by Dean Koontz
Together, he and Makani dragged her to her feet and forced her onto the chair beside the picnic cooler. “You make so much as half of one wrong move,” Pogo warned her, “and I’ll empty this entire canister in your face. You hear me?” When Ursula only wheezed and blew her nose into her hand, he said again, “You hear me?” She said she did, she heard him. In a voice cracked and raw with hot-pepper fumes, she choked out a series of expletives that defined him as one part of the human anatomy after another, both male and female; she showed no gender prejudice in her choice of words.
When Makani turned away from Ursula to retrieve the pistol, the imprisoned but now freed twin sister had already plucked the weapon from the floor and stood with it in a two-hand grip. Although weak and shaky, Undine proved to be an excellent shot, at least at that close range, when she pumped two rounds into Ursula’s perfect chest, killing her instantly.
11
Happy Families Are All Alike
Undine never imagined she could be this happy.
She is famished, starving, aching for food, but she is no less ecstatic because of her hunger.
Tolstoy once said, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
He was right, if by “happy families” he meant families in which all the members are dead but for one.
They are all dead now: Mother, Father, and the greedy bitch-slut-pig sister.
Undine has wanted them all dead since she was ten. She has a secret stash of drawings and paintings that depict them mutilated and dead in many grotesque positions and conditions.
Twenty years of drawing them dead, wanting them dead. Patience pays off.
She might call this a miracle if she believed in miracles, but she doesn’t believe in anything except herself. And money.
The sexy but perhaps stupid white boy and his sexy but mongrel girlfriend look down in shocked disbelief at Ursula’s drilled body, which has slid off the blood-spattered chair and onto the floor.
“Who the hell are you?” Undine asks.
Staring at the corpse, they seem to have forgotten who they are.
“Are you friends of that thieving pig?”
“Does it appear like we were friends?” the boy asks.
“I don’t know what it appears like. What’re you doing here?”
The boy looks at the girl. The girl looks at the boy.
“We were just following her,” the boy says at last.
“Why?”
The girl shrugs. “Why not?”
They are both staring at the corpse again, still stunned.
“So you were up to some kind of no good,” Undine says.
The boy says, “It was just something to do.”
“Following her was just something to do?”
“Yeah.”
Maybe for the moment it doesn’t matter who they are.
A slight vertigo afflicts Undine. She wills herself to be steady. She is two twins in one now. She has the strength of two.
“I need your help,” she says.
They turn their full attention to her, bewildered but beginning to recognize the consequences of this event.
The girl lost her pepper spray in the tussle with Ursula.
The boy still has a little canister. Undine tells him to drop it, he hesitates, she thrusts the pistol toward him, and he drops the pepper spray on the floor.
The black Labrador is slinking quietly to Undine’s right, no doubt with heroic intentions.
“I’ll shoot your dog dead if you don’t control him.”
“Here, Bob,” the girl says. “Here, now.”
Reluctantly, the dog returns to her and sits at her side.
Undine says, “What kind of name is Bob for a dog? Why not Blackie or Midnight or Ebony?”
“Bob suits him best,” the girl says.
“Bob is a stupid name for a dog,” Undine insists. She is, after all, a poet. She knows a thing or two about names and words and the way they resonate. “What’s your name?”
“Makani.”
“Is that a name? What kind of name is that?”
“Hawaiian.”
“Hawaiian. Jeez. Everyone wants to be exotic these days.”
When asked, the boy says his name is Pogo, and Undine says that would be a better name for the dog, and then for half a minute or so, none of them seems to know what to say next.
Undine breaks the silence. “I’m too weak to do what needs to be done all by myself. Help me, and I’ll make you rich.”
The two look at each other, making whatever feeble calculations pass for their thinking.
Their names are so improbable that Undine has already forgotten them and remembers only Bob.
A little vertigo again. Less than before. She has the strength of two. She steadies her world.
A line from Shakespeare reminds her of the stakes: Some o’ their plants are ill-rooted already; the least wind i’ the world will blow them down.
Undine is not only a poet who knows a lot of Shakespeare; she is also deeply rooted, safe from all winds.
The girl says, “How rich will you make us?”
“A million dollars each. In cash.”
“You have that kind of money?” the boy asks.
“I will. The fat bitch finagled our egg-sucking, shit-for-brains father into leaving it all to her, with just an allowance for me.”
“She wasn’t fat,” the boy says.
“She’s fat compared to me right now, the jealous little whore.”
The girl says, “If you only get an allowance…”
“I went to see her in that tasteless mansion with its thousand tons of garish furniture, supposedly to do a little dickering for an increase in my allowance, the two of us over dinner. But I didn’t go there to dicker. That was bullshit. I went there to kill the vicious leech.”
“But obviously you didn’t kill her then. Why didn’t you kill her?” the pretty boy asks, proving her suspicion that he is a moron.
“Obviously,” Undine says, “the selfish sack of pus had a plan of her own.”
“Starving you to death,” the girl says.
“Your children will surely be geniuses,” Undine declares scornfully.
She needs these two and shouldn’t be cross with them, but she loathes stupidity.
