Creature (45 page)

He’s not in there!

The thought had come into her mind out of nowhere. She tried to tell herself that it was dumb—that if Mark wasn’t in the coffin, they wouldn’t be burying it.

But the thought stayed with her. Several times since the funeral—she wasn’t sure how many—she’d come awake in the middle of the night, the memory of a dream fresh in her mind.

It was like she was in the grave, too, and Mark was with her, and they were both pounding on the sides of the coffin, but nobody could hear them. They knew they were buried and that they weren’t going to be able to get free, but they weren’t dead.

She remembered crying those nights.

The other nights she must have had other dreams that had made her cry, but she didn’t remember them.

Only the one of Mark, struggling to get them both out of the terrible prison of the coffin. When she awakened from the dream and found she wasn’t in the coffin at all, she’d known that Mark wasn’t, either.

Tears threatened to overcome her, and she put the thought out of her mind, determined not to start crying again. She got out of bed and dressed, pulling a clean pair of jeans out of the bottom drawer of the dresser they’d brought over from the house on Telluride Drive. Then she put on one of Mark’s old flannel shirts and pulled a sweater over that.

She liked the feel of Mark’s shirt against her skin, even though it was much too big for her; and even though it had been washed last week, she imagined she could still smell Mark in the shirt. When she wore it, she felt close to him.

It was as she left her room that she decided what she was going to do that morning.

Today, she would go and visit her parents.

The Harrises were already at the breakfast table when Kelly came out and silently took her place next to Linda. Mrs. Harris, whom she still hadn’t managed to call Aunt Elaine—even though Mrs. Harris had told her she ought to—was looking at her. She finally managed a polite smile.

“Did you sleep all right, Kelly?”

She nodded, then her gaze returned to the stack of pancakes on the plate. She really wasn’t very hungry, but she
remembered her mother telling her that it wasn’t polite not to eat whatever was put in front of you.

She began forking the heavy cakes into her mouth.

   Twenty minutes later, when her plate was empty, Kelly looked up shyly. “May I be excused?” she asked.

“Of course,” Elaine Harris told her.

She scuttled out of her chair and went back to her room, where she dug in the bottom drawer of her dresser until she found the little bank she had kept her allowance in for as long as she could remember.

She pried the bottom of the little brass box open and pulled out five dollars. She wasn’t certain how much flowers cost, but it seemed like five dollars should be enough. She hid the bank away again, pulled on her jacket, then walked quietly to the front door. She’d just pulled it open when she heard a voice behind her.

“Where are you going, Kelly?”

It was Linda, and Kelly looked shyly up at her. “The—The cemetery,” she admitted, and felt herself blush. “I just wanted to go visit my family.”

Linda smiled at her. “Can I go with you?”

Kelly hesitated, then bobbed her head. “All right.”

Half an hour later they walked into the little graveyard behind the church and slowly approached the three graves that were lined up next to each other, a single wide slab of marble marking the spot. In Kelly’s hand were two red roses. At the flower shop, when she’d bought them, Linda had asked if she didn’t want three, but Kelly had shaken her head, and Linda, frowning thoughtfully, had said nothing. Now, as they stood in front of the graves, Linda watched as Kelly carefully placed one of the roses on her mother’s grave and the other on her father’s. Only when the little girl finally straightened up did Linda speak.

“Why didn’t you get one for Mark?” she asked.

Kelly was silent for several seconds, then her brows knit thoughtfully. “B-Because he’s not here,” she said, her voice barely audible.

Linda felt her heart skip a beat and her breath catch in her throat. “Not here?” she echoed.

Kelly shook her head.

“He’s not dead,” she said. Her eyes drifted toward the mountains to the east. “I think he’s up there,” she said. “I think he’s up there, and he’s going to come back someday.” Her eyes met Linda’s, and there was a pleading quality to them that made Linda want to cry. “If he were really dead, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? I mean, wouldn’t I feel it, like I do about Mom and Dad?”

Linda slowly nodded.

“But I don’t,” Kelly said. “I just feel like Mark isn’t dead at all.”

