Shadowfires

by Dean Koontz

  They might have been some of the federal agents who were after Ben and Rachael, but at this point Whitney didn’t care if they were lieutenants in the devil’s own army, because surely no one could pose a greater danger than the deadly creature that was stalking the motel grounds. Against that enemy, all men ought to be united in a common cause. Even federal agents, even DSA men, would be welcome allies in this battle. They would have to give up the idea of keeping the Wildcard Project a secret; they would see that there was no way this particular line of life-extension research could be safely carried on; and they would stop trying to silence Ben and Rachael, would help stop the thing that Leben had become, yes, that was certainly what they would do, so Whitney told them what was happening, urged them to help Ben and Rachael, alerted them to the nature of the danger that they faced …

  “What’s he saying?” the big one asked.

  “I can’t make it out exactly,” the small, well-dressed, Mexican-looking man said. He had stopped examining the cuts and had fished Whitney’s wallet out of his trousers.

  The big man carefully felt Whitney’s left leg. “This isn’t a recent injury. He lost the leg a long time ago. The same time he lost the arm, I guess.”

  Whitney realized that his voice was no louder than a whisper and that it was mostly drowned out by the patter, splash, and gurgle of the rain. He tried again.

  “I think he’s delirious,” the big man said.

  I’m not delirious, damn it, just weak, Whitney tried to say. But no words came from him at all this time, which scared him.

  “It’s Gavis,” the smaller man said, studying the driver’s license in Whitney’s wallet. “Shadway’s friend. The man Teddy Bertlesman told us about.”

  “He’s in a bad way, Julio.”

  “You’ve got to take him in the car and get him to a hospital.”

  “Me?” the bigger man said. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be all right here.”

  “You can’t go in alone,” the big man said, his face carved by lines of worry and bejeweled with rain.

  “Reese, there’s not going to be trouble here,” the smaller man said. “It’s only Shadway and Mrs. Leben. They’re no danger to me.”

  “Bullshit,” the bigger man said. “Julio, there’s someone else. Neither Shadway nor Mrs. Leben did this to Gavis.”

  “Leben!” Whitney managed to expel the name loud enough for it to carry above the sound of the rain.

  The two men looked at him, puzzled.

  “Leben,” he managed again.

  “Eric Leben?” Julio asked.

  “Yes,” Whitney breathed. “Genetic … chaos … chaos, mutation … guns … guns …”

  “What about guns?” the bigger man—Reese—asked.

  “ … won’t … stop … him,” Whitney finished, exhausted.

  “Get him into the car, Reese,” Julio said. “If he isn’t in a hospital in ten or fifteen minutes, he’s not going to make it.”

  “What’s he mean that guns won’t stop Leben?” Reese asked.

  “He’s delirious,” Julio said. “Now move!”

  Frowning, Reese scooped Whitney up as easily as a father might lift a small child.

  The one named Julio hurried ahead, splashing through puddles of dirty water, and opened the back door of their car.

  Reese maneuvered Whitney gently onto the seat, then turned to Julio. “I don’t like this.”

  “Just go,” Julio said.

  “I swore I’d never cut and run on you, that I’d always be there when you needed me, any way you needed me, no matter what.”

  “Right now,” Julio said sharply, “I need you to take this man to a hospital.” He slammed the rear door.

  A moment later, Reese opened the front door and got in behind the wheel. To Julio, he said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Lying on the rear seat, Whitney said, “Chaos … chaos … chaos … chaos.” He was trying to say a lot of other things, convey a more specific warning, but only that one word would come out.

  Then the car began to move.

  Peake had pulled to the side of Tropicana Boulevard and had switched off the headlights when Hagerstrom and Verdad had coasted to a stop along the shoulder about a quarter of a mile ahead.

  Leaning forward, squinting through the smeary windshield past the monotonously thumping wipers, Sharp twice rubbed a stubborn patch of condensation from the glass and at last said, “Looks like … they’ve found someone lying in front of that place. What is that place?”

  “Seems like it’s out of business, a deserted motel,” Peake said. “Can’t quite read that old sign from here. Golden … something.”

  “What’re they doing here?” Sharp wondered.

  What am I doing here? Peake wondered silently.

  “Could this be where Shadway and the Leben bitch are hiding out?” Sharp wondered.

  Dear God, I hope not, Peake thought. I hope we never find them. I hope they’re on a beach in Tahiti.

  “Whoever those bastards have found,” Sharp said, “they’re putting him in their car.”

  Peake had given up all hope of becoming a legend. He had also given up all hope of becoming one of Anson Sharp’s favorite agents. All he wanted was to get through this night alive, to prevent whatever killing he could, and to avoid humiliating himself.

  At the side of the garage, the battered door cracked again, from top to bottom this time, and the jamb splintered, too, and one hinge tore loose, and the lock finally exploded, and everything crashed inward, and there was Leben, the beast, coming through like something that had broken out of a bad dream into the real world.

  Ben grabbed the bucket—which was more than half full—and headed toward the kitchen door, trying to move fast without spilling any of the precious gasoline.

