Creature

Chapter Twenty

Sharon Tanner stared dolefully at the list of Colorado mental hospitals she'd copied at the library on Monday. Since then she'd called every one of them, and yesterday had even driven over to Canon City to inquire after CharlotteLaConner personally. But of course she'd gotten nowhere. Although most of the private hospitals had simply denied that they had a patient namedLaConner at all, others had simply refused to answer her questions, citing policies and confidentiality laws.

It was an exercise in futility, and Sharon knew it. Even if Charlotte or Jeff were patients in one of the hospitals she'd called, they might have been admitted under other names, or they might have notations in their records to the effect that no information was to be given out.

And now, on Wednesday afternoon, she was finally ready to face the fact that what she had really been doing was procrastinating, putting off the moment when she would finally have to deal with the mice in the freezer-the one that seemed so normal, the other that was so grotesquely deformed and unnaturally large.

She knew she'd been trying to evade the issue, trying to deny the possibility that the mice had anything to do with the sports center at all. And yet, every time she thought about them, an image of the Silverdale High football team kept coming unbidden into her mind.

Big boys-oversized boys-all of them.

But it wasn't possible, was it? SurelyTarrenTech wouldn't allow any kind of experimentation on human subjects, let alone on the children of their own employees? After all, Jerry and Elaine Harris's own son was on the football team.

And he was big, she reminded herself. Much bigger than either of his parents.

Once more she remembered the skinny asthmatic boy who had left San Marcos three years before. Was it really possible that nothing more than a regimen of vitamins and exercise, combined with clean mountain air, had effected such a change in Robb? It sounded too good to be true.

But if something was going on atTarrenTech and at the sports center, it meant that Mark was already involved.

That, of course, was what she'd been avoiding facing up to. She didn't want to believe that the changes in Mark-the changes she'd tried to deny were taking place until Kelly had talked about them this morning-could be anything except the natural changes that occur in every teenage boy.

But the mice kept coming back to haunt her.

She looked at the phone again, reaching out to pick it up, then hesitated. She told herself there was no reason for her to be worried, that she'd done nothing wrong in calling around, trying to locate CharlotteLaConner. And yet several times as she'd talked on the phone during recent days, she'd heard an odd hollowness, as if someone, somewhere, had picked up an extension. Twice she was certain she'd heard faint clicks, as if someone had either come on the line or gotten off it.

Could her telephone be tapped?

My God, she groaned to herself, I'm starting to sound as paranoid as CharlotteLaConner! She gasped out loud at the thought. Hadn't she herself insisted that perhaps Charlotte wasn't paranoid, that maybe something really was going on and that Charlotte had stumbled onto it?

Taking her fears firmly in hand, she picked up the phone and dialed the county hospital. A moment later she recognized MacMacCallum's friendly voice at the other end of the line.

"D-Dr.MacCallum?" she stammered, still not quite certain what she was going to say. "It's Sharon Tanner-Mark's mother."

"Well, hello,"MacCallum said, then his voice took on a note of concern. "What's going on? Mark's all right, isn't he?"

"Yes," Sharon said. Then, even though she knew the doctor couldn't see her, she shook her head. "I mean-well, I guess he's all right. But I was just wondering if I could talk to you about something."

In his office,MacCallum frowned. He could tell from Mrs. Tanner's voice that she was upset, but if there was something wrong with Mark, why had she said he was all right? "What's the problem, Mrs. Tanner?"

Sharon hesitated, and was just about to try to explain her fears when she heard a soft click and the phone took on that odd, hollow quality she'd noticed before. She felt a chill run through her body, and when she spoke again, she knew she sounded nervous. "It-Well, it's not something I feel comfortable discussing on the phone," she said.

MacCallum'sfrown deepened. What was going on? Had someone come into the room as she spoke? Was the woman afraid her phone was tapped? "I see," he said slowly. "Then perhaps you'd like to come out here," he suggested, glancing at the appointment book that lay open on his desk. "How about four o'clock this afternoon?"

