Free Face by Dean Koontz Page B

managerial-class at best. Intellectual stimulation in such a place would be hard to find.
    He had driven here to take a walk.
    Emergency-yellow, blazing canary, he nevertheless passed along these streets with complete anonymity, drawing as little notice as might a ghost whose substance was but a twist of ectoplasmic mist.
    He had yet to encounter anyone on foot. Few cars traveled the quiet streets.
    The weather kept most people snug indoors.
    The glorious rotten weather was Corky’s fine conspirator.
    At this hour, of course, most residents of these houses were away at work. Toiling, toiling, with stupid purpose.
    Because this was a holiday week, children had not gone to school. Today: Monday. Christmas: Friday. Deck the halls.
    Some children would be in the company of siblings. A lesser number would be under the protection of a nonworking mother.
    Others were home alone.
    In this instance, however, children were not Corky’s avenue of expression. Here, they were safe from the yellow ghost passing among them.
    Anyway, Corky was forty-two. Kids these days were too savvy to open their doors to strange men.
    Welcome disorder and lovely decadence had deeply infected the world in recent years. Now the lambs of all ages were growing wary.
    He contented himself with lesser outrages, just happy to be out in the storm and doing a little damage.
    In one of his capacious inner pockets, he carried a plastic bag of glittering blue crystals. A wickedly powerful chemical defoliant.
    The Chinese military had developed it. Prior to a war, their agents would sow this stuff in their enemy’s farms.
    The blue crystals withered crops through a twelvemonth growing cycle. An enemy unable to feed itself cannot fight.
    One of Corky’s colleagues at the university had accepted a grant to study the crystals for the Department of Defense. They felt an urgent need to find a way to protect against the chemical in advance of its use.
    In his lab, the colleague had a fifty-pound drum of the stuff. Corky had stolen one pound.
    He wore thin protective latex gloves, which he could easily hide in the great winglike sleeves of his slicker.
    The slicker was as much a serape as a coat. The sleeves were so voluminous that he could withdraw his arms from them, search his interior pockets, and slip into the sleeves again with fistfuls of one poison or another.
    He scattered blue crystals over primrose and liriope, over star jasmine and bougainvillea. Azaleas and ferns. Carpet roses, lantana.
    The rain swiftly dissolved the crystals. The chemical seeped into the roots.
    In a week, the plants would yellow, drop leaves. In two weeks, they would collapse in a muck of reeking rot.
    Large trees would not be affected by the quantities that Corky could scatter. Lawns, flowers, shrubs, vines, and smaller trees would succumb, however, in satisfying numbers.
    He didn’t sow death in the landscaping of every house. One out of three, in no apparent pattern.
    If an entire block of homes were blighted, neighbors might be drawn closer by the shared catastrophe. If some were untouched, they would become the envy of the afflicted. And might arouse suspicion.
    Corky’s mission was not merely to cause destruction. Any fool could wreck things. He intended also to spread dissension, distrust, discord, and despair.
    Occasionally a dog barked or growled from the shelter of a porch where it was tethered or from within a doghouse behind a board fence or a stone wall.
    Corky liked dogs. They were man’s best friend, though why they would want to fill that role remained a mystery, considering the vile nature of humanity.
    Now and then, when he heard a dog, he fished tasty biscuits from an inner pocket. He tossed them onto porches, over fences.
    In the interest of societal deconstruction, he could put aside his love of dogs and do what must be done. Sacrifices must be made.
    You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, and all that.
    The dog biscuits were treated with cyanide. The