Free Strange Highways by Dean Koontz Page B

glow at the open pit pulsed brighter than before. Streams of white and red sparks spewed out of the earth, like great swarms of fireflies, expelled with such force that they rose at least a hundred feet into the heavy rain before being quenched.
    Fearful that a fluttering in his belly could quickly grow into a paralyzing weakness, Joey switched off the dome light, steered the Mustang back onto Coal Valley Road, and drove toward the desolate village below.
    “We’ll go straight to my house,” Celeste said.
    “I don’t know if we should.”
    “Why not?”
    “It might not be a good idea.”
    “We’ll be safe there with my folks.”
    “The idea isn’t just to get safe.”
    “What is the idea?”
    “To keep you alive.”
    “Same thing.”
    “And to stop him.”
    “Stop him? The killer?”
    “It makes sense. I mean, how can there be any redemption if I knowingly turn my back on evil and walk away from it? Saving you has to be only half of what I need to do. Stopping him is the other half.”
    “This is getting too mystical again. When do we call in the exorcist, start spritzing holy water?”
    “It is what it is. I can’t help that.”
    “Listen, Joey, here’s what makes sense. My dad has a gun cabinet full of hunting rifles, a shotgun. That’s what we need.”
    “But what if going to your house draws him there? Otherwise maybe your parents wouldn’t be in danger from him, wouldn’t ever encounter him.”
    “Shit, this is deeply crazy,” she said. “And you better believe, I don’t use the word ‘shit’ often or lightly.”
    “Principal’s daughter,” he said.
    “Exactly.”
    “By the way, a little while ago, what you said about yourself—it isn’t true.”
    “Huh? What did I say?”
    “You’re not nerdy.”
    “Well.”
    “You’re beautiful.”
    “I’m a regular Olivia Newton-John,” she said self-mockingly.
    “And you’ve got a good heart—too good to want to change your own fate and ensure your future at the cost of your parents’ lives.”
    For a moment she was silent in the roar of the sanctifying rain. Then she said, “No. God, no, I don’t want that. But it would take so little time to get into the house, open the gun cabinet in the den, and load up.”
    “Everything we do tonight, every decision we make, has heavy consequences. The same thing would be true if this was an ordinary night, without all this weirdness. That’s something I once forgot—that there are always moral consequences—and I paid a heavy price for forgetting. Tonight it’s truer than ever.”
    As they descended the last of the long slope and drew near the edge of town, Celeste said, “So what are we supposed to do—just cruise around, stay on the move, wait for that avalanche you talked about to hit us?”
    “Play it as it lays.”
    “But how does it lay?” she asked with considerable frustration.
    “We’ll see. Show me your hands.”
    She switched on the flashlight and revealed one palm, then the other.
    “They’re only dark bruises now,” he told her. “No bleeding. We’re doing something right.”
    The car hit a narrow band of subsidence in the pavement, not a deep pit with flames at the bottom, just a shallow swale about two yards wide, although it was rough enough to jolt them, make the car springs creak, scrape the muffler, and spring open the door on the glove box, which evidently had not been closed tightly.
    The flapping door startled Celeste, and she swung the flashlight toward it. The beam flared off a curve of clear glass in that small compartment. A jar. Four or five inches tall, three to four inches in diameter. Once it might have contained pickles or peanut butter. The label had been removed. It was filled with a liquid now, which was made opaque by the glimmering reflections of the flashlight beam, and in the liquid floated something peculiar, not quite identifiable, but nevertheless alarming.
    “What’s this?” she asked, reaching into the glove box without hesitation