Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

He put his hand on the butt of the revolver that was holstered at his side.

Loman Watkins had been the chief of police in Moonlight Cove for nine years, and in the past month more blood had been spilled in his jurisdiction than in the entire preceding eight years and eleven months. He was convinced that worse was coming. He had a hunch that the regressives were more numerous and more of a problem that Shaddack realized—or was willing to admit.

He feared the regressives almost as much as he feared his own new, cool, dispassionate perspective.

Unlike happiness and grief and joy and sorrow, stark fear was a survival mechanism, so perhaps he would not lose touch with it as thoroughly as he was losing touch with other emotions. That thought made him as uneasy as did the phantom movement in the trees.

Is fear, he wondered, the only emotion that will thrive in this brave new world we’re making?

16

After a greasy cheeseburger, soggy fries, and an icy bottle of Dos Equis in the deserted coffee shop at Cove Lodge, Tessa Lockland returned to her room, propped herself up in bed with pillows, and called her mother in San Diego. Marion answered the phone on the first ring, and Tessa said, “Hi, Mom.”

“Where are you, Teejay?”

As a kid, Tessa could never decide whether she wanted to be called by her first name or her middle, Jane, so her mother always called her by her initials, as if that were a name in itself.

“Cove Lodge,” Tessa said.

“Is it nice?”

“It’s the best I could find. This isn’t a town that worries about having first-rate tourist facilities. If it didn’t have such a spectacular view, Cove Lodge is one of those places that would be able to survive only by showing closed-circuit porn movies on the TV and renting rooms by the hour.”

“Is it clean?”

“Reasonably.”

“If it wasn’t clean, I’d insist you move out right now.”

“Mom, when I’m on location, shooting a film, I don’t always have luxury accommodations, you know. When I did that documentary on the Miskito Indians in Central America, I went on hunts with them and slept in the mud.”

“Teejay, dear, you must never tell people that you slept in the mud. Pigs sleep in the mud. You must say you roughed it or camped out, but never that you slept in the mud. Even unpleasant experiences can be worthwhile if one keeps one’s sense of dignity and style.”

“Yes, Mom, I know. My point was that Cove Lodge isn’t great, but it’s better than sleeping in the mud.”

“Camping out.”

“Better than camping out,” Tessa said.

Both were silent a moment. Then Marion said, “Dammit, I should be there with you.”

“Mom, you’ve got a broken leg.”

“I should have gone to Moonlight Cove as soon as I heard they’d found poor Janice. If I’d been there, they wouldn’t have cremated the body. By God, they wouldn’t! I’d have stopped that, and I’d have arranged another autopsy by trustworthy authorities, and now there’d be no need for you to get involved. I’m so angry with myself.”

Tessa slumped back in the pillows and sighed.

“Mom, don’t do this to yourself. You broke your leg three days before Janice’s body was even found. You can’t travel easily now, and you couldn’t travel easily then, either. It’s not your fault.”

“There was a time when a broken leg couldn’t have stopped me.”

“You’re not twenty any more, Mom.”

“Yes, I know, I’m old,” Marion said miserably.

“Sometimes I think about how old I am, and it’s scary.”

“You’re only sixty-four, you look not a day past fifty, and you broke your leg skydiving, for God’s sake, so you’re not going to get any pity from me.”

“Comfort and pity is what an elderly parent expects from a good daughter. If you caught me calling you elderly or treating you with pity, you’d kick my ass halfway to China.”

“The chance to kick a daughter’s ass now and then is one of the pleasures of a mother’s later life, Teejay. Damn, where did that tree come from, anyway? I’ve been skydiving for thirty years, and I’ve never landed in a tree before, and I swear it wasn’t there when I looked down on the final approach to pick my drop spot.”