Dean Koontz - Night Chills

Bob Thorp was standing by the door, as if he were an honor guard. He said, “That’s true.”

“I don’t see it,” Salsbury said. “I mean, they have an eleven-year-old girl with them. She’ll slow them down. They’ll need days to reach help that way.”

“That little girl has spent a big part of the last seven summers in these forests,” the general said. “She might not be as much of a drag on them as you think. Besides, if we don’t locate them, they’ll do the same damage whether they reach help tonight or not until the middle of next week.”

Dawson thought about that. Then: “If they’re trying to walk out through the mountains, sixty miles round-about to Bexford, how far do you think they’ve gotten by now?”

“Three, maybe three and a half miles,” Klinger said.

“No farther than that?”

“I doubt it,” Klinger said. “They’d have to be damned careful leaving town if they didn’t want to be seen. They’d move slowly, a few yards at a time for the first mile. In the forest they’d need a while to really hit their stride. And even if the little girl is at home in the woods, she’d slow them down a bit.”

“Three and a half miles,” Dawson said thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t that put them somewhere between the Big Union mill and the planned forests?”

“That’s about right.”

Dawson closed his eyes and seemed to mutter a few words of silent prayer; his lips moved slightly. Then his eyes snapped open, as if sprung by a holy revelation, and he said, “The first thing we’ll do is organize a search in the mountains.”

“That’s absurd,” Salsbury said, although he was aware that Dawson probably thought of his plan as a divine inspiration,

the very handiwork of God. “It would be like — well, like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”

His voice as cold as the dead boy in the next room, Dawson said, “We have nearly two hundred men at the logging camp, all of them familiar with these mountains. We’ll mobilize them. Arm them with axes and rifles and shotguns. Give them flashlights and Coleman lanterns. We’ll put them in trucks and jeeps and send them a mile or so beyond the logging camp. They can form a search line and walk back. Forty feet between the men. That way, the line will be a mile and a half from one end to the other — yet each man will have only a small area of ground to cover. The Edisons and the Annendales won’t be able to get by them.”

“It’ll work,” Klinger said admiringly.

“But what if they aren’t up there in the mountains?” Salsbury said. “What if they’re right here in town?”

“Then we’ve nothing to worry about,” Dawson said. “They can’t get to you because you’re surrounded by Bob Thorp and his deputies. They can’t get out of town because every exit is blocked. All they can do is wait.” He smiled wolfishly. “If we don’t find them in the mountains by three or four o’clock in the morning, we’ll begin a house-to-house search here in town. One way or another, I want this whole affair wrapped up by noon tomorrow.”

“That’s asking a lot,” the general said.

“I don’t care,” Dawson said. “It isn’t asking too much. I want the four of them dead by noon. I want to restructure the memories of everyone in this town to cover our trail completely. By

noon.”

“Dead?” Salsbury said, confused. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “But I need to study the Edisons. You can kill the Annendales if you want. But I’ve got to know why the Edisons weren’t affected. I’ve got—”

“Forget that,” Dawson said brusquely. “If we attempted to capture them and take them back to the laboratory at Greenwich, there’s a good chance they’d escape along the way. We Can’t risk that. They know too much. Much too much.”

“But we’ll have so damned many corpses!” Salsbury said. “For God’s sake, there’s already the boy. And Buddy Pellineri. Four more. — And If they fight back, we may have as many as a dozen to bury. How are we going to account for so many?”

Obviously pleased with himself, Dawson said, “We’ll put the lot of them in the Union Theater. Then we’ll stage a tragic fire. We’ve got Dr. Troutman to issue death certificates. And we can use the key-lock program to keep the relatives from requesting autopsies.”

“Excellent,” Klinger said, grinning, lightly clapping his hands. Sycophant to the court of King Leonard the First, Salsbury thought sourly.

“Really excellent, Leonard,” Klinger said.

“Thank you, Ernst.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Salsbury said weakly.

Dawson gave him a nasty look. He was displeased with such strong profanity. “For every sin that we commit, the Lord will have His awful retribution one day. There’s no escaping that.”

Salsbury said nothing.

“There is a hell.”

Looking at Klinger, finding no support nor even a wink of sympathy, Salsbury managed to keep quiet. There was something in Dawson’s voice — like a well-honed knife hidden in the soft folds of a priest’s gown — something hard and sharp that frightened him.

Dawson glanced at his watch and said, “Time to be moving, gentlemen. Let’s get this over with.”

10:12 P.M

The helicopter rose from the parking lot behind the municipal building. It swung gracefully over the town square where several people stood watching it, and then it clattered westward toward the mountain, into the darkness.

In a moment it was gone.

Sam turned away from the street and slumped with his back to the belfry wall. “On their way to the mill?”

“Looks like it,” Paul said. “But why?”

“Good question. I would have asked the same thing myself if you hadn’t.”

“Another thing,” Paul said. “What if they’ve figured out how we escaped? What if they realize we know the code phrase?”

“That’s not very likely.”

“But if it’s the case?”

“I wish I knew,” Sam said worriedly. He sighed. “But remember that even under the worst circumstances, it’s just us against them. If they realize how much we know, we lose the advantage of surprise. But they’ve lost the advantage of an army of programmed bodyguards. So it balances out.”

Jenny said, “Do you think both of Salsbury’s friends are aboard the helicopter?”

Sam held his revolver before him. He was unable to see more than the outline of it in the darkness. Nevertheless, studying it with dread fascination, he said, “Well now, that’s another thing I sure wish I knew.”

Paul’s hands were shaking. His own Smith & Wesson felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. He said, “I guess we go after Salsbury now.”

“It’s past time we did.”

Jenny touched her father’s hand, the one that held the gun. “But what if one of those men did stay with Salsbury?”

“Then it’s two against two,” Sam said. “And we sure as hell can handle that.”

“If I went along,” she said, “it would be three against two, and that would have to improve the odds.”

“Rya needs you,” Sam said. He hugged her, kissed her on the cheek. “We’ll be okay, Jen. I know we will. You just watch after Rya while we’re gone.”

And if you don’t come back?”

We will.

“If you don’t?” she insisted.

“Then — you’re on your own,” Sam said, his voice almost breaking. If there were tears in the corners of his eyes, the darkness hid them. “There’s nothing more I can do for you.”

“Look,” Paul said, “even if Salsbury does know how much

we’ve learned, he doesn’t know where we are. But we know exactly where he is. So we still have some advantage.”

Rya clung to Paul. She didn’t want to let him go. She spoke in a quiet but fierce voice, and she virtually demanded that he not leave her in the tower.