Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

"Burn him," Jessica said. Her pretty lips made a thin pencil line on her face. Her long yellow hair caught the morning sun and glimmered. The day was perfect, and she was the most beautiful part of it. "Burn him all up."

"Shouldn't we drag Mother out and burn the two of them at the same time?" Jonathan asked. "It would save work."

"If we make a big pyre, the flames might dance too high," she said. "And we don't want a stray spark to catch the house on fire."

"We have our choice of all the houses in the world!" Jonathan said, spreading his arms to indicate the beach resort around us, Massachusetts beyond the resort, the nation past the state's perimeters — the world.

Jessica only glared at him.

"Aren't I right, Jerry?" Jonathan asked me. "Don't we have the whole world to live in? Isn't it silly to worry about this one old house?"

"You're right," I said.

"I like this house," Jessica said.

Because Jessica liked this house, we stood fifteen feet back from the sprawled corpse and stared at it and thought of flames and ignited it in an instant. Fire burst out of nowhere and wrapped Father in a red-orange blanket. He burned well, blackened, popped, sizzled, and fell into ashes.

"I feel as if I ought to be sad," Jonathan said.

Jessica grimaced.

"Well, he was our father," Jonathan said.

"We're above cheap sentimentality." Jessica stared hard at each of us to be certain we understood this. "We're a new race with new emotions and new attitudes."

"I guess so." But Jonathan was not fully convinced.

"Now, let's get Mother," Jessica said.

Although she is only ten years old — six minutes younger than Jonathan and three minutes younger than I — Jessica is the most forceful of us. She usually has her way.

We went back into the house and got Mother.

THE GOVERNMENT HAD ASSIGNED A CONTINGENT OF TWELVE MARINES and eight plainclothes operatives to our house. Supposedly, these men were to guard us and keep us from harm. Actually, they were there only to be sure that we remained prisoners. When we were finished with Mother, we dragged these other bodies onto the lawn and cremated them one at a time.

Jonathan was exhausted. He sat down between two smoldering skeletons and wiped sweat and ashes from his face. "Maybe we made a big mistake."

"Mistake?" Jessica asked. She was immediately defensive.

"Maybe we shouldn't have killed all of them," Jonathan said.

Jessica stamped one foot. Her golden ringlets of hair bounced prettily. "You're a stupid bastard, Jonathan! You know what they were going to do to us. When they discovered just how far-ranging our powers were and just how fast we were acquiring new powers, they finally understood the danger we posed. They were going to kill us."

"We could have killed just a few of them to make our point," Jonathan said. "Did we really have to finish them all?"

Jessica sighed. "Look, they were like Neanderthals compared to us. We're a new race with new powers, new emotions, new attitudes. We are the most precocious children of all time — but they did have a certain brute strength, remember. Our only chance was to act without warning. And we did."

Jonathan looked around at the black patches of grass. "It's going to be so much work! It's taken us all morning to dispense with these few. We'll never get the whole world cleaned up."

"Before long, we'll learn how to levitate the bodies," Jessica said. "I feel a smidgen of that power already. Maybe we'll even learn how to teleport them from one place to another. Things will be easier then. Besides, we aren't going to clean up the whole world — just the parts of it we'll want to use for the next few years. By that time, the weather and the rats will have done the rest of the job for us."

"I guess you're right," Jonathan said.

But I knew he remained doubtful, and I shared some of his doubt. Certainly, we three are higher on the ladder of evolution than anyone who came before us. We are fledgling mind readers, fortune tellers, capable of out-of-body experiences whenever we desire them. We have

that trick with the fire, converting thought energy into a genuine physical holocaust. Jonathan can control the flow of small streams of water, a talent he finds most amusing whenever I try to urinate; though he is one of the new race, he is still strangely enchanted by childish pranks. Jessica can accurately predict the weather. I have a special empathy with animals; dogs come to me, as do cats and birds and all manner of offal-dropping creatures. And, of course, we can put a stop to the life of any plant or animal just by thinking death at it. Like we thought death at all the rest of humanity. Perhaps, considering Darwin's theories, we were destined to destroy these new Neanderthals once we developed the ability. But I cannot rid myself of the nagging doubt.

I feel that, somehow, we will suffer for the destruction of the old race.

"That's backward thinking," Jessica said. She had read my mind, of course. Her telepathic talents are stronger and more developed than either Jonathan's or mine. "Their deaths meant nothing. We cannot feel remorse. We are the new ones, with new emotions and new hopes and new dreams and new rules."

"Sure," I said. "You're right."

WEDNESDAY, WE WENT DOWN TO THE BEACH AND BURNED THE CORPSES of the dead sunbathers. We all like the sea, and we do not want to be without a stretch of unpolluted sand. Putrefying bodies make for a very messy beach.

When we finished the job, Jonathan and I were weary. But Jessica wanted to do the nasty.

"Children our age shouldn't be capable of that," Jonathan said.

"But we are capable," Jessica said. "We were meant to do it. And I want to. Now."

So we did the nasty. Jonathan and her. Then me and her. She wanted more, but neither of us cared to oblige.

Jessica stretched out on the beach. Her shapeless, slender body was white against the white sand. "We'll wait," she said.

"For what?" Jonathan asked.

"For the two of you to be ready again."

FOUR WEEKS AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD, JONATHAN AND I WERE alone on the beach, soaking up the sun. He was oddly silent for a while, almost as if he was afraid to speak.

At last he said, "Do you think it's normal for a girl her age to be always… wanting like that? Even if she is one of the new race?"

"No."

"She seems… driven."

"Yes."

"There's a purpose we don't grasp."

He was right. I sensed it too.

"Trouble," he said.

"Maybe."

"Trouble coming."

"Maybe. But what trouble can there be after the end of the world?"

TWO MONTHS AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD AND THE BURNING OF OUR parents, when Jonathan and I were getting bored with the house and wanted to strike out for more exotic places, Jessica let us in on the big news. "We can't leave here just yet," she said. Her voice was especially forceful. "We can't leave for several more months. I'm pregnant."

WE BECAME AWARE OF THAT FOURTH CONSCIOUSNESS WHEN JESSICA WAS in her fifth month of pregnancy. We all woke in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat, nauseated, sensing this new person.

"It's the baby," Jonathan said. "A boy."

"Yes," I said, wincing at the psychic impact of the new being. "And although he's inside of you, Jessica, he's aware. He's unborn but completely aware."

Jessica was racked with pain. She whimpered helplessly.

"THE BABY WILL BE OUR EQUAL, NOT OUR SUPERIOR," JESSICA INSISTED. "And I won't listen to any more of this nonsense of yours, Jonathan."