by Dean Koontz
had been staying with some people in Pennsylvania fourteen or fifteen years before. The chrysalis had been hanging from a twig on a birch tree, semitransparent and backlit by a beam of sunlight, so she had been able to see the insect within. It was a butterfly that had passed all the way through the pupa stage, a fully mature imago. Its metamorphosis complete, it had been quivering frantically within the cocoon, its wirelike legs twitching ceaselessly, as if it was eager to be free but frightened of the hostile world into which it would be born. Now, in her padding and hard-plastic armor, Chyna quivered like that butterfly, although she was not eager to burst free into the night world that awaited her but wanted to withdraw even deeper into her chrysalis.
She went to the front door.
She pulled on the stained leather gloves, which were heavy but surprisingly flexible. They were too large but had adjustable Velcro bands at the wrists to hold them in place.
She had sewn a brass key to the thumb of the right-hand glove, running the thread through the hole in the key bow. The entire blade, with all its tumbler-activating serrations, extended beyond the tip of the thumb, so it could be inserted easily into the keyway on the door of the motor home. She didn’t want to have to fumble the key from a pocket with the dogs attacking from all sides—and she sure as hell didn’t want to risk dropping it.
Of course, the vehicle might not be locked. But she wasn’t taking any chances.
From the floor, she picked up the spray bottles. One in each hand. Again, she checked to be sure that they were set on STREAM.
She quietly disengaged the deadbolt lock, listened for the hollow thump of paws on the board floor, and finally cracked the door.
The porch looked clear.
Chyna crossed the threshold and quickly pulled the door shut behind her, fumbling at the knob because she was hampered by the plastic bottles in her hands.
She hooked her fingers around the levers on the bottles. The effectiveness of these weapons would depend on how fast the dogs came at her and whether she could aim well in the brief window of opportunity that they would give her.
In a night as windless as it was deep, the seashell mobile hung motionless. Not even a single leaf stirred on the tree at the north end of the porch.
The night seemed to be soundless. With her ears under the padded helmet, however, she wasn’t able to hear small noises.
She had the weird feeling that the entire world was but a highly detailed diorama sealed inside a glass paperweight.
Without even the faintest breeze to carry her scent to the dogs, maybe they would not be aware that she had come outside.
Yeah, and maybe pigs can fly but just don’t want us to know.
The fieldstone steps were at the south end of the porch. The motor home stood in the driveway, twenty feet from the bottom of the steps.
Keeping her back to the wall of the house, she edged to her right. As she moved, she glanced repeatedly to her left at the railed north side of the porch, and out past the balustrade into the front yard directly ahead of her. No dogs.
The night was so chilly that her breath formed a faint fog on the inside of her visor. Each flare of condensation faded quickly—but each seemed to fan out across the Plexiglas farther than the one before it. In spite of the ventilation from under her chin and through the six penny-size holes across the center of the pane, she began to worry that her own hot exhalations were gradually going to leave her effectively blind. She was breathing hard and fast, and she was hardly more able to slow her rate of respiration than quiet the rapid pounding of her heart.
If she blew each breath out, angling it toward the open bottom of the face shield, she would be able to minimize the problem. This resulted in a faint, hollow whistling characterized by a vibrato that revealed the depth of her fear.
Two small sliding steps, three, four: She eased sideways past the living-room window. She was uncomfortably aware of the light at her back. Silhouetted again.
She should have turned all the lights out, but she hadn’t wanted Ariel to be alone in the dark. In her current condition, perhaps the girl would not have known if the lights were on or off, but it had felt wrong to leave her in blackness.
Having crossed half the distance from the door to the south end of the porch without incident, Chyna grew bolder. Instead of edging sideways, she turned directly toward the steps and shuffled forward as fast as the hampering gear would allow.
As black as the night out of which it came, as silent as the high patchy clouds sailing slowly across fields of stars, the first Doberman sprinted toward her from the front of the motor home. It didn’t bark or growl.
She almost failed to see it in time. Because she forgot to exhale with calculation, a wave of condensation spread across the inside of the visor. At once, the pale film of moisture retreated like an ebbing surf, but the dog was already there, leaping toward the steps, ears flattened against its tapered skull, lips skinned back from its teeth.
She squeezed the lever of the spray bottle that she clutched in her right hand. Ammonia shot six or seven feet in the still air.
The dog wasn’t within range when the first stream spattered onto the porch floor, but it was closing fast.
She felt stupid, like a kid with a water pistol. This wasn’t going to work. Wasn’t going to work. But oh, Jesus, it had to work or she was dog chow.
