Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  He also knew at once that the trouble on O'Bannon Lane was not merely

  coincidental. Something was happening at the Sharkle house.

  In spite of temperatures in the mid-twenties and wind gusting to thirty

  miles an hour, a crowd of about a hundred had gathered outside the

  police barricade-on the sidewalks and on the lawns of the corner houses.

  Passing traffic on Scott Avenue was slowed by gawkers, and Stefan had to

  drive almost two blocks at a frustratingly slow pace before he found a

  parking space.

  When he walked back to the crowd and became part of it, seeking

  information from the well-bundled onlookers, Father Wycazik found that

  they were for the most part a friendly and strangely excited group. But

  creepy, too. Not blatantly weird. In fact, they were ordinary

  people-except for their totally insensitive fascination with the tragedy

  unfolding before them, as if it were as legitimate a source of thrills

  as a football game.

  It was definitely a tragedy, and one of a particularly horrible nature,

  which Father Wycazik discovered a minute after he joined the crowd and

  began to ask questions. A florid-faced, mustachioed man in a plaid

  hunting jacket and toboggan hat said, "Jesus, man, don't you watch the

  goddamned TV?" He was not the least restrained because he did not know

  he was talking to a priest; Stefan's topcoat and scarf concealed all

  evidence of his holy office. "Christ, fella, that's Sharkle down there.

  Sharkle the Shark, man. That's what they're callin' him. Guy's a

  dangerous loony. Been sealed up in his house there since yesterday,

  man. He shot him two of his neighbors and one cop already, and he's got

  him two goddamn hostages who, if you ask me, got about as much chance as

  a fuckin' cat at a Doberman convention."

  Tuesday morning, via Pacific Southwest Airlines, Parker Faine flew into

  San Francisco from Orange County, then caught a connecting West Air

  flight to Monterey. It was an hour's trip up the California coast on

  PSA, a one-hour layover in San Francisco, and then only thirty-five

  minutes to Monterey. The journey seemed shorter because one of the

  other travelers, a pretty young woman, recognized his name, liked his

  paintings, and was in the mood to be enthralled by his burly charms.

  In Monterey, at the small airport rental agency, he hired a vomit-green

  Ford Tempo. It was an offense to his refined sense of color.

  The Tempo's tempo was satisfyingly allegro on flat roads but a bit

  adagio on the hills. Nevertheless, he required less than half an hour

  to find the address Dom had given him for Gerald Salcoe, the man who had

  stayed at the Tranquility Motel with his wife and two daughters on the

  night of July 6, and who had thus far been unreachable by both phone and

  Western Union. It was a big Southern Colonial manor house, hideously

  out of place on the California coast, set on a prime half-acre, in the

  shade of massive pines, with enough elaborately tended shrubbery to

  employ a gardener one full day a week, including beds of impatiens that

  blazed with red and purple flowers even now, in January.

  Parker swung the Tempo into the majestic circular driveway and parked in

  front of broad, flower-bordered steps that led up to a deep pillared

  veranda. In the shadows of the trees, there was sufficient gloom to

  require lights indoors, but he saw none at the front windows. All of

  the drapes were tightly shut, and the house had a vacant look.

  He got out of the Tempo, hurried up the steps, and crossed the wide

  veranda, voicing his objection to the chilly air as he went: "Brrrrrrr."

  The area's usual morning fog had cleared from the airport, permitting

  landings, but it was still clinging to this part of the peninsula,

  bearding the pines, weaving tendrils between their trunks, muting the

  impatiens' brilliant blooms. Winter in northern California was a more

  bracing season than in Laguna Beach, and with the added damp chill of

  fog, it was not at all to Parker's taste. He had come dressed for it,

  however, in heavy corduroy slacks, a green-plaid flannel shirt, a green

  pullover that mocked Izod-Lacoste by featuring a goofy-looking appliqudd

  armadillo on the breast instead of an alligator, and a

  three-quarter-length navy peacoat with sergeant's stripes on one sleeve:

  quite an outfit, especially when accented by Day-Glo-orange running

  shoes. As he rang the doorbell, Parker looked down at himself and

  decided that maybe sometimes he dressed too eccentrically, even for an

  artist.

  He rang the doorbell six times, waiting half a minute between each ring,

  but no one came.

  Last night, when a man named Jack Twist had called him at eleven o'clock

  from a pay phone in Elko, claiming to have a message from Dom, and had

  asked him to go to a specific pay phone in Laguna for a callback in

  twenty minutes, Parker had still been working on a new and exciting

  painting that he had begun at three o'clock that afternoon.

