Dead and Alive by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

Mercy can be like a year with your testicles in a vise and not allowed to turn off the pain.’”
    The palpi around the insectile mouth quivered excitedly at the soft sucking sound of the four dozen three-inch-thick lock bolts retracting from the architraves.
    “Of course,” said Ripley, “I had to report him to Father for an attitude adjustment. Now he’s hanging upside down in a re-education box with a catheter in his penis, a collection hose up his rectum, and two holes in his skull to allow the insertion of brain probes.”
    Finally, as the bolts finished retracting and the two vault doors on the transition modules began to swing open, Free Werner turned his attention once more to Ripley.
    “Of course, as primary lab assistant to the Beekeeper … that is, to Mr. Helios, there’s no place I’d rather be than in the Hands of Mercy. This is the birth-place of the future, where the Million-Year Reich has begun.”
    As he spoke, Ripley casually reached toward the control console, intending to tap two switches and cycle shut the doors that had just opened. If he could slip into one of the transition modules just as the door closed, before Free Werner could follow, he might be safe.
    When he had been security chief, Werner had known how to operate the console. But the genetic chaos that the Beekeeper referred to as catastrophic cellular metamorphosis might have scrambled hiscerebral function as much as it had wrought havoc with his body. His cognitive power or his memory, or both, might be so diminished that he would not know how to open the vault door and get at his prey.
    In that gargly, hissing voice, Free Werner said,
“Don’t touch the switches.”

CHAPTER 12
    HAVING NARROWLY ESCAPED death-by-Mercedes on the rain-slickened streets of a city soon to be under assault by Victor Frankenstein’s berserk killing machines, Carson O’Connor wanted an Acadiana fried-redfish poor boy.
    Acadiana didn’t advertise. You couldn’t see it from the street. Locals didn’t tell tourists about it. For fear too much success would ruin the place, locals didn’t tell other locals about it all that often. If you found Acadiana, it meant you had the right kind of soul to eat there.
    “We already had dinner,” Michael reminded her.
    “So you’re on death row, you eat your last meal, after dessert you’ll be electrocuted, but they ask if you want to delay execution long enough to have a
second
last meal—and you’re gonna say no?”
    “I don’t think dinner was our last meal.”
    “I think it could have been.”
    “It could have been,” he admitted, “but probably not. Besides, Deucalion told us just to cruise the neighborhood until he called.”
    “I’ll have the cell phone with me.”
    Acadiana didn’t have a parking lot. You couldn’t park on the street near it, because it was approached by an alleyway. The only diners who dared to leave their vehicles in the alleyway were cops.
    “With this car, we’ll have to park a block away,” Michael said. “And what if we get back, and somebody’s stolen it?”
    “Only an idiot is going to steal this spavined heap.”
    “The Helios empire is exploding, Carson.”
    “The Frankenstein empire.”
    “I still can’t bring myself to say that. Anyway, it’s blowing up, and we have to be ready to move.”
    “I’m sleep-deprived and I’m starving. I can’t sleep, but I can get a po’ boy. Look at me, I’m a poster girl for protein deficiency.” She turned off the street into a backway. “I’ll park in the alley.”
    “If you park in the alley, I’ll have to stay with the car.”
    “Okay, stay with the car, we’ll eat in the car, we’ll get married someday in the car, we’ll live in the car with four kids, and when the last one goes off to college, we’ll finally get rid of the damn car and buy a house.”
    “You’re a little bit on edge tonight.”
    “I’m a
lot
on edge.” She set the hand brake andswitched to the parking lights, but didn’t kill