Dean Koontz - Lost Souls

Travis shuffled his feet in place. “Never give up.”

“That’s part of it. What else?”

An old Chevrolet passed in the street, briefly whirling autumn leaves in its wake.

“Nothing’s over till it’s over,” Travis said.

“That too. What else?”

From some perch on a roof elsewhere in the Lowers, an owl called out, and a more distant owl responded.

Travis said, “Maybe we don’t ever really die.”

Bryce wanted to fold his arms around the boy and hold him very tight, but he knew that such an expression of sympathy was not wanted yet. Because in spite of what Travis had first said, he had not given up all hope. While there was hope, there need not be consolation.

“All right,” Bryce said. “Let’s go. My ass is half frozen off.”

A tall fence separated the two backyards. For Carson, however, since childhood, fences had existed for one reason: to be climbed. Thankful that she still wore her Rockport walking shoes instead of ski boots, she gripped the headrail of the fence and toed her way up and over.

Michael dropped to her side in the Benedettos’ backyard and drew the pistol from his shoulder rig.

“Isn’t that a little premature?” she whispered.

“I just remembered, good old Larry was thoughtful and stylish and funny, yeah, but he also had a dark side.”

“You think she lied, he’s not at work?”

“She’s a replicant. Her whole existence is a lie.”

“I’m glad you’re not in denial anymore.”

Carson drew her pistol.

Michael said, “A little premature?”

“There’s a baby in there.”

“Good point.”

They crossed the lawn to the deep back porch. There didn’t seem to be a lot of sunning patios in Montana. The wooden steps creaked, though not enough to be heard inside.

Four windows-all with lighted rooms beyond-faced onto the porch. They were curtained.

Michael knelt on one knee at the head of the porch steps, his attention split between Carson and the back of the property, making sure no one surprised them from behind.

At the first window, the curtains were fully closed, and Carson could see nothing. At the second, a one-inch gap gave her a view of part of a laundry room.

On the other side of the back door, the curtains at the first window were again less than tightly drawn, and between the panels she could see a kitchen.

A girl of about five or six sat at the kitchen table. Her face was flushed and wet with tears.

On the table in front of her lay several teddy bears. They had been torn open and dismembered.

Encircling the girl’s neck, a rope secured her to the headrail of the chair.

A flood of fury swept Carson from the window to the back door, but she possessed the presence of mind to know that Michael had more power than she did for this job, and she breathed his name.

When he came to her, she indicated the door and whispered, “Kick it in.”

A door always had to be taken down in one kick or two, unless you wanted to lose the advantage of surprise and be gut-shot going through-or in this case risk giving the Denise replicant a chance to do something unthinkable to the child before she could be stopped.

Michael might argue that a baby was not necessarily a baby baby, but they had worked together long enough for him to know better than to second-guess Carson at a moment like this. He gripped her arm as she offered it to steady him, reared one leg back to slam the door, but hesitated. On two feet again, he quietly turned the knob, and the unlocked door opened.

Making the assumption, as always, that it was a trap, they went in low and fast, but the girl at the table was the only person in the room. Wide-eyed, the child regarded them with no less amazement than she might have if Santa Claus had come through the door months ahead of his season.

Carson eased past the refrigerator to the hall door, which stood half open. Sheltering behind it, she exposed herself enough to survey the hallway. The false Denise was nowhere to be seen.

Michael snared a wicked-looking piece of cutlery from a wall rack of knives.

Too smart to fear him as he approached her with the gleaming blade, the girl said, “Mommy’s not my mommy.”

Michael shushed her and sawed at the rope between her neck and the headrail of the chair.

The hallway remained deserted.

When Carson glanced at the table, Michael had already freed the child; he lifted her out of the chair. Carson gestured for him to go, go, go.

After Michael exited, Carson hesitated half a minute before abandoning the position from which she could observe the hallway, giving him time to carry the girl to the fence between properties. She retreated backward across the kitchen, and was glad she did when suddenly the not-mommy entered from the hall.

Like the New Race replicants in New Orleans, this one boasted great reflexes and the instincts of a predator. Carrying a pair of scissors, perhaps the implement with which she’d earlier gutted the teddy bears, she flipped it in her hand to grip it by the blades, and threw it as if it were a dagger.

Carson juked, the scissors flew past her, and the replicant attacked. She squeezed off one, two, three shots, and scored with all three: the first high in the abdomen, the second in the chest, the third in the throat.

The not-mommy pitched backward, went down, striking her head on the handle of the oven door as she fell. Although wretched sounds issued from her torn throat, she sat up, clutched at a countertop, got to her feet, and snatched a knife from the same rack from which Michael had gotten the blade to free the girl.

The creature’s persistence in spite of grievous wounds didn’t surprise Carson, although even for a replicant, there wasn’t much blood. Backing into the open doorway between the kitchen and the porch, Carson squeezed off three more rounds: scored with the first, missed with the second, scored with the third.

The replicant collapsed facedown, and instead of retreating, Carson advanced, expending her last four shots point-blank into the woman’s back and into the back of her head. Then she scrambled to the open door, from which she watched the deceased, because she knew from hard experience that the word deceased might prove to be wishful thinking.

Gasping, she ejected the depleted magazine from the pistol, fished a replacement from a pocket of her blazer, and reloaded.

There was some blood, but it didn’t pool around the body. She thought the head wounds or the neck wounds should have leaked more.

The not-mommy didn’t move, didn’t move, and still didn’t move.

Carson decided the replicant must be dead, but nevertheless she backed across the porch, pistol in a two-hand grip. She took the steps sideways. She sidled across half the yard, expecting to be charged again, before she turned her back on the house and ran.

Michael had already crossed the fence, out of sight. Carson hoped he didn’t drop the girl on her head.

As the truck returned to the warehouse, Deucalion waited in the cargo box with the eleven people from the telephone company, who were in a strange, desperate condition. Even with animal-keen eyesight, he couldn’t see them well enough to determine how they had been disabled and so effectively controlled.

The warehouse door clattered up, the truck pulled inside, and as the big sectional rattled down once more, the driver switched off the engine.