Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle (85 page)

ERIKA TOLD JOCKO
,
Stay down
.

She said it like a scolding mother. She would be a good mother. But wasn't Jocko's mother. Nobody was.

Jocko raised his head. Saw Erika and Victor together. Instantly soaked by rain.

More interesting was the bug. The biggest bug Jocko ever saw. Half as big as Jocko.

This one didn't look tasty. Looked bitter.

In the storm drain, bugs came close to Jocko. Easy to catch. Bugs didn't know his big yellow eyes could see them in the dark.

Something wrong with this bug. Besides being so big.

Suddenly Jocko knew. The way it sneaked. The way it started to rear up. This bug would kill.

Pillowcase. On the floor. In front of his seat. Slip the knot in the shoelace. Inside—soap, soap, soap. The knife.

Quick, quick, quick, Jocko in the rain. Capering toward Erika and Victor.
Don't pirouette
.

THE BUG DIDN'T WANT TO DIE
.

Neither did Jocko. Everything going so well. Soap. His first ride in a car. Someone to talk to. His first pants. Nobody hit him for
hours
. Soon a funny hat. So of course a giant killer bug shows up. Jocko luck.

Two ripping claws. One crushing claw. Six pincers. Stinger. Reciprocating saw for a tongue. Teeth. Teeth behind the first teeth. Everything but a flame-spitting hole. Oh, there it was. A bug born to be bad.

Jocko dropped on it with both knees. Stabbed, slashed, ripped, tore. Picked the bug up, slammed it down. Slammed it again. Slammed it. More stabbing. Fierce. Unrelenting. Jocko scared himself.

The bug squirmed. Tried to wriggle away. But it didn't fight back, and it died.

Puzzled by the bug's pacifism, Jocko got to his feet.
Maybe the sight of Jocko paralyzed it with terror. Jocko stood in the driving rain. Breathless. Dizzy.

Rain snapping on his bald head.

Lost the baseball cap. Ah. Standing on it.

Erika and Victor seemed speechless.

Gasping, Jocko said, “Bug.”

Erika said, “I couldn't see it. Until it was dead.”

Jocko triumphant. Heroic. His time had come. His time at last. To shine.

Victor skewered Jocko with his stare.
“You
could see it?”

The cap's expansion strap was hooked around Jocko's toes.

Wheezing, Jocko said to Erika, “It was … gonna … kill you.”

Victor disagreed: “It's programmed to spare anyone with the scent of New Race flesh. Of we three, it would have killed only me.”

Jocko had saved Victor from certain death.

Victor said, “You're of my flesh, but I don't know you.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Jocko wanted to lie down in front of one of the cars and drive over himself.

“What are you?” Victor demanded.

Jocko wanted to beat himself with a bucket.

“Who
are you?” Victor pressed.

Trying to shake the cap off his foot, panting, Jocko said without the desired force: “I am … the child of … Jonathan Harker.”

He raised the knife. The blade had broken off in the bug.

“He died … to birth me….”

“You're the parasitical second self that developed spontaneously from Harker's flesh.”

“I am … a juggler….”

“Juggler?”

“Never mind,” said Jocko. He dropped the handle of the knife. Furiously kicked his foot. Cast off the cap.

“I will need to study your eyes,” said Victor.

“Sure. Why not.”

Jocko turned away. Skip, skip, skip forward, hop backward. Skip, skip, skip forward, hop backward. Twirl.

AS SHE WATCHED
the troll pirouetting across the blacktop, Erika wanted to hurry to him, halt him, give him a hug, and tell him that he was very brave.

Victor said, “Where did he come from?”

“He showed up at the house a little while ago. I knew you'd want to examine him.”

“What is he doing?”

“It's just a thing he does.”

“I'll find answers in him,” Victor said. “Why they're changing form. Why the flesh has gone wrong. There's much to learn from him.”

“I'll bring him to the farm.”

“The eyes are a bonus,” Victor said. “If he's awake when I dissect the eyes, I'll have the best chance of understanding how they function.”

She watched Victor walk to the open door of the S600.

Before getting into the car, he looked again at the skipping, hopping, twirling troll, and then at Erika. “Don't let him dance away into the night.”

“I won't. I'll bring him to the farm.”

As Victor got into the sedan and drove out of the rest area, Erika walked into the middle of the roadway.

Wind tore the night, ripped rain from the black sky, shook the trees as if to throttle the life from them. The world was wild and violent and strange.

The troll walked on his hands, down the center line of the highway.

When she could no longer hear the S600 above the wind roar, Erika glanced back, watching the distant taillights until they were out of sight.

The troll capered in a serpentine pattern, lane to lane, pausing now and then to spring off the pavement and kick his heels together.

Wind danced with the night, anointed the earth with rain, inspired the trees to celebrate. The world was free and exuberant and wondrous.

Erika rose onto the points of her toes, spread her arms wide, took a deep breath of the wind, and stood for a moment in expectation of the twirl.

AS THE LANDFILL
was encircled by a formidable fence, so was the tank farm. Instead of three staggered rows of loblolly pines, there were clusters of live oaks festooned with moss.

The sign at the entry gate identified the resident corporation as
GEGENANGRIFF
, German for
counterattack
, Victor's little joke, as his life was dedicated to an assault against the world.

The main building covered over two acres: a two-story brick structure with clean modern lines. Because every policeman, public official, and bureaucrat in the parish was a replicant, he'd had no trouble with building-code requirements, building inspections, or government approvals.

He opened the rolling iron gate with his remote control and parked in the underground garage.

