by Dean Koontz
She was clutching her wound, trying not to reveal the extent of her pain, but the truth was in her eyes. “Okay, I’m okay, it’s nothing,” she said, yet Spencer saw her glance at the whimpering dog when she lied.
The heavy door to the abattoir hadn’t fallen shut. Someone was holding it open. The shooter stepped aside to let him enter. The second man was Steven Ackblom.
Roy was certain that this would be one of the most interesting nights of his life. It might even be as singular as the first night that he had spent with Eve, although he wouldn’t betray her even by hoping that it might be better. This was an incredible confluence of events: the capture of the woman at last; the chance to learn what Grant might know about any organized opposition to the agency, then the pleasure of putting that troubled man out of his misery; a unique opportunity to be with one of the great artists of the century as he turned his hand to the medium that had made him famous; and when it was done, perhaps even Eleanor’s perfect eyes would be salvageable. Cosmic forces were at work in the design of such a night.
When Steven entered the room, the expression on Spencer Grant’s face was worth the loss of at least two helicopters and a satellite. Anger darkened his face, twisted his features. It was a rage so pure that it possessed a fascinating beauty all its own. Enraged, Grant nonetheless shrank back with the woman.
“Hello, Mikey,” Steven said. “How’ve you been?”
The son—once Mikey, now Spencer—was unable to speak.
“I’ve been well but…in boring circumstances,” said the artist.
Spencer Grant remained silent. Roy was chilled by the expression in the ex-cop’s eyes.
Steven looked around at the black ceiling, walls, floor. “They blamed me for the woman you did here that night. I took the fall on that one too. For you, baby boy.”
“He never touched her,” Ellie Summerton said.
“Didn’t he?” the artist asked.
“We know he didn’t.”
Steven sighed with regret. “Well, no, he didn’t. But he was that close to doing her.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, only a quarter of an inch apart. “That close.”
“He was never close at all,” she said, but Grant remained unable to speak.
“Wasn’t he?” Steven said. “Well, I think he was. I think if I’d been a little smarter, if I’d encouraged him to drop his pants and climb on top of her first, then he would have been happy to take the scalpel afterward. He’d have been more in the spirit of things then, you see.”
“You’re not my father,” Grant said emptily.
“You’re wrong about that, my sweet boy. Your mother was a firm believer in marital vows. There was only ever me with her. I’m sure of that. In the end, here in this room, she was able to keep not the slightest secret from me.”
Roy thought that Grant was going to come across the room with all the fury of a bull, heedless of bullets.
“What a pathetic little dog,” Steven said. “Look at him shaking, hanging his head. Perfect pet for you, Mikey. He reminds me of the way you acted here that night. When I gave you the chance to transcend, you were too much of a pussy to seize it.”
The woman appeared to be furious too, perhaps even angrier than she was afraid, though both. Her eyes had never been more beautiful.
“How long ago that was, Mikey, and what a new world this is,” Steven said, taking a couple of steps toward his son and the woman, forcing them to shrink back farther. “I was so ahead of my time, so much deeper into the avant-garde than I ever fully realized. The newspapers called me insane. I ought to demand a retraction, don’t you think? Now, the streets are crawling with men more violent than I ever was. Gangs have gunfights anywhere they please, and babies get shot down on kindergarten playgrounds—and nobody does anything about it. The enlightened are too busy worrying that you’re going to eat a food additive that’ll shave three and a half days off your lifespan. Did you read about the FBI agents up in Idaho, where they shot an unarmed woman while she was holding her baby, and shot her fourteen-year-old son in the back when he tried to run from them? Killed them both. You see that in the papers, Mikey? And now men like Roy here hold very responsible positions in government. Why, I could be a fabulously successful politician these days. I’ve got everything it takes. I’m not insane, Mikey. Daddy’s not insane and never was. Evil, yes. I embrace that. From earliest childhood, I had it all in that regard. I’ve always liked to have fun. But I’m not crazy, baby boy. Roy here, guardian of public safety, protector of the republic—why, Mikey, he’s a raving lunatic.”
