Dean Koontz - Lost Souls

The first four displeased him in one way or another and were terminated with brutal violence. Erika Five, Erika Helios-in truth Erika Frankenstein-displeased him, too, during the brief time that she had been his to use, but he never had the chance to terminate her.

On this October morning, as she had for more than two years, she lived under the name Erika Swedenborg. Her continued existence, following Victor’s death, was nothing less than miraculous.

The two main thoroughfares of Rainbow Falls – Beartooth Avenue and Cody Street -formed a crossroads at the center of town. The commercial blocks were, for the most part, lined with quaint two-and three-story buildings, mostly nineteenth-century but some early twentieth-century, with double-thick brick walls that kept out the bitter cold in winter.

On Cody, half a block east of Beartooth, Erika pulled to the curb and parked near the Jim James Bakery, which opened before dawn for the early-bird breakfast crowd. Once every week, she drove into town to buy a dozen rich, buttery cinnamon rolls packed full of pecans and glistening with white icing, the best of their kind that she had ever tasted.

Jim James baked them himself, using a recipe developed by his mother, Belinda. Jim’s half-brother, Andy Andrews, owned the Andy Andrews Café two blocks north on Beartooth, serving delicious lunches and dinners from a menu based on his mom’s recipes. Unimaginative when naming her children, Belinda was a totally wicked cook who taught her sons well.

Switching off the engine, before she opened the driver’s door, Erika saw someone she knew. He approached along the sidewalk. A man in hand-tooled black cowboy boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket too consciously and fussily stylish to have been sold at any store in rustic Rainbow Falls. Tall. Fit. Handsome in a severe way.

Victor.

Victor Helios, alias Frankenstein. Her husband-by-decree, her tormentor, her master whom she must obey, her maker.

She believed him to be dead. Or if not dead, not anywhere near Montana.

He walked as if lost in thought, hands in his jacket pockets, head down, eyes on the sidewalk in front of him. Vaporous plumes of his warm breath blossomed and dissipated in the cold morning air.

Erika should have averted her face against the possibility that he would glance up and discover her sitting behind the wheel of the SUV. But the sight of him paralyzed her. She could not look away.

He passed within arm’s reach of the Explorer without becoming aware of her. On his left temple was a familiar small golden-brown mole no bigger than a pencil eraser, which confirmed that he was not just someone who resembled Victor.

After he passed Erika, she watched him in the side mirror. Near the end of the block, he opened the door of some kind of truck and stepped out of sight. The intervening parked vehicles denied her a clear view of his transportation.

In the rearview mirror, she saw him pull away from the curb. She bent over, as if studying something on the passenger seat, in case he glanced toward her as he drove past.

When the sound of his engine peaked and receded, she raised her head and saw that he was driving a silver Mercedes GL550 with Montana license plates. At the end of the block, he stopped for a red traffic light.

After escaping Victor’s sphere of control, she had driven over eighteen hundred miles to start a new life in a place as different from Louisiana as she could find. The fact that Victor remained alive after the disaster in New Orleans was barely credible, but that he should have taken refuge in this same town, of all places he might have gone, seemed impossible.

Erika started the Explorer, swung into the street, and pulled behind the GL550 as the traffic light changed to green. Fearful but determined not to succumb to fear, she followed her maker through the intersection. As they drew near the end of town, she fell back, so her pursuit would not become obvious to him, and she allowed a van to slip between them.

Acutely aware that there were no coincidences and that the meaning of her life was not hers to determine but only hers to discover, she nevertheless decided one thing: Whatever happened, she would not cease to be Erika Swedenborg and would never become again Erika Five.

At 8:48 that Tuesday morning, the new Chief Rafael Jarmillo, in appearance indistinguishable from the former Rafael Jarmillo, stepped into the elevator with Dr. Henry Lightner, and the doors closed behind him.

With 106 beds, Rainbow Falls Memorial Hospital was primarily a short-term, acute-care facility. Once stabilized, those patients with chronic conditions or with critical acute conditions were transferred either by ambulance or by air ambulance to Great Falls -or to one of the town’s three funeral homes if the air ambulance did not arrive in a timely fashion.

As one of the town’s two general surgeons and head of staff at Memorial, Henry Lightner didn’t do heart work, but over the years he removed hundreds of diseased gallbladders, surely a thousand appendixes, uncounted benign cysts, and not a few bullets. He had saved victims of accidents, stabbings, shootings, and suicide attempts, and was well regarded by the people of Rainbow Falls for his skills as a physician, for his reassuring bedside manner, and for his civic spirit.

The current Dr. Lightner was not the real Dr. Lightner. Although he had downloaded enough of the physician’s memories to pass for the doctor, he couldn’t have performed even the most simple surgery with any expectation of success.

The Creator hadn’t yet developed a brain tap that could entirely transfer complex acquired knowledge, such as a medical education. Eventually that would happen. Given enough time, the Creator could accomplish whatever goal he set for himself.

Anyway, in seventy-two hours, by this time Friday morning, Rainbow Falls would have no need of physicians or a hospital. By then its entire population would consist of members of the Community, none of whom was vulnerable to disease or infection, and every one of whom was able to recover swiftly from all but the most grievous wounds.

“The entire day shift has arrived?” Jarmillo asked as they descended to the basement of the two-story building.

“Nursing staff, clerical, technicians, maintenance,” Lightner confirmed. “The hospital has a shift-overlap system, so they arrived at seven o’clock. They were met by replicants. Memory downloading is complete. We’ll deal with the physicians one by one as they arrive for their daily rounds.”

The elevator doors opened, and Henry Lightner led Chief Jarmillo into a corridor with pale-blue walls and a white ceramic-tile floor.

Busy day-shift clerical and maintenance personnel were using hand trucks and moving carts to empty several offices of hospital records, filing cabinets, and furniture.

“Everything is being dumped in the garage, which is on this level,” Lightner reported. “These interior rooms offer the security and the sound abatement we need for the Builders.”

“Are they noisy?”

“Not themselves so much. But maybe their materials.”

Lightner opened a door and preceded Chief Jarmillo into a twenty-foot-square room that had been emptied of its contents in order to accommodate the eighteen people imprisoned there.

“These are night-shift, been here since we took over the place almost five hours ago.”

Ten nurses and two orderlies in uniforms, one young resident physician who was on duty to deal with emergency admissions in a hospital too small to have an ER, two maintenance men, two security guards, and a building-systems engineer were in custody. Each sported a dime-sized silver hemisphere, the nailhead of a brain tap, in his or her left temple.