Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

WATKINS: PETERSON? PETERSON: HERE.

They probably didn’t have to type in their names. Each man’s link would identify him to the main computer, and his name would be automatically printed in front of the brief input that he typed. Clean, swift, easy to use.

WATKINS: BACK UP SHOLNICK. PETERSON: DONE. WATKINS: DON’T KILL HIM UNTIL WE CAN QUESTION.

All over Moonlight Cove, cops in patrol cars were talking to one another by computer, off the public airwaves, where they could not be easily overheard. Even though Sam was eavesdropping on them without their knowledge, he felt that he was up against a formidable enemy nearly as omniscient as God.

WATKINS: DANBERRY? DANBERRY: HERE. HQ. WATKINS: BLOCK OCEAN AVENUE TO IN INTERSTATE. DANBERRY: DONE. SHADDACK: WHAT ABOUT THE FOSTER GIRL?

Sam was startled to see Shaddack’s name appear on the screen. The alert apparently had flashed on his computer at home, perhaps also sounding an audible alarm and waking him.

WATKINS: STILL LOOSE. SHADDACK: CAN’T RISK BOOKER STUMBLING ACROSS HER. WATKINS: TOWN’S RINGED WITH SENTRIES. THEY’LL CATCH HER COMING IN. SHADDACK: SHE’S SEEN TOO MUCH.

Sam had read about Thomas Shaddack in magazines, newspapers. The guy was a celebrity of sorts, the computer genius of the age, and somewhat geeky looking besides.

Fascinated by this revealing dialogue, which incriminated the famous man and his bought police force, Sam had not immediately picked up on the meaning of the exchanges between Chief Watkins and Danberry: Danberry … Here. HQ … Block Ocean Avenue to interstate … Done. He realized that Officer Danberry was at headquarters, HQ, which was the municipal building, and that any moment he was going to come out the back door and rush to one of the four patrol cars in the parking lot.

“Oh, shit.” Sam grabbed the ignition wires, tearing them apart. The engine coughed and died, and the video-display went dark. A fraction of a second later, Danberry threw open the rear door of the municipal building and ran into the parking lot.

34

When the screaming stopped, Tessa broke out of a trance of terror and went straight to the phone again. The line was still dead.

Where was Quinn? The motel office was closed at this hour, but didn’t the manager have an adjacent apartment? He would respond to the ruckus. Or was he one of the savage pack in the corridor?

They had broken down one door. They could break down hers too.

She grabbed one of the straight-backed chairs from the table by the window, hurried to the door with it, tilted it back, and wedged it under the knob.

She no longer thought they were after her just because she was Janice’s sister and bent on uncovering the truth. That explanation didn’t account for their attack on the other guests, who had nothing to do with Janice. It was nuts. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she clearly understood the implications of what she had heard: a psychotic killer—no, several psychotics, judging by the noise they had made, some bizarre cult like the Manson family maybe, or worse—were loose in the motel. They had already killed two people, and they could kill her, too, evidently for the sheer pleasure of it. She felt as if she were in a bad dream.

She expected the walls to bulge and flow in that amorphous fashion of nightmare places, but they remained solid, fixed, and the colors of things were too sharp and clear for this to be a dreamscape.

Frantically she pulled on her socks and shoes, unnerved being barefoot, as earlier her near nakedness had made her feel vulnerable—as if death could be foiled by an adequate wardrobe.

She heard those voices again. Not at the end of the hallway any more. Near her own door. Approaching. She wished the door featured one of those one-way, fisheye lenses that allowed a wide-angled view, but there was none.

At the sill was a half-inch crack, however, so Tessa dropped to the floor, pressed one side of her face against the carpet, and squinted out at the corridor. From that limited perspective, she saw something move past her room so quickly that her eyes could not quite track it, though she caught a glimpse of its feet, which was enough to alter dramatically her perception of what was happening. This was not an incidence of human savagery akin to the bloodbath she had witnessed—and to which she nearly had succumbed—in Northern Ireland. This was, instead, an encounter with the unknown, a breach of reality, a sudden sideslip out of the normal world into the uncanny. They were leathery, hairy, dark-skinned feet, broad and flat and surprisingly long, with toes so extrusile and multiple jointed that they almost seemed to have the function of fingers.