  Nevertheless, deeply involved as he was with the work, he had hastened

  to the booth as directed. And he had agreed to the trip to Monterey

  without hesitation. The fact was that he had plunged into work as a

  means of taking his mind off Dom and the unfolding events in Elko

  County, for that was where he really wanted to be, neck-deep in the

  mystery. When Twist told him about Dom's and the priest's psychic

  demonstration-floating salt and pepper shakers, levitating

  chairs!-nothing short of World War III could have prevented Parker from

  going to Monterey. And now he was not going to be defeated by an empty

  house. Wherever the Salcoes were, he would find them, and the best place

  to start was with the neighbors.

  Because of the half-acre lots and walls of intervening shrubbery, he

  could not easily walk next door. Back in the Tempo, as he put the car

  in gear, he glanced at the house again, and at first he thought he saw

  movement at one of the downstairs windows: a slightly parted drape

  falling back into place. He sat for a moment, staring, then decided the

  movement had been a trick of fog and shadows. He popped the handbrake

  and drove around the second half of the circular driveway, out to the

  street, delighted to be playing spy again.

  Ernie and Dom parked the Jeep Cherokee at the end of the county road,

  and the pickup with the tinted windshield halted two hundred yards

  behind them. Perched on its high allterrain tires, with goggle-eyed

  spotlights on its roof, it looked (Dom thought) like a big insect poised

  alertly on the downsloping lane, ready to skitter toward a hidey-hole if

  it saw someone with a giant economy-size can of Raid. The driver did

  not get out, nor did the passenger, if there was one.

  "Think there's going to be trouble here?" Dom asked, getting out of the

  Cherokee and joining Ernie at the side of the road.

  "If they'd meant trouble, they'd already have made it," Ernie said. His

  breath steamed in the frigid air. "If they want to tag along and watch,

  that's all right by me. To hell with them."

  They got two hunting rifles-a Winchester Model 94 carbine loaded with

&
nbsp; .32 special cartridges, and a .30/06 Springfield-from the back of the

  Jeep Cherokee, handling the weapons conspicuously in the hope that the

  men in the pickup would be encouraged to remain peaceable by the

  realization that their quarry could fight back.

  The mountain still rose on the western side of the lane, and forest

  still clothed those slopes. But the land that fell away to the east had

  become a broad treeless field, the northern end of the series of meadows

  that lay along the valley wall.

  Although snow had not yet begun to fall, the wind was picking up. Dom

  was thankful for the winter clothes he had purchased in Reno, but he

  wished he had an insulated ski suit like Ernie was wearing. And a pair

  of those rugged laceup boots instead of the flimsy zippered pair he now

  wore. Later today, Ginger and Faye would stop at a sporting-goods store

  in Elko with a list of gear needed for tonight's operation, including

  suitable clothes for Dom and everyone else who did not already have

  them. At the moment, however, the insistent wind found entrance at

  Dom's coat collar and at the unelasticized cuffs of his sleeves.

  Leaving the Cherokee, he and Ernie went over the side of the road, down

  into the sloping meadow, continuing their inspection of the Thunder Hill

  perimeter on foot. The high, electrified chainlink fence with the

  barbed-wire overhang led out of the trees farther back; it ceased to

  parallel the northward course of the county road, turning east and down

  toward the valley floor. The snow in the meadow was ten inches deep,

  but still below the tops of their boots. They slogged two hundred yards

  to a point along the fence from which they could see, in the distance,

  the enormous steel blast doors set in the side of the valley wall.

  Dom saw no signs of human or canine guards. The snow on the other side

  of the fence was not marked by footprints or pawprints, which meant no

  one walked the perimeter on a regular schedule.

  'A place like this, they're not going to be sloppy," Ernie said. "So if

  there aren't any foot patrols, there must be one hell of a lot of

  electronic security on the other side of this fence."

  Dom had been glancing toward the top of the meadow, a little worried

  that the men in the all-terrain truck might be up to something with the

  Cherokee. This time, when he looked back, he saw a man in dark clothes,

  starkly silhouetted against the snow. The guy wasn't around the

  Cherokee and seemed to have no interest in it, but he had come down from

  the edge of the county road, descending a few yards into the inclined

  meadow. He was standing up there, unmoving, maybe a hundred and eighty

  yards above Dom and Ernie, watching them.

  Ernie noticed the observer, too. He tucked his Winchester under his

  right arm and lifted the binoculars he had been carrying on a strap

  around his neck. "He's Army. At least that looks like a regulation

  Army greatcoat he's wearing. Just watching us."

  "You'd think they'd be more discreet."

  "Can't follow anyone discreetly, not in these wide-open spaces. Might

  as well be forthright. Besides, he wants us to see what he's carrying,

  so we'll know our rifles don't worry him."

  "What do you mean?" Dom asked. "What's he carrying?"

  "A Belgian FN submachine gun. Damn fine weapon. It can fire up to six

  hundred rounds a minute."