Immediately she pumped the lever again, and the dog was on the steps, where the stream fell short of it, and she wished that she had a sprayer with more pressure, one with at least a twenty-foot range, so she could stop the beast before it got near her, but she squeezed the trigger again even as the previous stream was still falling, and this one got the dog as it came up onto the porch. She was aiming for its eyes, but the ammonia splashed its muzzle, spattering its nose and its bared teeth.
The effect was instantaneous. The Doberman lost its footing and tumbled toward Chyna, squealing, and would have crashed into her if she hadn’t jumped aside.
With caustic ammonia slathering its tongue and fumes filling its lungs, unable to draw a breath of clean air, the dog rolled onto its back, pawing frantically at its snout. It wheezed and hacked and made shrill sounds of distress.
Chyna turned from it. She kept moving.
She was surprised to hear herself speaking aloud: “Shit, shit, shit…”
Onward, then, to the head of the porch steps, where she glanced back warily and saw that the big dog was on its feet, wobbling in circles, shaking its head. Between sharp squeals of pain, it was sneezing violently.
The second dog virtually flew out of the darkness, attacking as Chyna descended the bottom step. From the corner of her eye, she detected movement to her left, turned her head, and saw an airborne Doberman—oh, God—like an incoming mortar round. Though she raised her left arm and started to swing toward the dog, she wasn’t quick enough, and before she could loose a stream of ammonia, she was hit so hard that she was nearly bowled off her feet. She stumbled sideways but somehow maintained her balance.
The Doberman’s teeth were sunk into the thick sleeve on her left arm. It wasn’t merely holding her as a police dog would have done but was working at the padding as if chewing on meat, trying to rip off a chunk and severely disable her, tear open an artery so she would bleed to death, but fortunately its teeth hadn’t penetrated to her flesh.
After coming at her in disciplined silence, the dog still wasn’t snarling. But from low in its throat issued a sound halfway between a growl and a hungry keening, an eerie and needful cry that Chyna heard too clearly in spite of her padded helmet.
Point-blank, reaching across her body with her right hand, she squirted a stream of ammonia into the Doberman’s fierce black eyes.
The dog’s jaws flew open as if they were part of a mechanical device that had popped a tension spring, and it spun away from her, silvery strings of saliva trailing from its black lips, howling in agony.
She remembered the words of warning on the ammonia label: Causes substantial but te
mporary eye injury.
Squealing like an injured child, the dog rolled in the grass, pawing at its eyes as the first animal had pawed at its snout, but with even greater urgency.
The manufacturer recommended rinsing contaminated eyes with plenty of water for fifteen minutes. The dog had no water, unless it instinctively made its way to a stream or pond, so it would not be a problem to her for at least a quarter of an hour, most likely far longer.
The Doberman sprang to its feet and chased its tail, snapping its teeth. It stumbled and fell again, scrambled erect, and streaked away into the night, temporarily blinded, in considerable pain.
Incredibly, listening to the poor thing’s screams as she hurried toward the motor home, Chyna winced with remorse. It would have torn her apart without hesitation if it could have gotten at her, but it was a mindless killer only by training, not by nature. In a way, the dogs were just other victims of Edgler Vess, their lives bent to his purpose. She would have spared them suffering if she had been able to rely solely on the protective clothing.
How many more dogs?
Vess had implied there was a pack. Hadn’t he said four? Of course, he might be lying. There might be only two.
Move, move, move.
At the passenger-side cockpit door of the motor home, she tried the handle. Locked.
No more dogs, just five seconds without dogs, please.
She dropped the spray bottle from her right hand, so she could pinch the bow of the key between her thumb and finger. She was barely able to feel it through the thick gloves.
Her hand was shaking. The key missed the keyhole and chattered against the chrome face of the lock cylinder. She would have dropped it if it hadn’t been sewn to the glove.
From behind this time, just as she was about to slip the key into the door on her second try, a Doberman hit her, leaping onto her back, biting at the nape of her neck.
She was slammed forward against the vehicle. The face shield on her helmet smacked hard against the door.
The dog’s teeth were sunk into the thick rolled collar of the trainer’s jacket, no doubt also into the padding on the segmented plastic collar that she wore under the jacket to protect her neck. It was holding on to her by its teeth, tearing at her ineffectively with its claws, like a demon lover in a nightmare.
As the dog’s impact had pitched her forward against the motor home, now the weight of it and its furious squirming dragged her away from the vehicle. She almost toppled backward, but she knew that the advantage would go to the dog if it managed to drag her to the ground.
Stay up. Stay tall.
Lurching around a hundred eighty degrees as she struggled to keep her balance, she saw that the first Doberman was no longer on the porch. Astonishingly, the creature hanging from her neck must be the small one that she had squirted on the muzzle. Now it was able to get its breath again, back in service, undaunted by her chemical arsenal, giving its all for Edgler Vess.
