Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

“So?”

“Well … that’s the same problem we have with the regressives. They’re New People like us, but the thing that makes them different from us, the rottenness in them, is impossible to see; they’re as indistinguishable from us as we are from the unchanged population of Old People.”

Shaddack’s iron erection had softened. Impatient with Watkins’s negativism, he rose from his armchair and moved to the nearest of the big windows. Standing with his hands fisted in the pockets of his sweat-suit jacket, he stared at the vague reflection of his own long, lupine face, which was ghostlike in its transparency. He met his own gaze, as well, then quickly looked through the reflection of his eye sockets and past the glass into the darkness beyond, where vagrant sea breezes worked the loom of night to bring forth a fragile fabric of fog. He kept his back to Watkins, for he did not want the man to see that he was concerned, and he avoided the glass-caught image of his own eyes because he did not want to admit to himself that his concern might be marbled with veins of fear.

45

He insisted on moving to the chairs, so they could not be seen as easily from the street. Tessa was leery about sitting beside him. He said that he was operating undercover and therefore carried no Bureau ID, but he showed her everything else in his wallet driver’s license, credit cards, library card, video rental card, photos of his son and his late wife, a coupon for a free chocolate-chip cookie at any Mrs. Fields store, a picture of Goldie Hawn torn from a magazine. Would a homicidal maniac carry a cookie coupon? In a while, as he took her back through her story of the massacre at Cove Lodge and picked relentlessly at the details, making sure that she told him everything and that he understood all of it, she began to trust him. If he was only pretending to be an agent, his pretense would not have been so elaborate or sustained.

“You didn’t actually see anybody murdered?”

“They were killed,” she insisted. “You wouldn’t have any doubt if you’d heard their screams. I’ve stood in a mob of human monsters in Northern Ireland and seen them beat men to death. I was filming an industrial in a steel mill once, when there was a spill of molten metal that splattered all over workers’ bodies, their faces. I’ve been with Miskito Indians in the Central American jungles when they were hit with antipersonnel bombs—millions of little bits of sharp steel, bodies pierced by a thousand needles—and I’ve heard their screams. I know what death sounds like. And this was the worst I’ve ever heard.”

He stared at her for a long time. Then he said, “You look deceptively—”

“Cute?”

“Yes.”

“Therefore innocent? Therefore naive?”

“Yes.”

“My curse.”

“And an advantage sometimes?”

“Sometimes,” she acknowledged. “Listen, you know something, so tell me What’s going on in this town?”

“Something’s happening to the people here.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. They’re not interested in movies, for one thing. The theater closed. And they’re not interested in luxury goods, fine gifts, that sort of thing, because those stores have all closed too. They no longer get a kick from champagne …”

He smiled thinly. “The barrooms are all going out of business. The only thing they seem to be interested in is food. And killing.”

46

Still standing at a tower-room window, Tom Shaddack said, “All right, Loman, here’s what we’ll do. Everyone at New Wave has been converted, so I’ll assign a hundred of them to you, to augment the police force. You can use them to help in your investigation in any way you see fit—starting now. With that many at your command, you’ll catch one of the regressives in the act, surely … and you’ll be more likely to find this man Booker too.”

The New People did not require sleep. The additional deputies could be brought into the field immediately.

Shaddack said, “They can patrol the streets on foot and in their cars—quietly, without drawing attention. And with that assistance, you’ll grab at least one of the regressives, maybe all of them. If we can catch one in a devolved state, if I’ve a chance to examine one of them, I might be able to develop a test—physical or psychological—with which we can screen the New People for degenerates.”