Sharon hesitated a split-second, and tried to keep her voice casual. "That's not very good for me," she countered. "I mean-well, this isn't really a medical matter. It's just something I need some advice about, and… well…"

MacCallumsat up straight in his chair. When Mark had been in the hospital that night, Sharon Tanner had struck him as a strong woman who knew her own mind and seldom hesitated to speak her thoughts. But now she was floundering around, searching for words, apparently unable to tell him what was on her mind.

Shewasafraid her line was tapped.

And her husband was second in command atTarrenTech.

"Tell you what," he said. "I have a couple of errands to run in the village. If you're going to be down there, maybe we could have a cup of coffee."

Sharon felt almost weak with relief. He'd understood and gone along with her. "As a matter of fact, I do have some shopping to do," she said. "Shall we say half an hour?"

"Sounds good,"MacCallum replied. He hung up the phone, sat pensively at the desk for a moment, then headed toward the main doors. As he passed the admissions desk, Susan Aldrich glanced up at him curiously. "Since when do you take the afternoon off?"

MacCallumgrinned. "Since that phone call," he told her. "It seems like we might just have a chink in the great wall of security aroundTarrenTech."

Jerry Harris's private intercom buzzed discreetly and he immediately picked up the receiver that would connect him directly with the security office in the basement. "Harris. What's up?"

"Might be nothing," the voice at the other end replied. "But Mrs. Tanner's been on the phone a lot the last couple of days, trying to find CharlotteLaConner. And now she's set up a meeting withMacCallum."

Harris frowned thoughtfully. "Okay," he said after a few seconds of silence. "I want that meeting monitored, and I want to know what happens right away." Knowing his orders would be obeyed without question, he put the receiver back on its cradle and returned to the file he'd been studying.

It was a complete report of the experimental procedures Martin Ames had implemented in the case of Mark Tanner.

Sharon nearly took the car to the village that afternoon, but changed her mind at the last minute. She knew it was stupid-knew she was once more giving in to the same kind of paranoid thoughts that had made her wonder if her phone were tapped. Still, better to look as if she had nothing more on her mind than a leisurely walk to the store. She pulled the collapsible shopping cart out of the broom closet, struggled with it for a moment before it suddenly expanded in her hands, its wire bottom falling into place, then went to the hall closet and pulled out her parka. Only when she was ready to leave the house did she finally go to the freezer and pick up the small package containing the dead animals she'd brought home fromTarrenTech. Her stomach feeling vaguely queasy at the knowledge of what the little package contained, she carefully tucked it into the bottom of her large carryall, then slung the bag itself over her shoulder. At last, awkwardly pulling the little cart behind her, she went out the back door and up the driveway to the street.

It was a chilly afternoon, but the sky was clear, a deep cobalt-blue dome over the valley which made it seem as if Silverdale had been cut off from the rest of the world and was now accessible only to those few people fortunate enough to live here.

Except that every day the perfection of the village had felt more and more claustrophobic to Sharon. Eventually she had come to believe that one way or another, nearly all the people in Silverdale were living lives that were as artificially decorated and as carefully planned as the community that housed them.

She saw a few other women walking in the streets that afternoon, their shopping carts rolling along behind them like so many tiny cabooses. Sharon nodded to the ones she didn't recognize, spoke to the ones she did.

As she walked, she had to force herself not to look back to see if she were being followed.

By the time she got to the village, she was beginning to feel a bit foolish about the whole thing, but still, the knowledge of what was in her bag-and the changes that had taken place in Mark-kept her wary. Even as she recognized MacMacCallum lounging on one of the benches on the boardwalk that connected the shops, she hesitated, her eyes scanning the area for anything suspicious. She chuckled hollowly to herself as she realized ruefully that she wasn't even certain what she should consider suspicious and what she shouldn't. At last, striding purposefully, she approachedMacCallum.

He stood up as she drew near, his eyes crinkling as he cocked his head slightly. "Sounds like you've got some kind of mystery on your hands," he said, his voice dropping so that, though Sharon could hear him clearly, she doubted that anyone else in the area would overhear him at all.

