Surrounded by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-10-13T07:00:00+00:00

* * *

When they entered the east corridor, they saw Edgar Bates down at the far end standing on the left just beyond Surf and Subsurface, across from the warehouse entrance. He had gotten a set of keys from one of the night watchmen, had inserted a key into a slot on the wall, and had activated the steel-bar gate that was recessed in the ceiling. An electric motor hummed loudly. The gate made a lot of noise itself, clattering like tank tread as it descended to block the entire width of the hall.

"What are you doing?" Meyers shouted, his ruined voice cracking.

Bates turned and looked at them. His face was drawn, his eyes as wide as Evelyn Ledderson's eyes had been when Tucker had first seen her. When they reached him, just as the gate clanked against the terrazzo floor, Bates said, "There's cops in the parking lot."

Meyers pushed past him and grabbed hold of the gate, shook it, tried to heave it up out of the way. "You dumb bastard! You'll trap us all in here."

Bates laughed without humor, his eyes flat and glassy. "Who's the dumb bastard? Don't you see, Frank? We already are trapped in here."

Tucker moved to the gate, pulling the woman along with him. He stared out through the grid of thin steel rods, past the glass outer doors that were only three feet away. One prowl car, made colorless by the ranks of mercury vapor lights out there, was already stopped about five short yards from the mall entrance. What Tucker had told Evelyn Ledderson a few minutes ago now held true for all of them- there was nowhere to run. Abruptly, a second squad car wheeled in beside the first, nearly scraping paint with it, braking so hard that tires squealed and the big Detroit frame rocked back and forth on its springs.

"We could shoot our way out," Meyers said.

"Forget it," Tucker said.

"We have to try."

"We'd get about two feet," Tucker said.

Edgar Bates was busy fixing the gate to its bolt holes along the baseboard. "We wouldn't even get through those doors," he called over his shoulder.

"He's right," Tucker told Meyers. "He did the right thing by sealing this off. We aren't going to get out this way. All we can do is make sure they can't come in, either."

"We can't hole up here," Meyers said.

"I know that." The specter of failure, linked arm in arm with the image of his father, rose in the back of his mind.

Meyers pointed to the gate. "Then what does this really buy us in the end?"

"Time," Tucker said.

"Time for more prowl cars to get here," Meyers said, making a sour face.

"We might come up with something," Tucker insisted as he watched the four cops outside move in toward the glass doors.

"Like what?"

"We might find another way out."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

"If we can't leave by this door," Meyers said, "we can't leave by any of them. They'll have the other three covered, too."

"I know," Tucker said. "But all the entrances are shut tight from the inside.

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