Dean Koontz: Winter Moon

"It's just the machine," Arkadian told Jack and Luther. "They keep saying it's fixed, but it keeps giving you Pepsi when you push Orange.Crush."

As bad as things were in the City of Angels these days, Jack found it difficult to believe that Arkadian was accustomed to seeing people fly off the handle every time an unwanted can of Pepsi dropped into the dispensing tray.

The customer turned away from the machine and from them, as if he might walk off and leave his Lexus. He seemed to be shaking with anger, but it was mostly the blustery wind shivering the loosely fitted suit.

"What's wrong here?" Luther asked, heading toward the guy as thunder tolled across the lowering sky and the palms in the south planter thrashed against a backdrop of black clouds.

Jack started to follow Luther before he saw the suit jacket billow out behind the blond, flapping like bat wings. Except the coat had been buttoned a moment ago. Double-breasted, buttoned twice.

The angry man faced away from them still, shoulders hunched, head lowered.

Because of the loose and billowing fabric of his suit, he seemed less than human, like a hunchbacked troll. The guy began to turn, and Jack would not have been surprised to see the deformed muzzle of a beast, but it was the same tan and cleanshaven face as before.

Why had the son of a bitch unbuttoned the coat unless there was something under it that he needed, and what might an irrational and angry man need that he kept under his jacket, his loose-fitting suit jacket, his roomy goddamned jacket?

Jack called a warning to Luther.

But Luther sensed trouble too. His right hand moved toward the gun holstered on his hip.

The perp had the advantage because he was the initiator. No one knew violence was at hand until he unleashed it, so he swung all the way around to face them, holding a weapon in both hands, before Luther and Jack had even touched their revolvers.

Automatic gunfire hammered the day. Bullets pounded Luther's chest, knocked the big man off his feet, hurled him backward, and Hassam Arkadian spun from the impact of one-two-three hits, went down hard, screaming in agony.

Jack threw himself against the glass door to the office. He almost made it to cover before taking a hit to the left leg. He felt as if he'd been clubbed across the thigh with a tire iron, but it was a bullet, not a blow.

He dropped facedown on the office floor. The door swung shut behind him, gunfire shattered it, and gummy chunks of tempered glass cascaded across his back.

Hot pain boiled sweat from him… A radio was playing. Golden oldies. Dionne Warwick. Singing about the world needing love, sweet love.

Outside, Arkadian was still screaming, but there wasn't a sound from Luther Bryson.

Luther was dead. Jack couldn't think about that. Dead. Didn't dare think about it. Dead. Wouldn't think about it.

The chatter of more gunfire.

Someone else screamed. Probably the attendant at the Lexus. It wasn't a lasting scream. Brief, quickly choked off.

Outside, Arkadian wasn't screaming anymore, either. He was sobbing and calling for Jesus.

Hard, chill wind made the plate-glass windows vibrate. It hooted through the shattered door.

The gunman would be coming.

Jack was stunned at the quantity of his own blood on the vinyl-tile floor around him. Nausea squirmed through him, and greasy sweat streamed down his face. He couldn't take his eyes off the spreading stain that darkened his pants.

He had never been shot before. The pain was terrible but not as bad as he would have expected. Worse than the pain was the sense of violation and vulnerability, a terrible frantic awareness of the true fragility of the human body.

He might not be able to hold on to consciousness for long. A hungry darkness was already eating away at the edges of his vision.

He probably couldn't put much weight on his left leg, and he didn't have time to pull himself up on his right alone, not while in such an exposed position.

Shedding broken glass as a bright-scaled snake might shed an old skin, unavoidably leaving a trail of blood, he crawled fast on his belly alongside the L-shaped work counter behind which Arkadian kept the cash register.

The gunman would be coming.

From the sound the weapon made and the brief glimpse he'd gotten of it, Jack figured it was a submachine gun-maybe a Micro Uzi. The Micro was less than ten inches long with the wire stock folded forward but a lot heavier than a pistol, weighing about two kilos if it had a single magazine, heavier if it featured two magazines welded at right angles to give it a forty-round capacity. It would be like carrying a standard-size bag of sugar in a sling, it was sure to cause chronic neck pain, but not too big to fit an oversize shoulder holster under an.Armani suit-and worth the trouble if a man had snake-mean enemies.

Could be an FN P90, too, or maybe a British Bushman 2, but probably not a Czech Skorpion, because a Skorpion fired only.32 ACP ammo.

Judging by how hard Luther had gone down, this seemed to be a gun with more punch than a Skorpion, which the 9mm Micro Uzi provided. Forty rounds in the Uzi to start, and the son of a bitch had fired twelve, sixteen at most, so at least twenty-four rounds were left, and maybe a pocketful of spare cartridges.

Thunder boomed, the air felt heavy with pent-up rain, wind shrieked through the ruined door, and the gun rattled again. Outside, Hassam Arkadian's cries to Jesus abruptly ended.

Jack desperately pulled himself around the end of the counter, thinking the unthinkable. Luther Bryson dead. Arkadian dead. The attendant dead. Most likely the young Asian mechanic too. All of them wasted.

The world had been turned upside down in less than a minute.

Now it was one-on-one, survival of the fittest, and Jack wasn't afraid of that game. Though Darwinian selection tended to favor the guy with the biggest gun and best supply of ammunition, cleverness could outweigh caliber. He had been saved by his wits before and might be again.

Surviving could be easier when he had his back to the wall, the odds were stacked high against him, and he had no one to worry about but himself. With only his own sorry ass on the line, he was more focused, free to risk inaction or recklessness, free to be a coward or a kamikaze fool, whatever the occasion demanded.

Then he dragged himself entirely into the sheltered space behind the counter and discovered that he didn't, after all, enjoy the freedom of a sole survivor. A woman was huddled there: petite, long dark hair, attractive. Gray shirt, work pants, white socks, black shoes with thick rubber soles. She was in her mid-thirties, maybe five or six years younger than Hassam Arkadian.

Could be his wife. No, not a wife any more. Widow. She was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up against her chest, arms wrapped tightly around her legs, trying to make herself as small as possible, straining for invisibility.

Her presence changed everything for Jack, put him on the line and reduced his own chances of survival. He couldn't choose to hide, couldn't even opt for recklessness any longer. He had to think hard and clearly, determine the best course of action, and do the right thing. He was responsible for her. He had sworn an oath to serve and protect the public, and he was old-fashioned enough to take oaths seriously.

The woman's eyes were wide with terror and shimmering with unspilled tears.

Even in the midst of fear for her own life, she seemed to comprehend.the meaning of Arkadian's sudden lapse into silence.

Jack drew his revolver.

Serve and protect.

He was shivering uncontrollably. His left leg was hot, but the rest of him was freezing, as if all his body heat was draining out through the wound.