Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

mountainside angled again. “By the time my tour of duty ended, I’d

answered none of those questions to my satisfaction.

.

. and so I volunteered for another tour.”

“You stayed in Nam when you could have gone home?” she asked, startled.

“Even though you had such terrible doubts?”

“I had to work it out,” he said. “I just had to. I mean, I’d killed

people, a lot of people, in what I thought was ajust cause, and I had to

know whether I’d been right or wrong. I couldn’t walk away, put it out

of my mind, get on with my life, and just forget about it. Hell, no. I

had to work it out, decide if I was a good man or a killer, and then

figure what accommodation I could reach with life, with my own

conscience. And there was no better place to work it out, to analyze

the problem, than right there in the middle of it. Besides, to

understand why I stayed on for a second tour, you’ve got to understand

me, the me that existed then, very young, idealistic, with patriotism as

much a part of me as the color of my eyes. I loved my country, believed

in my country, totally believed, and I couldn’t just shed that belief

like . . . well, like a snake sheds skin.”

They passed a road sign that said they were sixteen miles from Running

Springs and twenty-three miles from Lake Arrowhead.

Rachael said, “So you stayed in Nam another whole year?”

He sighed wearily. “As it turned out. .. two years.”

In his cabin high above Lake Arrowhead, for a time that he could not

measure, Eric Leben drifted in a peculiar twilight state, neither awake

nor asleep, neither alive nor dead, while his genetically altered cells

increased production of enzymes, proteins, and other substances that

would contribute to the healing process. Brief dark dreams and

unassociated nightmare images flickered through his mind, like hideous

shadows leaping in the bloody light of tallow candles.

When at last he rose from his trancelike condition, full of energy

again, he was acutely aware that he had to arm himself and be prepared

for action. His mind was still not entirely clear, his memory

threadbare in places, so he did not know exactly who might be coming

after him, but instinct told him that he was being stalked.

Sure as hell, someone’ll find this place through Sarah Kiel, he told

himself.

That thought jolted him because he could not remember who Sarah Kiel

was. He stood with one hand on a kitchen counter, swaying, straining to

recall the face and identity that went with that name.

Sarah …….

Suddenly he remembered, and he cursed himself for having brought the

damn girl here. The cabin was supposed to be his secret retreat. He

should never have told anyone. One of his problems was that he needed

young women in order to feel young himself, and he always tried to

impress them. Sarah had been impressed by the five-room cabin,

outfitted as it was with all conveniences, the acres of private woods,

and the spectacular view of the lake far below. They’d had good sex

outside, on a blanket, under the boughs of an enormous pine, and he had

felt wonderfully young. But now Sarah knew about his secret retreat,

and through her others-the stalkers whose identities he could not quite

fix upon-might learn of the place and come after him.

With new urgency, Eric pushed away from the counter and headed toward

the door that opened from the kitchen into the garage. He moved less

stiffly than before, with more energy, and his eyes were less both&d by

bright light, and no phantom uncles or insects crept out of the corners

to frighten him, the period of coma had apparently done him some good.

But when he put his hand on the doorknob, he stopped, jolted by another

thought, Sarah can’t tell anyone about this place because Sarah is dead,

I killed her only a few hours ago…

A wave of horror washed over Eric, and he held fast to the doorknob as

if to anchor himself and prevent the wave from sweeping him away into

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