the hum of tires on blacktop so convincing that he can almost believe the car and the road and the night are real…
In time, Worstead again, as barely sketched as some town in a low-budget Western, the buildings mere façades, no citizens afoot after midnight, a lone and bold coyote slinking past the dark drugstore, eyes radiant in the headlights…
Gottfrey is neither angry nor even disappointed about the turn of events at Hawk Ranch. In this honeycomb of illusions that is his existence, nothing matters enough to warrant strong emotions.
Having passed his motel, Gottfrey doesn’t know where he is going. He is only along for the ride.
He is not surprised, however, when he passes Nashville West, pulls to the curb half a block from the roadhouse, switches off the lights, and kills the engine.
Although closing time must be approaching, several vehicles remain in the parking lot.
When he gets out of the Rhino GX, Gottfrey hears country music, a live band, not a jukebox.
EAT—DRINK—MUSIC.
He moves to a corner of the roadhouse where a burned-out light welcomes shadows and those who need them.
The wait is not a long one. A weather-bitten man in cowboy boots, faded jeans, a checkered flannel shirt, and a white Stetson exits Nashville West. He is singing with a slur the song that the band just finished playing.
Even someone who believes in the reality of all things as they appear might think this man is too much of a walking cliché to be real. He approaches—what else—a Ford pickup on which is fixed a bumper sticker that declares TEXAS TRUE.
“Hey, cowpoke,” says Gottfrey, stepping close behind the man.
He thumbs the button on the handle of a collapsible baton. The instrument instantly telescopes out to twenty inches, and he raises it high. When Wyatt Earp turns to favor him with a loose smile, Gottfrey hammers the steel knob at the end of the baton into his whiskey-flushed face.
The crunch of bone crush, the rush of freed blood, the shock of sudden sobriety in the widening eyes, the Stetson spinning up as the cowpoke folds down, denim and flannel to blacktop…