Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

In addition to the department stores that were integrated into the acres of single-story shops, Fashion Island offered a three-story indoor mall, Atrium Court, where the large Barnes & Noble outlet was located. Brooding over a few things that Chubb Coy had said after shooting Dr. St. Croix, Bibi purchased three collections of stories by Flannery O’Connor, Thornton Wilder, and Jack London.

While searching for the London, she shared the aisle with two teenage girls. One was of Asian extraction, with thick, silky black hair and eyes as large as those of a child in a Keane painting; the other was a blonde, wearing eyeglasses with red-plastic frames; both were leggy, as physically awkward as they were attractive. She could not help but hear their conversation, which after a while took an ominous turn.

“What about this one?”

“The movie sucked.”

“Movies usually suck.”

“I like John Green.”

“But his movie sucked.”

“It wasn’t his fault. Hollywood cooked it with crap.”

“Here. What about Alice Hoffman?”

“I get off on Alice Hoffman.”

“Everybody likes Alice Hoffman, except the robots-and-aliens digit-head losers.”

“My sister’s slaving through Herman Melville in college. She says it’s like passing a kidney stone.”

“She ever pass a kidney stone?”

“She is a kidney stone. So who do you think they are?”

“The men in black? Maybe the president’s going shopping.”

“These aren’t cop guys. They’re butthole spiders.”

“So is something bad going down?”

“No. They’re not shoot-and-shout-Allah types. What about Salinger?”

“Holden Caulfield is such a babbling depressive.”

“He’s not a depressive. He’s a screwed-up child of privilege. Anyway, you’re sometimes a depressive.”

“I’m not sometimes a depressive. I’m sometimes a realist. So if they aren’t going to kill everyone for God, what’re they doing?”

“They’re looking for somebody.”

“Who?”

“Whoever. The one with the earring could be looking for me, and I truly wouldn’t mind.”

“Like that’s going to happen. When he saw you undressing him with your eyes, he gave you this look like, Go away, little girl. I’ve got someone to beat up.”

Holding her three books, Bibi turned to the teenagers. “You want to know who they’re looking for? They’re looking for me.”

They regarded her like two baby night owls surprised by a light.

“How many of them are there?” Bibi asked.

The blonde said, “For real, they’re looking for you?”

“Or,” Bibi said, “this is some brain-dead YouTube joke show, and I’ve got a camera up my nose. Can you help me? How many are there?”

“At least twenty,” the brunette whispered, though there was no need to whisper. “They’re everywhere.”

“Way more than twenty,” the blonde said. “They’ve all got these little phones in their ears. There’s a freakin’ swarm of them.”

“Men in black—you mean like the movie, suits and sunglasses?”

“No,” the brunette said, graduating from a whisper to a stage whisper, “they’re all dressed different, but they’re still the same. They have a look. You know, like they’ve all got somebody’s boot up their ass.”

“How’s everyone reacting to them?”

“Everyone who?”

“The other shoppers, mall security, everyone.”

The blonde shrugged. “We’re maybe the only ones who noticed.”

Her companion agreed. “We notice things. We’re super-observant, because we’re among the one percent, brainwise.”

“We’re super-observant,” the blonde amended, “because basically we don’t have a life of our own.

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