Midnight Read online

  As Carson’s current guest talked about a weekend he’d spent at an arts festival in Havana with Fidel Castro—“a great guy, a funny guy, a compassionate guy”—Tessa got up from the bed and went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. As she was squeezing Crest onto the brush, she heard someone try the door to her room.

  The small bath was off the smaller foyer. When she stepped to the threshold, she was within a couple of feet of the door to the hall, close enough to see the knob twisting back and forth as someone tested the lock. They weren’t even being subtle about it. The knob clicked and rattled, and the door clattered against the frame.

  She dropped her toothbrush and hurried to the telephone that stood on the nightstand.

  No dial tone.

  She jiggled the cutoff buttons, pressed 0 for operator, but nothing worked. The motel switchboard was shut down. The phone was dead.

  30

  Several times Chrissie had to scurry off the road, taking cover in the brush along the verge, until an approaching car or truck went past. One of them was a Moonlight Cove police car, heading toward town, and she was pretty sure it was the one that had come out to the house. She hunkered down in tall grass and milkweed stalks, and remained there until the black-and-white’s taillights dwindled to tiny red dots and finally vanished around a turn.

  A few houses were built along the first mile and a half of that two-lane blacktop. Chrissie knew some of the people who lived in them: the Thomases, the Stones, the Elswicks. She was tempted to go to one of those places, knock on the door, and ask for help. But she couldn’t be sure that those people were still the nice folks they had once been. They might have changed, too, like her parents. Either something SUPERNATURAL or from outer space was taking possession of people in and around Moonlight Cove, and she had seen enough scary movies and read enough scary books to know that when those kind of forces were at work, you could no longer trust anyone.

  She was betting nearly everything on Father Castelli at Our Lady of Mercy because he was a holy man, and no demons from hell would be able to get a grip on him. Of course, if the problem was aliens from another world, Father Castelli would not be protected just because he was a man of God.

  In that case, if the priest had been taken over, and if Chrissie managed to get away from him after she discovered he was one of the enemy, she’d go straight to Mrs. Irene Tokawa, her teacher. Mrs. Tokawa was the smartest person Chrissie knew. If aliens were taking over Moonlight Cove, Mrs. Tokawa would have realized something was wrong before it was too late. She would have taken steps to protect herself, and she would be one of the last that the monsters would get their hooks into. Hooks or tentacles or claws or pincers or whatever.

  So Chrissie hid from passing traffic, sneaked past the houses scattered along the county road, and proceeded haltingly but steadily toward town. The horned moon, sometimes revealed above the fog, had traversed most of the sky; it would soon be gone. A stiff breeze had swept in from the west, marked by periodic gusts strong enough to whip her hair straight up in the air as if it were a blond flame leaping from her head. Although the temperature had fallen to only about fifty degrees, the night felt much colder during those turbulent moments when the breeze temporarily became a blustering wind. The positive side was that the more miserable the cold and wind made her, the less aware she was of that other discomfort—hunger.

  “Waif Found Wandering Hungry and Dazed After Encounter with Space Aliens,” she said, reading that imagined headline from an issue of The National Enquirer that existed only in her mind.

  She was approaching the intersection of the county route and Holliwell Road, feeling good about the progress she was making, when she nearly walked into the arms of those she was trying to avoid.

  To the east of the county route, Holliwell was a dirt road leading up into the hills, under the interstate, and all the way to the old, abandoned Icarus Colony—a dilapidated twelve-room house, barn, and collapsing outbuildings where a group of artists had tried to establish an ideal communal society back in the 1950s. Since then it had been a horse-breeding facility (failed), the site of a weekly flea market and auction (failed), a natural food restaurant (failed), and had long ago settled into ruin. Kids knew all about it because it was a spooky place and thus the site of many tests of courage. To the west, Holliwell Road was paved and led along the edge of the town limits, past some of the newer homes in the area, past New Wave Microtech, and eventually out to the north point of the cove, where Thomas Shaddack, the computer genius, lived in a huge, weird-looking house. Chrissie didn’t intend to go either east or west on Holliwell; it was just a milestone on her trek, and when she crossed it she would be at the northeast corner of the Moonlight Cove city limits.

  She was within a hundred feet of Holliwell when she heard the low but swiftly swelling sound of a racing engine. She stepped away from the road, over a narrow ditch at the verge, waded through weeds, and took cover against the thick trunk of an ancient pine. Even as she hunkered down by the tree, she got a fix on the direction from which the vehicle was approaching—west—and then she saw its headlights spearing into the intersection just south of her. A truck pulled into view on Holliwell, ignoring the stop sign, and braked in the middle of the intersection. Fog whirled and plumed around it.

