Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

And his dog Moose had been terrific.

Now, looking at the redwood-and-glass house through the tips of the rain-shiny stalks of high grass, thinking about Harry Talbot and Moose, Chrissie wondered if that was a place she could go for help.

She dropped back down in the brush and thought about it for a couple of minutes.

Surely a wheelchair-bound cripple was one of the last people the aliens would bother to possess—if they wanted him at all.

She immediately was ashamed of herself for thinking such thing. A wheelchair-bound cripple was not a second-class human being. He had just as much to offer the aliens as anyone else.

On the other hand … would a bunch of aliens have an enlightened view of disabled people? Wasn’t that a bit much to expect? After all, they were aliens. Their values weren’t supposed to be the same as those of human beings. If they went around planting seeds—or spoors or slimy baby slugs or whatever—in people, and if they ate people, surely they couldn’t be expected to treat disabled people with the proper respect any more than they would help old ladies to cross the street.

Harry Talbot.

The more she thought about him, the more certain Chrissie became that he had thus far been spared the horrible attention of the aliens.

12

After she called him Dr. Doom, he sprayed the Jenn-Air griddle with Pam, so the pancakes wouldn’t stick.

She turned on the oven and put a plate in there, to which she could transfer the cakes to keep them warm as she made them.

Then, in a tone of voice that immediately clued him to the fact that she was bent on persuading him to reconsider his bleak assessment of life, she said, “Tell me—”

“Can’t you leave it alone yet?”

“No.”

He sighed.

She said, “If you’re this damned glum, why not …”

“Kill myself?”

“Why not?”

He laughed bitterly. “On the drive up here from San Francisco, I played a little game with myself—counted the reasons that life was worth living. I came up with just four, but I guess they’re enough, because I’m still hanging around.”

“What were they?”

“One—good Mexican food.”

“I’ll go along with that.”

“Two—Guinness Stout.”

“I like Heineken Dark myself.”

“It’s okay, but it’s not a reason to live. Guinness is a reason to live.”

“What’s number three?”

“Goldie Hawn.”

“You know Goldie Hawn?”

“Nope. Maybe I don’t want to, ’cause maybe I’d be disappointed. I’m talking about her screen image, the idealized Goldie Hawn.”

“She’s your dream girl, huh?”

“More than that. She … hell I don’t know … she seems untouched by life, undamaged, vital and happy and innocent and … fun.”

“Think you’ll ever meet her?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She said, “You know what?”

“What?”

“If you did meet Goldie Hawn, if she walked up to you at a party and said something funny, something cute, and giggled in that way she has, you wouldn’t even recognize her.”

“Oh, I’d recognize her, all right.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d be so busy brooding about how unfair, unjust, hard, cruel, bleak, dismal, and stupid life is that you would not seize the moment. You wouldn’t even recognize the moment. You’d be too shrouded in a haze of gloom to see who she was. Now, what’s your fourth reason for living?”

He hesitated. “Fear of death.”

She blinked at him.

“I don’t understand. If life’s so awful, why is death to be feared?”

“I underwent a near-death experience. I was in surgery, having a bullet taken out of my chest, and I almost bought the farm. Rose out of my body, drifted up to the ceiling, watched the surgeons for a while, then found myself rushing faster and faster down a dark tunnel toward this dazzling light—the whole screwy scenario.”

She was impressed and intrigued. Her clear blue eyes were wide with interest. “And?”

“I saw what lies beyond.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Damned serious.”

“You’re telling me that you know there’s an afterlife?”

“Yes.”

“A God?”

“Yes.”

Astonished, she said, “But if you know there’s a God and that we move on from this world, then you know life has purpose, meaning,”