Dean Koontz - Night Chills

“Get up then.”

“Please.

Ashamed of himself, sick of this violent game but determined to carry on with it, Paul took hold of the front of Salsbury’s shirt. He shook him and tried to lift him out of the chair. “When I’m done with you, I’ll let Bob Thorp have you. I’ll tape your mouth so you can’t talk to him, and I’ll program him to put it to you.” He was incapable of doing that, of course. But Salsbury obviously believed he would. “And not just Thorp. Others. Half a dozen others.”

With that, Salsbury’s resistance dissolved. “Anything. I’ll tell you anything,” he said, his voice distorted by the wretched sobbing that he couldn’t control. “Anything you want. Just don’t touch me. Oh, Jesus. Oh, don’t touch me. Don’t make me undress. Don’t touch. Don’t.”

Still twisting Salsbury’s shirt in his left hand, leaning toward the man, nearly shouting in his face, Paul said, “Who were those men in the helicopter? Unless you want to be used until you’re raw, you better tell me who they were.”

“Dawson and Klinger.”

“There were three.”

“I don’t know the pilot’s name.”

“Dawson and Klinger. First names?”

“Leonard Dawson and—” “The Leonard Dawson?” “Yes. And Ernst Klinger.”

“Is Klinger a government man?”

“He’s an army general.”

“Is this a military project?”

“No.”

“A government project?”

“No,” Salsbury said.

Paul knew all of the questions. There was no point in the rapid-fire interrogation at which he had to hesitate.

And there was never a single moment when Salsbury dared hesitate.

Ernst Klinger crouched behind a yard-high wall of shrubbery across the alleyway from the municipal parking lot. Stunned, confused, he watched them load the woman into the white Cadillac van with the words BLACK RIVER — EMERGENCY painted in red letters on the side.

At 11:02 the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, swung into the alley and from there onto North Union Road. It turned right, toward the square.

Its bright red flashers washed the trees and the buildings, and Sent crimson snakes of light wriggling along the wet pavement.

The bearded, white-haired man who stood in the parking lot was Sam Edison. Klinger recognized him from a photograph that he had seen in one of the rooms above the general store, little more than an hour ago.

Edison watched the ambulance until it turned east at the Square. He was too far away for Klinger to get a shot at him with the Webley. When the ambulance was out of sight, he went inside the municipal building.

Have we lost control of the town? Klinger asked himself. Is

it all coming down on our heads: the field test, the plan, the project, the future? Sure as hell looks that way. Sure does. So… Is it time to get out of Black River, out of the country with a big bundle of cash and the phony identity Leonard provided?

Don’t panic, another part of him thought. Don’t be rash. Wait. See what happens. Give it a few minutes.

He looked at his watch. 11:03.

Thunder rumbled in the mountains.

It was going to rain again.

11:04.

He had been hunkered down for so long that his legs ached. He longed to stand up and stretch.

What are you waiting here for? he asked himself. You can’t plan your strategy without information. You’ve got to reconnoiter. They’re probably in Thorp’s office. Get under those windows. Maybe you can hear what they’re up to.

At five minutes past the hour, he hurried across the alley. He dodged from car to car in the parking lot, and then to the thick trunk of a pine tree.

Just like in Korea, he thought almost happily. Or Laos in the late fifties. Just like it must have been for the younger guys in Nam. Commando work in an enemy town. Except this time the enemy town is American.

11:05 P.M.

Sam stood in the doorway and studied Ogden Salsbury, who was still in the spring-backed office chair. To Paul, Sam said, “You’re sure he told you everything?”

“Yes.”

“And that everything he’s told you is true?”

“Yes.”

“This is important, Paul.”

“He didn’t withhold anything,” Paul said. “And he didn’t lie to me. I’m sure of it.”

Stinking of sweat and blood, crying quietly, Salsbury looked from one to the other of them.

Does he understand what we’re saying? Paul wondered. Or is be broken, shattered, unable to think clearly, unable to think at all?

Paul felt unclean, sick to his soul. In dealing with Salsbury, be had descended to the man’s own level. He told himself that these were after all the 1970s, the very first years of a brave new world, a time when individual survival was difficult and when it counted for more than all else, the age of the machine and of the machine’s morality, perhaps the only era in the entire span of history when the ends truly did justify the means — but he still felt unclean.

“Then the time has come,” Sam said quietly. “One of us has to — do it.”

“A man named Parker apparently raped him when he was eleven years old,” Paul said. He was speaking to Sam, but he was watching Ogden Salsbury.

“Does that make any difference?” Sam asked.

“It should.”

“Does it make any difference that Hitler might have been born of a syphilitic parent? Does it make any difference that he was mad? Does that bring back the six million dead?” Sam was talking softly but with tremendous force. He was trembling. “Does what happened to him when he was eleven justify what he did to Mark? If Salsbury wins, if he takes control of everyone, does it matter what happened to him when he was eleven?”

“There’s no other way to stop him?” Paul asked, although he knew the answer.

“We’ve already discussed that.”

“I guess we have.”

“I'll do it,” Sam said.

“No. If I can’t get up the courage here, I won’t be any help to you later, with Dawson and Klinger. We may be in a tight spot with one of those. You’ll have to know that you can count

Letting go of his left shoulder, reaching out as if to shake with one bloody hand, Salsbury said, “Wait. I’ll make you a partner. Both of you. Partners.”

Paul aimed at the center of the man’s chest.

“If you’re partners, you’ll have everything. Everything you could want. All the money you could ever spend. All the money in the world. Think of that!”

Paul thought of Lolah Tayback.

“Partners. That doesn’t mean just money. Women. You can have all of the women you want, any women you want, no matter who they are. They’ll crawl to you. Or men, if that’s what you like. You can even have children. Little girls. Nine or ten years old. Little boys. Anything you want.”

Paul thought of Mark: a lump of frosted meat jammed into a food freezer.

And he thought of Rya: traumatized perhaps, but with a chance to live a halfway normal life.

He squeezed the trigger.

The Magnum bucked in his hand.

Because of his revolver’s impressive kick — which jolted Paul from hand to shoulder in spite of that fact that he was using.38 Special ammunition rather than Magnums — the bullet was high. It tore through Salsbury’s throat.

Blood and bits of flesh spattered the metal firearms cabinet. The roar of the shot was deafening. It bounced back and forth between the walls, echoed inside Paul’s skull, reverberated as it would forever in his memory.

He squeezed off another round.

That one took Salsbury in the chest, nearly rocked him and the chair backward onto the floor.

He turned away from the dead man.

“Are you going to be sick?” Sam asked.