The Dead Town (Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 5)

Frost saw the monstrosity first. In the instant of discovery, he was overcome by a sensation about which he’d often read but of which he had no previous experience. The skin on the back of his neck went cold and seemed to be crawling with something as real as centipedes or spiders.

As an agent of the FBI assigned to the equivalent of a black-ops division, he had seen horrors enough and had known fear in a variety of textures and intensities. But nothing until this had touched that most deeply buried nerve, which was not a physical nerve at all, but an intuitive sensitivity to the uncanny, whether of a supernatural or merely a preternatural kind. Neither all of his education nor his vivid imagination could explain the existence of this abomination. As he stared at it, the crawling sensation burrowed deeper, from the back of his neck into his spine, and a chill scurried down his laddered vertebrae.

He gestured for Dagget to join him. Frost didn’t need to look up to gauge his partner’s reaction to the loathsome object. The sudden intake of breath and a wordless expression of revulsion in the back of his throat conveyed Dagget’s disgust and dread.

For a moment, Frost anticipated that the eye might turn in its fleshy socket, focusing on him, or that the tongue might flex and curl in an obscene quest. But that expectation was imagination run wild. The tongue and the eye on the bed were dead tissue, no more capable of movement than the teeth in the jawbone fragment would be able to chew the carpet under them.

A mere pistol and two spare magazines seemed to be inadequate armament against whatever enemy they faced. The explanation behind events in Rainbow Falls was neither ordinary criminal activity nor terrorism of a kind before seen.

As though he had been cast back to childhood, to the confusions and anxieties of a preschooler, Frost looked down at his feet, inches from the hem of the quilted bedspread, and he wondered if something hostile might be hiding under the bed. Where in the past there had never been a boogeyman or a troll, or any kind of witch’s familiar, might there now be something more mysterious and yet more real than any of those fairy-tale threats?

The spell of childish timidity held him in thrall only for a moment and was broken by the announcement of a real threat. From the darkness in the adjoining bathroom, through the half-open door, into the stillness of the master bedroom came a sound like scores of urgent whispering voices.

Chapter 18

The front passenger-side window dissolved as Deucalion rolled the Toyota Sequoia onto its roof. When Mason Morrell refused to abandon the overturned SUV, the giant expressed the intention of smashing the windshield, as well, and hauling the reluctant warrior from the vehicle whether he wanted to come out or not.

Sammy Chakrabarty prevailed upon Deucalion to let him negotiate with the on-air talent. He reached through the broken window, pulled up the lock stem, and dragged open the passenger door. After using the side of his foot as a broom, sweeping away the broken glass that sparkled in the snow, he got on his hands and knees, and he crawled into the Sequoia.

On all fours on the ceiling of the overturned SUV, he faced Mason at a curious angle. The talk-show host hung upside-down in the driver’s seat. Actually, he wasn’t hanging because he hadn’t taken the time to put on his safety harness, so eager had he been to start the engine and split the scene. He maintained his position by holding tightly to the steering wheel and by hooking the heels of his shoes under the seat as best he could. Of the two men, Mason was the one whose head was nearer the ceiling. Sammy found himself peering down into his friend’s face when the orientation of the SUV suggested that he should be looking up into it.

The only light, the bluish glow of the parking-lot lamps, seeped through the low windows of the inverted vehicle. The air was cold and smelled of new-car leather and of Mason’s spicy aftershave. Besides their breathing, the only sounds were the clicks and tinks and pings of the Sequoia adjusting to its new, unconventional relationship to the pavement.

“I’m so sorry this had to happen,” Sammy said.

Mason sounded more resigned than aggrieved. “It didn’t have to.”

“Maybe it didn’t, but it has. The station will pay for repairs.”

“That’s the way you are, but it’s not the way Warren is. Warren pinches pennies.”

“Remember,” Sammy said, “Warren Snyder is dead. And the thing that looked like Warren is dead, too, its weird guts all over the floor in there. So I’m in charge now.”

Refusing to look at Sammy, Mason declared solemnly, “We’re all going to die.”

“That’s not what I believe,” Sammy said.

“Well, it’s what I believe.”

“I haven’t told you this,” Sammy said, “but I have big plans for you and your show.”

