Dean Koontz - Night Chills

Paul knew what he meant. “Salsbury’s taken over the telephone exchange.”

“And if he’s done that,” Sam said, “he’s taken other precautions too. He’s probably blockaded the roads and every other route out of town. We couldn’t go to Bexford and tell the state police even if we still wanted to.”

“We’re trapped,” Jenny said quietly.

“For the time being,” Paul said, “that really doesn’t matter. We’ve already decided there’s no place to run anyway. But if he’s not working for the government, if he’s backed by a corporation or a single wealthy man, maybe we’ve got a chance to stop him here in Black River.”

“Stop him. “ Sam stared thoughtfully at the floor. “Do you realize what you’re saying? We’d have to get our hands on him, interrogate him — and then kill him. Death is the only thing that will stop a man like that. We’d also have to find out from him who he’s associated with — and kill anyone else who might understand how the drug was made and how the subliminal program was constructed.” He looked up from the floor. “That could mean two murders, three, four, or a dozen.”

“None of us is a killer,” Jenny said.

“Every man’s a potential killer,” Paul said. “When it comes to matters of survival, any man is capable of anything. And this is sure as hell a matter of survival.”

“I killed men in the war,” Sam said.

“So did I,” Paul said. “A different war than yours. But the same act.”

“That was different,” Jenny said.

“Was it?”

“That was war,” she said.

“This is war too,” Paul said.

She stared at Paul’s hands, as if imagining them with a knife or a gun or clamped around a man’s throat.

Sensing her thoughts, he raised his hands and studied them

for a moment. On occasion, washing his hands before dinner or after treating a sick animal, he would flash back to the war, back to Southeast Asia. He would hear the guns and see the blood again in his memory. In these almost psychic moments, he was both amazed and dismayed that the same hands were accustomed to mundane and horrible acts, that they could heal or injure, make love or kill, and look no different after the task was done. Codified morality, he thought, was indeed a blessing but also a curse of civilization. A blessing because it permitted men to live in harmony most of the time. A curse because— when the Jaws of nature and especially of human nature made it necessary for a man to wound or kill another man in order to save himself and his family — it spawned remorse and guilt even if the violence was unwanted and unavoidable.

Besides, he reminded himself, these are the 1970s. This is the age of science and technology when a man often is required to act with the implacable and unemotional savagery of the machine. For better or worse, in these times gentility is becoming less and less a sign of the civilized man and is, in fact, very nearly an obsolescent quality. You see gentility, most often, in those who are least likely to survive wave after wave of future shock.

Lowering his hands he said, “In the classic paranoid vein, it’s us against them. Except that this isn’t a delusion or an illusion; it’s real.”

Jenny seemed to accept the need for murder as quickly as he had accepted the fact that he might be called upon to commit it. By this point in her life, she had experienced, as had all but the most gentle people, at least the flickering of a homicidal urge in a moment of despair or great frustration. She hadn’t accepted it as the solution to whatever problem had inspired it. But she was not incapable of conceiving of a situation in which homicide was the most reasonable response to a threat. In spite of the overprotected, sheltered upbringing of which she’d spoken last Monday, she could adapt to even the most unpleasant truths. Perhaps, Paul thought, the ordeal with her first husband

had made her stronger, tougher, and more resilient than she realized.

She said, “Even if we could bring ourselves to kill in order to stop this thing. Well, it’s still too much. To stop Salsbury, we need to know more about him. And how do we learn anything? He’s got hundreds of bodyguards. Or if he wants, he can turn everyone in town into killers and send them after us. Do we just sit here, pass the time, wait for him to stop around for a chat?”

Returning the hardbound volume of essays to the shelf from which he’d taken it, Sam said, “Wait a minute.. Suppose. “ He faced them. He was excited. All three of them were tense, twisted as tight as watch springs. But now a glimmer of pleasurable excitement was in his Santa Claus — like features. “When Salsbury saw Rya standing in the kitchen doorway at the Thorp house, what do you imagine he did, very first thing?”

“Grabbed for her,” Jenny said.

“Wrong.”

Bitterly, Paul said, “Ordered Bob to kill her.”

“Not that either. Remember, he would expect her to be another one of his — zombies.”

Sucking in her breath, Jenny said, “He would use the code phrase on her, the system he talks about in the article. He’d try to open her up and take control of her before she ran away. So. Rya must have heard the code phrase!”

“And if she can recall it,” Sam said, “we’ll have control of everyone in Black River, the same as Salsbury. He won’t be able to send them after us. He won’t have hundreds of bodyguards to hide behind. It won’t be us against them. It’ll be us against him.”

3:15 P.M.

DR. WALTER TROUTMAN entered the police chief’s office. He was carrying his black leather satchel in his right hand and a chocolate candy bar with almonds in his left. He appeared to be delighted with the world and with himself. “You wanted to see me, Bob?”

Before Thorp could answer, Salsbury stepped away from the windows and said, “I am the key.”

“I am the lock.”

“Buddy Pellineri is waiting in the room across the hail,” Salsbury said. “You know him, don’t you?”

“Buddy?” Troutman asked, wrinkling his fleshy face. “Well, of course I know him.”

“I’ve told him that we’re afraid he’s picked up a very bad germ and that you’re going to give him a vaccination so he won’t get sick. As you know, he’s not especially bright. He believed me. He’s waiting for you.”

“Vaccination?” Troutman said, perplexed.

“That’s what I told him to keep him here. Instead, you’ll inject an air bubble into his bloodstream.”

Troutman was shocked. “That would cause an embolism.”

“I know.”

“It would kill him!”

Salsbury smiled and nodded. “It had better. That’s the whole idea, doctor.”

Looking at Bob Thorp, who was seated behind the desk, then back at Salsbury, Troutman said miserably, “But I can’t do a thing like that. I can’t possibly.”

am I, doctor?” “You’re — the key.”

“Very good. And who are your’

“I’m the lock.”

“All right. You will go across the hail to the room where Buddy is waiting. You’ll chat with him, be very pleasant, give him no cause to be suspicious. You’ll tell him that you’re going to give him a vaccination, and you’ll inject an air bubble into his bloodstream. You won’t mind killing him. You won’t hesitate. As soon as he is dead, you’ll leave the room — and you will remember only that you gave him a shot of penicillin. You won’t remember killing him when you leave that room. You will come back here, look in the door, and say to Bob, ‘He’ll be better in the morning.’ Then you’ll go back to your house, having forgotten entirely about these instructions. Is that clear?”