Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

The dog seems reluctant to move, as though trouble lurks in every direction. His tail lowers further, wrapping partly around his right hind leg.

The motel and the diner lay out of sight to the east, beyond the ranks of parked vehicles, marked by the fiery glow of red neon. The boy sets off in that direction.

The mutt is gradually becoming his master's psychic brother as well as his only friend. He shakes off his hesitancy and trots at the boy's side.

"Good pup," the boy whispers.

They pass behind eight semis and are at the back of a ninth when a low growl from the dog halts the boy. Even if the animal's sudden anxiety hadn't been strong enough to feel, the nearest of the tall pole lamps provides sufficient sour yellow light to reveal the animal's raised hackles.

The dog peers at something in the oily Muck gloom under the big truck. Instead of growling again, he glances up at the boy and mewls entreatingly.

Trusting the wisdom of his brother-becoming, the boy drops to his knees, braces one hand against the trailer, and squints into the pooled darkness. He can see nothing in the murk between the parallel sets of tires.

Then movement catches his eye, not immediately under the rig but along the side of it, in the lamplit passageway between this vehicle and the next. A pair of cowboy boots, blue jeans tucked in the tops: Someone is walking beside the trailer, approaching the back where the boy kneels.

Most likely this is an ordinary driver, unaware of the boyhunt that is being conducted discreetly but with great resources and urgency across the West. He's probably returning from a late dinner, with a thermos full of fresh coffee, ready to hit the road again.

Another pair of boots follows the first. Two men, not just one. Neither talks, both move purposefully.

Maybe ordinary drivers, maybe not.

The young fugitive drops flat to the pavement and slips under the trailer, and the dog crawls beside him into hiding. They huddle together, turning their heads to watch the passing boots, and the boy is oddly excited because this is a situation encountered in all the adventure stories that he loves.

Admittedly, the character of his excitement is different from what he feels when he experiences such exploits vicariously, through the pages of books. Young heroes of adventure stories, from Treasure bland to The Amber Spyglass, are never eviscerated, decapitated, torn limb from limb, and immolated — which is a possible fate that he envisions for himself too clearly to embrace fully the traditional boys'-book spirit of derring-do. His excitement has a nervous edge sharper than anything Huckleberry Finn was required to feel, a darker quality. He's a boy nonetheless, and he's virtually programmed by nature to be thrilled by events that test his pluck, his fortitude, and his wits.

The two men reach the back of the trailer, where they pause, evidently surveying the parking lot, perhaps not quite able to recall where they left their rig. They remain silent, us though listening for the telltale sounds that only born hunters can perceive and properly interpret.

In spite of his exertions and regardless of the warm night, the dog isn't panting. He lies motionless against his master's side.

Good pup.

Instrument of nostalgia, scented with desert fragrances that remind the boy of home, the breeze is also a broom to the blacktop, sweeping along puffs of dust, spidery twists of dry desert grass, and scraps of litter. With a soft rustle, a loosely crumpled wad of paper twirls lazily across the pavement and comes to rest against the toe of one of the boots. The parking-lot light is bright enough that from a distance of a few feet, the boy can see this is debris with value: a five-dollar bill.

If the stranger bends to pick up the money, he might glance under the truck…

No. Even if the man drops to one knee, instead of simply bending down, his head will be well above the bottom of the trailer. He won't inadvertently get a glimpse of a boy-shape-dog-shape cowering in the shadows cast by the rig.

After trembling against the boot toe, the five-dollar bill blows free. and twirls under the truck.

In the gloom, the boy loses track of the money. He's focused intently on the cowboy boots.

Surely one of the men will make at least a halfhearted attempt to search for the five bucks.

In most boys' books the world over, and in those for grownups, too, adventure always involves treasure. This globe rotates on a spindle of gold. A peglegged, parrot-petting pirate said exactly that, in one tale or another.

Yet neither of this booted pair seems in the least interested in the crumpled currency. Still without speaking a word to each other, they move on, away from the truck.

The possibility that neither of them noticed the money is slim. By I heir disinterest in the five dollars, they have revealed their true nature. They are engaged in an urgent search for something more important than treasure, and they won't be distracted.

The two men walk westward from the back of the semi — in the general direction of the automobile transport.

The boy and his companion crawl forward, farther under the trailer, toward the cab, and then they slip out of shelter, into the open space between this rig and the next, where they had first glimpsed the cowboy boots.

Evidently having snatched a small treasure from the teeth of the desert breeze, the dog holds the five-dollar bill in his mouth.

"Good pup."

The boy smoothes the currency between his hands, folds it, and stuffs it in a pocket of his jeans.

Their meager financial resources won't carry them far, and they can't expect to find money in the wind whenever they need it. For the time being, however, they are spared the humiliation of committing another larceny.

Maybe dogs aren't capable of feeling humiliated. The boy's never had a dog before. He knows their nature only from movies, books, and a few casual encounters.

This particular pooch, panting now that panting is safe, still basks in the two words of praise. He is a scamp, a rascally fun-loving creature that lives by the simple rules of wild things.

In becoming brothers, they will change each other. The dog might become as easily humiliated and as fearfully aware of ever-looming death as his master is, which would be sad. And the boy figures that during their desperate, lonely, and probably long flight for freedom, he himself will have to guard against becoming too much like a dog, wild and given to rash action.

Without shame, the mutt squats and urinates on the blacktop.

The boy promises himself that public toileting is a behavior he will never adopt, regardless of how wild the dog might otherwise inspire him to be.

Better move.

The two silent men who had headed toward the auto transport won't be the only searchers prowling the night.

Skulking among the trucks, staying as much as possible out of the open lanes of the parking lot, the alert dog ever at his side, he chooses an indirect route, as if making his way through a maze, toward the promise of the red neon.

Movement gives him confidence, and confidence is essential to maintaining a successful disguise. Besides, motion is commotion, which has value as camouflage. More of his mother's wisdom.

Being among people is helpful, too. A crowd distracts the enemy — not much but sometimes enough to matter — and provides a screening effect behind which a fugitive can, with luck, pass undetected.

The truck lot adjoins a separate parking area for cars. Here, the boy is more exposed than he was among the big rigs.

He moves faster and more boldly, striking out directly toward the "full range of services," which are provided in a complex of structures farther back from the highway than the service islands and fuel pumps.