She is swaying on her feet, and her arms are shaking, and the boy sees this. “That gun is heavy.”
“It won’t be as heavy if I put two bullets in your head. I may look shaky, but don’t think you can screw with me.”
Undine feels as if she’s tilting. Or the room is tilting. She tells herself that neither is the case.
The girl says, “He isn’t going to screw with anyone who can make us rich. Chill, Pogo.”
Undine says, “My plan was to kill her, chop her up, put the pieces through an industrial Cuisinart, take the sludge far out into the desert, pour it out for the snakes and bugs and rats to eat, then take her identity.”
“Become Ursula,” the boy says.
“You are lightning-quick on the uptake. But now I’ll need to lie low for a few weeks, gain some weight, get my looks back, before I can pass for that disgusting parasite.”
“So what do you need us to do?” the girl wonders.
Indicating the corpse, Undine says, “Chop, Cuisinart, dispose of the sludge.”
“All that for just a million?”
“A million each,” Undine reminds them. “Two million total, for just a few hours of manual labor.”
They stand there, thinking about it.
“What the hell is there to think about?” Undine demands.
“How do we know you won’t kill us after we do it?” the girl asks.
The girl is stupid. Undine will not kill them until weeks from now, when she is restored.
Undine says, “Kill you? Are you crazy paranoid? If I killed you, I’d have to chop, Cuisinart, and dispose of you two, and I don’t have the strength for it, Bob!”
The girl regards her wit
h what might be pity when she says, “Bob is the dog.”
“The dog is Bob,” the boy agrees.
Bob is the dog, the dog is Bob: Something about those lines, spoken one after the other, affects Undine negatively, summons the vertigo that she has repressed, no doubt because she is a poet and therefore highly sensitive to the way that words resonate with one another, to subtle rhythms that ordinary people are not capable of appreciating. She tilts, tilts, and the room turns. Bob is the dog, the dog is Bob, Bob is the dog is the dog is Bob, Bob-Bob-Bob, Bob is the dog.
Although the girl has spoken no command, the dog bolts, Bob bolts, Bob the dog bolts. Bolts into the slowly revolving room. Not toward Undine. Away from her. Which is confusing as she tilts. She’d shoot him if he leaped at her. Now boy and girl are between her and Bob the dog, the dog is Bob is the dog, as the floor undulates. If she shoots, she might hit them. She needs boy and girl. Desperately, she needs them as, with the power of twins in one body, she commands the room to be still. The dog barks in alarm—or is it the girl?—barks Pogo, no! as the boy drops to the undulant floor and bounces up again with something in his hand, bounces up like a leaping Bob, pepper spray in hand, and Undine fires twice just as the stinging, blinding, suffocating stream defines a Z by splashing from eye to eye, slanting across nose, from one corner of mouth to the other. Bob dog did a circle, Bob dog behind her, teeth in her slacks, Bob dog pulling, Undine tilting. The blur of a boy as the world goes white, the boy at her like a dog on two legs, Bob dog behind, boy dog in front and grappling for the gun, girl barking Pogo, Pogo! Undine smells his blood. His hands slick with blood, so he can’t tear the gun away from her. Kill him. Trigger it. The sound is huge, the pain huge, and everything is wrong. The white pain is brighter than the white blindness of pepper spray. Gun is gone. Vertigo. Going round, going down. Going, going…How happy she is with all of them dead. Father, Mother, Ursula dead, dead. How happy, but how brief has been her happiness, how brief, how—
12
The Final Hour
Pogo had been shot. Undine fired two rounds as Pogo squirted her with the Sabre 5.0, and the second bullet tore through him.
Makani couldn’t believe he stayed on his feet, but he launched himself at Undine, struggled with her for possession of the pistol, as Bob attacked her from behind. The gun fired again, and the sound seemed to pierce Makani’s heart, arrested her breathing, for she was certain he was dead, shot at such close range. But it was the woman who dropped, still holding the weapon, as Bob skittered out of the way and as Pogo staggered backward.
In life, the dazzling blue eyes of both twins had appeared luminous, though the glow had been demonic. Their depthless stares were lightless now, their eyes as flat as buttons in the cold fluorescent glare.
Pogo sat on the straight-backed chair, breathing hard, his left hand pressed lightly against the wound in his right shoulder. There was an exit wound, too. He said that was good. The bullet wasn’t in him. He said that made everything easier.
Makani wanted to call 911, but he refused to let her, even spoke sharply to her, which he had never done before—“No!”—because there was too much at stake.
She said, “Your life is at stake, damn it. You’re bleeding.”
“Exactly. My life, your life, our future. We have to be smart about how we deal with this.”
How they dealt with it was so scary, so stressful, that Makani found herself talking aloud to herself, which rattled her each time she realized that she was doing it.
She had to wipe clean whatever they might have touched. The picnic cooler contained, among other things, foil packets of moist towelettes. She used those, pocketing each of the empty foil squares lest she inadvertently leave a thumbprint on one of them.
She wiped down the door handle to the death room, though she had no memory of touching it. Fingers wrapped in a towelette, she switched off the lights in each area from which they retreated, the darkness flowing in behind, swelling toward them like a tide.
