Dean Koontz 3-Book Thriller Collection: Breathless, What the Night Knows, 77 Shadow Street. Dean Koontz
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Название: Dean Koontz 3-Book Thriller Collection: Breathless, What the Night Knows, 77 Shadow Street
Автор: Dean Koontz
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Эзотерика
isbn: 9780007549832
isbn:
Inside, the joint was packed, as the herd of pickups indicated that it ought to be, but the band played no music, no dancers danced, and people were gathered in peculiar configurations at the bar, at an area to the left of the stage, and in a separate raised lounge area near the rest rooms.
“Must be a hundred people here,” Cammy said. “Maybe a hundred fifty. Homeland Security can’t arrest them all, can’t shut up all these people. Come on. It’s time. Come on, Puzzle, Riddle, it’s time for your debut.”
“The stage,” Grady suggested. “The microphone.”
Behind them, Lamar said, “Oh, my God,” but Cammy didn’t look back, just kept on moving through the mostly abandoned tables, with the wolfhound and the two amazements rushing ahead of her.
She mounted the stage, took the microphone from the stand, and said, “Please, may I have your attention!”
Joining her, Grady said, “It’s not turned on.”
She fumbled for a switch, found one, and her voice boomed out – “Folks, everyone, hey, I’ve got an announcement!” – and as she spoke, the black-clad legions, carrying fully automatic carbines at the ready, burst through the front doors, an instant later through a back entrance.
The patrons turned toward her. But half the armed agents spread through the room, intimidating the crowd, while the other half came toward the stage.
Clambering onto the stage, one of them said, “You’re under arrest,” and she heard another one telling Grady that he had the right to remain silent, and she said, “But you have no right to make us be silent!”
In the chaos, she heard Lamar shouting at her from among the tables, and just as she was about to start clubbing one of the agents with the microphone, she understood what he was saying: “Cammy, Grady, look at the TVs!”
In the distant lounge was a big flat screen, a smaller screen behind the bar, another to one side of the stage. The music had stopped, the dancing, the drinking, because people had been drawn to something on television.
On the screens were Puzzle and Riddle.
Cammy stared uncomprehending.
Someone cranked up the sound on the flat screen as an anchorman appeared in place of Puzzle and Riddle. “We’ve got breaking news now, something big is happening out there tonight. Whatever this event in Michigan means, and the pair in western Pennsylvania, apparently they aren’t alone.” He spoke to someone off screen, off mike, and turned again to the camera. “I’m being told we’ve got a live report coming right now from an affiliate in Marietta, Georgia, and three more to follow, and I think somebody’s saying the same thing’s happening in Italy … France, I think I heard Italy and France. We’re going now to Marietta.”
In Georgia, a pair like Puzzle and Riddle were capering on a lawn around which forty or fifty people had gathered, for once not to be seen on camera but to see more directly what the camera saw.
In confusion, the armed agents in the roadhouse backed off the stage. Cammy heard a squad leader on a cell phone nearby, but the TVs interested her more than Homeland Security.
The roadhouse crowd, however, appeared less drawn to the TVs now than to the two wonders here among them.
Cammy carried Puzzle, and Grady carried Riddle, down from the stage, into the room, to allow these citizens of Colorado to meet the new creations with which they now shared the world.
Puzzle whispered in her ear, “You’re so clear, you shine so bright, and there’s no sadness in you anymore.”
Bald and hunched, his mustache white, the old man sat on a bench in the park across from the retirement home. He wore sunglasses on an overcast day. Hooked to the bench was a white cane.
Tom Bigger sat beside the blind man and said, “What do you think of all the news?”
“I’ve heard their voices. They sound like angels. The sound of them makes me happy. I wish I could see them. Are they beautiful?”
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