Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  current assignment had put on the colonel, for the thing being hidden

  here in Thunder Hill could not be controlled forever. Which was a

  realization that might lead Falkirk to a harmless breakdown-or to an

  explosion of psychotic anger.

  Third: Leland Falkirk suffered a mild but persistent claustrophobia that

  was strongest in subterranean places. This fear might have arisen in

  his childhood as a result of his parents' unrelenting assertion that he

  would one day wind up in Hell.

  Falkirk, uncomfortable when underground, would be automatically

  suspicious of everyone in a place like Thunder Hill. In retrospect, it

  was frighteningly obvious that the colonel's growing paranoid suspicion

  of everyone on the project had been inevitable from the first day.

  Fourth and worst: Leland Falkirk was a controlled masochist. He

  subjected himself to tests of physical stamina and resistance to pain,

  pretending these ordeals were necessary to maintain the high level of

  fitness and superb reflexes required of a DERO officer. His dirty

  little secret, hidden even from himself, was that he enjoyed the

  suffering.

  Miles Bennell was more disturbed by that aspect of Fal kirk's character

  than by anything else in the profile. Because the colonel liked pain,

  he would not mind suffering along with everyone in Thunder Hill if he

  decided their suffering was necessary to cleanse the world. He might

  actually enjoy the prospect of death.

  Miles Bennell sat in darkness, troubled and bleak.

  But it was not even his death or the deaths of his colleagues that most

  frightened him. What made his gut clench was the fear that, while

  destroying everyone on the project, Falkirk would also destroy the

  project itself. If he did, he would be denying mankind the greatest

  news in history. And he'd also be denying the species its best-perhaps

  only-chance for peace, immortality, endless plenty, and transcendence.

  Leland Falkirk stood in the Blocks' kitchen, looking down at the album

  that lay on the table. When he opened it, he saw photographs and

  drawings of the moon, all colored red.

  Outside, searching the property end to end, a dozen DERO troops shouted

  to one another, voices garbled and muffled by the raging wind.

  Doing deep breathing exercises that were supposed to expel a little of

  his tension with each exhalation, Leland turned a page of the album and

  saw more scarlet moons: the child's weird collection.

  The sound of engines rose to the kitchen window from behind the motel as

  the men drove at least two vehicles around from the front. Leland

  recognized the souped-up, all-terrain pickup's distinctive snarl.

  The colonel continued to page through the album, remaining calm, totally

  in control in spite of the series of setbacks that continued to plague

  him. He was proud of his control. Nothing could faze him.

  Lieutenant Horner's quick heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs leading

  up from the office. A moment later he thumped across the living room,

  into the kitchen. "Sir, we've checked all the motel rooms. No one's

  there. They left by the back, overland. Two very vague sets of tire

  tracks in the snow. Can't have gone far. Not in this weather, not

  already."

  "Have you sent the men to follow them?"

  "No, sir. But I had them pull the pickup and a Wagoneer around back.

  They're ready to go."

  "Move them out," Leland said in a soft, measured tone.

  "Don't worry, sir, we'll get our hands on them."

  "I'm sure we will," Leland said, totally in control of himself, showing

  a firm and steady sense of command to his lieutenant. Horner turned and

  started to leave, and Leland said, "As soon as you've sent the men off,

  meet me downstairs with a county map. They'll intend to connect with a

  county or state road somewhere. We'll anticipate their next move and be

  waiting for them."

  "Yes, sir," Horner said.

  Alone, Leland calmly turned a page of the album. Red moons.

  Horner's crashing footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs; then the

  front door slammed shut behind him, reverberating through the walls.

  Calmly, so calmly, Leland turned a page in the album, and another.

  Outside, Horner was shouting orders to the men.

  Leland turned a page, another, another. Red moons.

  Outside, engines reved. Eight men, in two parties of four, moved out on

  the trail of the escaped witnesses.

  Leland calmly turned two, three, six pages, saw red moons and more red

  moons, and calmly picked up the album and threw it across the room. The

  book slammed into cupboards, bounced off the refrigerator, fell. A

  score of scarlet moons flew free and fluttered briefly. On a counter,

  Leland saw a ceramic jar: a smiling bear sitting with forepaws clasped

  over his tummy. He scooped it up, threw it to the floor, where it

  exploded in a hundred fragments. Broken chocolate-chip cookies landed

  atop the album and crumbled across the scattered red moons. He swept a

  radio off the counter, onto the floor. A canister of sugar. Flour. He

  pitched a breadbox against the wall and threw a Mr. Coffee machine at

  the oven.

