Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  After a while, Parker sighed and said, "Personally, I think the CISG was

  full of crap. First contact wouldn't destroy us."

  "I agree," Stefan said. "Their fallacy lies in comparing this situation

  to our contact with primitive cultures. The difference is that we

  aren't primitive. This will be the contact between one very advanced

  culture and another super-advanced culture. The CISG believed if there

  ever was contact it'd have to be concealed, if at all possible, and that

  news of it would have to be broken to the public over ten or even twenty

  years. But that's wrong, dead wrong, Parker. We can handle the shock.

  Because we're ready for them to come. Oh, dear God, but we are so

  desperately and longingly ready for them!"

  "So ready," Parker agreed in a whisper.

  For perhaps another minute they bumped and rocked along in silence,

  unable to speak, unable to put in words exactly what it felt like to

  know that mankind did not stand alone in creation.

  Finally, Parker cleared his throat, checked the compass, and said,

  "You're right on course, Stefan. Ought to be less than a mile to Vista

  Valley Road. This man in Chicago that you mentioned a while ago ... Cal

  Sharkle. What was it he yelled to the cops this morning?"

  "He insisted he'd seen aliens land and that they were hostile. He was

  afraid they were taking us over, that most of his neighbors had been

  possessed. He said the aliens tried to take control of him by strapping

  him in a bed and dripping themselves into his veins. Initially, I was

  afraid maybe he was right, that what had come down here in Nevada was a

  threat. But on the trip from Chicago, I had time to think about it. He

  was confusing his incarceration and brainwashing with the landing of the

  starship he'd seen. He thought it was aliens in pressurized space suits

  who'd kept him captive and stuck him full of needles. He witnessed the

  descent of a starship, and then these government men in decontamination

  suits came, and by the time they'd rammed all that stuff into his

  subconscious and weighted it down with a memory block, he was completely

  mixed up. No aliens apprehended him. It was his fellow men who

  mistreated him."

  "You're saying government agents would've worn decontamination suits

  until it was clear whether or not the alien contact carried a risk of

  bacteriological contamination."

  "Exactly," Stefan said. "Some guests at the Tranquility must've

  approached the ship openly, so they had to be considered contaminated

  until evidence to the contrary was turned up. And we know some at the

  motel have distinctly remembered men inside decontamination suits: a few

  soldiers, brainwashing specialists. So poor Calvin was driven insane by

  a misconception arising from his inability to remember clearly."

  "Must be less than half a mile to Vista Valley Road," Parker said,

  studying the map in the light from the open glovecompartment door.

  Snow drove relentlessly through the yellow cones of the headlights. Now

  and then, when the wind faltered or briefly changed the angle of its

  assault, short-lived forms of snow capered in arabesque dances, this way

  and that, but always dispersing and vanishing like ghostly performers

  the moment that the wind recovered its momentum and purpose.

  As they started up a steep slope, Parker said softly, "Something came

  down. . . . And if the government knew enough to close I-80 ahead of

  the event, they must've been tracking the craft a long time. But I

  still don't see how they could

  know where it would come down. I mean, the crew of the ship might've

  changed its course at any time."

  "Unless it was crashing," Father Wycazik said. "Maybe it was picked up

  by satellite observation far out in space, monitored for days or weeks.

  If it approached on an undeviating course that would indicate it wasn't

  traveling under control, there'd have been time to calculate its point

  of impact."

  "Oh, no. No. I don't want to think it crashed," Parker said.

  "Nor do I."

  "I want to think they got here alive . . . all that way."

  When the Jeep Cherokee was halfway up the slope, the tires spun on an

  especially icy patch of ground, then caught hold and propelled them

  forward again with a jolt.

  Parker said, "I want to believe Dom and the others didn't just see a

  ship . . . but encountered whoever came in it. Imagine. Just

  imagine. . ."

  Father Wycazik said, "Whatever happened to them that night in July was

  very strange indeed, a whole lot stranger than just seeing a ship from

  another world."

  "You mean . . . because of Brendan's and Dom's powers?"

  "Yes. Something more happened, more than just contact."

  They topped the crest of the hill and started down the other side. Even

  through shifting curtains of the storm, Stefan saw the headlights of

  four vehicles on Vista Valley Road below. All four were stopped and

  angled every which way, and their blazing beams crisscrossed like

  gleaming sabers in the snowbleeding darkness.

  As he drove down toward the gathering, he quickly realized that he was

  heading into trouble.

  "Machine guns!" Parker said.