Now it was Linda who was silent for a few moments. Finally, she reached out and took Kelly’s hand.

“I know,” she said as they slowly walked out of the cemetery. “I feel the same way.” She smiled at Kelly again, and winked. “But we won’t tell anybody, will we? It’ll just be our own little secret.”

Kelly said nothing, but squeezed Linda’s hand.

Now she didn’t feel quite so alone in the world.

   “But what if he’s not dead?” Phil Collins asked. He was in Marty Ames’s private quarters in the sports center, and though a fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth, its warmth had done nothing to dispel the chill Collins felt every time he glanced out the enormous picture window that faced the mountains. The thought that Mark Tanner might still be alive up there somewhere had haunted him from the moment Jerry Harris’s men had given up the search two days after Mark’s disappearance. But now Marty Ames looked at him scornfully, and Collins felt the sting of the doctor’s open contempt.

“How many times do I have to explain it?” Ames said, his voice taking on the condescending tone he might have used on a child. “He was already dying when he escaped. Every system in his body had gone out of balance—his growth hormones, adrenal gland, the works. You saw what he was like when we brought him out here. He was already half crazy. The only way we were able to keep him under control at all was with heavy doses of barbiturates.”

“Which didn’t work,” Collins reminded him, his voice bitter.

“All right, I’ll admit we shouldn’t have lost him,” Ames replied. “But the fact is we did, and the fact is also that he’s dead! Christ, Collins—he was sick, he was going crazy, and he didn’t know anything about survival in the first place. You really think he could have survived up there?”

He nodded toward the mountains, and as if to underscore his words, a gust of wind howled outside, rattling the shutters and making the pine trees bend.

“I suppose not,” Collins reluctantly agreed. Each day was getting shorter than the one before. Though it was only six o’clock, it was already dark outside. But the mountains, he knew, were covered with snow now, and this morning he’d seen a few early skiers heading up the valley toward the lift, intent on being the first to hit the slopes that year.

What Ames had told him made sense. “But I still wish we knew for sure.”

“We never will,” Ames told him, rising to his feet in an obvious gesture of dismissal.

Collins drained the last of a double shot of bourbon from the glass in his hand, then heaved himself out of his chair and walked to the door, where his thick, plaid hunting jacket hung from a brass hook on the wall. Shrugging himself into it, he eyed Ames warily. “What about the rest of the boys?” he asked. “How are they looking?”

Ames offered him a wintry smile. “If you mean are any of them getting sick, the answer is no,” he said coolly. “If you mean are any more of them
going
to get sick, obviously
I can’t tell you. That’s what experiments are all about, you know: finding out what will happen.” He held the door open for Collins, and as the coach left the apartment on the second floor and headed for the staircase, Ames spoke once more, his voice edged with sarcasm. “Sure you’re not afraid to walk home alone in the dark, Collins? You never know what might come out of the hills, do you?”

Collins ignored him, walking heavily down the broad staircase and leaving the lodge. He walked quickly toward the main gate, where men were now posted twenty-four hours a day, and nodded to the guard as he passed through. As he moved down the driveway toward the main road for the half-mile walk back to his home on the eastern fringes of the town, he found his pace quickening and suddenly wished he’d brought his car instead of deciding that the hike would be good for him.

   Five minutes after Collins left his office, Marty Ames glanced at his watch, winced at the lateness of the hour, then shrugged indifferently: If Jerry Harris didn’t want to wait for him, that was his problem. After all, Ames was in the driver’s seat now, at least as far as TarrenTech was concerned. They’d covered up so much, allowed themselves to become so deeply entangled in Ames’s research, that they would never be able to extricate themselves. From now on, Jerry Harris—and Ted Thornton, too—would do exactly as Marty Ames told them.

As he left the building and slid behind the wheel of one of the station wagons with
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH
emblazoned on its side, he smiled to himself. He was, indeed, the man who knew too much, and it was his own knowledge—his own brilliance—that made his position within TarrenTech impregnable.

