“Quarantine is for diseased people or something.”
“They will suspect your entire family of being contaminated with alien DNA.”
If I ever wondered what it might feel like to have a live eel squirming around in my stomach—which actually isn’t anything I have wondered, but supposing I did—well, right when I hear the words contaminated with alien DNA, I know the feeling vividly.
“Ed, be straight with me. Might we be contaminated?”
“I think that possibility is slight, Jolie Ann Harmony.”
From behind the dead control console, gazing out into the sphere room, I watch the witchy shadows leap and spin through the terrible red light beyond the veined rock-crystal windows of the artifact—if it actually is rock crystal, and if they are windows.
“How slight?” I ask Ed.
“I lack the knowledge of alien biology that would allow me to make such a calculation with confidence. But I do not believe that Dr. Norris Hiskott became contaminated simply by close contact with the ETs. Evidence exists to suggest that Dr. Hiskott determined that the aliens removed from the sunken vessel were not dead but in a state of suspended animation, that he isolated what he believed to be alien stem cells of some particular function, and that he secretly injected himself with these stem cells because he was convinced that he would thereby greatly increase his intelligence and longevity.”
“Good grief. Was he a nut or something?”
“Everyone considered for a position in Project Polaris had to go through exhaustive psychological testing before reporting to work. Dr. Hiskott was diagnosed as afflicted with narcissism, which is intense self-love, and megalomania, which is delusions of grandeur and an obsession with doing grand things. He was also found to suffer from occasional periods of depersonalization, which is a state of feeling unreal, accompanied by derealization, which is a state of feeling that the world is not real, though these never lasted longer than two or three hours.”
“So he was a total nut, but they hired him anyway?”
From his cozy nest of Cray supercomputers in a distant building, Ed reassures me: “None of his conditions is a psychosis. They are all neuroses or mild personality disorders that do not necessarily interfere with a scientist’s work. In Dr. Hiskott’s case, his peers nationwide were in almost unanimous agreement that he was one of the most brilliant men in his field. Furthermore, his brother-in-law is a United States senator.”
“Okay, well,” I say, “no one in my family injected himself with alien blood or anything, so how long will the FBI quarantine us?”
“Forever.”
“Don’t you think that’s a teeny-weeny littlest-bit extreme?”
“Yes, I do. However, what I think will not matter to them. They will isolate all of you until you die. Then they will dissect all of you. Finally, they will burn every scrap of your bodily tissue in an ultra-high-temperature furnace.”
Let me tell you, I am finding it difficult to stay upbeat. I’m sort of flirting with a funk.
I say, “Then except for Harry, we’re still alone. There’s no one else to help us.”
After a silence, Ed says, “There is someone else.”
EIGHTEEN
Having committed my second act of terror, one with the truck and one with the propane tank, in the first half hour of the still-pink dawn, I reach the feathery shade of the first trees that shelter the ten cottages. There I encounter a potbellied man with a Friar Tuck fringe of red hair. Although the morning is slightly cool for his ensemble, he looks primed for leisure in a banana-yellow polo shirt, khaki Bermuda shorts, white socks, and sandals.
“What’s happening over there?” he asks excitedly as we approach each other.
I babble at him breathlessly: “Eighteen-wheeler went over the edge, crashed down through the meadow, like bombs going off, driver’s probably dead, there’s fire. Man, it’s all crazy.”
He’s so thrilled at the prospect of spectacle that he amps up from a fast walk to a run.
In addition to the cottages that Annamaria and I have taken, five others are occupied. If the events at the diner have awakened others besides the guy in the Bermudas, they are not yet out and about.
My original hope was to find a vehicle of a vintage that would be easier to hot-wire than are most new cars and SUVs. I urgently need to add to my criminal record by committing auto theft. Happily, when he was distracted by the exploding propane tank, Bermuda Guy was in the process of loading his luggage into the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The driver’s door stands open. His key is in the ignition.
I almost thank God for this gift, but on second thought that seems inappropriate.
I slam the tailgate, get behind the wheel, pull shut the door, and start the engine.
