Quicksilver

by Dean Koontz

“None of us has any memory of getting in our vehicles. The next thing we know, it seems like an instant later, we’re in Peptoe, me with the baby—that’s you—in the power-company truck, Bailie and Caesar following. We all had this terrible feeling that the baby was in great danger, that someone could come for him—for you—at any moment. Hell, not someone. Something. Something that would kill us to get at you. I swear, we were flat-out terrified. It makes no sense how crazy frightened we were. We’d been made terrified. I think that weird blue light, those concentric circles . . . somehow they programmed us to guard you and get you quickly away from that lonely stretch of highway, into the hands of the authorities, eventually to someone who would care about you as if you were their own child. I kept thinking that your vital thread had been broken, that the ends of your vital thread couldn’t be tied together again until you were in loving hands.” “What does that mean, ‘vital thread’?” I asked. “I don’t know what the hell it means. But I was in a panic about it.” He raised the bottle to his lips and seemed surprised that he had drained it. Bridget’s turn had come to say, “And?” “No, I’m done. I’m empty. I have no more for you. Bailie and Caesar didn’t see quite the same thing I did. You need to hear their side to get the whole picture.”