On the plus side, maybe there were only two dogs.
She still had the spray bottle in her left hand. She squeezed the trigger, aiming several squirts over her shoulder. But the heavy padding in the jacket sleeves didn’t allow her to bend her arms much, and she wasn’t able to fire at an angle that could splash the ammonia in the dog’s eyes.
She threw herself backward against the side of the motor home, much as she had hurtled into the fireplace earlier. The Doberman was trapped between her and the vehicle as the chair had been between her and the river-rock wall, and it took the brunt of the impact.
Letting go of her, falling away, the dog squealed, a pitiful sound that sickened her, but also a good sound—oh, yes—a good sound as sweet as any music.
Buckles jangling, padded chaps slapping together, Chyna scuttled sideways, trying to get out of the animal’s reach, worried about her ankles, her vulnerable ankles.
But suddenly the Doberman no longer seemed to be in a fighting mood. It slunk away from her, tail tucked between its legs, rolling its eyes to keep a watch on her peripherally, shaking and wheezing as though it had damaged a lung, and favoring its hind leg on the right side.
She squeezed the trigger on the spray bottle. The creature was out of range, and the stream of ammonia arced into the grass.
Two dogs down.
Move, move.
Chyna turned to the motor home again—and cried out as a third dog, weighing more than she did, leaped at her throat, bit through the jacket, and staggered her backward.
Going down. Shit. And as she went, the dog was on top of her, chewing frenziedly at the collar of the jacket.
When Chyna hit the ground, her breath was knocked from her in spite of all the padding, and the spray bottle popped out of her left hand, spun into the air. She grabbed at it as it tumbled away, but she missed.
The dog ripped loose a strip of padding from around the jacket collar and shook its head, casting the scrap aside, spraying her face shield with gobs of foamy saliva. It bore in at her again, tearing more fiercely at the same spot, burrowing deeper, seeking meat, blood, triumph.
She pounded its sleek head with both fists, trying to smash its ears, hoping that they would be sensitive, vulnerable. “Get off, damn it, off! Off!”
The Doberman snapped at her right hand, missed, teeth clashing audibly, snapped again, and connected. Its incisors didn’t instantly penetrate the tough leather glove, but it shook her hand viciously, as though it had hold of a rat and meant to snap its spine. Though her skin hadn’t been broken, the grinding pressure of the bite was so painful that Chyna screamed.
In an instant, the dog released her hand and was at her throat again. Past the torn jacket. Teeth slashing at the Kevlar vest.
Howling in pain, Chyna stretched her throbbing right hand toward the spray bottle lying in the grass. The weapon was a foot beyond her reach.
When turning her head to look at the bottle, she inadvertently caused the bottom of her face shield to lift, giving the Doberman better access to her throat, and it thrust its muzzle under the curve of Plexiglas, above the Kevlar vest, biting into the thick padding on the exterior of the segmented hard-plastic collar, which was her last defense. Intent on tearing this band of body armor away, the dog jerked back so hard that Chyna’s head was lifted off the ground, and pain flared across the nape of her neck.
She tried to heave the Doberman off her. It was heavy, bearing down stubbornly, paws digging frantically at her.
As the dog wrenched at Chyna’s protective collar, she could feel its hot breath against the underside of her chin. If it could get its snout under the shield at a slightly better angle, it might be able to bite her chin, would be able to bite her chin, and at any moment it was going to realize this.
She heaved with all her strength, and the dog clung, but she was able to hitch a few inches closer to the spray bottle. She heaved again, and now the bottle was just six inches beyond her grasping fingertips.
She saw the other Doberman limping toward her, ready to rejoin the fray. She hadn’t damaged its lungs, after all, when she slammed it between her and the motor home.
Two of them. She couldn’t handle two of them at once, both on top of her.
She heaved, desperately hitching sideways on her back, dragging the clinging Doberman with her.
Its hot tongue licked the underside of her chin, licked, tasting her sweat. It was making that horrible, needful sound deep in its throat.
Heave.
Spotting her point of greatest vulnerability, the limping dog scuttled toward her right foot. She kicked at it, and the dog dodged back, but then it darted in again. She kicked, and the Doberman bit the heel of her Rockport.
Her frantic breathing fogged the inside of the visor. In fact, the breath of the clinging Doberman fogged it too, because its muzzle was under the Plexiglas. She was effectively blind.
Kicking with both feet to ward off the limping dog. Kicking, heaving sideways.
The other’s hot tongue slathered her chin. Its sour breath. Teeth gnash
ing an inch short of her flesh. The tongue again.
