THE LAST STORY: A Tribute to Dean Koontz by ... - Smashwords

THE LAST STORY: A Tribute to Dean Koontz by Jeanne Marie Smashwords Edition This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Copyright 2013 by Jeanne Marie Smashwords Edition The hail smashes against the windows. The thunder roars through the house and as a thunderous flash hits just outside the bedroom I call my office, the lights flicker and go out. As my fingers jump off the keyboard in fright, the computer shuts down. Damn! There goes all the work I’ve done in the last three hours. Several days have since passed. The electricity has been out since the night of that dreadful storm. I write by candlelight, because I will not sleep. I am driven by a need to record the horror that has become our reality. Perhaps if I force myself to commit the insanity to paper it will become a story, fiction. Last Sunday, researchers from the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center were applauded by the world for successfully cloning a monkey, an announcement quickly followed by another, a sheep cloning in England. Today, less than a week later, the world as we knew it is gone. Deformed beasts, savage half-human, half-animal, roam the streets at night under the cover of darkness. We’re calling them the Wild Ones. They’re crashing into our homes, using talons and brute force to destroy our flimsy barriers. They’re ripping bodies to shreds, raping the women, the children and the men, with no distinction, no line drawn. They’re slashing throats, tearing beating hearts from their owner’s chests, annihilating legions of humans, howling with unrestrained glee. Their very saliva burns the flesh off their victims; their foul breath smothers the defenseless infants before they touch them. After the killing frenzy, they gather the pieces of each family together, these Wild Ones, and they chew on the warm dripping flesh. Sucking and licking with delight, gnawing on the bones, cracking them open, they curl their bloody tongues inside to devour the marrow. As they leave each home, they torch it so that they can be sure no one has survived their visit. Fires are burning all over the city. During the day, they burrow beneath the ground. We wait with dread for nightfall, knowing they’ll return at sunset. They cannot be stopped. They destroyed the military and the politicians first. They will not stop until every man, woman and child has been brutally assassinated. I don’t know how I know this, but I feel the knowledge burning into my gut, twisting my intestines into knots. I’ve been cursed since it began, burdened with the life-like images that flash

before me, a mental avalanche of horror. We broke the laws of Nature by recreating life, and it did not go unpunished. I know this. Now, I also know that we’ve been on shaky ground with The Almighty since the 1970’s when we legalized abortion and screamed, “Make Love, Not War!” His patience has been sorely tested. His anger and His grief have been unleashed because of the evil that His children have allowed themselves to wallow in. We have at last overcome His love. It began with the thunderstorm last Monday, although I didn’t realize then what was happening. The storm was not contained to southern California; no, it encompassed the earth’s entire surface. The last time I was able to flick through the satellite stations, the one hundred and fifty stations were all flashing emergency hurricane, volcano and tornado warnings. Once each country became aware of the devastation being wrought around the world, confusion and panic became the new normal. Then, the electricity went out Monday night and it hasn’t come back on. It never will. Nuclear power plants have exploded, killing millions instantly. They were the lucky ones. Those not killed yet by disasters or by the Wild Ones, are dying slowly from radiation burns, hunger, thirst and exposure to the Arctic freeze that has swept the planet. Gas and oil wells have blown, volcanoes have erupted spewing molten lava, and burning entire towns. Millions more have been destroyed that way. I don’t know why I have been chosen to view this apocalypse. The Wild Ones have gone up and down my street and spared my home, my family. Why? We hear the savages tearing apart the people who live next door. We hear the horrifying screams; human screams coupled with the beast’s savage shouts of victory, screams that chill our hearts. “Dean,” my wife, Gerda, suddenly whispers, “Why have they gone past our house once more? Why do you sit there and write when the world is ending? There’ll be no one left to read your words. Why do you keep writing?” she quietly sobs. Tears flow down our cheeks as I pull her close to me. “I don’t know. Dear God, I don’t know.” I pull her onto my lap, wrapping the comforter from our bed around her. She falls back into a drug-induced sleep; groggy with the last of the painkillers I’ve been feeding her. I can’t bear for her to be conscious when they come for us, as surely they will. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. The Almighty Creator imposed our sentence; there will be no forgiveness. They’re at our front door. I squeeze Gerda to me; unable to force myself to smother her, as I’d planned, clinging to a shred of hope in the face of hopelessness. I hear the sounds of splintering wood, breaking glass, shouts of delight, as they smell our warm blood and charge straight to our barricaded bedroom door. My determents are child’s play before their strength and in a moment, they burst into the room, still dripping with the blood of their last victims, giving off the stench of Hell itself. Their appearance is no surprise to me. They are no more frightening than the visions that have played themselves out in my mind since Monday night, but I am chilled to the core as I realize, that in person, they bear an eerie resemblance to the creatures I’ve brought to life in my books. Blood drips from their gaping mouths as they smile at us, viscous slime cakes their fur. They pause in the doorway as if to count their latest bounty, to savor the victory

before the kill. I want to scream but have no voice. “Well Mr. Koontz, at last we meet.” They know my name! Why do they know my name? Why aren’t they finishing their night’s work by quickly adding my wife and I to their gory count? A Wild One steps forward and answers my unspoken questions. “Come now Dean, would we destroy the man who made this all possible?” I’d had nothing to do with the cloning! What did he mean? “What?” squeaks out of my terror-stricken throat. “How can you say that I had anything to do with this debauchery?” He replies with glee, “God wanted to destroy the world, but He was just too damn good to develop a plan so horrible, so deliciously evil! That’s where you and your wonderfully vivid imagination came in. Hey Dean! God is a big fan of your writing. He took all your books and He studied them. He borrowed this and He snitched that. He came up with us. What do ya think? Anyway come on, we gotta take you up to Him before the suns rises. He’s dying to meet you face to face,” said the disgusting Wild One with a grin. “You and the wife are all that’s left of His first batch now. Guess He wanted a couple of souvenirs.” The End I sent this tribute story to Dean Koontz in 1997, along with a copy of my newsletter, “Women Who Think Too Much” for his wife, Gerda. I was at the computer when the idea to write a story Dean Koontz style hit me. I had read over thirty-six of his books by then; so, I put my head back and began clearing my mind. I let the idea bounce around for a while and I imagined being in Dean’s mind. Suddenly, the story flowed from my fingers into the computer keyboard without pause. I don’t know if we connected, but I do know that my story was very similar to the book he was just finishing. I had never read a proof or a preview of “Fear Nothing” so when it did come out later that year, I was amazed at how well I’d climbed into Dean’s head. My then eighteen-year-old son, on reading Dean’s reply note, said to me, “Mom, this is it. If you never write another word, rest assured, you have made your mark as a writer. You have creeped out and impressed your favorite author in the world. He has taken the time to sit down and to write to you, just to tell you that, and he and his wife enjoyed your newsletter, Women Who Think Too Much. I am so proud of you.” Of course, I have gone on writing and I will write as long as I can breathe, good or bad, it’s me. If you stripped away everything and everyone in my life, but left me a pen and paper, I would live just to write about the experience. Dean, thank you for the many hours of pleasure and terror your words have given me. [email protected] https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287988 http://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/