  If Father Wycazik had watched television news, he would have heard about

  Calvin Sharkle last night, for the man had been a hot story for

  twenty-four hours. However, he'd stopped watching TV news years ago,

  for he'd decided that its relentless simplification of every story into

  stark black and white issues was intellectually corrupt and that its

  gleeful concentration on violence, sex, gloom, and despair was morally

  repellent. He also might have read about the tragedy on O'Bannon Lane

  on the front pages of this morning's Tribune and Sun-Times, but he had

  left the rectory in such a ' hurry that he'd had no time for newspapers.

  Now he pieced the story together from information provided by those in

  the crowd behind the police barricades.

  For months, Cal Sharkle had been acting . . . odd. Ordi narily

  cheerful and pleasant, a bachelor who lived alone and was well-liked by

  everyone on O'Bannon Lane, he'd become a brooder, dour and even grim. He

  told neighbors he had "a bad feeling about things," and believed

  something "important and terrible is going to happen." He read

  survivalist books and magazines, and talked about Armageddon. And he

  was plagued by vivid nightmares.

  December first, he quit trucking, sold his rig, and told neighbors and

  relatives the end was imminent. He wanted to sell his house, buy remote

  property in the mountains, and build a retreat like those he had seen in

  the survivalist magazines. "But there isn't time," he told his sister,

  Nan Gilchrist. "So I'll just prepare this house for a siege." He didn't

  know what was going to happen, did not understand the source of his own

  fear, though he said he was not concerned about nuclear war, Russian

  invasion, economic collapse, or anything else that alarmed most

  survivalists. "I don't know what . . . but something strange and

  horrible is going to happen," he told his sister.

  Mrs. Gilchrist made him see a doctor, who found him fit, suffering only

  from job-related stress. But after Christmas, Calvin's previously

  garrulous nature gave way to a closedmouth suspicion. During the first

  week of January, he had his phone disconnected, cryptically explaining:

  "Who knows how they'll get at us when they come? Maybe they can do it

  over the phone." He was unable or unwilling to identify "they."

  No one considered Cal really dangerous. He had been a peaceful,

  kind-hearted man all his life. In spite of his new eccentric behavior,

  there was no reason to think he would turn violent.

  Then, yesterday morning at eight-thirty, Cal visited the Wilkersons, the

  family across the street, with whom he had once been close but from whom

  he had recently kept his distance. Edward Wilkerson told reporters that

  Cal said, "Listen, I can't be selfish about this. I'm all prepared, and

  here you are defenseless. So when they come for us, Ed, it'll be okay

  if you and your family hide out at my place." When Wilkerson asked who

  "they" were, Cal said, "Well, I don't know what they'll look like, or

  what they'll call themselves. But they're going to do something bad to

  us, maybe turn us into zombies." Cal Sharkle assured Wilkerson that he

  had plenty of guns and ammunition in his house and had taken steps to

  make a fortress of the place.

  Alarmed by talk of weapons and shootouts, Wilkerson had humored Cal and,

  as soon as the man left, had called his sister. Nan Gilchrist had

  arrived at half-past-ten with her husband and had told a worried

  Wilkerson that she would handle it, that she was sure she could persuade

  Cal to enter the hospital for observation. But after she and Mr.

  Gilchrist went into the house, Ed Wilkerson decided they might need some

  backup, so he and another neighbor, Frank Krelky, went to the Sharkle

 
; house to provide what assistance they could.

  Wilkerson expected Mr. or Mrs. Gilchrist to answer the bell, but Cal

  himself came to the door. He was distraught, nearly hysterical-and

  armed with a .20-gauge semiautomatic shotgun. He accused his neighbors

  of being zombies already. "You've been changed, " he shouted at

  Wilkerson and Krelky. "Oh God, I should've seen it. I should've known.

  When did it happen, when'd you stop being human? My God, now you've

  come to get us all in one swoop." Then, with a wail of terror, he opened

  fire with the shotgun. The first blast took Krelky in the throat at

  such close range that it decapitated him. Wilkerson ran, was hit in the

  legs as he reached the end of Sharkle's front walk, fell, rolled, and

  played dead, a ruse that saved his life.

  Now Krekly was in the morgue, and Wilkerson was in the hospital in good

  enough condition to talk to reporters.

  And Father Wycazik was at the entrance to O'Bannon Lane, where a young

  man in the crowd behind the police line was eager to fill in the last of

  it for him. The man's name was Roger Hasterwick, a "temporarily

  unemployed beverage concoctionist," which Stefan suspected was an

  out-of-work bartender. He had a disturbing gleam in his eyes that might

  have been a sign of intoxication, drug use, lack of sleep, psychopathy,

  or all four, but his information was detailed and apparently accurate:

  "So, see, the cops close the block, evacuate the people out their

  houses, then they try to talk with this Sharkle the Shark. But he don't

  have a phone, see, and when they use a bullhorn, he won't answer them.

  The cops figure his sister and brotherin-law are in there alive,

  hostages, so nobody wants to do nothin' rash."

  "Wise," Father Wycazik said bleakly, feeling even colder than the winter

  day in which he stood.