Dark of the Woods by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror
Google: Af4xGQAACAAJ
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1970-07-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

He did feel standing there with the wind whipping his coat tightly against his legs—with the weight of their supplies on his shoulders, with his nerves still unquieted from the near disaster of the snowslide—like doing nothing heroic, like waiting for them and going with them as meekly as they could possibly desire, letting them do to him whatever they wished. But he reminded himself that such thinking was selfish and that "us" should not be ignored in a rush to consider the bone-aching exhaustion and the desire for rest and peace that plagued "me." With so many miles left to go before they would reach Tooth, their chances for survival were slim. How much easier and less painful it would be to die under the guns of the Alliance soldiers than under the sapping wind and cold of Demos's winter.

Intellectually, he was aware that the death wish that now flirted about the back of his mind was a holdover from earlier days, from those dark hours in his childhood when he found rebuff from both parents and turned to his books for solace given second-hand where none of first-hand nature was obtainable. He read books of stories about the supernatural, of demons and devils, angels and spirits. In those days, it seemed as if it would be so much more bearable to be dead, to inhabit the regions of the netherworld creatures where odd and magical things transpired and where there were no great emotional tangles that made you sick deep in your stomach, no fights and scoldings that made you shake like an old man with the ague.

But he was no longer a child.

And there was solace to be had in this world, in the land of the living. If only he could keep both of them alive long enough to enjoy it and strengthen the bond of affection that joined them, he might eventually learn to stand up to adverse conditions without hesitation, without first falling back on the deathwish and the easy way out of a bad position.

"Gun forward!" he directed Proteus. "Fire one!"

The projectile struck the center Sherlock, tearing the delicate and complex machine into thousands of whirling, twisted pieces of junk. Now he had added yet another crime to his string of punishable acts on his record: willfully destroying a major piece of Alliance property. He wondered how many years that carried with it, and he felt an elation rise in him the likes of which he had not felt since he was a boy and had secretly violated one of the many rules his mother or father laid down for him.

The other two detection robots curved away to avoid the same fate, but he shouted for Proteus to track the one on the right and fire when on target. He was rewarded with a flash of green-blue light as the casing of the second Sherlock split and poured forth a long stream of mechanical guts.

He turned to look for the third of the devices, but he could not locate it.

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