The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Stories

gate, he climbed onto the ridge above, used the snowshoes to circle the guard, returned to the road, and threw the snowshoes away. Security eventually found them. Bollinger was probably at the bottom gate two and a half hours after he walked out of the door here, three hours after he was infected. That was just about the time that another researcher walked into his lab, saw the cultures of Wuhan-400 broken open on the floor, and set off the alarm. Meanwhile, in spite of the razor wire, Bollinger climbed over the fence. Then he made his way to the road that serves the wildlife research center. He started out of the forest, toward the county lane, which is about five miles from the turnoff to the labs, and after only three miles—”

“He ran into Mr. Jaborski and the scouts,” Elliot said.

“And by then he was able to pass the disease on to them,” Tina said as she finished bundling Danny into the blanket.

“Yeah,” Dombey said. “He must have reached the scouts five or five and a half hours after he was infected. By then he was worn out. He’d used up most of his physical reserves getting out of the lab reservation, and he was also beginning to feel some of the early symptoms of Wuhan-400. Dizziness. Mild nausea. The scoutmaster had parked the expedition’s minibus on a lay-by about a mile and a half into the woods, and he and his assistant and the kids had walked in another half-mile before they encountered Larry Bollinger. They were just about to move off the road, into the trees, so they would be away from any sign of civilization when they set up camp for their first night in the wilderness. When Bollinger discovered they had a vehicle, he tried to persuade them to drive him all the way into Reno. When they were reluctant, he made up a story about a friend being stranded in the mountains with a broken leg. Jaborski didn’t believe Bollinger’s story for a minute, but he finally offered to take him to the wildlife center where a rescue effort could be mounted. That wasn’t good enough for Bollinger, and he got hysterical. Both Jaborski and the other scout leader decided they might have a dangerous character on their hands. That was when the security team arrived. Bollinger tried to run from them. Then he tried to tear open one of the security men’s decontamination suits. They were forced to shoot him.”

“The spacemen,” Danny said. Everyone stared at him.

He huddled in his yellow blanket on the bed, and the memory made him shiver. “The spacemen came and took us away.”

“Yeah,” Dombey said. “They probably did look a little bit like spacemen in their decontamination suits. They brought everyone here and put them in isolation. One day later all of them were dead . . . except Danny.” Dombey sighed. “Well . . . you know most of the rest.”

THE HELICOPTER CONTINUED TO FOLLOW THE FRO-zen river north, through the snow-swept valley.

The ghostly, slightly luminous winter landscape made George Alexander think of graveyards. He had an affinity for cemeteries. He liked to take long, leisurely walks among the tombstones. For as long as he could remember, he had been fascinated with death, with the mechanics and the meaning of it, and he had longed to know what it was like on the other side—without, of course, wishing to commit himself to a one-way journey there. He didn’t want to die; he only wanted to know. Each time that he personally killed someone, he felt as if he were establishing another link to the world beyond this one; and he hoped, once he had made enough of those, linkages, that he would be rewarded with a vision from the other side. One day maybe he would be standing in a graveyard, before the tombstone of one of his victims, and the person he had killed would reach out to him from beyond and let him see, in some vivid clairvoyant fashion, exactly what death was like. And then he would know.

“Not long now,” Jack Morgan said.

Alexander peered anxiously through the sheeting snow into which the chopper moved like a blind man running full-steam into endless darkness. He touched the gun that he carried in a shoulder holster, and he thought of Christina Evans.

To Kurt Hensen, Alexander said, “Kill Stryker on sight. We don’t need him for anything. But don’t hurt the woman. I want to question her. She’s going to tell me who the traitor is. She’s going to tell me who helped her get into the labs even if I have to break her fingers one at a time to make her open up.”

• • •

In the isolation chamber, when Dombey finished speaking, Tina said, “Danny looks so awful. Even though he doesn’t have the disease anymore, will he be all right?”

“I think so,” Dombey said. “He just needs to be fattened up. He couldn’t keep anything on his stomach because recently they’ve been reinfecting him, testing him to destruction, like I said. But once he’s out of here, he should put weight on fast. There is one thing . . .” Tina stiffened at the note of worry in Dombey’s voice. “What? What one thing?”

“Since all these reinfections, he’s developed a spot on the parietal lobe of the brain.” Tina felt ill. “No.”

“But apparently it isn’t life-threatening,” Dombey said quickly. “As far as we can determine, it’s not a tumor. Neither a malignant nor a benign tumor. At least it doesn’t have any of the characteristics of a tumor. It isn’t scar tissue either. And not a blood clot.” “Then what is it?” Elliot asked.

Dombey pushed one hand through his thick, curly hair. “The current analysis says the new growth is consistent with the structure of normal brain tissue. Which doesn’t make sense. But we’ve checked our data a hundred times, and we can’t find anything wrong with that diagnosis. Except it’s impossible. What we’re seeing on the X rays isn’t within our experience. So when you get him out of here, take him to a brain specialist. Take him to a dozen specialists until someone can tell you what’s wrong with him. There doesn’t