Roy smiled at Steven, wondering what joke he was setting up. The artist was endlessly amusing. But Steven had moved so far into the room that Roy couldn’t see his face, only the back of his head.
“Mikey, you should hear Roy rant on about compassion, about the poor quality of life that so many people live and shouldn’t have to, about reducing population by ninety percent to save the environment. He loves everybody. He understands their suffering. He weeps for them. And when he has a chance, he’ll blow them to kingdom come to make society a little nicer. It’s a hoot, Mikey. And they give him helicopters and limousines and all the cash he needs and flunkies with big guns in shoulder holsters. They let him run around making a better world. And this man, Mikey, I’m telling you, he’s got worms in his brain.”
Playing along with it, Roy said, “Worms in my brain, big old slimy worms in my brain.”
“See,” Steven said. “He’s a funny guy, Roy is. Only wants to be liked. Most people do like him too. Don’t they, Roy?”
Roy sensed that they were coming to the punch line. “Well, now, Steven, I don’t want to be bragging about myself—”
“See!” Steven said. “He’s a modest man too. Modest and kind and compassionate. Doesn’t everybody like you, Roy? Come on. Don’t be so bashful.”
“Well, yeah, most people like me,” Roy admitted, “but that’s because I treat everyone with respect.”
“That’s right!” Steven said. He laughed. “Roy treats everyone with the same solemn respect. Why, he’s an equal-opportunity killer. Evenhanded treatment for everyone from a presidential aide wasted in a Washington park and then made to look like a suicide…to an ordinary paraplegic shot down to spare him the daily struggle. Roy doesn’t understand that these things have to be done for fun. Only for fun. Otherwise, it’s insane, it really is, to do it for some noble purpose. He’s so solemn about it, thinks of himself as a dreamer, a man of ideals. But he does uphold his ideals—I’ll give him that much. He plays no favorites. He’s the least prejudiced, most egalitarian, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic who ever lived. Don’t you agree, Mr. Rink?”
Rink? Roy didn’t want Rink or Fordyce hearing any of this, for God’s sake, seeing any of this. They were muscle, not true insiders. He turned to the door, wondering why he hadn’t heard it open—and saw that no one was there. Then he heard the scrape of the Micro Uzi against concrete as Steven Ackblom plucked it off the floor, and he knew what was happening.
Too late.
The Uzi chattered in Steven’s hands. Bullets tore into Roy. He fell, rolled, and tried to fire back. Though he was still holding the gun, he couldn’t make his finger squeeze the trigger. Paralyzed. He was paralyzed.
Over the zinging-whining ricochets, something snarled viciously: a sound out of a horror movie, echoing off the black walls with more blood-curdling effect than the bullets. For a second Roy couldn’t understand what it was, where it was coming from. He almost thought that it was Grant because of the fury in the scarred man’s face, but then he saw the beast exploding through the air toward Steven. The artist tried to swing around, away from Roy, and cut down the attack dog. But the hellish thing was already on him, driving him backward into the wall. It tore at his hands. He dropped the Uzi. Then it was climbing him, snapping at his face, at his throat.
Steven was screaming.
Roy wanted to tell him that the most dangerous people of all—and evidently the most dangerous dogs
as well—were those who had been beaten down the hardest. When even their pride and hope had been taken from them, when they were driven into the last of all corners, then they had nothing to lose. To avoid producing such desperate men, applying compassion to the suffering as early as possible was the right thing to do for them, the moral thing to do—but also the wisest thing to do. He couldn’t tell the artist any of that, however, because in addition to being paralyzed, he found that he couldn’t speak either.
“Rocky, no! Off! Rocky, off!”
Spencer pulled the dog by the collar and struggled with him until at last Rocky obeyed.
The artist was sitting on the floor. His legs were drawn up defensively. His arms crossed over his face, and he was bleeding from his hands.
Ellie had picked up the Uzi. Spencer took it from her.
He saw that her left ear was bleeding. “You’ve been hit again.”
“Ricochet. Grazed,” she said, and this time she could have met the dog’s eyes forthrightly.
Spencer looked down at the thing that was his father.
