Dean Koontz - Phantoms

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Phantoms: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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When Jenny returns to her medical practice in Snowfield after attending the death of her mother, she finds the shock of her young life. Everyone in the town is either horribly dead or missing. She does not know what or who has killed everyone or whether it will allow her and her fourteen-year-old sister to either leave safely or call for help. Extremely riveting supernatural thriller.

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"I still don't see why this can't wait," Bryce said.

"We won't take long," Major Isley said.

"I've got a search team ready to go," Bryce said." We've got to go through every building in this town, take a body count, find out how many are dead and how many are missing, and look for some clue as to what the hell killed all these people. There's several days of work ahead of us, especially since we can't continue with the search past sundown. I won't let my men go prowling around at night, when the power might go off at any second. Damned if I will.”

Jenny thought of Wargle's eaten face. The hollow eye sockets.

Major Isley said, "Just a few questions.”

Arkham switched on the tape recorder.

Lisa was staring hard at the major and at the captain.

Jenny wondered what was on the girl's mind.

"We'll start with you, Sheriff," Major Isley said." In the forty-eight hours prior to these events, did your office receive any reports of power failures or telephone service interruptions?”

"If there were problems of that nature," Bryce said, "people would generally call the utility companies, not the sheriff.”

"Yes, but wouldn't the utilities notify you? Aren't power and telephone outages contributory to criminal activity?" Bryce nodded." Of course.

And to the best of my knowledge, we didn't receive any such alerts.”

Captain Arkham leaned forward." What about difficulties with television and radio reception in this area?”

"Not that I'm aware of," Bryce said.

"Any reports of unexplainable explosions?”

"Explosions?”

"Yes," Isley said." Explosions or sonic booms or any unusually loud and untraceable noises.”

"No. Nothing like that.”

Jenny wondered what in the devil they were driving at.

Isley hesitated and said, "Any reports of unusual aircraft in the vicinity?”

" No.”

Lisa said, "You guys aren't part of General Copperfield's team, are you?

That's why you don't have names on your helmets.”

Bryce said, "And your decontamination suits don't fit as well as everyone else's. Theirs are custom tailored. Yours are strictly off the rack.”

"Very observant," Isley said.

"If you aren't with the CBW project," Jenny said, "what are you doing here?”

"We didn't want to bring it up at the start," Isley said." We thought we might get straighter answers from you if you weren't immediately aware of what we were looking for.”

Arkham said, "We're not Army Medical Corps. We're Air Force.”

"Project Skywatch," Isley said." We're not exactly a secret organization, but… well… let's just say we discourage publicity.”

"Skywatch?" Lisa said, brightening." Are you talking about UFOs? Is that it? Flying saucers?”

Jenny saw Isley wince at the words "flying saucers.”

Isley said, "We don't go around checking out every crackpot report of little green men from Mars. For one thing, we don't have the funds to do that. Our job is planning for the scientific, social, and military aspects of mankind's Just encounter with an alien intelligence. We're really more of a think tank than anything else.”

Bryce shook his head." No one around here's been reporting flying saucers.”

"But that's just what Major Isley means," Arkham said.

"You see, our studies indicate the Just encounter might start out in such a bizarre way that we wouldn't even recognize it as a first encounter. The popular concept of spaceships descending from the sky… well, it might not be like that. If we find ourselves dealing with truly alien intelligences, their ships might be so different from our concept of a ship that we wouldn't even be aware they'd landed.”

"Which is why we check into strange phenomena that don't seem to be UFO related at first glance,' Arkham said." Like last spring, up in Vermont, there was a house in which an extremely active poltergeist was at work.

Furniture was levitated. Dishes flew across the kitchen and smashed against the wall. Streams of water burst from walls in which there were no water pipes. Balls of flame erupted out of empty air-”

"Isn't a poltergeist supposed to be a ghost?" Bryce asked.

"What could ghosts have to do with your area of interest?”

"Nothing," Isley said." We don't believe in ghosts. But we wondered if perhaps poltergeist phenomena might result from an attempt at interspecies communication gone awry. If we were to encounter an alien race that communicated only by telepathy, and if we were unable to receive those telepathic thoughts, maybe the unreceived psychic energy would produce destructive phenomena of the sort sometimes attributed to malign spirits.”

"And what did you finally decide about the poltergeist up there in Vermont?" Jenny asked.

"Decide? Nothing," Isley said.

" Just that it was… interesting," Arkham said.

Jenny glanced at Lisa and saw that the girl's eyes were very wide. This was something Lisa could grasp, accept, and cling to. This was a fear she had been thoroughly prepared for, thanks to movies and books and television. Monsters from outer space.

Invaders from other worlds. It didn't make the Snowfield killings any less gruesome. But it was a known threat, and that made it infinitely preferable to the unknown. Jenny strongly doubted this was mankind's Just encounter with creatures It-from the stars, but Lisa seemed eager to believe.

"What about Snowfield?" the girl asked." Is that what's going on? Has something landed from… out there?”

Arkham looked uneasily at Major Isley.

Isley cleared his throat: As translated by the squawk box on his chest, it was a racheting, machinelike sound." It's much too soon to make any judgment about that. We do believe there's a small chance the first contact between man and alien might involve the danger of biological contamination. That's why we've got an information-sharing arrangement with Copperfield's project. An inexplicable outbreak of an unknown disease might indicate an unrecognized contact with an extraterrestrial presence.”

"But if it is an extraterrestrial creature we're dealing with," Bryce said, obviously doubtful, "it seems damned savage for a being of 'superior' intelligence.”

" The same thought occurred to me," Jenny said.

Isley raised his eyebrows." There's no guarantee that a creature with greater intelligence would be pacifistic and benevolent.”

"Yeah," Arkham said." That's a common conceit: the notion that aliens would've learned how to live in complete harmony among themselves and with other species. As that old song says… it ain't necessarily so.

After all, mankind is considerably further along the road of evolution than gorillas are, but as a species we're definitely more warlike than gorillas at their most aggressive.”

"Maybe one day we will encounter a benevolent alien race that'll teach us how to live in peace," Isley said." Maybe they'll give us the knowledge and technology to solve all our earthly problems and even to reach the stars. Maybe.”

"But we can't nile out the alternative," Arkham said grimly.

Chapter 25

London, England Eleven o'clock Monday morning in Snowfield was seven o'clock Monday evening in London.

A miserably wet day had flowed into a miserably wet night.

Raindrops drummed on the window in the cubbyhole kitchen of Timothy Flyte's two-room, attic apartment.

The professor was standing in front of a cutting board, making a sandwich.

After partaking of that magnificent champagne breakfast at Burt Sandler's expense, Timothy hadn't felt up to lunch. He had fore one afternoon tea, as well.

He'd met with two students today. He was tutoring one of them in hieroglyphics analysis and the other in Latin. Surfeited with breakfast, he had nearly fallen asleep during both sessions.

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