  The creature saw him and let loose a shriek of such intense hatred and rage that the sound seemed to penetrate deep into Ben’s bones and vibrate there. It kicked aside an outdoor vacuum cleaner and clambered over the piles of trash—including a fallen set of metal shelves—with arachnoid grace, as if it were an immense spider.

  Entering the kitchen, Ben heard the thing close behind him. He dared not look back.

  Half the cupboard doors and drawers were open, and just as Ben entered, Rachael pulled out another drawer. She cried—“There!”—and snatched up a box of matches.

  “Run!” Ben said. “Outside!”

  They absolutely had to put more distance between themselves and the beast, gain time and room to pull the trick they had in mind.

  He followed her out of the kitchen into the living room, and some of the gasoline slopped over the edge of the pail, spattering the carpet and his shoes.

  Behind them, the mutant crashed through the kitchen, slamming shut cupboard doors, heaving aside the small kitchen table and chairs even though that furniture wasn’t in its way, snarling and shrieking, apparently in the grip of a destructive frenzy.

  Ben felt as if he were moving in slow motion, fighting his way through air as thick as syrup. The living room seemed as long as a football field. Then, finally nearing the end of the room, he was suddenly afraid that the door to the motel office was going to be locked, that they were going to be halted here, with no time or room to set fire to the beast, at least not without serious risk of immolating themselves in the process. Then Rachael threw open the door, and Ben almost shouted with relief. They rushed into the motel office, through the swinging gate in one end of the check-in counter, across the small public area, through the outer glass door, into the night beneath the breezeway—and nearly collided with Detective Verdad, whom they had last seen on Monday evening, at the morgue in Santa Ana.

  “What in the name of God?” Verdad said as the beast shrieked in the motel office behind them.

  Ben saw that the rain-soaked policeman had a revolver in his hand. He said, “Back off and shoot it when it comes through the door. You can’t kill it, but maybe you can slow it down.”

  It wanted th
e female prey, it wanted blood, it was full of a cold rage, it was burning with hot desire, and it would not be stopped, not by guns or doors, not by anything, not until it had taken the female, buried its aching member inside her, not until it had killed both of them and fed upon them, it wanted to chew out their soft sweet eyes, bury its muzzle in their torn and spurting throats, it wanted to feed on the bloody pulsing muscle of their hearts, wanted to burrow through their eviscerated corpses in search of their rich livers and kidneys, it felt that overwhelming hunger beginning to grow within it again, the changefire within it needed more fuel, a mild hunger now but soon to get worse, like before, an all-consuming hunger that could not be denied, it needed meat, and it pushed through the glass door, out into the night wind and blowing rain, and there was another male, a smaller one, and fire flashed from something in the smaller male’s hand, and a brief sharp pain stung its chest, and fire flashed again, and another pain, so it roared a furious challenge at its pathetic assailant—

  Just this morning, when he had been at the library doing research related to the unofficial investigation he intended to conduct with Reese, Julio had read several magazine and journal articles Eric Leben had written about genetic engineering and about the prospects for the success of life extension by means of genetic manipulation. Later, he had spoken with Dr. Easton Solberg at UCI, had done a lot of thinking since then, and had just heard Whitney Gavis’s disjointed ramblings about genetic chaos and mutation. He was not a stupid man, so when he saw the nightmare creature that followed Shadway and Mrs. Leben out of the motel office, he quickly determined that something had gone terribly wrong with Eric Leben’s experiment and that this monstrosity was, in fact, the scientist himself.

  As Julio unhesitatingly opened fire on the creature, Mrs. Leben and Shadway—who, judging from the smell of it, was carrying a bucket full of gasoline—hurried from beneath the cover of the breezeway into the rainy courtyard. The first two rounds did not faze the mutant, though it stopped for a moment as if baffled by Julio’s sudden and unexpected appearance. To his astonishment, he saw that he might not be able to bring it down with the revolver.

  It lurched forward, hissing, and swung one multiple-jointed arm at him as if to knock his head off his shoulders.

  Julio barely ducked under the blow, felt the arm brush through his hair, and fired up into the beast’s chest, which bristled with spines and strangely shaped lumps of tissue. If it embraced him, he would be impaled upon those breast spikes, and that realization brought his finger to bear upon the trigger again and again.

  Those three shots finally drove the thing backward until it collided with the wall by the office door, where it stood for a moment, clawing at the air.

  Julio fired the sixth and final round in the revolver, hitting his target again, but still it remained standing—hurt and maybe even dazed, but standing. He always carried a few extra cartridges in his jacket pocket, even though he had never before needed spare rounds in all his years of police work, and now he fumbled for them.

  The creature shoved away from the motel wall, apparently having already recuperated from the six rounds it had just taken. It cut loose a cry so savage and furious that Julio turned away from it at once and ran into the courtyard, where Shadway and Mrs. Leben were standing at the far end of the swimming pool.

  Peake had hoped that Sharp would send him off after Hagerstrom and the unknown man that the cop had loaded into the back seat of the rental car. Then, if shooting took place at the abandoned motel, it would be entirely Sharp’s responsibility.

  But Sharp said, “Let Hagerstrom go. Looks to me like he’s taking that guy to a doctor. Anyway, Verdad is the real brains of the team. If Verdad’s staying here, then this is where the action is; this is where we’ll find Shadway and the woman.”

