Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

she saw the knife rack filled with gleaming blades.

      LEAVING HARKER’S APARTMENT, Michael hadn’t made any attempt to get behind the wheel. He tossed the keys to Carson.

      He rode shotgun – literally, holding the weapon between his knees, the muzzle toward the ceiling.

      By habit, as they rocketed through the night, he said, “Stop trying for the land-speed record. The dispatcher will have someone there ahead of us, anyway”

      Accelerating, Carson came back at him: “Did you say something, Michael? ‘Yes, Carson, I said, Faster, faster.’ Yeah, that’s what I thought you said, Michael.”

      “You do a lousy imitation of me,” he complained. “You’re not nearly funny enough.”

      WITH ONE HAND on his abdomen, as if suffering a stomachache, Harker prowled the kitchen, moving toward the knife rack and then away, but then toward it once more. “Something’s happening,” he said worriedly. “Maybe it’s not going to be like I thought it would.”

      “What’s wrong?” Kathy asked warily.

      “Maybe it’s not going to be good. Not good at all. Something’s coming.”

      Abruptly his face wrenched with pain. He let out a strangled cry and clasped both hands to his abdomen.

      “Jonathan?”

      “I’m splitting.”

      Kathy heard tires squeal and brakes bark as a fast car pulled to a stop in her driveway.

      Looking toward the sound, terror trumping his pain, Harker said, “Father?”

      INSTEAD OF THE WALK-in unicorn gate, Carson favored the driveway and slid to a stop so close to the garage door that even a wizard couldn’t have charmed himself thin enough to fit between the building and the sedan’s bumper.

      She pulled her piece from her paddle holster as she exited the car, and Michael chambered a shell in the shotgun as he came around the back of the car to join her.

      The front door of the house flew open, and Kathy Burke ran onto the porch, down the steps.

      “Thank God,” Carson said.

      “Harker went out the back,” Kathy said.

      Even as she spoke, Carson heard running footsteps and turned, seeking the sound.

      Harker had come along the farther side of the garage. He was off the lawn, into the street, before Carson could draw down on him.

      By now he was in too public an area – houses across the street – to allow her to take a shot. The risk of collateral damage was too high.

      Michael ran, Carson ran, Harker ahead of them, down the middle of the residential street.

      In spite of the doughnuts and the grab-it dinners eaten on their feet, in spite of the ass-fattening time spent at desks filling out the nine yards of paperwork that had become the bane of modern police work, Carson and Michael were fast, movie-cop fast, wolf-on-a-rabbit fast.

      Harker, being inhuman, being some freak brewed up in a lab by Victor Frankenstein, was faster. Along Kathy’s block to the corner and left into another street, along another block and right at the next corner, he opened up his lead.

      Lightning tore the sky, magnolia shadows jumped across the pavement, and a blast of thunder rocked the city so hard that Carson thought she could feel it rumbling in the ground, but the rain did not fall at once, held off.

      They traded the neighborhood of bungalows for low-rise office and apartment buildings.

      Harker ran like a marathon man on meth, moving away, away – and then mid-block he made the mistake of veering into an alleyway that proved to dead-end in a wall.

      He came to the eight-foot-high brick barrier, flung himself at it, scrambled up like a monkey on a stick, but abruptly screamed as if torn by horrendous pain. He fell off the wall, rolled, sprang at once to his feet.

      Carson shouted at him to freeze, as if there were a hope in hell that he would, but she had to go through the motions.

      He went at the wall again, leaped, grabbed the top, too fast for her to sight on him, and clambered over.

      “Get out in front of him!” she shouted to Michael, and he raced back the way they had come, looking for a different route into the street beyond the wall.

      She holstered her pistol, dragged a half-filled garbage can to the end of the alley, climbed onto it, gripped the top of the wall with both hands, levered up, got a leg over.

      Although she was sure that Harker would have escaped, Carson discovered that he had fallen again. He was lying faceup in the street, wriggling like a snake with a broken back.

      If their kind could turn off pain in a crisis, as Deucalion claimed, either Harker had forgotten that option or something was so wrong with him that he had no control of it.

      As she came off the wall, he got to his feet again, staggering toward an intersection.

      They were near the waterfront. Ship-chandlers’ offices, ship brokerages, mostly warehouses. No traffic at this hour, businesses dark, streets silent.

      At the intersection, Michael appeared in the street ahead.

      Trapped between Carson and Michael, Harker turned toward the alleyway on the left, which led toward the waterfront, but it was fenced to twelve feet, with a wide padlocked gate, so he veered toward the front of a warehouse.

      When Michael closed on him with the shotgun, Carson held back, giving him a clear approach.

      Harker built speed toward the man-door at the front of the warehouse, as if he didn’t see it.

      Following the usual protocol, Michael shouted for Harker to stop, to drop, to put his hands behind his head.

      When Harker hit the door, it held, and he screamed, but he didn’t bounce off and go down as he ought to have done. He seemed to stick to it.

      The crash of impact was followed at once by Harker’s cry of rage and the shriek of tortured metal.

      Michael shouted again, five steps from point-blank position.

      The warehouse door sagged. Hinges snapped with reports as loud as gunshots. The door went down, and Harker disappeared inside just as Michael halted and brought the 12-gauge into firing position.

      Carson joined him at the entrance. “He’s going to try to get out the back.”

      Once Harker was on the waterfront – the docks, the boats, the cargo esplanade – there were a thousand ways for him to disappear.

      Offering Michael her pistol, grip first, she said, “You two-gun him at the back when he comes out. Gimme the shotgun, and I’ll move him through to you.”

      This made sense because Michael was taller than she, stronger, and therefore could scale the twelve-foot alleyway fence faster than she could.

      He took her pistol, gave her the shotgun. “Watch your ass. I’d hate for anything to happen to it.”

      The mantle of the black sky cracked. Volcanic blaze of light, volcanic boom. At last the pent-up rain fell in a volume to inspire ark builders.

       CHAPTER 93

      TO THE RIGHT of the broken door, Carson found switches. Light revealed a reception area. Gray-tile floor, pale-blue walls. A few chairs. Low railings to the left and right, desks beyond.

      Directly ahead was a service counter. At the left end, a gate stood open.

      Harker might have been crouched against the farther side of the counter, waiting for her, but she doubted she would find him there. His priority wasn’t to waste her, just to get away.