  Stefan saw that two of the men below were holding submachine guns on a

  group of seven people-six adults and one child-who were lined up against

  the side of a Cherokee that was different only in color from the one

  Parker had just bought. Eight or ten other men were standing around, a

  substantial force, obviously military because they were all dressed in

  the same Arctic-issue uniforms. Stefan had no doubt that these were

  some of the same forces involved in the closure of I-80 both tonight and

  eighteen months ago.

  They had turned toward him and were staring uphill, surprised at being

  interrupted.

  He wanted to swing the Jeep around, gun the engine, and flee, but

  although he slowed down, he knew there was no point in running. They

  would come after him.

  Abruptly, he recognized a familiar Irish face among those lined up

  against the Cherokee. "That's him, Parker! That's Brendan on the end

  of the lineup."

  "The others must be from the motel," Parker said, leaning forward to

  peer anxiously through the windshield. "But I don't see Dom."

  Now that he had spotted Brendan, Father Wycazik could not have turned

  back even if God had opened the mountains for him and provided a highway

  clear to Canada, as He had parted the Red Sea for Moses. On the other

  hand, Stefan was unarmed. And as a priest, he would have had little use

  for a gun even if he had possessed one. Having neither the means nor

  desire to attack, yet unable to run, he let the Cherokee roll slowly

  down the hill as he frantically wracked his mind for some course of

  action that would turn the tables on the soldiers below.

  The same concern had gripped Parker, for he said, "What in the devil are

  we going to do?"

  Their dilemma was resolved by the soldiers below. To Stefan's

  astonishment, one of the men with a machine gun opened fire on them.

  Dom watched as Jack Twist directed
the flashlight beam over the

  chainlink fence, then up to the barbed-wire overhang that thrust out

  above their heads. They were at that long length of Thunder Hill's

  perimeter that ran through an open meadow, down toward the floor of the

  valley. Windblown snow had stuck to large sections of the thick,

  interlocking steel loops of the fence, but other areas were bare, and

  those uncrusted links were what Jack studied most closely.

  "The fence itself isn't electrified," Jack said above the shrieking

  wind. "There aren't conducting wires woven through it, and the current

  can't be carried by the links. No way. There'd be just too damn much

  resistance because they're too thick and because the ends of some of

  them don't make tight contact with each other."

  Ginger said, "Then why the warning signs?"

  "Partly to spook away amateurs," Jack said. He put the beam of the

  flash on the overhang again. "However, there are conducting wires

  strung carefully through the center of that barbed-wire roll, so you'd

  get fried if you went over the top. We'll cut through the bottom."

  Ginger held the flashlight while Dom dug into one of the canvas

  rucksacks, found the acetylene torch, and passed it to Jack.

  After he had slipped on a pair of tinted ski goggles, Jack lit the torch

  and began to cut an entrance through the chainlink barrier. The fierce

  hissing of the burning gas was audible even above the keening, moaning

  wind. The intense bluewhite acetylene flame cast an eerie light that

  struck a thousand jewel-bright glints in the snow.

  They were not at a position where they risked being seen from the main

  entrance of the Depository, which lay over the brow of a hill that

  sloped up from the other side of the fence. However, Dom was sure the

  weird acetylene light reached high enough into the night to be spotted

  from the other side of that rise. If seen, it would draw guards this

  way. But if Jack was right, if the Depository's security was largely

  electronic, there would not be guards prowling the grounds tonight; and

  in this weather, surveillance by video cameras was pretty much ruled

  out, too, for their lenses would be iced-over or packed with snow.

  Of course, though they wanted to get inside the Depository and have a

  quick look around, it Would not be a tragedy if they were apprehended

  here. After all, being taken into custody was part of Jack's plan for

  focusing attention on Thunder Hill.

  Dom, Ginger, and Jack were not armed. All the weapons had been for the

  others, in the Cherokee, because their escape was essential. If they

  were stopped, all was lost. Dom hoped they wouldn't need their guns,

  and that they were already safely in Elko.

  As Jack cut a crawl-through opening in the fence, the eldritch light of

  the acetylene torch increasingly captivated Dom and, suddenly, made a

  connection with the past, hurtling him back once more in memory:

