Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle (73 page)

BOOK: Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle
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“Something was wrong with Christine,” she said.
“She didn't seem to know who she was. She thought I was someone named Mrs. Danvers.”

“Do
you
know who you are?” Victor asked.

She frowned at the muzzle of the pistol and at the question. “What do you mean?”

“Who are you!
” Victor demanded with such vehemence that she flinched, as if reminded of the intensity with which he could deliver a beating when she deserved one.

“I'm Erika.
Your
wife.”

“Erika Five?”

She looked puzzled. “Yes, of course.”

“Then tell me—what is the most dangerous thing in the world?”

“Books,” she said at once. “Books corrupt.”

Erika Four had been allowed to read, which led to her death. Only Erika Five was created with a proscription against reading books. A resurrected Erika Four could have no way of knowing this.

On the floor, Christine said, “Manderley …” and her eyes glazed over.

She appeared to have died. Victor kicked her head, testing her response, but she didn't twitch or make a sound.

Beside her on the floor was a book titled
Jamaica Inn
.

Returning the pistol to his shoulder holster, Victor said, “What was the word she just spoke?”

“Manderley,” said Erika.

“What language is it, what does it mean?”

Surprised, she said, “It's the name of a great English
house, a literary allusion. I've got it in my program. Like, I might say to someone we visited, ‘Oh, my dear, your house is even more wonderful than Manderley
and your
housekeeper isn't insane.'”

“Yes, all right, but to what work does it refer?”

“Daphne du Maurier's
Rebecca,
” Erika said, “which I have never read and never will.”

“Books again,” he fumed, and in anger this time, he kicked the dead housekeeper, and then the book that had fallen from her hand. “I'll send a team to bring this trash to the Hands of Mercy for an autopsy. Clean up the blood yourself.”

“Yes, Victor.”

SKIP, SKIP, HOP.
Skip, skip, hop. Along the south hall. Skip, skip, hop. Knife in hand.

The back stairs. Three steps up, one step back. Three steps up, one step back.

Racing, in his fashion, toward vengeance, Jocko reminded himself of the speech he must make. As he drove the blade deep into Victor, he must say:
I am the child of he who I was before I was me! I died to birth me! I am a monster, outcast and castaway! Die, Harker, die!

No. All wrong. So much practice in so many storm drains. And still Jocko didn't have it right.

Climbing twice as many stairs as he descended, Jocko tried again:
You are the monster child of he who I!

No, no, no. Not even close.

I
am you he who I am who die!

Jocko was so angry with himself that he wanted to
spit. He
did
spit. And he spat again. On his feet. Two steps up, one step back, spit. Two steps up, one step back, spit.

Finally he reached the top step, feet glistening.

In the second-floor south hall, Jocko stopped to collect his thoughts. There was one. And here was another. And here was a third thought, connected to the other two. Very nice.

Jocko often had to collect his thoughts. They scattered so easily.

I am the child of Jonathan Harker! He died to birth me! I am a juggler, monsters and apples! Now you die!

Close enough.

Tippytoe, tippytoe, east along the south hall, across soft rugs. Toward the main corridor.

Jocko heard voices. In his head? Could be. Had been before. No, no, not this time. Real voices. In the main hallway.

The corner. Careful. Jocko halted, peeked around.

Erika stood in the hallway, at the open master-suite doors. Talking to someone inside, probably Victor.

So pretty. Such shimmering hair. She had lips. Jocko wished he had lips, too.

“It's the name of a great English house, a literary allusion,” Erika said to probably Victor.

Her voice soothed Jocko. Her voice was music.

As a calmness came over Jocko, he realized that he was different when in her company. With her, he didn't feel compelled to do so much skipping, hopping, spitting, pirouetting, juggling, capering, nostril pulling, scampering, and walking on his hands.

She lied to Jocko. Lied about the tastiness of soap. Otherwise, however, she was a positive influence.

Eighty or ninety feet away, Victor Helios appeared. Out of the master suite. Tall. Trim. Excellent hair on his head, probably none on his tongue. Pretty suit.

Jocko thought:
Die, juggler, die!

Victor walked past Erika. To the stairs. Said one last thing to her. Started down.

Jocko had the knife. The knife belonged in Victor.

A
thousand
knives belonged in Victor.

Jocko only had two hands. Could juggle three knives with two hands, put them in Victor. Trying to juggle a thousand knives, Jocko would probably lose some fingers.

To reach Victor with one pathetic knife, Jocko must run past Erika. That would be awkward.

She would see him. Would know he broke his promise. More than one promise. Would know he lied. Would be disappointed in him.

And she might smell soap on his breath.

Erika moved to the stairs. Watched Victor descend.

Maybe she saw Jocko. From the corner of her eye. She started to turn. Turn toward Jocko.

Jocko ducked back. Away from the corner.

Hoppity-hoppity-hop. Hoppity-hoppity-hop. West along the south hall. Backward down the stairs.

Kitchen again. Apples on the floor. Oranges would be even more round. Jocko must ask for oranges. And scissors to trim his tongue hairs.

Jocko capered out of the kitchen, through a butler's pantry, across an intimate dining room.

Beyond was a large, formal dining room. Jocko didn't see it too clearly because he had to, had to,
had to pirouette
.

Room after room, small connecting halls, so much house. Walking on his hands, knife gripped in one foot. Cartwheeling, cartwheeling, knife in his teeth.

North hall. Back stairs. Second floor. His suite.

Jocko hid the knife in his bedding. He scampered back into the living room. Sat on the floor in front of the fireplace. Enjoying the fireplace without fire.

She would say:
I thought I saw you in the hall
.