  Chrissie could see that heavy-duty, black, extended-bed pickup fairly well because, as the junction of Holliwell and the county road was the site of frequent accidents, a single streetlight had been installed on the northeast corner for better visibility and as a warning to drivers. The truck bore the distinctive New Wave insignia on the door, which she could recognize even at a distance because she had seen it maybe a thousand times before: a white and blue circle the size of a dinner plate, the bottom half of which was a cresting blue wave. The truck had a large bed, and at the moment its cargo was men; six or eight were sitting in the back.

  The instant that the pickup halted in the intersection, two men vaulted over the tailgate. One of them went to the wooded point at the northwest corner of the intersection and slipped into the trees, no more than a hundred feet south of the pine from which Chrissie was watching him. The other crossed to the southeast corner of the junction and took up a position in weeds and chaporral.

  The pickup turned south on the county road and sped away.

  Chrissie suspected that the remaining men in the truck would be let off at other points along the eastern perimeter of Moonlight Cove, where they would take up watch positions. Further more, the truck had been big enough to carry at least twenty men, and no doubt others had been dropped off as it had come eastward along Holliwell from the New Wave building in the west. They were surrounding Moonlight Cove with sentries. She was quite sure they were looking for her. She had seen something she had not been meant to see—her parents in the act of a hideous transformation, shucking off their human disguise—and now she had to be found and “converted”—as Tucker had put it—before she had a chance to warn the world.

  The sound of the black truck receded.

  Silence settled in like a damp blanket.

  Fog swirled and churned and eddied in countless currents, but the overriding tidal forces in the air pushed it relentlessly toward the dark and serried hills.

  Then the breeze abruptly ratcheted up until it became a real wind again, whispering in the tall weeds, soughing through the evergreens. It produced a soft and strangely forlorn thrumming from a nearby road sign.

  Though Chrissie knew where the two men had gone to ground, she could not see them. They were well hidden.

  31

  Fog flew past the patrol car and eastward through the night, driven by a breeze that was swiftly becoming a full wind, and ideas flew through Sam’s mind with the same fluidity. His thoughts were so disturbing that he would have preferred to have sat in mindless stupefaction.

  From considerable prior computer experience, he knew that part of a system’s capabilities could be hidden if the program designer simply deleted some choices fr
om the task menus that appeared on the screen. He stared at the primary menu on the car’s display—A, DISPATCHER; B, CENTRAL FILES; C. BULLETIN BOARD; D. OUTSYSTEM MODEM—and he pressed E, though no E task was offered.

  Words appeared on the terminal HELLO, OFFICER DORN.

  There was an E. He’d entered either a secret data base requiring ritual responses for access or an interactive information system that would respond to questions he typed on the keyboard. If the former was the case, if passwords or phrases were required, and if he typed the wrong response, he was in trouble; the computer would shut him out and sound an alarm in police headquarters to warn them that an impersonator was using Dorn’s number.

  Proceeding with caution, he typed HELLO.

  MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

  Sam decided to proceed as if this was just what it seemed to be—a straightforward, question-and-answer program. He tapped the keyboard MENU.

  The screen blanked for a moment, then the same words reappeared MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

  He tried again PRIMARY MENU.

  MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

  MAIN MENU.

  MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

  Using a system accessed by question and response, with which one was unfamiliar, meant finding the proper commands more or less by trial and error. Sam tried again FIRST MENU.

  At last he was rewarded.

  CHOOSE ONE

  A. NEW WAVE PERSONNEL

  B. PROJECT MOONHAWK

  C. SHADDACK

  He had found a secret connection between New Wave, its founder Thomas Shaddack, and the Moonlight Cove police. But he didn’t know yet what the connection was or what it meant.

  He suspected that choice C might link him to Shaddack’s personal computer terminal, allowing him to have a dialogue with Shaddack that would be more private than a conversation conducted on police-band radio. If that was the case, then Shaddack and the local cops were indeed involved in a conspiracy so criminal that it required a very high degree of security. He did not punch C because, if he called up Shaddack’s computer and got Mr. Big himself on the other end, there was no way he could successfully pretend to be Reese Dorn.

