Free Hell's Gate by Dean Koontz Page A

was the gun, still in his room, loaded.
        The back door was locked. He screamed at it, rattled it, then knew that was no good.
        He started around toward the front of the house, remembering that the intruder must have come out of the house that way to get in the car, then looked down toward the orchard.
        The killer was coming.
        Fast.
        Salsbury had only seconds to spare.
        The porch door was open, but the front door was locked.
        He fancied he could hear the pounding feet of the killer closing on him.
        Grabbing a patio chair, he smashed the window in the door, reached through, unlocked it, and went inside. He took the stairs two at a time, though his legs were ready to buckle. He glanced down once, saw his pajama top was a bright red and punctured with fragments of the car window. He had a moment of dizziness, stopped to hold the railing and shake away the vertigo that sought to claim him.
        Then he heard the killer's feet on the front porch.
        As he went by the master bedroom, Intrepid began barking again. Salsbury called out a word of encouragement, went into the other room and picked the pistol and shells up from the nightstand. When he came out into the corridor again, the stranger had just reached the top of the stairs.
        He raised the pistol and fired twice. The boom of each discharge slammed against the walls and echoed through the big house as if all the doors were being slammed simultaneously. Two holes appeared in the stranger's chest, and he fell sideways against the railing. His face was still passive, as if he were watching a boring motion picture or contemplating the lint in his navel.
        Slowly, he raised his firing arm.
        Salsbury emptied the other four slugs into him in quick succession. The impact knocked the stranger backwards. He rolled over and over to the bottom of the steps, six chunks of lead in him.
        Salsbury went and looked down on him.
        Slowly but surely, the killer started to get up.
        “Die, damn you!” Salsbury shouted hysterically.
        The pistol clicked several times before he realized there were no more bullets. By then, the killer was starting back up the steps; he aimed his brass finger at Salsbury. A golden thread of light smashed the railing, threw a cloud of wooden chips into the air.
        Salsbury retreated through the corridor to a point where he could not be seen until the killer topped the stairs again. He went down on one knee, fumbled shells out of the box and loaded the pistol again. When his target lumbered off the last riser, he placed six more chunks of metal in his chest.
        With the same result as before: nothing.
        No blood.
        Just little black tunnels in his flesh.
        The killer was bringing up his vibrabeam.
        Salsbury rolled sideways, clutching gun and ammunition, through the open door of his bedroom, up against the three trunks there. He could hear the killer coming down the hall, lurching somewhat but advancing nonetheless. Frantically, he loaded the pistol, closed the chamber just as the man stumbled into the doorway. There was nowhere to go now. If these six did not bring him down, Salsbury was dead.
        The killer opened his mouth, said: “Gnnhunhggggg.”
        He put three shots in the killer's face. For a moment, he thought he had won, for the man stopped, was perfectly still, eyes hardly blue at all, but more of a gray. Then, painfully, the arm with the brass vibrabeam tube rose toward Salsbury.
        A premature blast erupted from the end, struck the computer trunk, glanced off without damage.
        Gritting his teeth, every cell screaming to every other cell in his body, Salsbury put the last three bullets in the killer, all in his chest again. When that was done, he threw the gun at the man, watched it bounce off the impassive face.
        Inexorably, the firing arm continued to