  When Lieutenant Verdad headed back along the motel driveway toward the lighted office, Sharp told Peake to pull down there and park in front of the place. By the time they stopped again on the shoulder of the boulevard in front of the dilapidated sign—GOLDEN SAND INN—they heard the first gunshots.

  Oh, hell, Peake thought miserably.

  Lieutenant Verdad stood on one side of Benny, hastily reloading his revolver.

  Rachael stood on the other side, sheltering the box of wooden matches from the relentless rain. She had withdrawn one match and had been holding it and the box in her cupped hands, silently cursing the wind and water that would try to extinguish the flame the moment it was struck.

  From the front of the motel courtyard, backlit by the amber light spilling through the office windows, the Eric-thing approached in that frighteningly swift, darkly graceful stride that seemed entirely at odds with its size and with its cumbersome, gnarled appearance. It emitted a shrill, ululant cry as it raced toward them. Clearly, it had no fear.

  Rachael was afraid that its reckless advance was justified, that the fire would do it no more damage than the bullets.

  It was already halfway along the forty-foot length of the pool. When it reached the end, it would only have to turn the corner and come another fifteen feet before it would be upon them.

  The lieutenant had not finished reloading his revolver, but he snapped the cylinder into place anyway, apparently deciding that he didn’t have time to slip the last two cartridges into their chambers.

  The beast reached the corner of the pool.

  Benny gripped the bucket of gasoline with both hands, one on the rim and the other on the bottom. He swung it back at his side, brought it forward, and threw the contents all over the face and chest of the mutant as it leaped across the last fifteen feet of concrete decking.

  At a run, Peake followed Sharp past the motel office and into the courtyard just in time to see Shadway throw a bucket full of something into the face of—

  Of what? Christ, what was that thing?

  Sharp, too, halted in amazement.

  The creature screamed in fury and staggered back from Shadway. It wiped at its monstrous face—Peake saw eyes that glowed orange like a pair of hot coals—and pawed at its chest, trying to remove whatever Shadway had thrown on it.

  “Leben,” Sharp said. “Holy shit, it must be Leben.” Jerry Peake understood at once, even though he didn’t want to understand, did not want to know, for this was a secret that it would be dangerous to know, dangerous not only to his physical well-being but to his sanity.

  The gasoline seemed to have choked and temporarily blinded it, but Rachael knew that it would recover from this assault as quickly as it had recovered from being shot. So, as Benny dropped the empty bucket and stepped out of the way, she struck the match and only then realized she should have had a torch, something she could have set aflame and then thrown at the creature. Now she had no choice but to step in close with the short-stemmed match.

  The Eric-thing had stopped shrieking and, temporarily overcome by the gasoline fumes, was hunched over, wheezing noisily, gasping for air.

  She took only three steps toward it before the wind or the rain—or both—extinguished the match.

  Making a strange terrified mewling that she could not control, she slid open the box, took out another match, and struck it. This time she had not even taken one step before the flame went out.

  The demonic mutant seemed to be breathing easier, and it began to straighten up, raising its monstrous head again.

  The rain, Rachael thought desperately, the rain is washing the gasoline off its body.

  As she shakily withdrew a third match, Benny said, “Here,” and he turned the empty bucket upright on the concrete at her feet.

  She understood. She rasped the third match against the striking pad on the side of the box, couldn’t get it to light.

  The creature drew in a deep breath at last, another. Recovering, it shrieked at them.

  She scraped the match against the box again and let out a cry of relief when the flame spurted up. The instant the match was lit, she dropped it straight into the bucket, and the residue of gasoline burst into flames.
<
br />   Lieutenant Verdad, who had been waiting to do his part, stepped in fast and kicked the bucket at the Eric-thing.

  The flaming pail struck one of the beast’s jean-clad thighs, where some of the gasoline had landed when Benny had thrown it. The fire leaped out of the bucket onto the jeans and raced up over the creature’s spiny chest, swiftly enveloped the misshapen head.

  The fire did not stop it.

  Screaming in pain, a pillar of flame, the thing nevertheless came forward faster than Rachael would have believed possible. In the red-orange light of the leaping fire, she saw its outreaching hands, saw what appeared to be mouths in the palms, and then it had its hands on her. Hell could be no worse than having those hands on her; she almost died right there from the horror of it. The thing seized her by one arm and by the neck, and she felt those orifices within its hands eating into her flesh, and she felt the fire reaching out for her, and she saw the spikes on the mutant’s huge chest where she could be so quickly and easily impaled—a multitude of possible deaths—and now it lifted her, and she knew she was certainly dead, finished, but Verdad appeared and opened fire with his revolver, squeezing off two shots that hit the Eric-thing in the head, but even before he could pull off a third shot, Benny came in at a flying leap, in some crazy karate movement, airborne, driving both feet into the monster’s shoulder, and Rachael felt it let go of her with one hand, so she wrenched and kicked at its flaming chest, and suddenly she was free, the creature was toppling into the shallow end of the empty swimming pool, she fell to the concrete decking, free, free—except that her shoes were on fire.