Fear Nothing

"Fear Nothing"

By

Dean Koontz

Philip D. Savitsky

8-A

26-Oct-05

Title: "Fear Nothing"

Author: Dean Koontz

Genre: Mystery-Thriller

Setting: Moonlight Bay, California

Characters

Main- Christopher Snow is a kind hearted guy who lives a dark life. Chris suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum, aka XP, a condition which makes him acutely vulnerable to cancer of the skin and eyes. Any exposure to UV rays, even those from incandescent and fluorescent lights, causes a build-up of radiation in his system. It is a condition shared by less than a thousand Americans, many of whom don't live until their teenage years.

Minor- Bobby Halloway is a wise, laid back, board head. A surfer who runs a business that provides weather and surf conditions to other surfers. By doing so he makes a very comfortable living, and gets to surf at will.

Minor- Sasha Goodall is a loving, caring, and peaceful human being. Sasha and Chris have an intimate relationship with each other. Although Chris is restricted to the night, Sasha has a job at night so they can both sleep during the day and spend as much time together as they can in the evening. She works at KBAY radio station, the only one in Moonlight Bay. She is athletic as well as talented and intellectual.

Main Conflict

The main conflict is an internal conflict in which Chris' mother was a leading scientist at a military installation (Wyvern) where strange unexpected things happen. It's there that they create a retrovirus that makes a person "become". He fights in his heart how and why his loving mother would help create such a devastating virus.

Plot summary

Chris has developed an almost normal life despite his XP. He roams the street of his town by night with his dog Orson, familiar with all the people who inhabit the dark. He gets around inside using candle light as a guide. His friends and acquaintances accommodate his presence by dimming the lights and keeping candles handy. Not only does Chris have a rare genetic disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light, but finds he's been plunged into a strange, dangerous, situation too.

Chris has lost his mother already and tonight someone has switched his father's body with a hitchhiker's. Why and what has he stumbled into? Why were those men going to cremate this man instead? Where were they taking his Dad? He has to find out.

Little does Chris realize the violent danger he'd just begun to place himself into. Now, not only must he rise above severe physical limitations, but also confront peculiar creatures, unusual circumstances, and threats to those he loves.

He had known Angela, his nurse, since she cared for him as a boy. She also was his father's nurse at the hospital. She seemed nervous when she called, saying she needed to talk to him now, tonight. Angela later tells Chris about a Christmas Eve a few years ago. It was just before the newspapers claimed her husband committed suicide. She had been in the kitchen happily making cookies when suddenly she looked up and found a Rhesus monkey sitting on the table. He was eating one of her tangerines. He glared at her with unusually dark yellow eyes and when he laughed a terrible evil cackle, the hair on Angela's arms stood up. She went on to say, that when she attempted to shoo it away with a broom, it instead tried to yank it from her. Then, it began to climb up the broom toward her. The Rhesus screeched, hopped up and down, tore at the air, and pounded the floor with its fists. The monkey was "becoming". Roosevelt Frost lives on a boat with security cameras, motion detectors, infrared sensors and high-tech binoculars. He warns Chris he has stumbled onto something bigger than the lab at Wyvern. The town's people were involved now too. Frost goes on to

explain that Chris can't contact the authorities in or out of town. "These people wouldn't touch you at first, not personally. You're revered and they're in awe of you. They'll leave you alone unless you give them no choice. Forget what you saw and get on with

your life." Chris then asks who asked Frost to warn him and why they revere him. "The cat, he told me," says Frost. "And the reason they revere you is because of who your mother was." Roosevelt's cat could communicate with him and was very wise.

Chris thinks about what has happened the last few days. Nothing could be dismissed as queer and out of the realm of possibility now. He'd seen monkeys that were not mere monkeys, a cat that was somehow more than a cat, and other mysteries that left the seemingly insignificant very significant.

Crazed by whatever disease had entered him, policeman Chief Lewis Stevenson reveals still more ghastly information. It makes Chris stomach churn. How many little girls would suffer a horrific fate before Stevenson gave into his monstrous lusts and claimed his granddaughter? "I'm warning you Snow, if I hear one peep out of you about what has begun here in Wyvern and Moonlight Bay. I'm taking your dog.