Chyna touched the spray bottle. Closed her fingers around it.
Though the bite hadn’t penetrated the glove, her hand was still throbbing with such crippling pain that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold on to the bottle or find the right grip, wouldn’t be able to work the lever-action trigger, but then she blindly squeezed off a stream of ammonia. Unthinking, she had used her swollen trigger finger, and the flash of pain made her dizzy. She shifted her middle finger onto the lever and squeezed off another blast.
In spite of her kicking, the injured dog bit through her shoe. Teeth pierced her right foot.
Chyna triggered another thick stream of ammonia toward her feet, yet another, and abruptly that Doberman let go of her. Both she and the dog were shrieking, blind and shaking and living now in the same commonwealth of pain.
Snapping teeth. The remaining dog. Pressing toward her chin, under the visor. Snap-snap-snap. And the eager hungry whine.
She jammed the bottle in its face, pulled the trigger, pulled, and the dog scrambled off her, screaming.
A few drops of ammonia penetrated the visor through the series of small holes across the center of the pane. She wasn’t able to see through the fogged Plexiglas, and the acrid fumes made breathing difficult.
Gasping, eyes watering, she dropped the spray bottle and crawled on her hands and knees toward where she thought the motor home stood. She bumped into the side of it and pulled herself to her feet. Her bitten foot felt hot, perhaps because it was soaking in the bath of blood contained in her shoe, but she could put her weight on it.
Three dogs so far.
If three, then surely four.
The fourth would be coming.
As the ammonia evaporated from the face shield and less rapidly from the front of her torn jacket, the quantity of fumes decreased but not quickly enough. She was eager to remove the helmet and draw an unobstructed breath. She didn’t dare take it off, however, not until she was inside the motor home.
Choking on ammonia fumes, trying to remember to exhale downward under the Plexiglas visor but half blinded because her eyes wouldn’t stop watering, Chyna felt along the side of the motor home until she found the cockpit door again. She was surprised that she could walk on her bitten foot with only tolerable twinges of pain.
The key was still sewn securely to her right glove. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger.
A dog was wailing in the distance, probably the first one that she had squirted in the eyes. Nearby, another was crying pitifully and howling. A third whimpered, sneezed, gagged on fumes.
But where was the fourth?
Fumbling at the lock cylinder, she found the keyhole by trial and error. She opened the door. She hauled herself up into the copilot’s seat.
As she pulled the door shut, something slammed into the outside of it. The fourth dog.
She took off the helmet, the gloves. She stripped out of the padded jacket.
Teeth bared, the fourth Doberman leaped at the side window. Its claws rattled briefly against the glass, and then it dropped back to the lawn, glaring at her.
Revealed by the light from the narrow hallway, Laura Templeton’s body still lay on the bed in a tangle of manacles and chains, wrapped in a sheet.
Chyna’s chest tightened with emotion, and her throat swelled so that she had trouble swallowing. She told herself that the corpse on the bed was not really Laura. The essence of Laura was gone, and this was only the husk, merely flesh and bone on a long journey to dust. Laura’s spirit had traveled in the night to a brighter and warmer home, and there was no point shedding tears for her, because she had transcended.
The closet door was closed. Chyna was sure that the dead man still hung in there.
In the fourteen hours or longer since she had been in the motor-home bedroom, the stuffy air had acquired a faint but repulsive scent of corruption. She had expected worse. Nevertheless, she breathed through her mouth, trying to avoid the smell.
She switched on the reading lamp and opened the top drawer of the nightstand. The items that she had discovered the previous night were still there, rattling softly against one another as the engine vibrations translated through the floor.
She was nervous about leaving the engine running, because the sound of it would mask the approach of another vehicle in case Vess came home earlier. But she needed lights, and she didn’t want to risk depleting the battery.
From the drawer, she withdrew the package of gauze pads, the roll of cloth tape, and the scissors.
In the lounge area behind the cockpit, she sat in one of the armchairs. Earlier, she had stripped out of all the protective gear. Now she removed her right shoe. Her sock was sodden with blood, and she peeled it off.
From two punctures in the top of her foot, blood welled dark and thick. It was seeping, however, not spurting, and she wasn’t going to die from the wound itself anytime soon.
She quickly pressed a double thickness of gauze pads over the seeping holes and fixed them in place with a length of cloth tape. By tightening the tape to apply a little pressure, she might be able to make the bleeding slow or stop.
She would have preferred to saturate the punctures with Bactine or iodine, but she didn’t have anything like that. Anyway, infection wouldn’t set in for a few hours, and by then she would have gotten away from here and obtained medical attention. Or she’d be dead of other causes.
The chance of rabies seemed small to nil. Edgler Vess would be solicitous of