The experience at the rest area had blown away the
last clinging doubts that made him wary of returning to the farm. He'd been spared from a murderous creation of his own, Chameleon, by the mutant being that had evolved out of Jonathan Harker, who himself was one of the New Race. To Victor, this strongly suggested—nay, confirmed beyond question—that the entire New Race enterprise was so brilliantly conceived and so powerfully executed that within it had evolved a system of synchronicity that would ensure that errors in the project, if any, would self-correct.

Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist, had theorized that synchronicity, a word he invented for remarkable coincidences that have profound effects, is an acausal connecting principle that can in strange ways impose order on our lives. Victor enjoyed Jung's work, though he would have liked to rewrite all the man's essays and books, to bring to them a far greater depth of insight than poor Carl possessed. Synchronicity was not integral to the universe, as Carl believed, but sprang up only during those certain periods in certain cultures when human endeavor was as close to fully rational as it would ever get. The more rational the culture, the more likely that synchronicity would arise as a means of correcting what few errors the culture committed.

Victor's implementation of the New Race and of his vision for a unified world was so rational, was worked out in such exquisitely logical detail, that a system of synchronicity evolved within it while he wasn't looking. Something had gone wrong with the creation tanks at the Hands of Mercy without any indication to
Victor, and before more imperfect New Race models could be produced, Deucalion appeared after two centuries to burn down the facility—an incredible coincidence indeed! Deucalion assumed that he was destroying Victor, when instead he was preventing more flawed models of the New Race from being produced, forcing Victor to use only the vastly improved creation tanks at the farm. Synchronicity had corrected the error. And no doubt synchronicity would deal with Deucalion, as well, and clean up other minor annoyances—Detectives O'Connor and Maddison, among others—that might otherwise inhibit Victor in his ever more rapid march toward absolute dominance of all things.

With Victor's unstoppable drive for power, with his singular intellect, with his cold materialism and his ruthless practicality, and now with synchronicity on his side, he had become untouchable, immortal.

He was immortal.

He took the elevator from the parking garage to the tank fields on the main floor. When the doors opened and he stepped through, he found the entire staff, sixty-two of the New Race, waiting for him, as throughout the ages commoners have gathered along streets to bask in the glory of passing royalty or to honor great political leaders whose courage and commitment those drudges of the proletariat could never hope to match.

Having stood in the rain while the synchronistic Harker mutant had killed Chameleon, Victor was disheveled as no one had ever seen him. On any other
day, he might have been keenly annoyed to be seen in a sodden and rumpled suit with his hair disarranged. But in this hour of his transcendence, the condition of his wardrobe and hair did not matter, because his elevation to immortality was clearly evident to this audience, his radiance undiminished.

How they goggled at him, abashed by his wisdom and knowledge, mortified by their ignorance, overawed by his godlike power.

Raising his arms and spreading them wide, Victor said, “I understand the awe in which you hold your maker, but always remember that the best way to honor him is to bend more diligently to his work, give of yourselves as never before, commit every fiber of your being to the fulfillment of his vision.”

As they came forward, Victor realized that they intended to lift him high and bear him to his office, as throughout history so many enraptured crowds had borne returning heroes through streets to halls of honor. Previously, he would have chastised them for wasting his time and their own. But perhaps this once, considering the momentous nature of the day's events and of his ascendance to the company of the immortals, he would indulge them, because allowing them to attend him in this way, he would surely be inspiring them to greater efforts on his behalf.

JOCKO IN DESPAIR.
Rain-soaked. Feet pulled up on the passenger seat. Thin arms around his legs. Baseball cap turned backward.

Erika behind the wheel. Not driving. Staring at the night.

Victor not dead. Should be but not.

Jocko not dead. Should be but not. Total screwup.

“Jocko is never gonna eat another bug,” Jocko said.

She just stared at the night. Said nothing.

Jocko wished she would say something.

Maybe she would do the right thing. Beat Jocko to death. He deserved it. But no. She was too nice. Typical Jocko luck.

There were things he could do. Put down the power window. Stick his head out. Power the window up. Cut off his head.

Erika said, “I'm programmed for obedience. I've
done things I knew he wouldn't approve of—but I haven't actively disobeyed him.”

Jocko could take off his T-shirt. Tear it in strips. Pack strips in his nose. Roll up his cap. Stuff it down his throat. Suffocate.

“Something's happened to me tonight,” she said. “I don't know. Maybe I could drive right by the farm, maybe just drive and drive forever.”

Jocko could go into woods. Prick a thumb. Wait for wild pigs to smell blood, come and eat him.

“But I'm afraid to pop the parking brake and drive. What if I can't pass the place? What if I pull in there? What if I'm not even able to let you go free on your own?”

Jocko raised one hand. “May I say?”

“What is it?”

“Jocko wonders if you have an ice pick.”

“Why do you need an ice pick?”

“Do you have one?”

“No.”

“Never mind.”

She leaned forward. Forehead on steering wheel. Closed her eyes. Made a thin, sad sound.

Should be possible to commit suicide with a tire jack. Think about it. Think. Think.

“May I say?”

“Say what?”

“See Jocko's ear?”

“Yes.”

“Is ear hole big enough, he could fit in the end of your tire jack?”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

With sudden determination, she released the parking brake. Put the 550 in gear, drove out of the rest area.

“Are we going somewhere?” Jocko asked.

“Somewhere.”

“Will we go past a high cliff?”

“No. Not on this road.”

“Will we cross any train tracks?”