Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

“This way,” Chrissie said, pulling loose of Tessa and turning back into the darkness from which they’d come, forcing them either to follow or abandon her.

16

Shaddack figured they wouldn’t have tried to break into Central on any side that faced a street, where they might be seen—and the Indian agreed—so he drove around to the back. He passed metal doors that would have provided too formidable a barrier, and studied the windows, trying to spot a broken pane.

The last rear door, the only one with glass in the top, was in an angled extension of the building. He was driving toward it for a moment, just before the service road swung to the left to go around that wing, and from a distance of only a few yards, with all the other panes reflecting the glare of his headlights, his attention was caught by the missing glass at the bottom right.

“There,” he told Runningdeer.

“Yes, Little Chief.”

He parked near the door and grabbed the loaded Remington 12-gauge semiautomatic pistol-grip shotgun from the van’s floor behind him. The box of extra shells was on the passenger seat. He opened it, grabbed four or five, stuffed them in a coat pocket, grabbed four or five more, then got out of the van and headed toward the door with the broken window.

17

Four soft thuds reverberated through the house, even into the attic, and Harry thought he heard glass breaking far away.

Moose barked furiously. He sounded like the most vicious attack dog ever bred, not a sweet black Lab. Maybe he would prove willing to defend home and master in spite of his naturally good temperament.

Don’t do it, boy, Harry thought. Don’t try to be a hero. Just crawl away in a corner somewhere and let them pass, lick their hands if they offer them, and don’t—

The dog squealed and fell silent.

No, Harry thought, and a pang of grief tore through him. He had lost not just a dog but his best friend.

Moose, too, had a sense of duty.

Silence settled over the house. They would be searching the ground floor now.

Harry’s grief and fear receded as his anger grew. Moose. Dammit, poor harmless Moose. He could feel the flush of rage in his face. He wanted to kill them all.

He picked up the .38 pistol in his one good hand and held it on his lap. They wouldn’t find him for a while, but he felt better with the gun in his hand.

In the service he had won competition medals for both rifle sharpshooting and performance with a handgun. That had been a long time ago. He had not fired a gun, even in practice, for more than twenty years, since that faraway and beautiful Asian land, where on a morning of exceptionally lovely blue skies, he had been crippled for life. He kept the .38 and the .45 cleaned and oiled, mostly out of habit; a soldier’s lessons and routines were learned for life—and now he was glad of that.

A clank.

A rumble-purr of machinery.

The elevator.

18

Halfway down the correct hallway, holding the dimming flashlight in his left hand and the revolver in his other, just as he caught up with Chrissie, Sam heard a siren approaching outside. It was not on top of them, but it was too close. He couldn’t tell if the patrol car was actually closing in on the back of the school, toward which they were headed, or coming to the front entrance.

Apparently Chrissie was uncertain too. She stopped running and said, “Where, Sam? Where?”

From behind them Tessa said, “Sam, the doorway!”

For an instant he didn’t understand what she meant. Then he saw the door swinging open at the end of the hall, about thirty yards away, the same door by which they had entered. A man stepped inside. The siren was still wailing, drawing nearer, so there were more of them on the way, a whole platoon of them. The guy who’d come through the door was just the first—tall, six feet five if he was one inch, but otherwise only a shadow, minimally backlighted by the security lamp outside and to the right of the door.