The murderous bastard had lowered his arms from his face. He was infuriatingly calm. “They’ve got men posted from one end of the property to the other. Nobody here in the building, but once you step outside, you won’t get far. You can’t get away, Mikey.”
Ellie said, “They won’t have heard the gunfire. Not if no one above-ground ever heard the screams from this place. We still have a chance.”
The wife-killer shook his head. “Not unless you take me and the amazing Mr. Miro here.”
“He’s dead,” Ellie said.
“Doesn’t matter. He’s more useful dead. Never know what a man like him might do, so I’d be edgy if we had to carry him out of here while he was alive. We take him between us, baby boy, you and me. They’ll see he’s hurt, but they won’t know how badly. Maybe they value him highly enough to hold back.”
“I don’t want your help,” Spencer said.
“Of course you don’t, but you need it,” his father said. “They won’t have moved your truck. Their instructions were to stay back, at a distance, just maintain surveillance, until they heard from Roy. So we can move him to the truck, between us, and they won’t be sure what’s going on.” He rose painfully to his feet.
Spencer backed away from him, as he would have backed away from something that had appeared in a chalk pentagram in response to the summons of a sorcerer. Rocky retreated as well, growling.
Ellie was in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. She was out of the way, reasonably safe.
Spencer had the dog—what a dog!—and he had the gun. His father had no weapon, and he was hampered by his bitten hands. Yet Spencer was as afraid of him as he had ever been on that July night or since.
“Do we need him?” he asked Ellie.
“Hell, no.”
“You’re sure whatever you were doing with the computer, it’s going to work?”
“More sure of that than we could ever be sure of him.”
To his father, Spencer said, “What happens to you if I leave you to them?”
The artist examined his bitten hands with interest, studying the punctures not as though concerned about the damage but as though inspecting a flower or another beautiful object that he had never seen before. “What happens to me, Mikey? You mean when I go back to prison? I do a little reading to pass the time. I still paint some—did you know? I think I’ll paint a portrait of your little bitch there in the doorway, as I imagine she’d look with no clothes, and as I know she’d look if I’d ever had the chance to put her on a table here and make her realize her true potential. I see that disgusts you, baby boy. But really, it’s such a small pleasure to allow me, considering she’ll never have been more beautiful than on my canvas. My way of sharing in her with you.” He sighed and looked up from his hands, as if unperturbed by the pain. “What happens if you leave me to them, Mikey? You’ll be condemning me to a life that’s a waste of my talent and joie de vivre, a barren and tiny existence behind gray walls. That’s what happens to me, you ungrateful little snot.”
“You said they were worse than you.”
“Well, I know what I am.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Self-awareness is a virtue in which they’re lacking.”
“They let you out.”
“Temporarily. A consultation.”
“They’ll let you out again, won’t they?”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t take another sixteen years.” He smiled, as if his bleeding hands had suffered only paper cuts. “But, yes, we’re in an age that’s giving birth to a new breed of fascists, and I would hope that from time to time they might find my expertise useful to them.”
“You’re figuring you won’t even go back,” Spencer said. “You think you’ll get away from them tonight, don’t you?”
“Too many of them, Mikey. Big men with big guns in shoulder holsters. Big black Chrysler limousines. Helicopters whenever they want them. No, no, I’ll probably have to bide my time until another consultation.”
“Lying, mother-killing sonofabitch,” Spencer said.
“Oh, don’t try to frighten me,” his father said. “I remember sixteen years ago, this room. You were a little pussy then, Mikey, and you’re a little pussy now. That’s some scar you’ve got there, baby boy. How long did you have to recuperate before you could eat solid foods?”
“I saw you beat her to the ground by the swimming pool.”
“If confession makes you feel good, go right ahead.”
“I was in the kitchen for cookies, heard her scream.”
“Did you get your cookies?”
“When she was down, you kicked her in the head.”
“Don’t be tedious, Mikey. You were never the son I might have wished to have, but you were never tedious before.”
