Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle (128 page)

Travis followed Bryce onto the porch and watched the old man ring the doorbell.

“You'll like this friend of mine,” Bryce said. “Sully York. He's led a life that any man would envy, with great spirit and on his own terms. He has put himself on the line in ways that most of us would never dare, in exotic and generally inhospitable places, always for the good of his country, and he's come out of every tight spot in triumph.”

The door opened and before Travis stood a bald man with one ear, an eye patch, a mouthful of gold teeth, and a livid scar from his right eye to the corner of his mouth.

“Sully,” Bryce said, “I'd like you to meet Travis Ahern. Travis, Colonel Sully York.”

“Pleased to meet you,” York said in a low rasp-and-rattle voice, and he held out an elaborate mechanical hand of steel and copper to be shaken.

Mr. Lyss found a car with keys in it. He said people left keys in their car when they wanted other people to feel free to use it, but Nummy wasn't fooled.

“This here is stealing is what it is,” he said.

They were on Cody Street, heading out of town.

“I once drove from Detroit to Miami without ever using the brake pedal,” Mr. Lyss said.

“That's no more true than people leaving keys for you to use.”

“Peaches, after all we've been through, I think you'd trust me by now. I was bunking in a new car, on a car hauler, and I rode all the way from Detroit to Miami on that big old truck without needing the brakes or the steering wheel. The driver never knew I was there.”

Nummy saw how that might be true, especially when it was Mr. Lyss, who seemed to know how to do everything at no cost to himself.

He said, “Well, now I feel bad for saying it was a lie.”

“You should feel bad,” Mr. Lyss said.

“Well, I do.”

“Maybe you'll be a little more trusting in the future.”

“I guess I might be,” Nummy said.

“Uh-oh,” said Mr. Lyss, and he stopped at the side of the road. Ahead were police cars with flashing lights, blocking both lanes. “Roadblock.”

“They're looking for jailbreakers,” Nummy said, “and we're it.”

“Those aren't real police, boy. Those are monster police.”

Mr. Lyss turned the car around and drove back into town.

“What now?” Nummy asked.

“I'll think of something,” Mr. Lyss said.

After half a minute, Nummy said, “You think of something yet?”

“Not yet.”

As they slowed for the red light at Beartooth Avenue, Nummy said, “You think of something yet?”

“Not yet.”

When the light changed, Mr. Lyss drove into the intersection.

As Nummy opened his mouth, Mr. Lyss said, “Not yet.”

In the gloom between streetlamps, Frost and Dagget sat in Frost's car across the street from the Benedetto house. They watched two Rainbow Falls police officers carry the corpse out of the house in a body bag.

“Where's the coroner's van?” Frost asked.

“Apparently they have a different routine than we'd think was suitable for Bureau agents like us.”

The two cops dumped the bagged body into the trunk of their patrol car and slammed the lid.

“They're as absurd as Abbott and Costello but not as funny,” Frost said.

“What the
hell
is going on in this town?” Dagget wondered.

“I don't know,” Frost said as he watched the patrol car drive away from the Benedetto place. “But I've got a totally bad feeling about this.”

Deucalion had taken Chrissy with him to Erika's.

Carson and Michael changed into storm suits and ski boots.

In a zippered pocket of her suit, Carson tucked one of her photos of Scout, where she could get it quickly for a final look if things went bad.

Michael said, “Are you ready?”

She said, “I was born ready.”

They were checking out of the Falls Inn. For the time being, the Jeep Grand Cherokee would be their base of operations.

Before they had realized that Victor was far along in his new venture, when they thought they needed to smoke him out, they had booked the room under their names. Considering everything that had happened since dinner and considering what Deucalion had told them about the fleet of unmarked trucks and the grisly scene at the warehouse, they didn't need to smoke out Victor. His creations were everywhere around them, and therefore he was everywhere around them. He would be coming for them soon.

Their task now was fourfold: against all odds, to survive, to convince the people of Rainbow Falls of the threat they faced, to fight back, and somehow to alert the world beyond this town that the first battle of Armageddon had begun here.

They had consolidated their spare ammunition, other weapons, and various tools of their trade in one large suitcase, which they stowed in the Jeep.

As Michael closed the tailgate, Carson held out the keys to him. “You want to drive?”

He shook his head. “Bad idea.”

“This might be one of the last times you have a chance.”

“Changing our routine now would be like the British people voting Churchill out of office halfway through World War II. They weren't that stupid and neither am I.”

In the Cherokee, after Carson started the engine, Michael leaned across the console, put a hand against the back of her head, and drew her to him. Eye to eye, lips to lips, he said, “You know how those New Race people he built in New Orleans each had two hearts? Seems to me like you and I—we have just one. If I die tonight, it's been a better
life than I deserved, just having you.” He kissed her, and she returned the kiss as if it might be their last.

When they pulled apart, she said, “I love you, Michael. My God, do I. But if you ever say anything about dying again, I'll kick your ass up between your shoulder blades.”

As she put the Jeep in gear, the first snow of the season began to fall. Flakes as big as half-dollars, as intricate as fern fronds, floated down out of the night and trembled across the windshield. To Carson, every flake seemed to be a reassuring omen, proof that out of darkness can come one bright grace after another.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEAN KOONTZ is the author of many #1
New York Times
bestsellers. He lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie.

Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:

Dean Koontz
P.O. Box 9529
Newport Beach, California 92658

Read on for an excerpt from Dean Koontz's

Frankenstein: The Dead Town

Owl-eyed and terrified, Warren Snyder occupied an armchair in his living room. He sat stiff, erect, his hands upturned in his lap. Now and then his right hand shook. His mouth hung slightly open, and his lower lip trembled almost continuously.

On his left temple, a silvery bead gleamed. As rounded and as polished as the head of a decorative upholstery tack, it looked like a misplaced earring.

The bead was in fact packed with electronics, nanocircuitry, and was rather like the head of a nail in that it was the visible portion of a needle-thin probe that had been fired into his brain by a pistol-like device. Instantaneous chemical cauterization of flesh and bone prevented bleeding.

Warren said nothing. He had been ordered to remain silent, and he had lost the power to disobey. Except for his twitching fingers and the tremors, which
were both involuntary, he did not move, not even to change position in the chair, because he had been told to be still.

His gaze shifted back and forth between two points of interest: his wives.

With a silver bead on her left temple and her eyes glazed like those of an amped-out meth junkie, Judy Snyder perched on the sofa, knees together, hands folded serenely in her lap. She didn't twitch or tremble like her husband. She seemed to be without fear, perhaps because the probe had damaged her brain in ways not intended.

The other Judy stood by one of the living-room windows that faced the street, alternately studying the snowy night and regarding her two prisoners with contempt. Their kind were the spoilers of the earth. Soon these two would be led away like a couple of sheep, to be rendered and processed. And one day, when the last human beings were eradicated, the world would be as much of a paradise as it had ever been or ever could be.

This Judy was not a clone of the one on the sofa, nothing as disgusting as a mere meat machine, which was all that human beings were. She had been designed to pass for the original Judy, but the illusion would not hold up if her internal structure and the nature of her flesh were to be studied by physicians. She had been created in a couple of months, programmed and extruded—“born”—as an adult in the Hive, deep underground, with no tao other than her program,
with no illusion that she possessed free will, with no obligation whatsoever to any higher power other than Victor Leben, whose true last name was Frankenstein, and with no life after this one to which she needed to aspire.