Dean Koontz - Phantoms

"Of course," Jenny said, "I read about the case. It was a big story that Junc-man competing with God and all that.”

Sara said, "Originally, GE didn't intend to market the bug.

It was a fragile organism that couldn't survive outside of strictly controlled lab conditions. They applied for a patent to test the legal question, to settle the matter before other experiments in genetic engineering produced more usable and more valuable discoveries. But after the court's decision, other scientists spent a few years working with the organism, and now they have a hardier strain that'll stand up outside the lab for twelve to eighteen hours. In fact it's been on the market under the trade name Biosan-4, and it's been used successfully to clean up oil slicks all over the world.”

"And that's what's in these tanks?" Bryce asked.

"Yes. Biosan-4. In a sprayable solution.”

The town was funereal. The sun beat down from an azure sky, but the air remained chilly. In spite of the uncanny silence, Sara had the unshakable feeling that it was coming, that it had heard and was coming and was very, very near, indeed.

The others felt it, too. They looked around uneasily.

Sara said, "Do you remember what we discovered when we studied the shape-changer's tissue?”

"You mean the high hydrocarbon values," Jenny said.

"Yes. But not just hydrocarbons. All forms of carbon. Very high values all across the board.”

Tal said, "You told us something about it being like petrolatum.”

"Not the same. But reminiscent of petrolatum in some respects," Sara said." What we have here is living tissue, very alien but complex and alive. And with such extraordinarily high carbon content… Well, what I mean is, this thing's tissue seems like an organic, metabolically active cousin of petrolatum. So I'm hoping Chakrabarty's bug will…”

Something is coming.

Jenny said, "You're hoping it'll eat into the shape-changer the same way it would eat into an oil slick.”

Something… something…

"Yes," Sara said nervously." I'm hoping it'll attack the carbon and break down the tissue. Or at least interfere with the delicate chemical balance enough to”

Coming, coming…

"… uh, enough to destabilize the entire organism," Sara finished, weighed down by a sense of impending doom.

Flyte said, "Is that the best chance we have? Is it really?”

" I think it is.”

Where is it? Where's it coming from? Sara wondered, looking at the deserted buildings, the empty street, the motionless this.

"Sounds awfully thin to me," Flyte said doubtfully.

"It is awfully thin," Sara said." It's not much of a chance, but it's the only one we've got.”

A noise. A chittering, hissing, hair-raising sound.

They froze. Waited.

But, again, the town pulled a cloak of silence around itself.

The morning sun cast its fiery reflection in some windows and glinted off the curved glass of the streetlamps. The black slate roofs looked as if they had been polished during the night; the last of the mist had condensed on those smooth surfaces, leaving a moist sheen.

Nothing moved. Nothing happened. The noise did not resume.

Bryce Hanunond's face clouded with worry." This Biosan… I gather it isn't harmful to us.”

"Utterly harmless," Sara assured him.

The noise again. A short burst. Then silence.

"Something's coming," Lisa said softly.

God help us, Sara thought.

"Something's coming," Lisa said softly, and Bryce felt it, too. A sense of on rushing horror. A thickening and cooling of the air. A new predatory quality to the stillness. Reality? Imagination? He could not be certain. He only knew that he felt it.

The noise burst forth again, a sustained squeal, not just a short blast.

Bryce winced. It was piercingly shrill. Buzzing.

Whining. Like a power drill. But he knew it wasn't anything as harmless and ordinary as that.

Insects. The coldness of the sound, the metallic quality made him think of insects. Bees. Yes. It was the greatly amplified buzzing-screeching of hornets.

He said, "The three of you who aren't armed with spray guns, get in the middle here.”

"Yeah," Tal said." We'll circle around, give you a little protection.”

Very damned little if this Biosan doesn't work, Bryce thought.

The strange noise grew louder.

Sara, Lisa, and Dr. Flyte stood together, while Bryce and Jenny and Tal ringed them, facing outward.

Then, down the street, near the bakery, something monstrous appeared in the sky, skimming over the tops of the buildings, hovering for a few seconds above Skyline Road. A wasp. A phantom the size of a German shepherd. Nothing remotely like this insect had ever existed during the tens of millions of years that the shape-changer had been alive. This was surely something that had sprung. from its vicious imagination, a horrible invention. Six-foot, opalescent wings beat furiously upon the air, glimmered with rainbow color. The multifaceted black eyes were slant-set in the nan-ow, pointed, wicked head. There were four twitching legs with pineered feet. The curled, segmented, mold-white body terminated in a foot-long stinger with a needle-sharp point.

Bryce felt as if his intestines were turning to ice water.

The wasp stopped hovering. It sank.

Jenny screamed as the wasp streaked toward them, but she didn't run. She aimed the nozzle of the sprayer and squeezed the pressure-release lever.

A cone-shaped, milky mist erupted for a distance of about six feet.

The wasp was twenty feet away and closing fast.

Jenny squeezed the lever all the way down. The mist became a stream, arcing fifteen or sixteen feet out from the nozzle.

Bryce loosed a stream from his sprayer. The two trails of Biosan played against each other, steadied, took the same aim, flowed together in midair.

The wasp came within range. The high-pressure streams sprayed, dulled the rainbow color of the wings, soaked the segmented body.

The insect stopped abruptly, hesitated, dipped lower, as if unable to maintain altitude. Hovered. Its attack had been arrested, although it still regarded them with hate-filled eyes.

Jenny felt a surge of relief and hope.

"It works!" Lisa cried.

Then the wasp came at them again.

Just when Tal thought they were safe, the wasp came at them again, through the mist of Biosan-4, flying slow but still flying.

" Down!" Bryce shouted.

They crouched, and the wasp swept over them, dripping milky fluid from its grotesque legs and from the tip of its stinger.

Tal stood again, so that he could give the thing a long squirt now that it was within range.

It swung toward him, but before he could give it a shot, the wasp faltered, fluttered wildly, then plummeted to the pavement. It flopped and buzzed angrily. It tried to rise up. Couldn't.

Then it changed.

It changed.

With the others, Timothy Flyte edged closer to the wasp and watched as it melted into a shapeless mass of protoplasm.

The hind legs of a dog began to form. And the snout. It was going to be a Doberman, judging by that snout. One eye began to open. But the shape-changer couldn't complete the transformation; the dog's features vanished. The amorphous tissue shuddered and pulsed in a manner unlike anything that Timothy had seen it do before.

" It's dying," Lisa said.

Timothy stared in awe as the strange flesh convulsed. This heretofore immortal being now knew the meaning and the fear of death.

The unformed mass broke out in pustulelike sores, leaking a thin yellow fluid. The thing spasmed violently. Additional sores opened in hideous profusion, lesions of all shapes and sizes that split and cracked and popped across the pulsating surface. Then, just as the tiny wad of tissue in the petri dish had done, this phantom degenerated into a lifeless pool of stinking, watery mush.