Free Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz Page A

all wars. Evil does not relent; it must be defeated. And even when defeated, uprooted, and purified by fire, evil leaves behind a seed that will one day germinate and, in blooming, again be misunderstood.
    I had defeated nothing. I knew better than to believe that my mysterious attackers would not return. The question was—
when
?
    Holding fast to the pulls on the underside of the feed-bin lids, Ilistened but heard nothing except my less frantic breathing and an occasional twang as my weight shifting ever so slightly upon the stainless-steel liner caused it to flex.
    After a minute or so, the pale light, the absence of ozone, and the silence drew me to the conclusion that the grunting pack had not left of their own will but had been somehow swept away when the too-early nightfall was magically undone and the day restored to morning.
    I didn’t know how night could have come so quickly after dawn or how it could have been rolled back, as if time were not a river with a fixed course but instead a changeable wind gusting now toward but now away.
    My curious life has been filled with supernatural events, but never before one like this.
    An argument could be made that the many strange things I see and experience are in fact as natural as the sun and moon, and that the five senses of other human beings have not yet adapted to the full reality of the world.
    That theory would seem to suggest that I am special, better than others, but I know that isn’t true. In spite of my talent, I am not any better than any other soul seeking redemption, no more than a good musician is a better person than those with no musical talent, and I am worse than some.
    Willing to entertain the possibility that I would not be torn asunder and eaten if I ventured forth, I let go of one of the lids, pushed up the other, and clambered out of the feed bin.
    I believed that I now knew what a lobster felt as it languished in a tank beside the maître d’ station in a restaurant, while hungry patrons, waiting to be seated, tapped the glass and remarked upon its size and succulence.
    Stepping out of the feed room, I saw that the south door wasclosed and the north one stood open precisely as far as it had when I first entered the stable. The sconces, which had failed earlier, now glowed. At the windows, the day was as it should be: plenty of light, brighter to the east than to the west.
    Warily, I proceeded through the stable to the open door, but no threat manifested.
    When I switched off the lights and stepped outside, the morning was fair and mild and right. The bright brush of a single sun painted the trees and grass and sloping land, leaving the distant ocean still half dark like gray slate through which were smeared some of the softer colors of the clay from which it had been formed. The stable cast a single black shadow, to the west, as did I. The rock and the crumpled Coke can had reappeared; they, like all things around me, spilled their silhouettes only westward in ordinary daylight.
    For a moment some power had imposed chaos on the day, followed by this reprieve. This is the world of men and women in their flesh, and more often than not they rebel against order, preferring the perceived freedom of a measured chaos. But chaos half-loosed cannot be long controlled; it is all or nothing. This reprieve would be brief.
    Whatever might be happening at Roseland, it was misconceived by men in the quest for power, because it was a lust for power of one kind or another that quivered at the root of every base human desire. I sensed that not only the land sloped from east to west; within the grounds of this walled estate, reality also was tilted from the norm and was being steadily levered to an ever more severe angle, until Roseland would abruptly slide to ruin, reason would slither down to madness, and everyone here would cascade into death.
    The sun was hardly risen, but already time was running out.

Nine

    IF THE ONSET OF NIGHT SO SOON AFTER DAWN AND then