The man was unshakably calm, self-possessed. He had an aura of power that was daunting—but no look of madness whatsoever in his eyes. He could preach a sermon and be thought a priest. He claimed that he wasn’t mad, but evil.
Spencer wondered if that could be true.
“Mikey, you really owe me, you know. Without me, you wouldn’t exist. No matter what you think of me, I am your father.”
“Without you, I wouldn’t exist. Yeah. And that would be okay. That would be fine. But without my mother—I might have been exactly like you. It’s her I owe. Only her. She’s the one who gave me whatever salvation I can ever have.”
“Mikey, Mikey, you simply can’t make me feel guilty. You want me to put on a big sad face? Okay, I’ll put on a big sad face. But your mother was nothing to me. Nothing but useful cover for a while, a helpful deceit with nice knockers. But she was too curious. And when I had to bring her down here, she was just like all the others—although less exciting than most.”
“Well, just the same,” Spencer said, “this is for her.” He fired a short burst from the Uzi, blowing his father to Hell.
There were no ricochets to worry about. Every bullet found its mark, and the dead man carried them down to the floor with him, in a pool of the darkest blood that Spencer had ever seen.
Rocky leaped in surprise at the gunfire, then cocked his head and studied Steven Ackblom. He sniffed him as if the scent was far different from any he had encountered before. As Spencer stared down at his dead father, he was aware of Rocky gazing up curiously at him. Then the dog joined Ellie at the door.
When at last he went to the door too, Spencer was afraid to look at Ellie.
“I wondered if you would actually be able to do it,” she said. “If you hadn’t, I’d have had to, and the recoil would have hurt like hell with this arm.”
He met her eyes. She wasn’t trying to make him feel better about what he had done. She had meant what she’d said.
“I didn’t enjoy it,” he said.
“I would have.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Immensely.”
“I didn’t hate doing it, eit
her.”
“Why should you? You have to stomp a cockroach when you get a chance.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“Hurts like hell, but it’s not bleeding all that much.” She flexed her right hand, wincing. “I’ll still be able to work the computer keyboard with both hands. I just hope to God I can work it fast enough.”
The three of them hurried through the depopulated catacombs, toward the blue room, the yellow vestibule, and the strange world above.
Roy had no pain. In fact, he could feel nothing at all. Which made it easier for him to play dead. He feared that they would finish him off if they realized he was alive. Spencer Grant, aka Michael Ackblom, was indisputably as insane as his father and capable of any atrocity. Therefore, Roy closed his eyes and used his paralysis to his advantage.
After the singular opportunity that he had given the artist, Roy was disappointed in the man. Such blithe treachery.
More to the point, Roy was disappointed in himself. He had badly misjudged Steven Ackblom. The brilliance and sensitivity that he had perceived in the artist had been no illusion; however, he had allowed himself to be deceived into believing that what he saw was the whole story. He had never glimpsed the dark side.
Of course he was always so quick to like people, just as the artist had said. And he was acutely aware of everyone’s suffering, within moments of having met them. That was one of his virtues, and he would not have wanted to be a less tenderhearted person. He had been deeply moved by Ackblom’s plight: such a witty and talented man, locked in a cell for the rest of his life. Compassion had blinded Roy to the full truth.
He still had hope of coming out of this alive and seeing Eve again. He didn’t feel as though he were dying. Of course, he was unable to feel much of anything at all, below the neck.
He took comfort from the knowledge that if he were to die, he would go to the great cosmic party and be welcomed by so many friends whom he’d sent ahead of him with great tenderness. For Eve’s sake, he wanted to live, but to some extent he longed for that higher plane where there was a single sex, where everyone had the same radiant-blue skin color, where every person was perfectly beautiful in an androgynous blue way, where no one was dumb, no one too smart, where everyone had identical living quarters and wardrobes and footwear, where there was high-quality mineral water and fresh fruit for the asking. He would have to be introduced to everyone he had known in this world, because he wouldn’t recognize them in their new perfect, identical blue bodies. That seemed sad: not to see people as they had been. On the other hand, he wouldn’t want to spend eternity with his dear mother if he had to look at her face all bashed in as it had been just after he had sent her on to that better place.