  Choice A probably would provide him with a roster of New Wave’s executives and department heads, and maybe with codes that would allow him to link up with their personal terminals as well. He didn’t want to talk with any of them either.

  Besides, he felt that he was on borrowed time. He surveyed the parking lot again and peered especially hard at the deeper pools of shadow beyond the reach of the sodium-vapor lamps. He’d been in the patrol car for fifteen minutes, and no one had come or gone from the municipal-building lot in that time. He doubted his luck would hold much longer, and he wanted to learn as much as possible in whatever minutes remained before he was interrupted.

  PROJECT MOONHAWK was the most mysterious and interesting of the three choices, so he pushed B, and another menu appeared.

  CHOOSE ONE:

  A. CONVERTED

  B. PENDING CONVERSION

  C. SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION - LOCAL

  D. SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION - SECOND STAGE

  He punched choice A, and a column of names and addresses appeared on the screen. They were people in Moonlight Cove, and at the head of the column was the notation 1967 NOW CONVERTED.

  Converted? From what? To what? Was there something religious about this conspiracy? Some strange cult? Or maybe “converted” was used in some euphemistic sense or as a code.

  The word gave him the creeps.

  Sam discovered that he could either scroll through the list or access it in alphabetized chunks. He looked up the names of residents whom he either knew of or had met. Loman Watkins was on the converted list. So was Reese Dorn. Burt Peckham, the owner of Knight’s Bridge Tavern, was not among the converted, but the entire Perez family, surely the same that operated the restaurant, was on that roster.

  He checked Harold Talbot, the disabled vet with whom he intended to make contact in the morning. Talbot was not on the converted list.

  Puzzled as to the meaning of it all, Sam closed out that file, returned to the main menu, and punched B. PENDING CONVERSION. This brought another list of names and addresses to the VDT, and the column was headed by the words 1104 PENDING CONVERSION. On this roster he found Burt Peckham and Harold Talbot.

  He tried C. SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION - LOCAL, and a submenu of three headings appeared:

  A. MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 6:00 P.M.

  THROUGH

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 6:00 A.M.

  B. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 6:00 A.M.

  THROUGH

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 6:00 P.M.

  C. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 6:00 P.M.

  THROUGH

  MIDNIGHT

  It was now 12:39 A.M. Wednesday, about halfway between the times noted in choice A, so he punched that one another list of names headed by the notation 380 CONVERSIONS SCHEDULED.

  The fine hairs were bristling on the back of Sam’s neck, and he didn’t know why except that the word “conversions” unsettled him. It made him think of that old movie with Kevin McCarthy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  He also thought of the pack that had pursued him earlier in the night. Had they been … converted?

  When he looked up Burt Peckham, he found the tavern owner on the schedule for conversion before 6:00 A.M. However, Harry Talbot was not listed.

  The car shook.

  Sam snapped his head up and reached for the revolver holstered under his jacket.

  Wind. It was only wind. A series of hard gusts shredded holes in the fog and lightly rocked the car. After a moment the wind died to a strong breeze again, and the torn fabric of fog mended itself, but Sam’s heart was still thudding painfully.

  32

  As Tessa put down the useless telephone, the doorknob stopped rattling. She stood by the bed for a while, listening, then ventured warily into the foyer to press her ear against the door.

  She heard voices but not immediately beyond that portal. They were farther down the hallway, peculiar voices that spoke in urgent, raspy whispers. She could not make out anything they said.

  She was sure they were the same ones who had stalked her, unseen, when she had gone for ice and a Diet Coke. Now they were back. And somehow they had knocked out the phones, so she couldn’t call for help. It was crazy, but it was happening.

  Such persistence on their part indicated to Tessa that they were not ordinary rapists or muggers, that they had focused on her because she was Janice’s sister, because she was there to look into Janice’s death. However, she wondered how they had become aware of her arrival in town and why they had chosen to move against her so precipitously, without even waiting to see if she was just going to settle Janice’s affairs and leave. Only she and her mother knew that she intended to attempt a murder investigation of her own.

  Gooseflesh prickled her bare legs, and she felt vulnerable in just a T-shirt and panties. She went quickly to the closet, pulled on jeans and a sweater.

  She wasn’t alone in the motel. There were other guests. Mr. Quinn had said so. Maybe not many, perhaps only another two or three. But if worse came to worst, she could scream, and the other guests would hear her, and her would-be assailants would have to flee.

  She picked up her Rockports, in which she had stuffed the white athletic socks she’d been wearing, and returned to the door.

