Dean Koontz: Anti-Man

"Good," I said, watching the coils begin to glow inside the heaters and feeling the first warm drafts of air as the blowers came on.

"The food," He said. "I want to see what I have to work with."

"This way," I said, taking Him down into the natural icebox of the cellar. There was very nearly a whole cow hung from meat hooks embedded in the ceiling. The meat was frozen solid and filmed by a thin coat of fuzzy frost. It was most probably a tank-grown cow, but the meat would still be tender and tasty. The walls of the room, natural rock, were coated with thick, brown-white ice, as was the floor. The cellar had been carved directly from the base of the mountain for the purpose of food storage; it was a fine job.

Next, I led Him back upstairs and showed Him the pantry where Harry kept about two hundred cans of various fruits, vegetables, and meats. At one time, when World Authority was threatened with a power crisis and looked as if it might topple at any moment, Harry had rented the cabin and had fixed it up as the perfect bomb shelter here in the Alaskan polar winds that would be relatively free from fallout. He had never quite gotten over the fear of a world holocaust, and he kept his pantry regularly stocked against it, though the present solidarity of World Authority seemed permanent.

"Take out everything you will need to keep you for three days," He said. "I'll take all that's left plus the beef down there in the cellar."

"You're going to need all that?" I asked, incredulous.

"Maybe more."

"More?"

"I can't really say yet. Not until I'm farther along with the changes. But you might have to go hunting for me, Jacob. Can you hunt?"

"I've done a little. Mostly gamebirds, though. Duck, pheasant, a bit of turkey. And it has been three or four years since I've even been out for those. What would I hunt here?"

"Well, we've seen that there are wolves. Geese, if it's that time of the year. Rabbits. I understand the park is noted for its elk herds and its white-tailed deer."

I laughed.

"I'm serious," He said.

"Let's see you eat what you have here first. That should take a month. If you manage that, then we'll talk about hunting."

I went to the window to check the weather. It was still snowing hard, and there did not appear to be any breaks in the cloud cover. The wind was whipping up the white stuff and jamming it against the cabin in dandy drifts. I was all for a blizzard. Aesthetically, I enjoyed the beauty of it. Also, and more importantly, it was unlikely that a search of the park could be initiated now even if some bright young World Authority executive candidate had thought of it. Helicopters couldn't move in that soup, and foot parties could easily get separated and lost. It was snowing much harder than before. The wind seemed strong enough to snap the towering pines all around us. Satisfied that we would not be interrupted by any nasty WA patrols, I went into one of the two bedrooms, stripped, and fell into bed. I didn't even mind that there were no sheets, just the spread. For all I knew, I could have been in the Astor, high up in the best suite available, curled on a five-thousand-dollar bed.

I had bad dreams. Real bad.

I was running through a dark, thick, silent forest in the first dream, pursued by some nameless, faceless hulk that moaned as it crashed through the brush. Several times, its long, thick fingers touched the nape of my neck, tried to draw me into its murderous grasp. Each time, I would have to double my speed to put more ground between us. But the night wore on and on, and the beast was tiring more slowly than I. It would get me. I knew it. As I ran, I screamed… In another dream, I was in an old, many-roomed castle at midnight, again pursued by something nameless that breathed heavily, chasing me from room to room, gurgling thickly in its throat and chuckling now and then when it almost trapped me in a deadend hallway or on a stair when I tripped and fell.

But the dreams failed to wake me. I woke naturally that evening, having slept the morning and afternoon through, with a faint sense of nausea from the unreal exertion of my nightmare chases. I felt a moment of terror as I realized I had allowed myself to sleep so soundly with the enemy breathing down our necks. Then I remembered the snow and slowed my heartbeat by deep breathing and conscious effort. I dressed and went into the living room. He was nowhere in sight, I called His name. There was no answer.

He's gone, I thought.

I had been expecting it all along, ever since that moment when we took flight from the laboratories. All along the line, I had been loking for Him to leave me high and dry, to strike out on His own. It was that concealed facet of His personality that gave me such pessimistic visions. I wondered if that secret portion of His soul knew that He did not need me, that He was, in fact, superior and needed no one. Now He was gone. Now it had happened. I felt a curious mixture of sadness and relief. I could go back now, give myself up. What would they do to me? Jail? Death? Conceivably nothing? It would be interesting to find out. I decided to get something to eat and then to leave for the trek back to the main gate, back to Cantwell, back to New York and the World Authority labs. I walked into the kitchen — and found Him.

He had changed.

Changed.

"What the hell — " I began, backing toward the door, my heart laboring, my lungs momentarily forgetting their function.

"It's all right, Jacob," He said. His voice was deeper and just a little difficult to understand. Still, it was parental, soothing, reassuring.

"All right?" I asked, looking Him over. The floor was littered with nearly two hundred empty cans. He must have been eating steadily since I went to bed that morning. Every can seemed to have been licked clean; there was no residue in any of them. He squatted on the floor in the middle of the tin mess, half again as large as when I had left Him. He had gained a good hundred and twenty-five pounds, maybe more. There was virtually no distinction between His head and neck, just one solid mass that connected with His shoulders. He had His shirt and trousers off, quite naked. Of course, He could never have fitted in them now. His chest was ringed with folds of tissue, though it was muscle and not fat. His arms were huge, as big around as gallon jugs at the biceps and a good eleven or twelve inches at the wrists. His manhood was lost in pouches of muscle that made Him sexless, hung between His legs Me some grotesquerie of Nature. His legs were swollen pillars now, shiny like sausages. The bones of His knees were invisible, padded beneath pounds of muscle that must surely hinder the use of the joint. His feet were buckets, the toes like fat cucumbers painted a flesh color, the nails engulfed by flesh, peeking out only here and there.

I had the feeling that I was in some small, tasteless carnival sideshow gawking at the strangest freak to come down the pike in centuries. Come and See Muscle-man! the signs would read outside the tent. So Bound With Muscles He Can Barely Move! Something To Tell Your Grandchildren About! One of the Marvels of the Modern Age!

He laughed. It was a fat, unpleasant chuckling sound far down in the tight mass of His throat. "Jacob, Jacob, Jacob," He crooned. "Have faith. I told you I was changing."

"But whatever good is a change like this?" I could not take my eyes from Him, for I did not know if I could pull them back again once I had looked away. It was like the sensation you feel at the scene of a bad accident where parts of bodies are strewn around like old weeds. You do not want to look, but you are transfixed, knowing you must look if only to grasp for a short while the immediacy of Death.

"This is only an intermediate step, Jacob. This form is no good at all. It is what I am heading for that will matter, that will be important. Can you understand that? Or am I making no sense at all?"