He would say:
No, not Jocko, not Jocko. No, no, no. Not I who am from he who was, monster from monster, no, not Jocko, not in the hall and not eating soap
.

Or maybe he would just say
No
.

Jocko would play it by ear. See what seemed right at the time.

After gazing at no fire for half a minute, Jocko realized he had forgotten to kill Victor.

Jocko hooked fingers in his nostrils and pulled them toward his brow until his eyes watered. He deserved worse.

CHAPTER 40

FOLLOWING THE FAILURE
of the freezer motors, the saline solution in the transparent sack begins to warm.

After the busy visitor in the laboratory throws the sink that smashes the glass door, the pace of the warming accelerates.

The first improvement in Chameleon's condition concerns its vision. In the cold environment, it sees only shades of blue. Now it begins to apprehend other colors, gradually at first, and then more rapidly.

For so long, Chameleon has drifted in the sack, mobility limited by the bitter cold of the fluid in which it is immersed. Now it is able to flex its abdomen and thorax. Its head turns more easily.

Suddenly it thrashes, thrashes again, a great commotion that causes the hanging sack to swing side to side and bump against the walls of the disabled freezer.

In semisuspended animation, Chameleon's metabolism performs at a basal rate so low as to be almost undetectable. As the fluid in the sack warms, the catabolic processes increase.

With the energy provided by catabolism, anabolic processes begin to speed up. Chameleon is returning to full function.

The thrashing signifies a need for air. The highly oxygenated solution in the sack maintains Chameleon in subfreezing cold, but is inadequate to sustain it at full metabolic function.

Suffocation panic triggers Chameleon's thrashing.

Although the polymeric fabric of the sack is as strong as bulletproof Kevlar, Chameleon's combat claws rip it open.

Fourteen gallons of chemically treated saline solution gush out of the sack, spilling Chameleon into the freezer, through the missing door, and onto the floor of the laboratory.

Air flows into its spiracles and follows the tracheal tubes that branch throughout its body.

As it dries out, Chameleon regains its sense of smell.

It is able to detect only two odors: a specially engineered pheromone with which all of the New Race are tagged, and human beings of the Old Race, who are identifiable by a melange of pheromones
lacking
that New Race spice.

The smell of the New Race pleases Chameleon, and therefore they are
EXEMPTS
.

Because the Old Race lacks the artificial pheromone, their scent infuriates Chameleon, and they are
TARGETS
.

Chameleon lives to kill.

At the moment, it smells only
EXEMPTS.
And even all of them seem to be dead, sprawled throughout the room.

It crawls across the debris-strewn floor of the wrecked lab, through pools of water, seeking prey.

Every external tissue of Chameleon mimics to the smallest detail the surface under it: color, pattern, texture. No matter how simple or complex the ground under it, Chameleon will blend with it.

To any observer looking down on it, Chameleon is invisible when not in motion.

If Chameleon moves, the observer may sense something amiss, but he will not understand what his eyes perceive: a vague shifting of a part of the floor, an impossible rippling of a solid surface, as if the wood or stone, or the lawn, has become fluid.

Most of the time, the observer will interpret this phenomenon not as a real event but as disturbing evidence of a problem internal to himself: dizziness or hallucination, or the first symptom of an oncoming stroke.

Often, the observer will close his eyes for a moment, to settle his disturbed senses. Closing his eyes is the end of him.

If Chameleon is on a higher plane than the floor, perhaps a kitchen countertop, it will remain invisible from the side only if the backsplash is of the same material
as the surface on which it stands. Otherwise, it will be visible as a silhouette.

For this reason, Chameleon generally remains low as it stalks its prey. A
TARGET
becomes aware of his attacker only when it skitters up his leg, ripping as it goes.

The wrecked lab offers no
TARGETS
.

Chameleon proceeds into the hallway. Here it discovers numerous
EXEMPTS
, all dead.

Taking more time to consider these cadavers than it did those in the lab, Chameleon discovers heads split open, brains missing.

Interesting.

This is not how Chameleon does its work. Effective, however.

Among the debrained
EXEMPTS
, Chameleon detects a whiff of a
TARGET.
One of the Old Race has been here recently.

Chameleon follows the scent to the stairs.

CHAPTER 41

RAIN HAD NOT YET REACHED
the parishes above Lake Pontchartrain. The humid night lay unbreathing but expectant, as if the low overcast and the dark land had compressed the air between them until at any moment an electric discharge would shock the heart of the storm into a thunderous beating.

Deucalion stood on a deserted two-lane road, outside Crosswoods Waste Management. The facility was enormous. A high chain-link fence was topped with coils of barbed wire and fitted with continuous nylon privacy panels.
RESTRICTED AREA
signs every forty feet warned of the health hazards of a landfill.

Outside the fence, a triple phalanx of loblolly pines encircled the property, the rows offset from one another. Between ninety and a hundred feet tall, these trees formed an effective screen, blocking views into
the dump from the somewhat higher slopes to the north and east.

Deucalion walked off the road, among the pines, and went through the fence by way of a gate that didn't exist—a quantum gate—into the dump.

He had night vision better than that of the Old Race, even better than that of the New. His enhanced eyesight, not the work of Victor, was perhaps another gift delivered on the lightning that had animated him, the ghost of which still sometimes throbbed through his gray eyes.

He walked a rampart of compacted earth, a span more than wide enough to accommodate an SUV. To both his left and right, well below the level of this elevated pathway, were huge lakes of trash heaped in uneven swells that would eventually be plowed level before being capped with eight feet of earth and methane-gas vent pipes.

BOOK: Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle
9.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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