Dean Koontz - City of Night

Clearly, however, the challenge before her was far greater than she had at first understood.

The three gone-wrongs were removed from the bed of palm fronds on the truck, wound in sheets, and then carried through torchlight to a shallow depression in the trash field, to be buried at a decent remove from the five members of the Old Race.

This was a more solemn ceremony than the dance of death, and not as viscerally exciting. Some of the crew grew restless by the time the three shrouded cadavers were lined up in what would become their communal grave.

Following this interment, the crew — which included as many women as men — would go to the showers to scrub one another clean. There, the sex would begin, and would continue through the evening’s feast, through the night until near dawn.

Curiously, although the stomping should have worked off much of their pent-up aggression, they often found their anger surfacing with renewed power later, and the sex became thrillingly savage.

Dog-nose Nick regretted only that the others felt the need to bathe before having at one another in various combinations. He loved the smell of Gunny Alecto, in particular, when she was incrusted with filth. After soap, she remained desirable, but not as much so.

As Gunny drove her garbage galleon toward the gone-wrongs, to plow a layer of concealing trash over them, the anticipated feast and orgy were thrust from Nick’s mind when abruptly something pale and many-limbed and strange beyond his experience shivered up out of the trash field. As quick as a spider, but like a huge assemblage of human limbs and heads and torsos in an illogical construct, it seized the three gone-wrongs and dragged them down, down and out of sight, and the trash field shuddered underfoot.

In the main laboratory at the Hands of Mercy, an Epsilon named Lester, a member of the janitorial team, performed daily maintenance at an industrious pace.

When Mr. Helios was in the facility, Lester could not clean in the lab. Mr. Helios did not like to be distracted by a mopping and dusting minion.

This suited Lester just fine. He always got nervous around his maker.

Because Mr. Helios spent more time than not within these walls and because he worked at irregular hours, whenever his great genius compelled him, Lester’s routine chores in this part of the building had to be done at different times every day. He liked the night best, like now, when none of the other staff members ventured into the main lab in their maker’s absence.

Perhaps the complex and fantastic machines, their purposes beyond his comprehension, should have made him fearful. The opposite was the case.

They hummed, burbled, ticked, whispered almost like voices imparting secrets, chuckled, occasionally beeped but not with the quality of alarm, sputtered, and murmured musically. Lester found these noises comforting.

He didn’t know why they should comfort him. He did not think about it or try to understand.

Lester didn’t try to understand much of anything, except what he needed to know to perform his work. His work was his life, as it should be for one such as him.

When not working, he found that time hung heavy. Sometimes he sat for hours, scratching his arm hard enough to make it bleed, and then watching it heal, scratching it open again, watching it heal, scratching it open… At other times, he went down to a private place on the lowest level of the building, where there was rubble that his maker would not permit to be cleaned up, and he stood in front of a concrete wall, knocking his head rhythmically against it until the compulsion to do so had passed.

Compared to work, leisure time had little appeal. He always knew what to do with the hours when at work.

The only other thing in his life besides work and leisure was the occasional blackout, a recent phenomenon. Now and then he woke, as if he had been sleeping on his feet, and found himself in odd places, with no recollection of how he had gotten there or of what he had been doing.

Consequently, he tried to work most of the time, cleaning again what he had cleaned only an hour ago, to help the time pass.

This evening, as he mopped the floor around his maker’s desk, the dark screen of the computer suddenly brightened. The face of Annunciata appeared.

“Mr. Helios, Helios, I have been asked by Werner to tell you that he is in Randal Six’s room and that he is exploding, exploding.”

Lester glanced at the face on the screen. He didn’t know what to say, so he continued mopping.

“Mr. Helios, sir, Werner wishes to stress the urgency, urgency, urgency of the situation.”

This sounded bad, but it was none of Lester’s business.

“Mr. Helios, an Alpha has made an urgent, urgent, urgent request for a meeting with you.”

Growing nervous, Lester said, “Mr. Helios isn’t here.”

“Mr. Helios. I have become aware that Werner, that Werner, that Werner has been trapped in Isolation Room Number Two.”

“You’ll have to call back later,” said Lester.

“Instructions?” Annunciata asked.

“What?”

“May I have instructions, sir?”

“I’m just Lester,” he told her. “I don’t give instructions, I take them.”

“Coffee has been spilled in the main lab.”

Lester looked around worriedly. “Where? I don’t see any coffee.”

“Coffee exploding, exploding in the main lab.”

The machines were humming and burbling as always. Colorful gases and liquids were bubbling and glowing in glass spheres, in tubes, as always they bubbled and glowed. Nothing was exploding.

“Annunciata,” said Annunciata sternly, “let’s see if you can get anything right.”

“Nothing’s exploding,” Lester assured her.

Annunciata said, “Werner is coffee in Isolation Room Number Two. Analyze your systems, Annunciata, analyze, analyze.”

“I don’t follow you at all,” Lester told her. “You’re making me nervous.”

“Good morning, Mr. Helios. Helios.”

“I’m going to clean over at the other end of the lab,” Lester declared.

“Werner is trapped, trapped, trapped. Analyze. See if you can get anything right.”

Carson pulled Vicky’s Honda to the curb in front of Michael’s apartment building. She did not engage the parking brake or turn off the engine.

They sat staring at the place for a minute. A bland structure, slabs on slabs of apartments, it didn’t look menacing. It was a big, dumb, happy kind of building where nobody would be stalked and killed by relentless meat machines.

“What’s that thing they say about going home again?” Michael asked.

“You can’t.”

“Yeah. That’s it. You can’t go home again.”

“Thomas Wolfe,” she said.

“Whoever. I’m definitely getting a you-can’t-go-home-again vibe.”

“Me too.”

“I’m glad I put on my new white shoes this morning. I’d have felt bad about never having worn them.”

“They’re cool shoes,” Carson said as she pulled away from the curb. “You’ve always got the right look.”

“Do I?”

“Always.”

“That’s nice. That’s a nice thing to say. I’m sorry about earlier, when I said you were going female on me.”

“Water under the bridge.”

“You hungry?”

“That Red Bull gave me an appetite.”

“I’ve got a what-would-you-like-for-dinner-before-we-strap-you-down-in-the-electric-chair kind of appetite. I want to eat everything before the switch is pulled. I’m starved.”

“Want to get po-boys?”

“That’s a start.”

They rode for a longer while in silence than was customary for them, at least than was customary for Michael, and then she said, “You know that plan we had — shooting our way into Helios’s mansion, taking him out?”