"I-I don't know," she stammered. She nodded toward the small park across the street. Surrounded by the neat white picket fences that were so prevalent in the village, its gardens were deserted this afternoon except for a small black and white dog sniffing around the playground at the north end. "Why don't we go over there?"

MacCallumnodded his assent and the two of them crossed the street, then moved into the park itself.

"What's going on?"MacCallum asked. "And you might start by telling me why you think your phone is tapped."

Sharon flinched. "Was it that obvious?" She couldn't resist glancing around now, but the park was still empty, and the few people on the sidewalk seemed oblivious to their presence. "Well, ifitis tapped, I suppose I was as obvious to whoever was listening as I was to you." Then, settling onto a bench in the center of the park, she began explaining everything that had been happening, from her worries about CharlotteLaConner to her ill-defined concerns about Mark. "I suppose it sounds kind of nutty, doesn't it?" she asked when she was finished.

Almost to her surprise,MacCallum shook his head. "It sounds like what you're postulating is some kind of conspiracy, withTarrenTech right smack in the middle of it all."

Sharon bit her lip and nodded. "But that's crazy, isn't it?"

MacCallumtook a deep breath. "Maybe it is," he conceded. "But on the other hand, if you're not part ofTarrenTech, sometimes this place looks pretty weird." He glanced sharply at Sharon out of the corner of his eye, but her face betrayed no trace of defensiveness. He smiled wryly at her. "Or maybe you don't think it's strange that even in a company town like this,TarrenTech either supports or runseverything.Everything. The schools, the town council, the library, even Rocky Mountain High."

"And the hospital?" Sharon asked, her heart suddenly skipping a beat. To her relief,MacCallum shook his head.

"We're county. Completely independent, although even that isn't byTarrenTech's choice. In fact, they offered to buy the hospital from the county a few years back. Claimed they could run it more cheaply and efficiently than the county. Unfortunately for them," he went on, making no attempt to keep his sarcasm and anger towardTarrenTech out of his voice, "all of us aren't quite as thrilled to haveTarrenTech here as the company thinks we ought to be, and the county didn't see it quite the company's way. They had the idea that a public hospital should be run by the public, and wouldn't knuckle under to Thornton." His lips curled into a wry grin. "So anyway, if you think there's some kind of conspiracy going on, I won't argue with you. This whole place has always been a little too perfect for my tastes. In fact, I was very happy with it the way it used to be. Anyway, the whole thing smells bad to me." He fell silent for a moment, then went on. "I assume you know all about Ricardo Ramirez?"

Sharon nodded.

"Well, if you ask me,TarrenTech wouldn't have been so antsy to avoid any kind of legal action on Maria's part if they didn't have something to hide. I'm afraid I just don't believe in that much corporate altruism. Which, I have to confess, is one of the reasons I'm here this morning." He looked at her pointedly now. "I'm assuming you know something you haven't told me about yet."

Sharon was silent for a few moments, making up her mind whether to trust him or not. But of course, she had no choice. Finally she nodded, reaching down to pull the small white package out of the bottom of her purse. "I-I found these out atTarrenTech the other day," she said, her voice dropping so lowMacCallum could barely hear her. "They were in a box marked for incineration, and when I had a chance, I just-well, I just took them."

She handed the package toMacCallum. He stared at it for a moment, then slowly unwrapped it. A moment later the brilliant glare of the afternoon sun shone on the two dead animals, both of them still frozen solid.

His frown deepening,MacCallum read the tags. "Same litter," he said. "Born May eighth. Their parents were Male Number 61 and Female Number 46."

"That's what I thought," Sharon replied. "But what could the other number mean? The one on the big one?"

MacCallumstudied it for a moment. Suddenly he was almost certain he knew. And then, as he thought about JeffLaConner and Randy Stevens-maybe even Robb Harris?-he felt a wave of nausea rise in his stomach. "Growth hormones," he breathed almost to himself. His eyes, oddly dazed, drifted toward Sharon. "That's what it has to be, doesn't it?" he asked. "They're experimenting on animals with growth hormones." He stared at the larger of the two mice once more. Now its strange deformities seemed to stand out.

The enlarged feet and the long claws.

