Dean Koontz - Anti-Man

Having irrevocably committed myself to a course of action, I felt greatly relieved. I am like that. I despise sitting on a tight rope. If I can't reach the other side safely, I would rather leap off and to hell with it. I was still afraid, but the anxiety over whether I was going to do the right or wrong thing drained away like the last of a filthy flood and left me purged. I unslung the rifle from my shoulder, loaded it, slammed the breech shut, and seriously set out for elk.

I found more wolves instead. Nasty looking fellows.

I didn't know whether it was the same pack that He and I had fought off the previous night or whether it was a different bunch. I heard their howls before I saw them, lonesome and penetrating, animal and yet somehow human in tone. I had a heavy gun with me now, plus the narcodart pistol, and I was feeling braver than I really had any right to. I topped a hill that gave me a clear view down the length of a small valley that ran for approximately a mile before a crossrun of foothills broke it off. A hundred yards down that valley, a pack of eight wolves were worrying something they had killed. I could tell from the racket they were making that they had eaten their fill and were now merely showing off for the benefit of any other beast in the neighborhood, also playing a game with the tattered carcass, tearing it from each other and running a few steps with it. After a few minutes of this, they left the dead thing, turned as a group, and wandered up the valley toward me.

I dropped to the ground and flattened myself as much as I could, blending into the scenery. If they spotted me before I wanted them to, it would ruin my hunting plans — and might even get a little sticky when they charged. Eight of them coming at full tilt would make a formidable wall of teeth and claws.

The wind was blowing my way, away from the wolves. I knew they wouldn't scent me. They broke into a lope for a few seconds, slowed and ambled again. When they were no more than a hundred feet from me, I aimed at the center of the lead demon's skull and slowly squeezed the trigger.

Wham!

The blast slammed around the hilly countryside and mushroomed back at me with the force of a dozen heavy cannons. The wolf's head shattered, and he was flung backwards six feet where he rolled over in the snow, leaking blood and dead, beyond question. The rest of the pack turned tail and ran down the valley until the darkness swallowed them. When we had fought them off with pin-guns, there had been no noise; it was the powerful rifle's retort that had scared them off this time. Indeed, that blast had been louder than I had expected. When it came, it startled me as much as it did them. I waited a few minutes until I heard one of the wolves howl at the sky. I knew, if I lay still, they would come back. And wolves were easier to carry home than elk.

Ten minutes passed before the first of the pack sneaked back along the edge of the ravine, trying to conceal himself in the scanty vegetation there, slinking, visibly trembling, but still full of the desire and the ability to kill. I would not have seen him but for a barren spot through which he had to pass. I caught the dark movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to watch him. I left him alone. Timidly, he moved opposite the body of his former brother and approached the corpse, sniffing it all over and casting wary glances in all directions as if he sensed the presence of the force that had dealt the death blow. He raised his head and smelled the wind, but my scent was being carried the wrong way. He howled.

Shortly, his friends came to join him, prancing a little and trying to look brave.

I raised the rifle and sighted on the largest of the group, then had a better idea. Quietly, I put the rifle down and took out my narcodart pistol. It was smaller, and I had to remove even the thin gloves I was wearing to be able to handle it right. I leveled it at the group, swept them from left to right as I depressed the trigger. All were hit. I swept back again, just to make certain. Some of them tried to run but got only a few feet when the drugs affected them, sent them tumbling into the snow, legs akimbo.

I put the pistol away and walked down to the sleeping demons. They lay with their mouths open, their teeth bare and wet with saliva. They smelled of the dead meat they had eaten. Raising the rifle, I shot two of them and decided to let the others go. Making live flesh into dead flesh did not appeal to me. I wanted to do as little of it as possible.

With cord from my pack, I tied the three dead wolves together and dragged them back to the cabin. The three together outweighed me, and it was not an easy job. I thought, too late now, that I should have brought the magnetic sled at least part of the way. Fortunately, the snow packed in their coats and turned to ice under the influence of their dissipating body heat so that they formed a sort of sled of their own that glided across the spots the wind had made bare and across the places where there was a heavy crust.

When I got back to the cabin, I stacked the wolves on the porch and went inside. I opened the cellar door and flipped on the light which He had not bothered with. I went down the first two steps when His voice came from below, hollow and strange, His voice, and yet not remotely His voice, much different than it had been an hour and a half ago. "Jacob, stay where you are," He said.

He meant it.

I stopped, looking down toward the bottom. The stairs came into one end of the cellar, and it was impossible to see anything of the basement room if you stood at the top of them. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"Nothing wrong," He said.

"Then I'm coming down."

"No! I'm not — not pleasant to look at," He said. "There has been a major change within the last hour. You had best stay up there."

The voice was something like a seventy-eight r.p.m. recording being played at forty-five, though it was intelligible and still carried enough of His former tones to let me know it was definitely Him. "I think I can take it," I said, starting down again.

"No!"

It was such a definite negative that I stopped on the fourth step, then turned and went to the top landing again. I was shaking all over. Scenes from the old horror story wound through my mind despite my earlier proclamation. Bolts in the neck… A series of heavy stitches across the forehead… malevolent eyes, eyes of a dead man "The changes," I said. "What — "

"It became necessary to adapt my circulatory system to my newer form," He said. It was eerie talking to Him and not being able to see Him. My mind conjured up worse apparitions, I was sure, than the one He must truly have possessed at that point. "It could not support the tissue I was making. I restructured it into a triple pump with external as well as internal vessels."

I sat down on the top step because I did not trust myself to remain standing. "I see," I said, seeing nothing. I have this complex about seeming stupid. It comes from having lived with Harry Leach for so many years. He would explain something to me, something so complex that only a team of specialists could fully understand it, and then he would say, "See?" And if I said no, he sulked and slunk around looking for simpler language to put it in, inevitably putting it so simply as to embarrass both of us. He never inferred that I was not as swift as he, but the aura of his frustration made me feel somehow inadequate. It was years and years, until I was finished with interning and had gained some confidence as a full-fledged doctor working on my own, that I came to understand myself in this respect, this threatening inferiority complex. I understand it now. I still can't shake it.

He went on. "And my eyes were insufficient. I did away with those. Other systems are more efficient. A great number of organs — Jacob, in short, I am not human — not even android — any longer. Not even remotely."