“It’s the end of the world. There won’t be any radio after the end of the world.”

“It’s not the end of the world. It’s a national crisis, that’s all. If we pull together, if we defend the station and get the word out about what’s happening here, we can turn this around in no time. I’ve always been an optimist, you know, and my optimism has always proved to be justified.”

“You’re not just an optimist. You’re insane.”

“I’m not insane,” Sammy said. “I’m an American. Hey, you’re an American, too. Where’s your can-do spirit? Listen, I have plans to expand the format of your show, make it emotionally deeper, really let you spread your wings. I want to advertise it more widely, too. With your talent and my dogged determination, we can take this show to regional syndication, then national, not just five other stations but hundreds. You could be the male Dr. Laura. You could be a more human Dr. Phil.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“You are if I say you are. That’s how radio works.”

A few flakes of snow spiraled through the broken-out window and danced on the frosty plumes of their breath.

Sammy was cold. And the thinly padded ceiling was hard under his bony knees. The weird angle made him feel like he was in one of those topsy-turvy dreams in the movie Inception. But he smiled and patted Mason on the arm, in a most friendly way, as if to say I’m here for you.

Tipping his head forward, rolling his eyes down and sideways to get a better look at his program director, Mason said, “Because I’m tall and built like a football star, people think I’m tough. I’m not tough, Sammy. I don’t think I’m tough enough to stand the pressures of national syndication.”

“I’m tough enough for both of us,” Sammy assured him. “And did you just listen to your voice? The timbre, the natural reverb, the exquisite diction—it’s a gift, Mason. You can’t throw away a gift like that.”

“I don’t know,” Mason said doubtfully. “Sometimes I kinda sound squeaky to myself.”

“Trust me, big guy. Listen, if you were doing one of those shows about flying saucers and parallel worlds and secret civilizations under the sea—well, then you’d be all wrong for what we’ve got to do tonight. Everyone would think it was just the usual shtick. But your show is intimate, people let you into their lives, all the way in, they trust you, they take your advice, they admire you. They love you, Mason. You’re a friend to your listeners. They think of you as family. If you tell your listeners that monsters made in some laboratory, capable of passing for human, are taking over Rainbow Falls, they’ll believe you. They wouldn’t believe my voice. I sound like a skinny kid.”

The talk-show host closed his eyes and hung—or clung—upside down in silence for a long moment, like a big frightened bat. Then he said, “They love me?”

“They adore you.”

“I try to do my best. I really try to help them.”

“That’s why they adore you.”

“It’s a terrible responsibility, giving advice.”

“It is. I know. I think it would be exhausting. But you’re a very giving man.”

“I’m always afraid one of them will take something I say the wrong way.”

“They won’t, Mason. You express yourself with great clarity.”

“I’m afraid some wife will like, you know, misunderstand my advice and go shoot her husband.”

“That only almost happened once,” Sammy counseled. “And almost happened. It didn’t really happen.”

Eyes still closed, Mason chewed on his lower lip. Finally he said, “Orson Welles sold that crazy Jules Verne thing, back in the 1930s. He had half the country believing it was true when it was just a stupid sci-fi story.”

“The War of the Worlds,” Sammy said, and didn’t correct Jules Verne to H. G. Wells.

“He got famous from that. It was just a silly sci-fi thing, but he got famous. This is real.”

Sammy smiled and nodded even though Mason’s eyes were closed. “By the time this is over, you’ll be huge. An international star. Not just a star, Mason. Not just a star—a hero.”

Mason shook his head. “I’m not hero material. I’m not a hero just because you say I am, like you can make me a doctor.”

Sammy was freezing, so cold that his voice trembled in time to his shivering. He wanted to grab the talk-show host by the ears and shake a sense of urgency into him, but he remained calm.

“Yes, you are a hero, Mason. It’s even easier to make you a hero than to make you a doctor. Some people might want to see a college degree to prove you’re a doctor, and we’d have to go to the trouble of buying you a PhD from some online university. But if we say you not only saved the world but at the same time you fought off a horde of violent clones trying to seize KBOW—remember, we already have the bodies of four—who’s to say you’re not what we claim you are.”