  He stood for a moment, breathing -deeply, evenly. Then he turned and

  walked calmly out of the kitchen, went calmly down the stairs to the

  office, to calmly study the county map and calmly assess the situation

  with his lieutenant.

  "The moon!" Marcie cried, then screamed shrilly again. "Mommy, look,

  look, the moon! Why, Mommy, why? Look, the moon!"

  The girl suddenly tried to pull loose of her mother, wrenched and

  flailed. Jorja strove to hold on to her but was unsuccessful.

  Startled by the screams, Ned had halted the Jeep.

  Screaming again, Marcie tore loose of her mother, scrambled across

  Ernie, with no particular destination as far as Ernie could determine,

  with no intention but to escape from whatever she had seen in memory.

  She was apparently not aware that she was in the Cherokee but believed

  herself to be in another place altogether, a scary place.

  Ernie grabbed her before she could scrabble and kick her way into

  Brendan's lap. He held the small child tightly in his big arms, held

  her against his chest, and as she continued to scream, he cooed

  soothingly to her.

  Gradually, Marcie's terror subsided. She stopped struggling and went

  limp in his arms. She stopped screaming, too, and merely chanted

  softly: "Moon, the moon, moon. . . ." And quietly, but with terrible

  dread: "Don't let it get me, don't let it, don't let it."

  "Be still, honey," Ernie said, patting her, stroking her hair, "be

  still, you're safe, I won't let it get you."

  "She remembered something," Brendan said as Ned drove forward again. "A

  crack opened for just a moment."

  "What did you see, baby?" Jor ' ja asked her daughter.

  The girl had slipped back into her deep catatonic glaze, unhearing,

  unheeding . . . except that, after a while, Ernie felt her arms

  tighten around him in a hug. He hugged her in return. She said

  nothing. She was still not really with them, adrift on a dark inner

 
sea. Evidently, however, she felt safe in Ernie's bearish embrace, and

  she held fast to him as the Cherokee rocked and lurched through the

  snowy night.

  After months of living in fear of every shadow, after regarding each

  oncoming twilight with despair and horror, Ernie felt indescribably

  good, delighted that someone needed his strength. It was profoundly

  satisfying. And as he held her and murmured to her and stroked her

  thick black hair, he was oblivious of the fact that night now surrounded

  the Cherokee and pressed its face to the windows.

  Eventually, Jack turned the pickup east and finally connected with the

  county road to Thunder at a point approximately one mile north of the

  place where Ned should have already crossed the same lane in the

  Cherokee. He turned right and headed up toward the Depository, the

  route that Dom and Ernie had covered this morning.

  He had never seen a storm this bad back East. The higher he went into

  the mountains, the harder and faster the snow came down. It was as

  dense as a heavy rainfall.

  "The entrance to the Depository is about a mile ahead," Dom said.

  Jack cut the headlights and proceeded at a slower pace. Until his eyes

  adjusted to the loss of light, the world seemed composed only of

  whirling white specks and darkness.

  He could not always tell if he was in his own lane. He expected another

  vehicle to hurtle out of the night and ram him head-on.

  Evidently Ginger had the same thought, for she shrank down in her seat

  as if for protection in a crash. She nervously bit her lower lip.

  " Those lights ahead," Dom said. "The entrance to the Depository."

  Two mercury_vapor lamps blazed on poles flanking the electric gate. A

  warmer amber glow shone in the two narrow windows of the guardhouse.

  Even with those lights, Jack could see only a vague outline of the small

  building on the far side of the fence, for the falling snow masked all

  details. He felt confident that, with no headlights, the pickup would

  be invisible to any guard who might happen to look out a window as the

  truck drifted past on the county lane. Their engine noise would be

  swallowed by the wind.

  They rolled slowly up the steep slope, deeper into the night and

  mountains. The windshield wipers were doing a poorer job by the moment,

  for snow had clogged the blades and turned to ice.

  When they had gone a mile past the entrance to Thunder Hill, Ginger

  said, "Maybe we could turn the lights on now."

  Hunching over the wheel, squinting into the gloom ahead, Jack said, "No.

  We'll go in darkness all the way."

  In the motel office, Leland Falkirk and Lieutenant Horner unfolded the

  county map on the check-in counter. They were still studying it when

  the men who had gone after the escaping witnesses returned in defeat,

  only minutes after departing. The search party had followed the tire

  tracks a couple of hundred yards through a glen running north into the

  hills, at which point the snow and wind erased the trail. However,

  there was some evidence that at least one vehicle had turned into

  another hollow leading east, and since there seemed no reason for the

  witnesses to split up, it was assumed both the Servers' pickup and the

  Cherokee were now headed in that general direction.

