Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

The boy and the dog were both eating steak. Charlie said, "For God's sake, what're you eating?" And the boy said, "It's delicious."

Charlie got to his feet beside the bed and took the meat away from the boy. The dog snarled. Charlie said, "Don't you see?

The meat's been poisoned. They've poisoned you."

"No," Joey said, "it's good. You should try some."

"Poison! It's poison!"

Then Charlie remembered the explosives that were hidden in the dog, and he started to warn Joey, but it was too late. The explosion came.

Except it wasn't the dog that exploded. It was Joey.

His chest blew open, and a horde of rats surged out of it, just like the rat in the battery room under the windmill, and they rushed at Charlie.

He staggered backward, but they surged up his legs. They were all over him, scores of rats, and they bit him, and he fell, dragged down by their numbers, and his blood poured out of him, and it was cold blood, cold instead of warm, and he screamed — and woke, gagging. He could feel cold blood all over his face, and he wiped at it, looked at his hand. It wasn't actually blood; it was snow.

He was lying on his back in the middle of the deer path, looking up at the trees and at a section of gray sky from which snow fell at a fierce rate. With considerable effort, he sat up.

His throat was full of phlegm. He coughed and spat.

How long had he been unconscious?

No way to tell.

As far as he could see, the trail leading up toward the crest of the ridge was deserted. Spivey's people hadn't yet come after him. He couldn't have been out for long.

The pain in his arm and shoulder had sent questing tendrils across his back and chest, up his neck, into his skull. He tried to raise his arm and had some success, and he could move his hand a little without making the pain any worse.

He squirmed to the nearest tree and attempted to pull himself up, but he couldn't do it. He waited a moment, tried again, failed again.

Christine. Joey. They were counting on him.

He would have to crawl for a while. Just till his strength teturned. He tried it, on hands and knees, putting most of his weight on his right arm, but demanding some help from his left, and to his surprise he was able to shuffle along at a decent pace.

Where the angle of the slope allowed him to accept gravity's assistance, he slid down the trail, sometimes as far as four or five yards, before coming to a stop.

He wasn't sure how far he had to go before reaching the rocky overhang under which he had left Christine and Joey. It might be around the next bend-or it might be hundreds of yards away.

He had lost his ability to judge distance. But he hadn't lost his sense of direction, so he crabbed down toward the valley floor.

A few minutes or a few seconds later, he realized he had lost his rifle., it had probably come off his shoulder when he'd fallen.

He ought to go back for it. But maybe it had slipped off the trail, into some underbrush or into a jumble of rocks. It might not be easy to find. He still had his revolver. And Christine had the shotgun. Those weapons would have to be sufficient.

He crawled farther down the trail and came to a fallen tree that barred his way. He didn't remember that it had been here earlier, though it might have been, and he wondered if he had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

But on the first two trips, he hadn't noticed any branches in the trail, so how could he have gone wrong? He leaned against the log — and he was in a dentist's office, strapped into a chair. He had grown a hundred teeth in his left shoulder and arm, and as luck would have it all of them were in need of root canal work.

The dentist opened the door and came in, and it was Grace Spivey. She had the biggest, nastiest drill he had ever seen, and she wasn't even going to use it on the teeth in his shoulder; she was going to bore a hole straight through his heart — and his heart was pounding furiously when he woke and found himself slumped against the fallen log.

Christine.

Joey.

Mustn't fail them.

He climbed over the log, sat on it, wondered if he dared to try walking, decided against it, and slipped down to his knees again. He crawled.

In a while his arm felt better.

It felt dead. That was better.

The pain subsided.

He crawled.

If he stopped for a moment and curled up and closed his eyes, the pain would go away altogether. He knew it would.

But he crawled.

He was thirsty and hot in spite of the frigid air. He paused and scooped up some snow and put it in his mouth. It tasted coppery, foul.

He swallowed anyway because his throat felt as if it were afire, and the wretched-tasting snow was at least cool.

Now all he needed before moving on again was a moment's rest. The day wasn't bright; nevertheless, the gray light striking down between the trees hurt his eyes. If he could just close them for a moment, shut out the gray glare for a few seconds …

Christine didn't want to leave Joey and Chewbacca alone under the overhang, but she had no choice because she knew Charlie was in trouble.

It wasn't just the extended gunfire that had worried her. It was partly the screaming, which had stopped some time ago, and partly the fact that he was taking so long. But mainly it was just a hunch. Call it woman's intuition: she knew Charlie needed her.

She told Joey she wouldn't go far, just up the trail a hundred yards or so, to see if there was any sign of Charlie. She hugged the boy, asked him if he would be all right, thought he nodded in response, but couldn't get any other reaction from him.

"Don't go anywhere while I'm gone," she said.

He didn't answer.

"Don't you leave here. Understand?"

The boy blinked. He still wasn't focusing on her.

"I love you, honey."

The boy blinked again.

"You watch over him," she told Chewbacca.

The dog snorted.

She took the shotgun and went out onto the trail, past the dying fire.

She glanced back. Joey wasn't even looking at her.

He was leaning against the rock wall, shoulders hunched, head bowed, hands in his lap, staring at the ground in front of him.

Afraid to leave him, but also afraid that Charlie needed her, she turned away and headed up the deer path.

The heat from the fire had done her some good. Her bones and muscles didn't feel as stiff as they had awhile ago; there wasn't so much soreness when she walked.

The trees protected her from most of the wind, but she knew it was blowing furiously, for it made a wild and ghoulish sound as it raged through the highest branches. In those places where the forest parted to reveal patches of leaden sky, the snow came down so thick and fast that it almost seemed like rain.

She had gone no more than eighty yards, around two bends in the trail, when she saw Charlie. He was lying face-down in the middle of the path, head turned to one side.

No.

She stopped a few feet from him. She dreaded going closer because she knew what she would find.

He was motionless.

Dead.

Oh, Jesus, he was dead. They had killed him. She had loved him, and he had loved her, and now he had died for her, and she was sick with the thought of it. The somber, sullen colors of the day seeped into her, and she was filled with a cold grayness, a numbing despair.

But grief had to allow room for fear, as well, because now she and Joey were on their own, and without Charlie she didn't think they would make it out of the mountains. At least not alive.

His death was an omen of their own fate.

She studied the woods around her, decided that she was alone with the body. Evidently, Charlie had been hurt up on the ridge top and had managed to come this far under his own steam.

Spivey's fanatics were apparently still on the other side of the ridge.