The heaviness of the bone structure around its eyes, and the distended look to its jaw.

He shook his head, unable to accept the idea that had taken such sudden form in his mind. "You're not thinking they're experimenting on the kids, are you?"

"I don't know what I'm thinking," Sharon said numbly, but knew in her heart that that was precisely what she had been thinking.

"Look,"MacCallum told her. "Let me take these things back to the hospital and run some tests on them. It could be that we're on the wrong track completely. I mean-maybe they're experimenting with some kind of genetic engineering techniques out there. Certainly all kinds of things are possible with that now, and the big one might be nothing more than some kind of mutation. If it is, it won't be too hard to find out-all I have to do is get a lab in Denver to run a DNA comparison on them."

"And if it's not?" Sharon asked, hearing in her mind once again echoes of Blake's assurances that Mark's treatment was nothing more than a vitamin complex of some sort.

"Then we'll take it one step at a time,"MacCallum told her. He wished he could tell her not to worry, assure her that nothing as evil as human experimentation could be going on in Silverdale.

But he couldn't.

They parted a few minutes later,MacCallum having carefully rewrapped the two small corpses in their butcher paper and put them into his briefcase.

As soon as they left the square, the man who had been parked in a station wagon half a block away, his presence unnoticed by either Sharon orMacCallum, stepped out of his car and moved across the sidewalk to a pay phone, ignoring the unsecured convenience of the cellular phone mounted in the console next to the driver's seat.

For this call he needed privacy.

MacCallumdrove slowly away from the village, only part of his mind involved in negotiating the familiar route from the town out to the hospital half a mile beyond the city limits. He was going over the conversation he'd had with Sharon Tanner once more, examining every bit of it, wishing he could find a way to disagree with her. But he'd known CharlotteLaConner, too, and to him Charlotte had never seemed the sort to harbor paranoid tendencies.

He turned onto the main highway but didn't bother to speed up. There was little traffic on the road, and he was in no hurry. Beside him, resting on the passenger seat, was the briefcase containing the dead mice. As he glanced down at it, he was already speculating on what might have been done to the larger of the two.

He was aware of certain experiments taking place with human growth hormones, aware that since the technology of synthesizing them had been developed, it was beginning to be possible to correct all sorts of genetic deficiencies and glandular imbalances.

And, of course, it was just the sort of thing that theTarrenTech pharmaceutical division might be interested in.

Also, it was just the sort of thing that Martin Ames would be interested in, with his ongoing research in the area of human physical development.

But surely they couldn't have begun experimenting on human beings. That was the sort of thing the Nazis had done back in the Second World War. And this was the end of the century! Even to consider such a thing-

The thought broke off asMacCallum was suddenly distracted by something on the road ahead.

It was a truck, a big semi, and even from hereMacCallum could see that it was going far faster than the fifty-mile-an-hour speed limit posted all along the two-lane highway that branched off from the main north-south route to the west.

He frowned. Didn't the guy know there was a lot of open range to the west and he might come across a cow wandering along the road? At the speed the truck was traveling, it would have as little chance of survival as the cow itself.

Instinctively, he pulled to the right, giving the oncoming vehicle plenty of space.

In the cab of the truck, the driver spotted the car ahead-an Audi, dark green. He raised his binoculars and checked the license plate, then glanced in the rearview mirrors. Just as he'd been told, there were no cars behind him.

Nor were there any cars following the Audi, either.

He smiled.

The job was going to be easy.

He pressed harder on the accelerator, and the pitch of the diesel engine under the hood changed slightly. A belch of black smoke rose from the twin exhausts flanking the cab itself, and the speedometer crept up toward the eighty-mile-per-hour mark.

He saw the Audi move slightly away from the center line as its driver attempted to give him more room.

"But not enough, you sorry son of a bitch," the driver muttered to himself.

He was closing fast on the Audi now, only a hundred yards still separating them. He stepped harder on the accelerator, gaining yet a little more extra speed.

Fifty yards now, then twenty-five.

His hands tensed on the steering wheel and his left foot hovered over the brakes, ready to execute the quick maneuver he'd practiced so many times before.

Ten yards.

