Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

Watkins said, “The way you explained it to me—these degenerates undergo willful devolution.”

“That’s right.”

“You said the whole history of human evolution is carried in our genes, that we still have in us traces of what the species once was, and that the regressives somehow tap that genetic material and devolve into creatures somewhere farther back on the evolutionary ladder.”

“What’s your point?”

“That explanation made some sort of crazy sense when we trapped Coombs in the theater and got a good look at him back in September. He was more ape than man, something in between.”

“It doesn’t make crazy sense; it makes perfect sense.”

“But, Jesus, look at Sholnick. Look at him! When I gunned him down, he’d halfway transformed himself into some goddamned creature that’s part man, part … hell, I don’t know, part lizard or snake. You telling me that we evolved from reptiles, we’re carrying lizard genes from ten million years ago?”

Shaddack thrust both hands in his coat pockets, lest they betray his apprehension with a nervous gesture or tremble. “The first life on earth was in the sea, then something crawled onto the land—a fish with rudimentary legs—and the fish evolved into the early reptiles, and along the way mammals split off. If we don’t contain actual fragments of the genetic material of those very early reptiles—and I believe we do—then at least we have racial memory of that stage of evolution encoded in us in some other way we don’t really understand.”

“You’re jiving me, Shaddack.”

“And you’re irritating me.”

“I don’t give a damn. Come here, come with me, take a closer look at Peyser. He was a friend of yours from way back, wasn’t he? Take a good, long look at what he was when he died.”

Peyser was flat on his back, naked, right leg straight in front of him, left leg bent under him at an angle, one arm flung out at his side, the other across his chest, which had been shattered by a couple of shotgun blasts. The body and the face—with its inhuman muzzle and teeth, yet vaguely recognizable as Mike Peyser—were those of a shockingly horrific freak, a dog-man, a werewolf, something that belonged in either a carnival sideshow or an old horror movie. The skin was coarse. The patchy coat of hair was wiry. The hands looked powerful, the claws sharp.

Because his fascination exceeded his disgust and fear, Shaddack pulled up his topcoat to keep the hem of it from brushing the bloody corpse, and stooped beside Peyser’s body for a closer look.

Watkins hunkered down on the other side of the cadaver.

While another avalanche of thunder rumbled down the night sky, the dead man stared at the bedroom ceiling with eyes that were too human for the rest of his twisted countenance.

“You going to tell me that somewhere along the way we evolved from dogs, wolves?” Watkins asked.

Shaddack did not reply.

Watkins pressed the issue. “You going to tell me that we’ve got dog genes in us that we can tap when we want to transform ourselves? Am I supposed to believe God took a rib from some prehistoric Lassie and made man from it before he took man’s rib to make a woman?”

Curiously Shaddack touched one of Mike Peyser’s hands, which was designed for killing as surely as was a soldier’s bayonet. It felt like flesh, just cooler than that of a living man.

“This can’t be explained biologically,” Watkins said, glaring at Shaddack across the corpse. “This wolf form isn’t something Peyser could dredge up from racial memory stored in his genes. So how could he change like this? It’s not just your biochips at work here. It’s something else … something stranger.”

Shaddack nodded. “Yes.” An explanation had occurred to him, and he was excited by it. “Something a great deal stranger … but perhaps I understand it.”

“So tell me. I’d like to understand it. Damned if I wouldn’t. I’d like to understand it real well. Before it happens to me.”

“There’s a theory that form is a function of consciousness.”

“Huh?”

“It holds that we are what we think we are. I’m not talking pop psychology here, that you can be what you want to be if you’ll only like yourself, nothing of that sort. I mean physically, we may have the potential to be whatever we think we are, to override the morphic stasis dictated by our genetic heritage.”