Pogo needed her help to climb the stairs. Bob dashed ahead of them, but kept pausing to look back, clearly worried.
Makani didn’t douse the lights on the ground floor. She would be returning.
The brightness of the day surprised her. She knew that night was still hours away, but for some reason she expected a menacing coagulum of dark clouds, although there had been none earlier, and bleak light that belied the California promise of a golden life.
Although Pogo didn’t need to lean on her to get to the Honda, the distance seemed greater than it had earlier. He settled in the front passenger seat, looking nearly as gray as the primer coat on the car.
“I can’t just leave you here alone.”
“I have Bob,” he said, and from the backseat, the dog chuffed. “But hurry.”
She closed the door and returned to the factory. With each step she took away from Pogo, she felt as if she were stepping out of her life, this life, and into another, meaner world where she would be someone different—and less than—who she had been until now.
In the factory again, she ran to the south end. Here, in more prosperous days, an enormous roll-up door had allowed trucks to pull partway into the structure to load or unload. Most likely, it had not been used in years. Maybe it would work; maybe it wouldn’t. She found the control box. Groaning and creaking, the big segmented door traveled up and overhead on rusted tracks.
Outside again, she glanced toward the Honda. She could make out Bob in the back of the car. She couldn’t see Pogo; he was slumped in his seat.
He’s okay. He’s all right. It’s not a mortal wound.
The electronic key that she had taken from Ursula Liddon’s body was in her pocket, and the push-button ignition brought the Mercedes engine racing to life. She hung a U-turn, drove to the open roll-up, into the building, and parked.
With another moist towelette, she wiped down the parts of the car that she had touched. She kept the electronic key.
She opened the hood and, as Pogo had instructed during their exit from the factory, she disconnected the leads from the battery. When the vehicle was disabled in this manner, maybe its transponder would cease to emit a signal, so it couldn’t be located by GPS. Pogo wasn’t sure about that. Simon could follow up here later today.
In a day or two, or five, the police would be notified that Ursula Liddon was missing. When they realized that, of her eight cars, only the Mercedes was not in her garage, they would hope to find it—and her—by GPS. It was essential that they be delayed.
Pogo’s car had been parked inside the chain-link gate. Anyone passing could have seen it. Although it was far less memorable than Makani’s highly customized Chevy, the Honda was not as nondescript as a car fresh off the dealer’s lot.
If the twins were found in mere days, the Honda would be fresh in the memory of anyone who had seen it. But if the bodies were not discovered for months or years…
She put down the roll-up, went to the side door, switched off the lights, and locked the place with another key that they had taken from Ursula’s body.
Although the day was not blistering-hot, only pleasantly warm, Makani perspired heavily as she hurried back to the Honda. The sweat felt as cold as ice water.
When she went to the passenger door to check on Pogo, his eyes were closed. He was still and pale, and blood saturated the entire front of his T-shirt.
He opened his eyes. She could see herself reflected in them. “The gate,” he reminded her.
“Yeah. I know. I just needed to…see.”
The portion of the gate-motor housing that he’d removed lay on the blacktop with four screws. He had described the cut wires to her. Holding them by the insulation, she crossed the bare-copper ends, and they sparked, and the gate rolled open.
Using the flip-out screwdriver in Pogo’s Swiss Army Knife, Makani replaced the section of motor housing, so that a police patrol—if one ever looked close—wouldn’t notice it and be curious. Although this once-humming neighborhood was desolate
, traffic passed in the street, and she expected every vehicle to be a black-and-white. Her hands shook, she kept dropping the screws, and the task took longer than it should have.
Pogo was okay. He looked tired, but he was okay.
She drove off the property and parked in the street, leaving the engine running and the driver’s door open when she got out.
From this side, the gate could be closed only manually. She got the job done.
In the driver’s seat, when they were rolling again, she said, “You need a doctor.”
“There’ll be one soon.” His voice was hoarse and weak. She thought maybe he was delirious or something.
“Where? Where will there be one soon?”
“Where I’m house-sitting, where you left your Chevy.”
“The owner isn’t a doctor. And anyway, he’s in Europe.”
Pogo indicated the phone in his lap. “I called someone.”
“Who?”
“Your only reliable resource in times of crisis.”
“Simon? Simon’s not a doctor.”
“He’ll have one at the house soon after we get there.”
She didn’t like the look of the viscid mass of blood, dark and clotted, bibbing him from neck to waistline, but she couldn’t stop glancing at it.
“You need a doctor now,” she worried.
“Any doc you take me to will have to file a police report. It’s the law when there’s a bullet wound. Simon’s doc will be discreet.”
“How can he be discreet if it’s the law?”
“Probably he lost his license. He’s practicing without it. Or he’s willing to take risks. Moonlight for the right money. Doctors don’t do as well these days as they once did.”
“This sucks.”
“It sucks,” he agreed.
Bob was lying down in the backseat. He usually liked to sit up in a car, to enjoy the passing view. He lay quiet, as if he wasn’t in the mood to enjoy anything right now.
She glanced at Pogo. “You don’t look so good.”