MacMacCallum didn't realize what was happening until the last possible instant. He was far to the right of the oncoming lane now, the tires on the right-hand side of the car kicking up a cloud of dust as they touched the hard-packed dirt and gravel of the road's shoulder. The oncoming truck had almost reached him, and its left tires had drifted over the center line. For a moment Mac thought the truck must have lost its brakes and was running wild, but then he realized that the road here was almost level-surely the truck's engine alone would have been enough to slow it down.

Then he heard the scream of tires skidding against pavement, and the truck suddenly slewed toward him, its air horn blasting, the immense mass of its cab hurtling straight at the closed window next to his head.

He wrenched at the wheel and for a split-second felt the tight steering mechanism of the Audi respond, but then the great chrome bumper of the truck smashed into the car.

The window exploded inward and a maelstrom of shattered glass tore into his face, blinding him. The car itself rose into the air, its side all but torn away by the impact, then flipped over onto its back and landed upside down, skidding across the ground for nearly thirty feet before slamming into a large boulder.

The roof had collapsed instantly when the car hit the ground, and now Mac, blood streaming from the lacerations that covered his face, struggled feebly to free himself from the tangled wreckage. The steering wheel was jammed against his chest, and every breath brought a searing agony of pain as his shattered ribs pierced both his lungs and tore at the muscles around his rib cage.

But the car hadn't caught on fire, and he wasn't dead yet.

The driver of the truck brought his vehicle to a skidding stop, all its wheels locked by the massive force he'd applied to the braking system. He scrambled out of the cab, a small air pump clutched in his right hand, its cord already attached to the cigarette lighter on the dash.

Ignoring the car that lay smashed almost beyond recognition a few dozen yards away, he attached the air pump's hose to the stem of the left front tire. Only when he'd made certain that the pump was operating properly did he turn his attention to the ruined Audi and the faint cries for help emanating from its twisted body.

He moved quickly to the car, then paused warily, waiting to see if it was going to burst into flame. A small puddle of gasoline had formed beneath the filling pipe, but nowhere did he see any signs of smoke.

Ignoring the driver's side, he hurried around the car and squatted down, peering inside until he spotted what he was looking for.

A black briefcase-the old-fashioned kind that opened at the top-was wedged between the passenger seat and the collapsed dashboard.

The truck driver reached through the window and quickly worked it loose. He opened it, rifled through it for a moment, then pulled out the small package wrapped in white butcher paper. Satisfied, he shoved the briefcase back into the car and stepped back.

"H-Help…"he heard a faint voice mumble. "I can't…"

"Sorry, buddy," the truck driver said. "If you'regonna stick your nose in where nobody wants you, yougotta expect some trouble."

Reaching into his pocket, he fished out a battered book of matches. Casually glancing in both directions, and still seeing no traffic approaching, he struck one of the matches and lit a cigarette. Then, stepping back and taking careful aim, he flicked the match into the small puddle forming beneath the gasoline intake, turned and fled.

For a moment the puddle only blazed up, but then the fumes in the tank itself ignited and the muffled roar of the explosion filled the air. As the tank came apart, a glowing fireball rose over the car and the car itself was engulfed in flames.

Inside the car MacMacCallum, still conscious, saw the orange flames whirl around him and felt the heat of the air as he tried to breathe.

A moment later, as the fire sucked the oxygen out of the air in the car, he felt himself passing out.

The last thing in his mind before he died was Sharon Tanner.

He wondered if they had killed her, too.

The driver stood well away from the truck until the small pump hadoverinflated the tire to the point where it blew out, then quickly returned the pump to its storage place under the front seat. He glanced only once at the wide black lines his skidding tires had left as he'd slewed the truck into the Audi, already well aware that they were an almost perfect imitation of the marks he'd have left trying to regain control of the big semi after a tire had blown.

Satisfied, he snapped on the C.B. radio mounted on the dash of the truck and tuned it to Channel 9. Only after he'd reported the accident on the emergency band did he at last move back toward the burning car, so that when the police arrived, it would be clearly seen that he was doing his best to rescue the man he'd just killed.