KOONTZ, Dean

The Darkest Evening of the Year

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In the salt-pale moonlight, an older middle-class neighborhood of one-story ranch houses seemed to effloresce out of the darkness. No streetlamps brightened the night, but the moon silvered the leaves and the creamy trunks of eucalyptuses. Here and there, stucco walls had a faint ectoplasmic glow, as if this were a ghost town of phantom buildings inhabited by spirits.

In the second block, lights brightened windows at one house. Amy braked to a full stop in the street, and the headlights flared off the reflective numbers on the curbside mailbox. She shifted the Expedition into reverse. Backing into the driveway, she said, "In an iffy situation, you want to be aimed out for the fastest exit."

As she killed the headlights and the engine, Brian said, "Iffy? Iffy like how?"

Getting out of the SUV, she said, "With a crazy drunk guy, you just never know."

Joining her at the back of the vehicle, where she put up the tailgate, Brian glanced at the house and said, "So there’s a crazy guy in there, and he’s drunk?"

"On the phone, this Janet Brockman said her husband, Carl, he’s crazy drunk, which probably means he’s crazy from drinking." Amy started toward the house, and Brian gripped her shoulder, halting her. "What if he’s crazy when he’s sober, and now it’s worse because he’s drunk?

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The Eyes of Darkness

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It was an accident, a quirky son of a bitch named Larry Bollinger, accidentally contaminated himself while he was working alone one morning in this lab. He didn’t turn in an alarm. He walked out of the lab, went to his quarters, dressed in outdoor clothes and he tried to escape on foot. He ran into Mr. Jaborski and the scouts but Mr Jaborski take him to the wildlife center where a rescue effort could be mounted. He got hysterical. That was when the security team arrived and they were forced to shoot him. They brought everyone here and put them in isolation. One day later all of them were dead except Danny.

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It’s like strep throat or the common cold or like canccer, because you get it again and again if you’re lucky enough to beat it the first time.

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Wuhan-400 kill-rate is one hundred percent. No one is supposed to survive. The Chinese tested it on God knows how many political prisoners. The virus migrates to the brain stem and there it begins secreting a toxin that literally eats away brain tissue like bacttery acid dissolving cheesecloth. It destroys the part of the brain that controls all of the body’s automatic functions. The victim simply ceases to have a pulse, functioning organs or any urge to breathe.

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