The interior of the SUV reeks of an aftershave so flowery that you might think nobody would use it except bearded ladies after they retire from carnival sideshows and are then able to shave without jeopardizing their livelihoods. The fumes burn in my sinuses, and instantly my nose begins to drip.
The Cherokee is parked between two cottages. I drive behind those buildings, turn right, and follow the mown grass along the edge of the woods that backdrops the motor court. Soon the lawn gives way to wild grass, and on the left the trees thin out, and I am able to pilot the SUV through the woods, driving at a sedate pace, weaving between the fissured trunks, needled boughs brushing across the roof, traveling into the less-civilized portion of Harmony Corner, where there might actually be some harmony.
My biggest concern is that I’ll blow a tire before I’ve been able to use this vehicle in the way that I absolutely must use it, but by the time I get to the farther end of the woods, the rubber is all intact. I park in the cover of the trees, on the brink of a meadow.
Bermuda Guy will soon discover his SUV has been stolen, but he’ll think it was driven out of Harmony Corner to the Coast Highway. He’ll never consider that it might have been taken deep into the woods behind the motor court. I hope he’ll call the county sheriff’s office in an even greater state of excitement than that in which he went sprinting off to see the wreckage of the eighteen-wheeler.
I want him to call the cops, just as I want someone to call the county’s wildfire-control agency. The more sirens, the more fire, the more chaos, the more distractions of all kinds, the better for me. The only other thing I could ask of Bermuda Guy is that in the future he not wear socks with sandals.
Getting out of the Grand Cherokee, I’m nervous about serpents because, as I noted earlier, I have a mild case of ophidiophobia. It’s not such a severe condition that, at the sight of a snake, I’ll commit hara-kiri rather than submit to the fang, but I will probably soil my pants. I’m also wary of skunks, and especially of raccoons, which are the gangsta bad boys of the woods. Having grown up in the Mojave, where there are no forests, I find landscapes of trees and ferns and rhododendrons to be gothic in the extreme.
I need to get to an observation point from which I can see north across the entire expanse of Harmony Corner, to accurately judge the effect of my criminal activities to date. As I leave the woodland, sudden movement to my right surprises a strangled cry from me, but the imagined enemy assault is in fact only four white-tailed deer in flight from the fire that I started. As they dash past, no more than ten feet from me, I call after them, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
From behind, a hand grips my shoulder.
Turning, I encounter Donny, husband of Denise, the mechanic who was forced by Hiskott to slash his own face. His eyes are a hot blue, as hot as gas flames, tears of outrage melting from them, and his misaligned lips are drawn back in a smile that is a snarl and a sneer of contempt all at once. He says, “Harry Potter, Lex Luthor, Fidel Castro—whoever you are, you’re goin’ to die here.”
TO BE CONTINUED in Odd Interlude #3, on sale June 25, 2012
By Dean Koontz
77 Shadow Street • What the Night Knows • Breathless • Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me • The Darkest Evening of th
e Year • The Good Guy • The Husband • Velocity • Life Expectancy • The Taking • The Face • By the Light of the Moon • One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye • False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing • Mr. Murder • Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire • The Bad Place • Midnight • Lightning • Watchers • Strangers • Twilight Eyes • Darkfall • Phantoms • Whispers • The Mask • The Vision • The Face of Fear • Night Chills • Shattered • The Voice of the Night • The Servants of Twilight • The House of Thunder • The Key to Midnight • The Eyes of Darkness • Shadowfires • Winter Moon • The Door to December • Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound • Strange Highways • Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock • The Funhouse • Demon Seed
ODD THOMAS
Odd Thomas • Forever Odd • Brother Odd • Odd Hours • Odd Interlude (e-original novella) • Odd Apocalypse
FRANKENSTEIN
Prodigal Son • City of Night • Dead and Alive • Lost Souls • The Dead Town
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie
About the Author
Dean Koontz is the author of more than a dozen New York Times No.1 bestsellers. His books have sold over 400 million copies worldwide, a figure that increases by more than 17 million copies per year, and his work is published in 38 languages.
He was born and raised in Pennsylvania and lives with his wife Gerda and their dog Anna in southern California.
www.deankoontz.com
Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:
Dean Koontz