  Low, hoarse voices hissed and muttered at the far end of the hall—then a bone-jarring crash slammed through the lodge, making her cry out and twitch in surprise. Another crash followed at once. She heard a door give way at another room.

  A woman screamed, and a man shouted, but the oilier voices were what brought a chill of horror to Tessa. There were several of them, three or even four, and they were eerie and shockingly savage. The public corridor beyond her door was filled with harsh wolflike growls, murderous snarls, shrill and excited squeals, an icy keening that was the essence of blood hunger, and other less describable sounds, but
worst of all was that those same inhuman voices, clearly belonging to beasts not men, nevertheless also spat out a few recognizable words: “… need, need … get her, get … get, get … blood, bitch, blood…”

  Leaning against the door, holding on to it for support, Tessa tried to tell herself that the words she heard were from the man and woman whose room had been broken into, but she knew that was not true, because she also heard both a man and woman screaming. Their screams were horrible, almost unbearable, full of terror and agony, as if they were being beaten to death or worse, much worse, being torn apart, ripped limb from limb and gutted.

  A couple of years ago Tessa had been in Northern Ireland, making a documentary about the pointlessness of the needless violence there, and she’d been unfortunate enough to be at a cemetery, at the funeral of one of the endless series of “martyrs”—Catholic or Protestant, it didn’t matter any more, both had a surfeit of them—when the crowd of mourners had metamorphosed into a pack of savages. They had streamed from the churchyard into nearby streets, looking for those of a different faith, and soon they’d come across two British plain clothes army officers patrolling the area in an unmarked car. By its sheer size, the mob blocked the car’s advance, encircled it, smashed in the windows, and dragged the would-be peacekeepers out onto the pavement. Tessa’s two technical assistants had fled, but she had waded into the melee with her shoulder-mounted videotape camera, and through the lens she had seemed to be looking beyond the reality of this world into hell itself. Eyes wild, faces distorted with hatred and rage, grief forgotten and bloodlust embraced, the mourners had tirelessly kicked the fallen Britons, then pulled them to their feet only to pummel and stab them, slammed them repeatedly against the car until their spines broke and their skulls cracked, then dropped them and stomped them and tore at them and stabbed them again, though by that time they were both dead. Howling and shrieking, cursing, chanting slogans that degenerated into meaningless chains of sounds, mindless rhythms, like a flock of carrion-eating birds, they plucked at the shattered bodies, though they weren’t like earthly birds, neither buzzards nor vultures, but like demons that had flown up from the pit, tearing at the dead men not only with the intention of consuming their flesh but with the hot desire to rip out and steal their souls. Two of those frenzied men had noticed Tessa, had seized her camera and smashed it, and had thrown her to the ground. For one terrible moment she was sure that they would dismember her in their frenzy. Two of them leaned down, grabbing at her clothes. Their faces were so wrenched with hatred that they no longer looked human, but like gargoyles that had come to life and had climbed down from the roofs of cathedrals. They had surrendered all that was human in themselves and let loose the gene-encoded ghosts of the primitives from whom they were descended. “For God’s sake, no!” she had cried. “For God’s sake, please!” Perhaps it was the mention of God or just the sound of a human voice that had not devolved into the hoarse gnarl of a beast, but for some reason they let go and hesitated. She seized that reprieve to scramble away from them, through the churning, blood-crazed mob to safety.

  What she heard now, at the other end of the motel corridor, was just like that. Or worse.

  33

  Beginning to sweat even though the patrol car’s heater was not on, still spooked by every sudden gust of wind, Sam called up submenu item B, which showed the conversions scheduled from 6:00 this coming morning until 6:00 p.m. that evening. Those names were preceded by the heading 450 CONVERSIONS SCHEDULED. Harry Talbot’s name was not on that list either.

  Choice C, six o’clock Thursday evening through midnight the same day, indicated that 274 conversions were scheduled. Harry Talbot’s name and address were on that third and final list.

  Sam mentally added the numbers mentioned in each of the three conversion periods—380, 450, and 274—and realized they totaled 1104, which was the same number that headed the list of pending conversions. Add that number to 1967, the total listed as already converted, and the grand total, 3071, was probably the population of Moonlight Cove. By the next time the clock struck midnight, a little less than twenty-three hours from now, the entire town would be converted—whatever the hell that meant.

  He keyed out of the submenu and was about to switch off the car’s engine and get out of there when the word ALERT appeared on the VDT and began to flash. Fear