WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

retriever. The flyer claimed that the animal had escaped from a medical research

lab that was conducting an important cancer experiment. The loss of the dog, the

bulletin claimed, would mean the loss of a million dollars of research money and

countless hours of researchers’ time—and might seriously impede the development

of a cure for certain malignancies. The flyer included a photograph of the dog

and the information that, on the inside of its left ear, it bore a lab tattoo:

the number 33-9. The letter accompanying the flyer requested not only

cooperation but confidentiality. The mailing had been repeated every seven days

since the breakout at Banodyne, and a score of NSA agents had been doing nothing

but phoning animal pounds and vets in the three states to be certain they

remembered the flyer and continued to keep a lookout for a retriever with a

tattoo.

Meanwhile, the urgent search for The Outsider could, with some confidence, be

confined to undeveloped territories because it would be reluctant to show

itself. And there was no chance that someone would think it was cute enough to

take home. Besides, The Outsider had been leaving a trail of death that could be

followed.

Subsequent to the murders at Bordeaux Ridge east of Yorba Linda, the creature

had fled into the unpopulated Chino Hills. From there it had gone north,

crossing into the eastern end of Los Angeles County, where its presence was next

pinpointed, on June 9, on the outskirts of semirural Diamond Bar. The Los

Angeles County Animal Control Authority had received numerous— and

hysterical—reports from Diamond Bar residents regarding wild-animal attacks on

domestic pets. Others called the police, believing the slaughter was the work of

a deranged man. In two nights, more than a score of Diamond Bar’s domestic

animals had been torn to pieces, and the condition of the carcasses left no

doubt in Lem’s mind that the perpetrator was The Outsider.

Then the trail went ice-cold for more than a week, until the morning of June 18,

when two young campers at the foot of Johnstone Peak, on the southern flank of

the vast Angeles National Forest, reported seeing something they insisted was

“from another world.” They had locked themselves in their van, but the creature

had tried repeatedly to get in at them, going so far as to smash a side window

with a rock. Fortunately, the pair kept a .32 pistol in the van, and one of them

opened fire on their assailant, driving it off. The press treated the campers as

a couple of kooks, and on the evening news the happy-talk anchorpersons got a

lot of mileage out of the story.

Lem believed the young couple. On a map, he traced the thinly populated corridor

of land by which The Outsider could have gone from Diamond Bar to the area below

Johnstone Peak: over the San Jose Hills, through Bonelli Regional Park, between

San Dimas and Glendora, then into the wilds. It would have had to cross or go

under three freeways that cut through the area, but if it had traveled in the

deep of night, when there was little or no traffic, it could have passed unseen.

He shifted the hundred men from Marine Intelligence into that portion of the

forest, where they continued their search in civilian dress, in groups of three

and four.

He hoped the campers had hit The Outsider with at least one shot. But no blood

was found at their campsite.

He was beginning to worry that The Outsider might evade capture for a long time.

Lying north of the city of Los Angeles, the Angeles National Forest was

discouragingly immense.

“Nearly as large as the entire state of Delaware,” Cliff Soames said after he

had measured the area on the wall map pinned to the bulletin board in Lem’s

office and had calculated the square miles. Cliff had come from Delaware. He was

relatively new to the West and still had a newcomer’s amazement at the gigantic

scale of everything at this end of the continent. He was also young, with the

enthusiasm of youth, and he was almost dangerously optimistic. Cliff’s

upbringing had been radically different from Lem’s, and he did not feel himself

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