He pulled through the gates, raising only a single finger from the steering wheel as an acknowledgment of the guard’s
presence, then stepped on the accelerator, his whole body responding to the surge of power from the car’s engine. The car was still gaining speed as it passed Phil Collins a minute later. Ames, if he noticed the coach at all, didn’t bother even to wave to him, let alone offer him a lift.

Ten minutes later he was on the west side of Silverdale, speeding toward the TarrenTech building. His mind was only partly concentrating on the road, for most of his attention was focused, as always, on his research. A new family was arriving in Silverdale next week, and the medical records for their son had been placed on Ames’s desk only that morning. Already his mind was at work on the boy’s treatment and how he might avoid the failures he had experienced with Mark Tanner, Jeff LaConner, and Randy Stevens.

When the headlights of the station wagon first picked up the oddly hulking shape that stood frozen in the middle of the road a hundred yards ahead, Ames didn’t even see it.

And when he did see it a couple of seconds later, his first thought was that it must be a deer, for all he could truly see in the glare of the headlights was the bright glow of a pair of eyes shining out from the dark shape.

Large, animal eyes.

Then, as the car sped closer, Ames realized that it was not a deer in the road at all. It was another sort of creature entirely.

A creature of his own creation.

He gasped as he stared at Mark Tanner.

It wasn’t possible—the boy should have been dead by now—should have been dead at least a week ago! Ames’s hands froze on the wheel as he stared, transfixed, at the creature that now seemed to be hypnotized by the glare of the lights.

The car was only a few yards away from Mark when Ames suddenly realized that the boy wasn’t going to move out of the path of the speeding vehicle, that he was only going to stare dumbly into the headlights until the car overtook him, and crushed him.

Ames was going to kill his own creation.

At the last second, he knew he couldn’t do it.

He jerked his right foot off the accelerator and smashed it down on the brake, at the same time twisting the wheel violently to the right.

The tires screeched angrily as they lost their traction on the pavement, and the station wagon slewed off the road, shooting across the shallow ditch beyond the shoulder only to smash head-on into a boulder on the other side.

Marty Ames experienced an odd sensation of detached surprise as the frame of the station wagon crumpled beneath the force of the impact, and the engine block moved back, jamming the steering wheel and the twisted wreckage of the dashboard into Ames’s chest. At the same moment that the wheel crushed his chest, his head flew forward, snapping his neck and shattering the windshield.

He was dead even before the brief moment of surprise had faded away.

   Mark Tanner gazed curiously at the wreckage of the car, then crouched low to the ground. His eyes—the wary, canny eyes of an animal—remained fixed on the ruins of the station wagon as he crept close. He paused a few feet away, sniffing cautiously at the air, then reached out and touched the twisted metal of the driver’s door, which was attached to the body of the car by only a single broken hinge.

The metal felt cold to his touch. He moved his finger away and touched the neck of the man inside the car.

Though the man’s face was covered with blood and totally unrecognizable, Mark knew who he was.

For a moment he had an urge to wrench Martin Ames loose from the wreckage and tear his body limb from limb, leaving the remains wherever they fell.

But then the urge passed, and he turned away, silently disappearing into the night.

* * *

The wind was rising now, and Phil Collins tugged his jacket collar up around his neck, hunching his shoulders, resisting the urge to turn around and look up toward the mountains that rose around him.

He came to the corner of Aspen Street and turned right. He paused then, and his skin crawled with the uneasy sensation that he was being watched.

Now he did turn around, shading his eyes against the glare of the streetlamp that glowed overhead, but seeing nothing in the inky darkness; only a silent blackness that seemed to close in around him, a suffocating, strangely malignant stillness.

He told himself he was imagining things, but once more his pace quickened.

His house was dark as he approached it, and he had a fleeting moment of uncertainty as he tried to remember if he’d turned the porch light on or not. But of course he hadn’t—it had still been broad daylight when he’d left the place a couple of hours before. He took the steps to the front porch in two quick bounds, then reached up to the ledge under the eaves for the key that he always left there.

A moment later he stepped through the front door and groped for the wall switch. The overhead light came on, washing the shadows from the living room.