“Burt and Ralph. They’d know.”

“Burt and Ralph become part of the Mason Morrell team. Their careers soar with yours. They’ll play along.”

“I don’t think they will.”

“They will.”

“I don’t think so.”

“THEY WILL!” Sammy shouted, and immediately added, “Sorry. I just get frustrated that you keep underestimating yourself. You’re always so confident on the air.”

“That’s on the air. This is life.” At last he opened his eyes. “But I guess I’ll do it, what you want.”

“You won’t try to run away again?”

“No. I can’t run away from this. There’s nowhere to run. I see that now.”

Sammy said, “My hero.”

“I think this door might be buckled. If you back out, I’ll crawl over the console and come through the passenger door.”

Grinning, Sammy said, “Let’s do radio.”

“Yeah. Let’s do great radio.”

“Immortal radio!” Sammy declared.

Mason hanging upside down, Sammy kneeling on the ceiling, they tried to high-five each other, but the weird perspective defeated them. Mason boxed Sammy’s left ear, and Sammy blew the Sequoia’s horn.

Chapter 19

Pistols ready, flanking the partially open door to the master bathroom, Frost and Dagget listened to the voices whispering in the darkness beyond the threshold. They sounded conspiratorial and eager and sinister, but if anything being said had a scintilla of meaning, the conspirators were speaking in a foreign tongue. Frost couldn’t understand a word.

This sounded like a language entirely of sibilants, hissing and sissing and snuffling and fizzing, which seemed highly unlikely. Then, after a moment, the whispering no longer struck him as being conspiratorial, but instead restless and agitated. When he began to think of it that way, he realized he wasn’t listening to whispering voices, after all, but to friction of some kind. One thing sliding against another. Or a horde of small things swarming over one another, all their carapaces and quivering antennas and brittle legs rubbing together.

The door was hinged on the left, and Frost stood to the right. He reached around the jamb with his left hand, found the switch in there, and flipped light into the bathroom. Dagget moved even as the doorway brightened, crossed the threshold, said a word that Frost had never heard him—or any other Mormon—say before, and backed into the bedroom so fast that Frost hadn’t yet moved in behind him.

The large bathroom featured white ceramic tile with blue tile accents, a pair of sinks in a long counter, a shower stall directly ahead, and to the left a soaking tub spacious enough to accommodate husband and wife at the same time. Over the bathtub, depending partway into it, hanging from the ceiling on a thick and lumpy organic rope that looked like the umbilical cord of the Antichrist, was a greasy-looking sack larger than a man, glistening in a variety of shades of silver and gray.

The teardrop shape suggested pregnancy. The slithering noise that arose from the sack—the whispering he’d heard through the open doorway—perhaps indicated a restless fetus of an unthinkable nature. And the overall impression was of a cocoon. The movement within that ominous incubator did not distort it; the surface neither bulged nor rippled.

Farther from the doorway, beyond the tub, in the shower stall, behind a glass door hung another cocoon. It virtually filled that space.

Foreboding had gripped Frost upon the discovery of the eye in the severed tongue. Now that feeling ripened fully into dread. He tried to reassure himself that these things were preternatural, beyond the ordinary course of nature, strange and inexplicable, yes, but only because this was an expression of nature never seen before. An extraterrestrial life form. Natural to the universe, just not to this world. Or the consequence of some mutation of an earthly animal. Intuitive knowledge, however, trumped what he had been taught to know. He could not reason himself out of the recognition that behind this scene, at the bottom of this situation, a supernatural force was at work.

Adjusting to the shock of his first sight of the cocoons, Dagget entered the bathroom again. Frost stepped onto the threshold behind his partner. They had never before fled from any threat, not because they were fearless but because once they took the coward’s way out, they would take it again, and again, until they would be forever incapable of fulfilling their duties.

With evident uneasiness, Dagget approached the cocoon that hung over the bathtub, and Frost cautioned him, and Dagget said, “There’s something strange about the surface of this thing.”

“Not just the surface,” Frost said.

The continuous slithering noise didn’t grow louder, but Frost found it increasingly sinister. He thought of snakes, but he knew that it wouldn’t be snakes, wouldn’t be anything he had ever seen before.