  The third jet roared over the roof of the diner, so low that he threw

  himself flat on the parking lot, certain the airplane was crashing on

  top of him, but it swooped past, leaving shattered air and a blast of

  engine heat in its wake; he started to get up, and a fourth jet boomed

  over the roof of the motel, a huge half-glimpsed shadowy shape, its

  running lights carving white and red wounds through the night as it

  thundered south and angled east, out across the barrens beyond I-80,

  where the thirdjet had gone, and now the first two craft, which

  hadpassed over at a greater altitude, were far out there, swinging back,

  one to the east and one to the west;, yet still the earth shook and the

  night was filled with a great rumble like an ongoing and never-ending

  explosion, and he thought there must be more jets coming, even though

  the queer electronic oscillation that had throbbed under the roar was

  now getting louder and shriller and stranger and was unlike anything

  jets would produce; he shoved up onto his feet and turned, and there was

  Ginger Weiss and Jorja and Marcie, and there was Jack running over from

  the motel, and Ernie and Faye coming out from the office, and others,

  all the others, Ned and Sandy; the rumble was now like the crash of

  Niagara Falls combined with the base-throb pounding of a thousand

  timpani; the ululant electronic whistle made him feel as if the top of

  his head was going to be sliced off by a bandsaw; there was frost-silver

  light of a peculiar kind; he looked up, away from the jets that had gone

  past, over the roof of the diner, looked up toward the light,- he

  pointed and said, "The moon! The moon!" Others looked where he pointed;

  he was filled with a sudden terror, and he cried, "The moon! The moon!"

  and staggered back several steps in surprise and fear; someone

  screamed.. . .

  "The moon!" he gasped.

  He was down in the snow, driven to his knees by the shock of the

  memory-flash, and Ginger was kneeling in front of him, holding him by

  the shoulders. "Dom? Dom, are you okay?"

  "Remembered," he said numbly as the wind rushed between their faces and

  tore their smoking breath out of their mouths. "Something . . . the

  moon . . . but I didn't quite get enough."

  Beyond them, having cut a crawl-through in the chainlink fence, Jack

  switched off the acetylene torch. The darkness folded around them again

  like the wings of a great bat.

  "Come on," Jack said, turning to Dom and Ginger. "Let's go in. Quickly

  now."

  "Can you make it?" Ginger asked Dom.

  "Yeah," he said, though there was an icy cramping in his guts and a

  tightness in his chest. "But all of a sudden ... I'm scared."

  "We're all scared," she said.

  "I don't mean scared of getting caught. No. It's something else.

  Something I almost remembered just then. And I'm . . .

  shaking like a leaf, for God's sake."

  Brendan gasped in disbelief when Colonel Falkirk ordered one of his men

  to open fire on the Jeep that was approaching Vista Valley Road from the

  hillside above. The madman didn't know who was in the vehicle. The

  soldier given the order also thought it was out of line, for he did not

  immediately raise his weapon. But Falkirk took a menacing step toward

  him and shouted: "I told you to open fire, Corporal! This is an urgent

  national security matter. Whoever's in that vehicle is no friend of

  yours, mine, or our country. You think any innocent civilians would be

  driving overland, sneaking around the roadblock, in a goddamn blizzard

  like this? Fire! Waste them!"

  This time, the corporal obeyed. The clatter of automatic gunfire

  hammered the night, briefly overpowering the voice of the raging wind.

  Up on the hillside, the headlights of the oncoming Jeep blew out. The

  two hundred hard cracks of two hundred bullets erupting in a murderous

  stream from the muzzle of the machine gun were augmented by the sound of

  slugs tearing through sheet metal and smacking onto more solid barriers.

  The windshield imploded under raining lead, and the Jeep, which had

  braked immediately after topping the crest of the hill and had been

  descending slowly, abruptly gained speed and rushe
d down at them, then

  angled left when its wheels jolted over a lateral hump that extended

  across most of the slope. Obviously no longer under anyone's control,

  it started to slow again, hit another bump, slid sideways, almost tipped

  over, almost rolled, but finally came to rest just forty feet away in

  the already drifting snow.

  Five minutes ago, when Ned had driven over the hill on the other side of

  Vista Valley Road and had turned south, only to encounter the colonel

  and his men waiting less than a half-mile south, it had been instantly

  clear that all the shot guns and handguns-and even the Uzi that Jack had

  provided-would be of no help. Considering that their lives depended on

  their escape from Elko County, they would have made a stand against a

  smaller force. But Falkirk was accompanied by too many men, all heavily

  armed. Resistance would have been purest folly.

  And Brendan had been filled with frustration because he had not dared

  use his special power to ensure their freedom. He felt he ought to be

  able to apply his telekinetic talent to the situation. If he

  concentrated hard enough, perhaps he could cause the guns to fly out of

  the soldiers' hands. He sensed he had that much-and more-power in him,

  but he did not know how to bring it to bear effectively. He could not

  forget how the experiment in the diner had gotten entirely out of hand

  last night; they had been fortunate that none of them had been hurt by

  the careening salt and pepper shakers, and the violently levitating

  chairs. If he used his power to wrench the weapons from the soldiers,

  he might not be able to disarm all of them simultaneously, in which case