  Returning his attention to the map, Leland said, "It makes sense. They

  wouldn't go west. Nothing's out there until Battle Mountain, forty

  miles away, then Winnemucca over fifty miles farther. Neither town's

  big enough to hide in for long. And neither's exactly a transportation

  hub; aren't many ways out. So they'll go east, into Elko."

  Lieutenant Horner put a cigar-sized finger on the map. "Here's the road

  that runs past the motel and up to Thunder Hill. They'll have crossed

  that by now and still be heading east."

  "What's the next southbound road they'll come to?"

  Lieutenant Horner bent down to read the small print on the map. "Vista

  Valley. Looks to be about six miles east of the road to Thunder Hill."

  A knock sounded, and Miles Bennell said, "Come in."

  General Robert Alvarado, CO of Thunder Hill, opened the door and entered

  the dark office in a swath of silvery light that came with him from The

  Hub and coated a portion of the room in an imitation of frost. He said,

  "Sitting alone in the dark, huh? Just imagine how suspicious that would

  seem to Colonel Falkirk."

  "He's a madman, Bob."

  "Not long ago," Bob Alvarado said, "I'd have argued that he was a fairly

  good officer, though a bit too by-the-book and much too gung-ho. But

  tonight, I have to agree with you. The man's only got one oar in the

  water. Maybe no oars. I just got a request from him a few minutes ago,

  by telephone. Supposed to be a request, but it was phrased like an

  order. He wants the entire staff, all military men and all civilians, to

  report to their quarters and stay there until further notice.

  You'll hear my order on the public address system in a couple minutes."

  "But why's he want that?" Miles asked.

  Alvarado sat in a chair near the open door, the frosty swath of light

  falling across his feet and up to the middle of his chest, leaving his

  face in darkness. "Falkirk's bringing in the witnesses and doesn't want

  them to be seen by any of our people who don't already know about them.

  Or that's what he claims is behind the request."

  Astonished, Miles said, "But if the time's come to put them through

  another memory-scrub, it's better to keep them at the motel. Though as

  far as I know, he's not called in the damn brain-fuckers."

  "He hasn't," Bob Alvarado confirmed. "He says the coverup might not be

  continued. He wants you to study the witnesses, especially Cronin and

  Corvaisis. He says maybe he's right, maybe they're not human any more.

  But he says he's been thinking over his conversation with you, wondering

  if maybe you could be right and maybe he's too paranoid about this. He

  says if you decide they're fully human, if you determine that their

  gifts are not evidence of an inhuman presence within them, he'll accept

  your word; he'll spare them. Then, so he says, he might decide against

  another brainwashing session and even recommend to his superiors that

  the whole story be revealed to the public."

  Miles was silent a moment. Then he shifted in his chair, more uneasy

  than ever. "It sounds as if he's finally got some common sense. Why do

  I find that so hard to believe? Do you think it's true?"

  Alvarado reached out from his chair, pushed the door shut, plunging the

  room into darkness. Sensing Miles reaching for the lamp switch, he

  said, "Let's keep it this way, huh? Maybe it's a little easier to be

  frank with each other when we can't see faces." Miles settled back in

  his chair, leaving the lamp unlit, and Alvarado said, "Tell me, Miles,

  was it you who sent the photographs to Corvaisis and the Blocks?"

  Miles said nothing.

  "We're friends, you and I," Alvarado said. "At least I've felt we are.

  I never met another guy I could enjoy playing both chess and poker with.

  So I'll tell you . . . I'm the one who got Jack Twist bac
k here."

  Startled, Miles said, "How? Why?"

  "Well, like you, I knew some of the witnesses were slowly shedding their

  memory blocks and having psychological problems in the process. So

  before anyone could decide to wipe them again one by one, I figured to

  do something to focus their attention on the motel. I hoped to stir up

  enough trouble to make it impossible to continue the cover-up.

  "Why?" Miles repeated.

  "Because I'd finally decided the cover-up was wrong."

  "But why sabotage it by such a back-door approach?" Miles asked.

  "Because if I'd gone public, I'd have been disobeying orders. I'd have

  been throwing my career away, maybe my pension. And besides ... I

  thought Falkirk might kill me."

  Miles had worried about the same thing.

  Alvarado said, "I started with Twist because I thought his Ranger

  background and his inclination to challenge authority would make him a

  good candidate for organizing the other witnesses. From the information

  turned up during his memory-wipe session that summer, I knew about his

  safe-deposit boxes. So I searched the file on him, got the names of the

  banks, the passwords. The file also contained copies of all the keys to

  his boxes; Falkirk had them made in case it was ever necessary to turn

  up criminal evidence against Twist to use as blackmail or to put him out

  of the way in prison. I made copies of the copies. Then, when I was on