Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

Here, now, the hot August darkness. The moon. The stars and the mysteries beyond. No getaway train for Leilani, and perhaps none for Micky herself.

Do you believe in life after death?

I better.

Four elderly women, three elderly men, a thirty-year-old mother of two… a six-year-old boy in a wheelchair.

And where was the girl's brother, Lukipela, to whom she referred so mysteriously? Was he Preston Maddoc's twelfth victim?

Do you believe in life after death?

I better.

"Dear God," Micky whispered, "what am I going to do?"

EIGHTEEN-WHEELERS LOADED with everything from spools of abb to zymometers, reefer semis hauling ice cream or meat, cheese or frozen dinners, flatbeds laden with concrete pipe and construction steel and railroad ties, automobile transports, slat-sided trailers carrying livestock, tankers full of gasoline, chemicals: Scores of mammoth rigs, headlights doused but cab-roof lights and marker lights colorfully aglow, encircle the pump islands in much the way that nibbling stegosaurs and grazing brontosauruses and packs of hunting theropods had eons ago circled too close to the treacherous bogs that swallowed them by the thousands, by the millions. Rumbling-growling-wheezing-panting, each big truck waits for its communion with the nozzle, feeding on two hundred million years of bog distillations.

This is how the motherless boy understands the current theory of bitumen deposits in general and petroleum deposits in particular, as put forth locally in everything from textbooks to the Internet. Yet even though he finds the idea of dinosaurs-to-diesel-fuel silly enough to have first been expounded by Daffy Duck or another Looney Tunes star, he is excited by the spectacle of all these cool trucks congregating at rank upon rank of pumps, in a great dazzle and rumble and fumy reek here in the middle of an otherwise dark, silent, and nearly scent-free desert.

From his hiding place in the Explorer on the lower deck of the car transport, he watches as purposeful men and women busily tend to their rigs, some of them colorful figures in hand-tooled boots and Stetsons, in studded and embroidered denim jackets, many in T-shirts emblazoned with the names of automotive products, snack foods, beers, and country-and-western bars from Omaha to Santa Fe, to Abilene, to Houston, to Reno, to Denver.

Disinterested in the bustle, not stirred — as the boy is — by the romance of travel and the mystery of exotic places embodied in these superhighway Gypsies, the dog is curled compactly on the passenger's seat, lightly dozing.

Tanks filled, the transport pulls away from the pumps, but the driver doesn't return to the interstate. Instead, he steers his rig into an immense parking lot, apparently intending to stop either for dinner or a rest.

This is the largest truck stop the boy has seen, complete with a sprawling motel, motor-home park, diner, gift shop, and according to one highway sign glimpsed earlier, a "full range of services," whatever that might encompass. He has never been to a carnival, but he imagines that the excitement he feels about this place must be akin to the thrill of being on an attraction-packed midway.

Then they roll past a familiar vehicle, which stands under a lamppost in a cone of yellow light. It's smaller than the giant rigs parked side by side on the blacktop. White cab, black canvas walls. The saddlery truck from Colorado.

A moment ago, he'd been eager to investigate this place. Now he wants only to move on — and quickly.

The transport swings into a wide space between two huge trucks.

Air brakes squeal and sigh. The rumbling engine stops. After the twin teams of Explorers stir slightly in their traces, like sleeping horses briefly roused from dreams of sweet pastures, the silence that settles is deeper than any the boy has heard since the high meadows of Colorado.

As the puddle of black-and-white fur on the passenger's seat becomes unmistakably a dog once more, rising to check out their new circumstances, the boy says worriedly, "We've got to keep moving."

In one sense, the nearness of those searching for him doesn't matter. The likelihood of his being apprehended within the next few minutes would be just as great if he were a thousand miles from here.

His mother has often told him that if you're clever, cunning, and bold, you can hide in plain sight as confidently as in the most remote and well-disguised bolt-hole. Neither geography nor distance is the key to survival: Only time matters. The longer he stays free and hidden, the less likely that he will ever be found.

Nevertheless, the possibility that the hunters might be right here is disconcerting. Their nearness makes him nervous, and when he's nervous, he's less likely to be clever or cunning, or bold; and they will find him, know him, whether he's in plain sight or hiding in a cave a thousand feet from sunlight.

Hesitantly, he eases open the driver's door and slips out of the SUV. onto the bed of the transport.

He listens. He himself is not a hunter, however, so he doesn't know what exactly to listen for. The action at the pump islands is a far away grumble. Muffled country music, oscillating between faint and fainter, seasons the night with enchantment, the landlocked Western equivalent of a siren's irresistible song drifting across a night-shrouded sea with a promise of wonder and companionship.

The ramped bed of the auto transport isn't much wider than the Explorer, too narrow to allow the dog to land safely in a leap from the driver's seat, which he now occupies. If in fact he had jumped from the porch roof at the Hammond farmhouse, surely the mutt can clear the truck entirely, avoiding the vertical supports between the decks of the open cargo trailer, and spring directly to the parking Id' However, if he possesses the agility to accomplish this feat, he doesn't possess the confidence. Peering down from his perch, the dog cocks his head left, then right, makes a pathetic sound of anxiety, stifles the whine as though he recognizes the need for stealth, and stares beseechingly at his master.

The boy lifts the dog out of the Explorer, as earlier he had lifted him up and in, not without considerable contortion. He teeters but keeps his balance and puts his shaggy burden down on the floor of the transport.

As the boy eases shut the door of the Explorer, the mongrel pads toward the back of the auto carrier, following the ramped bed. He is waiting immediately behind the truck when his master arrives.

The ears arc pricked, the head lifted, the nose twitching. The fluffy tail, usually a proud plume, is held low.

Although domesticated, this animal nevertheless remains to some degree a hunter, as the boy is not, and he has the instincts of a survivor. His wariness must be taken seriously. Evidently, something in the night smells threatening or at least suspicious.

Currently, no vehicles are either entering or leaving the lot. No truckers are in sight across the acres of blacktop.

Although a couple hundred people are nearby, this place in this moment of time seems as lonely as any crater on the moon.

From the west, out of the desert, arises a light breeze, warm but not hot, carrying the silicate scent of sand and the faint alkaline fragrance of the hardy plants that grow in parched lands.

The boy is reminded of home, which he will most likely never see again. A pleasant nostalgia wells within him, too quickly swells into a gush of homesickness, inevitably reminding him of the terrible loss of his family, and suddenly he sways as though physically battered by the flood of grief that storms through his heart.

Later. Tears are for later. Survival comes first. He can almost hear his mother's spirit urging him to control himself and to leave the grieving for safer times.