Dean Koontz - Cold Fire

"— you know what piss-poor cooperation they got across state lines " "-he's out there somewhere, damn it" "-so're a million scorpions and rattlesnakes-" Jim stepped around to their side of the motor home, covering them with the shotgun. "Don't move!" For an instant they gaped at him the way he might have stared at a three-eyed Martian with a mouth in its forehead. They were only about eight feet away, close enough to spit on, which they looked like they deserved. At a distance they had appeared as dangerous as snakes with legs, and they still looked deadlier than anything that slithered in the desert.

They were holding their handguns, pointed at the ground. Jim thrust the shotgun at them and shouted, "Drop 'em, damn it!" Either they were the hardest of hard cases or they were nuts-probably both-because they didn't freeze at the sight of the shotgun. The guy with the redoubled ponytail flung himself to the ground and rolled.

Simultaneously, the refugee from Road Warrior brought up his pistol, and Jim pumped a round into the guy's chest at point-blank range, blowing him backward and down and all the way to hell.

The survivor's feet vanished as he wriggled under the Road king.

To avoid being shot in the foot and ankle, Jim grabbed the open door and jumped onto the step beside the driver's seat. Even as his feet left the ground, two shots boomed from under the motor home, and one of them punctured the tire beside which he'd been standing.

Instead of retreating into the Road king, he dropped back to the ground, fell flat, and shoved the shotgun under the vehicle, figuring to take his adversary by surprise. But the guy was already out from under on the other side. Jim could see only the black cowboy boots hurrying toward the rear of the motor home. The guy turned the corner-and vanished.

The ladder. At the right rear corner. Next to the racked motorcycle.

The bastard was going onto the roof Jim hustled all the way under the Road king before the killer could look over the edge of the roof, spot him, and fire down. It was no cooler beneath the vehicle, because the sun-scorched earthen shoulder radiated the heat it had been storing up since dawn.

Two cars roared by on the highway, one close after the other. He hadn't heard them coming, maybe because his heart was beating so hard that it felt as if he were inside a kettle drum. He cursed the motorists under his breath, then realized they couldn't be expected to stop when they saw a guy like Dork Knob prowling the top of the motor home with a handgun He had a better chance of winning if he continued to do the unexpected so he immediately crawled on his belly, fast as a marine under fire, to the rear of the Road king. He twisted onto his back, eased his head out past the rear bumper, and peered up across the Harley, at the ascending rungs that appeared to dwindle into blazing white sun.

The ladder was empty. The killer was already on the roof He might think that he had temporarily mystified his pursuer with his vanishing act and in any case he wouldn't expect to be followed with utter wrecklessness Jim slid all the way into the open and went up the ladder.

He gripped the hot siderail with one hand, holding the compact shotgun with the other, trying to ascend as soundlessly as possible. His adversary was surprisingly quiet on the aluminum surface above, making barely enough noises of his own to cover an occasional pop and squeak from the ladder rungs under Jim's feet.

At the top, Jim cautiously raised his head and squinted across the roof The killer was two-thirds of the way toward the front of the Road king, the right side, looking down. He was moving along on hands and knees which must have hurt; although the time-stained white paint reflected a little of the sun, it had stored sufficient heat to sting even well-callused hand and to penetrate blue denim. But if the guy was in pain, he didn't show it. He was evidently as suicidally macho as his dead buddy had been.

Jim eased up another rung.

The killer actually lowered himself onto his belly, though the roof must have scorched instantly through his thin T-shirt. He was trying to maintain as low a profile as possible, waiting for Jim to appear below.

Jim eased up one more rung. The roof now met him at mid-torso. He turned sideways on the ladder and jammed one knee behind the other upright, wedging himself in place so he would have both hands for the shotgun and so the recoil would not knock him backward to the ground If the guy on the roof didn't have a sixth sense, then he was just damned lucky. Jim had not made a sound, but the creep suddenly glanced back over his shoulder and spotted him.

Cursing, Jim swung the shotgun around.

The killer flung himself sideways, off the roof Without getting in a shot, Jim pulled his knee from behind the upright and jumped from the ladder. He hit the ground hard but kept his balance stepped around the corner of the motor home, and squeezed off one round But the creep was already bolting through the side door. At worst, he caught a few pellets in one leg. Probably not even that.

He was going after the woman and child.

Hostages.

Or maybe he just wanted to slaughter them before he was cut down himself The past couple of decades had seen the rise of the vagabond sociopath, roaming the country, looking for easy prey, racking up long lists of victims, attaining sexual release as much from brutal murder as from rape.

In his mind, Jim heard the anguished voice of the dying man in the station wagon: Lisa. Susie. My wife, daughter.

With no time for caution, his anger having grown greater than his fear, he raced after the killer, through the door, into the Road king, entering aft of the cockpit. His sun-dazzled eyes couldn't handle the comparative gloom of the motor home's interior, but he was able to see the psychotic sonofabitch heading toward the rear of the motor home, past the lounge area and into the galley.

A shadowy figure now, with just a dark oval for a face, the killer turned and fired. The slug tore a chunk out of a wall-hung storage cabinet to the left of Jim, showering him with splinters of Formica and smoking particle board.

He didn't know where the woman and child were. He was afraid of hitting them. A shotgun wasn't a precise weapon.

The killer fired again. The second bullet passed so close to Jim's face that it left a wake of stinging-hot wind, like a kiss of fire burning across his right cheek.

He pumped out one round, and the blast shook the tinny walls. The killer screamed and was flung hard against the kitchen sink. Jim fired again, reflexively, half deafened by the double explosion. The guy was virtually lifted off his feet, hurled backward, slammed against the rear wall, beside a closed door that separated the main living area from the bedroom. Then he dropped.

Grabbing a couple of shells from his pants pocket, reloading the shotgun magazine, Jim moved deeper into the Road king, past a tattered and sagging sofa.

He knew the man had to be dead, but he could not see well enough to be certain of anything. Though shafts of the Mojave sun shoved in like hot branding irons through the windshield and the open doors, the heavily draped side windows insured that the rear of the Road king was filled with shadows, and there was a thin acrid haze of smoke from all the gunfire.

When he reached the end of the narrow chamber and looked down, he had no doubt that the man crumpled on the floor was dead. Bloody human garbage. Garbage alive, now garbage dead.

At the sight of the torn and battered corpse, a savage elation grip him, a furious righteousness that was both thrilling and frightening. He wanted to be sickened by what he had done, even if the dead man deserved to die, but although the carnage nauseated him, he was not merely repulsed. He had encountered purest evil in human form.