Last Light (Novella) by Dean Koontz

ID and moving to Mexico,” Makani said.
    After a long pull at his beer, Pogo said, “There
is
some killer surf in Baja. Down to Todos Santos and Scorpion Bay, even all the way to Mazatlán.”
    “You changing your name, then?”
    “Hell, no. Nothing would be as easy to remember as Pogo.”
    “I like Pogo.”
    “I like Makani.”
    “I don’t mean just the name.”
    “I don’t mean just the name, either.”
    They smiled at each other.
    Bob raised his head.
    “Screw it,” Makani said. “Gobble away if you want.” And she put the plate of beef on the floor.
    “It’s who Bobby is,” Pogo said. “Bobby’s a gobbler.”
    “Who are we if we are not us?” she said.
    “Then we’d be nobody.”
    “Well, I’m not nobody, and you’re not nobody, and Bobby is somebody, too.”
    A pause for beer.
    Pogo reminded her, “Sparks is one big bastard.”
    “And invisible,” she said.
    “There’s got to be a way around that.”
    “You think of it yet?”
    “I have a kind of idea.”
    They had preparations to make, shopping to do, second thoughts to consider, and a lot of mutual encouragement to perform. Being of high spirits most of the time, Bob didn’t need encouragement, but he went with them to the hardware store, which he enjoyed, not least of all because the owner always brought his Labrador, Gracie, to work.
    By noon, they were ready. Or as ready as they could be.
    Over a lunch of sandwiches, eaten on the patio, Makani said, “It’s good not to be alone.”
    Pogo nodded. “I never have been.”
    “Well, I have been for almost ten years.”
    “Where do you see this going?”
    “You mean if he doesn’t kill us?”
    “Exactly.”
    “He will probably kill us.”
    “Probably.”
    “But if he doesn’t, I don’t see us plunging into things.”
    Pogo nodded. “Nothing worthwhile happens overnight.”
    “You really feel that way?”
    “I’ve got to get used to being read all the time.”
    “And I’ve got to figure how I cope with you knowing that you’re being read.”
    “Maybe I’ll learn how to hide my darker thoughts.”
    “What darker thoughts? I’ve known you two years, and I’ve never seen one.”
    “Right now, I’m planning to kill a man.”
    “Oh, that,” she said. “That’s not as dark as what
I’d
like to do to him.”
    Under the table, where he was lying in the shade and summer heat, Bob grumbled his agreement.
    Pogo wanted to nap for a few hours, to be sure his head was clear when sunset came.
    Although they didn’t expect Sparks to show up sooner than he had promised, Makani insisted on sitting in a chair in the second guest room, the pistol in her lap, while Pogo slept in the nearby bed. She kept Bob at her side, hoping he understood that he was their early-warning system.
    In all her conversations with Pogo, she had tried to match his light tone, which was natural to him because it was a reflection of his confident and buoyant spirit. In truth, however, she expected to die this evening, and she hoped only that Pogo would survive and that she would not have been the cause of his death.

16
Round Three
    Two hours before sunset.
    Having returned to Makani’s bungalow to sleep in her bed with the scent of her, eat her food, shower with her soap and her loofah sponge, and again use her toothbrush, Rainer was rested and primed for the encounter ahead.
    When he checked the GPS for the location of her ’54 Chevy, he found that it remained at the house of Oliver Watkins.
    He was not surprised.
    There were people who ran like the frightened mice they were. He destroyed them.
    Then there were people who would not run and who thought they were clever enough to outwit him. In the end, they died, too.
    Makani most likely believed that her power made her a harder target than ordinary people. But her power
was
ordinary when compared to Rainer’s.
    Anyway, Rainer had analyzed the situation from every angle. He was confident that she had no advantage that would save her or the