Dean Koontz: Dragonfly

When he woke shortly after three o'clock Wednesday morning, Roger Berlinson thought he heard strange voices in the house. A quick word or two. Then silence. An unnatural silence? He was clutching the sweat-dampened sheets so tightly that his arms ached all the way to his shoulders. He let go of the sodden linens and worked the cramps out of his fingers. Trembling, he reached out with his right hand, pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand, and picked up the loaded pistol that was lying there. In the moon-dappled darkness he performed a blind man's exploration of the gun until he was certain that both of the safeties were switched off. Then he lay perfectly still, listening.

The house was on a low bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In the empty early-morning hours the only sounds at the windows were the voices of nature: the soughing of a southwesterly wind, distant thunder, and the steady rush of the tide. Inside the house there were no voices, no squeaking floorboards, nothing but Berlinson's own heavy breathing.

It's just your imagination, he told himself. Putney is on the midnight-to-eight duty. He's downstairs in the kitchen right now, monitoring the alarm systems. If there was any trouble, he'd take care of it before it got serious. Putney's a damned good man; he doesn't make mistakes. So we're safe. There's absolutely no danger. You've had another nightmare, that's all.

Nevertheless, Berlinson threw back the covers and got out of bed and stepped into his felt-lined slippers. His moist pajamas clung to his back and thighs; chills swept down his spine.

He held the gun at his side. In an instant he could bring it up, swivel, and fire in any direction. He was well trained.

His wife, Anna, stirred in her sleep, but thanks to her nightly sedative, did not wake up. She turned over on her stomach and mumbled into the pillow and sighed.

Quietly, cautiously, Berlinson crossed the room to the open door and eased into the second-floor hall. The corridor was much darker than the bedroom, for it had only one window at the far end. Berlinson had just enough light to see that everything was as it should be: the telephone table was at the head of the stairs; a large vase full of straw flowers stood on the window bench at the end of the hall; and the flimsy curtains billowed in the draft from the air-conditioning vent high on the right-hand wall.

Berlinson walked past the staircase and on down the hall to his son's room. Peter was in bed, lying on his side, facing the door, snoring softly. Under the circumstances, no one but a teenager, with an appetite for sleep as great as his appetite for food and activity, could possibly have slept so soundly, so serenely, without the aid of a drug.

There you are, Berlinson told himself. Everyone's safe. There's no danger here. No one from the agency can possibly know where you are. No one. Except McAlister. Well, what about McAlister? Hell, he's on your side. You can trust him. Can't you? Yes. Implicitly. So there you are.

However, instead of returning straight to bed, he went to the stairs and down to the first floor. The living room was full of dark, lumpish furniture. A grandfather clock ticked in a far corner; its pendulum provided the only movement, the only noise, the only sign of life, either animal or mechanical, in the room. The dining room was also deserted. The many-paned glass doors of the china hutch — and the dishes shelved beyond the glass — gleamed in the eerie orange light. Berlinson went into the kitchen, where the Halloweenish glow, the only light in the house, emanated from several expensive, complicated machines that stood on the Formica-topped breakfast table.

Putney was gone.

“Joe?”

There was no reply.

Berlinson went to look at the monitors — and he found Joseph Putney on the other side of the table. The night guard was sprawled on the floor, on his back, his arms out to his sides as if he were trying to fly, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes glittered demonically in the orange light from the screens.

Now hold on, keep control, keep cool, Berlinson thought as he automatically crouched and turned to see if anyone had moved in behind him.

He was still alone.

Glancing at the four repeater screens of the infrared alarm system which protected the house, Berlinson saw that the machines were functioning and had detected no enemies. All approaches to the house — north, east, south, and west from the beach — were drawn in thermal silhouette on these monitors. No heat-producing source, neither man nor animal nor machine, could move onto the property without immediately registering on the system, setting off a loud alarm, and thereby alerting the entire household.

Yet Putney was dead.

The alarm system had been circumvented. Someone was in the house. His cover was blown; the agency had come after him. In the morning Anna would find him just as he had found Putney…

No, dammit! You're a match for them. You're as good and as fast as they are: you're one of them, for Christ's sake, a snake from the same nest. You'll get Anna and Petey out of here, and you'll go with them.

He moved along the wall, back toward the dining room, through the archway, past the hutch, into the living room, to the main stairs. He studied the darkness at the top of the staircase. The man — or men— who had killed Putney might be up there now. Probably was. But there was no other way Berlinson could reach his family. He had to risk it. Keeping his back to the wall, alternately glancing at the landing above and at the living room below, expecting to be caught in a crossfire at any moment, he went up step by step, slowly, silently.

Unmolested, he covered sixteen of the twenty risers, then stopped when he saw that there was someone sitting on the top step and leaning against the banister. He almost opened fire, but even in these deep shadows, the other man was somehow familiar. When there was no challenge made, no threat, no movement at all, Berlinson inched forward — and discovered that the man on the steps was Peter, his son. The front of Petey's pajama shirt was soaked with blood; he had been shot in the throat.

No! Dammit, no! Berlinson thought, weeping, shuddering, cursing, sick to his stomach. Not my family, damn you. Me, but not my family. That's the rule. That's the way the game's played. Never the family. You crazy sonsofbitches! No, no, no!

He stumbled off the steps and ran across the hall, crouching low, the pistol held out in front of him. He fell and rolled through the open bedroom door, came up onto his knees fast, and fired twice into the wall beside the door.

No one was there.

Should have been, dammit. Should have been someone there.

He crawled around behind the bed, using it as a shield. Cautiously, he rose up to see if Anna was all right. In the moonlight the blood on the sheets looked as viscous and black as sludge oil.

At the sight of her, Berlinson lost control of himself. “Come out!” he shouted to the men who must now be in the corridor, listening, waiting to burst in on him. “Show yourselves, you bastards!”

On his right the closet door was flung open.

Berlinson fired at it.

A man cried out and fell full length into the room. His gun clattered against the legs of a chair.

“Roger!”

Berlinson whirled toward the voice which came from the hall door. A silenced pistol hissed three times. Berlinson collapsed onto the bed, clutching at the covers and at Anna. Absurdly, he thought: I can't be dying. My life hasn't flashed before my eyes. I can't be dying if my life hasn't