Dean Koontz
Intensity
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  The red sun balances on the highest ramparts of the mountains, and in its waning light, 
the foothills appear to be ablaze. A cool breeze blows down out of the sun and fans 
through the tall dry grass, which streams like waves of golden fire along the slopes 
toward the rich and shadowed valley.
  In the knee-high grass, he stands with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, 
studying the vineyards below. The vines were pruned during the winter. The new growing 
season has just begun. The colorful wild mustard that flourished between the rows during 
the colder months has been chopped back and the stubble plowed under. The earth is dark 
and fertile.
  The vineyards encircle a barn, outbuildings, and a bungalow for the caretaker. Except 
for the barn, the largest structure is the owners' Victorian house with its gables, 
dormers, decorative millwork under the eaves, and carved pediment over the front porch 
steps.
  Paul and Sarah Templeton live in the house year-round, and their daughter, Laura, 
visits occasionally from San Francisco, where she attends university. She is supposed to 
be in residence throughout this weekend.
  He dreamily contemplates a mental image of Laura's face, as detailed as a photograph. 
Curiously, the girl's perfect features engender thoughts of succulent, sugar-laden 
bunches of pinot noir and grenache with translucent purple skin. He can actually taste 
the phantom grapes as he imagines them bursting between his teeth.
  As it slowly sinks behind the mountains, the sun sprays light so warmly colored and so 
mordant that, where touched, the darkening land appears to be wet with it and dyed 
forever. The grass grows red as well, no longer like a fireless burning but, instead, a 
red tide washing around his knees.
  He turns his back on the house and the vineyards. Savoring the steadily intensifying 
taste of grapes, he walks westward into the shadows cast by the high forested ridges.
  He can smell the small animals of the open meadows cowering in their burrows. He hears 
the whisper of feathers carving the wind as a hunting hawk circles hundreds of feet 
overhead, and he feels the co glimmer of stars that are not yet visible.
  In the strange sea of shimmering red light, the black shadows of overhanging trees 
flickered shark-swift across the windshield.
  On the winding two-lane blacktop, Laura Templeton handled the Mustang with an expertise 
that Chyna admired, but she drove too fast.
  “You've got a heavy foot,” Chyna said.
  Laura grinned. “Better than a big butt."
  “You'll get us killed."
  “Mom has rules about being late for dinner."
  “Being late is better than being dead for dinner."
  “You've never met my mom. She's hell on rules."
  “So is the highway patrol."
  Laura laughed. “Sometimes you sound just like her."
  Bracing herself as Laura took a curve too fast, Chyna said, “Well, one of us has to be 
a responsible adult."
  “Sometimes I can't believe you're only three years older than me,” Laura said 
affectionately. “Twenty-six, huh? You sure you're not a hundred and twenty-six?"
  “I'm ancient,” Chyna said.
  They had left San Francisco under a hard blue sky, taking a four-day break from classes 
at the University of California, where, in the spring, they would earn master's degrees 
in psychology. Laura hadn't been delayed in her education by the need to earn her tuition 
and living expenses, but Chyna had spent the past ten years attending classes part time 
while working full time as a waitress, first in a Denny's, then in a unit of the Olive 
Garden chain, and most recently in an upscale restaurant with white tablecloths and cloth 
napkins and fresh flowers on the tables and customers-bless them-who routinely tipped 
fifteen or twenty percent. This visit to the Templetons' house in the Napa Valley would 
be the closest thing to a vacation that she'd had in a decade.
  From San Francisco, Laura had followed Interstate 80 through Berkeley and across the 
eastern end of San Pablo Bay. Blue heron had stalked the shallows and leaped gracefully 
into flight: enormous, eerily prehistoric, beautiful against the cloudless heavens.
  Now, in the gold-and-crimson sunset, scattered clouds burned in the sky, and the Napa 
Valley unrolled like a radiant tapestry. Laura had departed the main road in favor of a 
scenic route; however, she drove so fast that Chyna was seldom able to take her eyes off 
the highway to enjoy the scenery. 
  “Man, I love speed,” Laura said.
  “I hate it.”
  “I like to move, streak,fly. Hey, maybe I was a gazelle in a previous life. You think?"
  Chyna looked at the speedometer and grimaced. “Yeah, maybe a gazelle-or a madwoman 
locked away in Bedlam.”
  “Or a cheetah. Cheetahs are really fast.”
  “Yeah, a cheetah, and one day you were chasing your prey and ran straight off the edge 
of a cliff at full tilt. You were the Wile E. Coyote of cheetahs.”
  “I'm a good driver, Chyna.”
  “I know”
  “Then relax.”
  “I can't."
  Laura sighed with fake exasperation. “Ever?”
  “When I sleep,” Chyna said, and she nearly jammed her feet through the floorboards as 
the Mustang took a wide curve at high speed.
  Beyond the narrow graveled shoulder of the two-lane, the land sloped down through wild 
mustard and looping brambles to a row of tall black alders fringed with early-spring 
buds. Beyond the alders lay vineyards drenched with fierce red light, and Chyna was 
convinced that the car would slide off the blacktop, roll down the embankment, and crash 
into the trees, and that her blood would fertilize the nearest of the vines.
  Instead, Laura effortlessly held the Mustang to the pavement. The car swept out of the