Invasion at Bald Eagle

by Kris Ashton

  Some of the creatures had reached the base of the hill. Only Main Street and the frontage of the Coultier property now separated them.

  Brolin started the car and wrenched it into gear. He tried to turn it around but did not have sufficient space between the house and the fence that ran along the length of the driveway. He put the car in reverse, but could not go back very far before the trailer came up against the porch. Going forward a second time he almost made it around, but the nose came up against a fence post.

  “Crash it if you have to,” Bert said. “Another dent’s not going to make any difference.”

  “Don’t want to risk damaging the engine,” Brolin said.

  He reversed hard enough to make the wheels spin in the dirt and then cranked it down to drive and hit the gas pedal.

  The swarming creatures’ front line had started to spread across the Coultier farm. Two or three came up the drive, head-on towards the cruiser. “Here we go again,” Brolin muttered.

  Bert wriggled around in his seat to look through the wire partition. “Barkley, you might want to get ready with one of those guns.”

  Barkley nodded and picked up an Uzi.

  They hit the first creature dead on and there was a dull gong as the bumper bar collided with its knees. It fell face down onto the hood and then got dragged under, coming out the back a writhing, trilling wreckage. Brolin swerved a few degrees and Bert winced with pain as the hard corner of the car’s front panel collected a second creature. They were traveling at better than forty miles an hour now and the impact sent the creature somersaulting. It cleared the car and the trailer and crashed onto the track like a fallen satellite.

  A third creature stopped its charge and stood statue-still in the center of the track. It reminded Bert of the deer he sometimes saw on the road when traveling home late at night, their pupils small luminescent green circles, dazzled and terrified by the approaching headlights.

  “Not smart,” Brolin said, bearing down on the creature.

  Bert grimaced, steeling himself against the bone-grinding pain to come. But a snipped second before impact the creature sprang up and landed with a heavy clunk on the bonnet.

  “Jesus!” Brolin said. He swerved hard left, trying to tip the creature off, but it had dug the metal points of its fingers into the hood. Its knees slid from side to side, scoring the duco. When Brolin centered the car again, the creature reached forward and grasped a windscreen wiper, dragging itself forward. Up so close, Bert thought he recognized the human origin behind the alien face, but could not place it.

  Brolin stamped down on the brake, locking up the tires. The car’s occupants were thrown forward into their seatbelts and Bert cried out in keen agony. As the G-forces mounted, the wiper broke off in the creature’s hand, but nothing would dislodge its fingers from the divots in the hood. More creatures were coming in from the right and ahead as well.

  “Don’t stop!” Bert said. “Go!”

  As Brolin sped up, the creature on the hood came forward and smashed its fist against the windshield. The glass did not shatter, but an intricate snowflake pattern radiated out from the impact site.

  “Shoot it, Barkley!” Brolin cried.

  “I can’t wind down the window!”

  “Then shoot that out as well!”

  “No!” Bert thundered. “It’s bulletproof. You do that, you’ll kill us all.”

  “What, then?” Barkley said.

  Bert took a deep breath. “Give the gun to me.”

  “But you’re—”

  Bert laid his injured arm flat on his lap and every vein transformed into a stinging jellyfish tentacle. He screamed out and threw his head back against the seat, blind with agony. When the pain-shock passed he said, “Just hand me the goddamned gun!”

  The creature bashed its fist against the windscreen again, creating another glass snowflake. Meanwhile, one of its nest mates threw itself against the side of the cruiser hard enough to make it rock. Its fingers squealed across the roof but it could not get purchase and it dropped off, cartwheeling and tumbling in the dirt.

  Bert unlatched the small window section of the cage and slid it across. There was just enough room for the Uzi to pass through.

  The creature struck a third time and the whole crazed windscreen fell in. It flopped across Brolin’s arms like a heat blanket and he cut his hand as he tried to throw it off. The creature took hold of the windscreen frame and yanked itself forward, its other arm cocked, the fine point of its spur aimed at Brolin’s neck.

  Bert unloaded the Uzi straight into the creature’s face. Its eyes exploded in a blurt of black glass and thick white blood and it fell back on its knees, emitting its low shriek that did not seem to belong on any known sound register. Brolin jumped on the brake pedal once more and the creature flew off the front of the cruiser, spilling onto the unforgiving bitumen of Main Street. Brolin stamped on the throttle and turned left, one of the cruiser’s tires running over the creature’s head like a speed hump. More creatures gave chase, but on the flat road they could not hope to match the car for pace. When Bert looked in his side mirror he saw hundreds of the creatures spread across the road. Thousands of unfeeling eyes watched their getaway.

  “I don’t think we have much time,” he said. “Whatever we hope to do, we’d better do it fast.”

  5:01 p.m.

  For the past two hours Father Bronson had kept scores of children entertained with bible stories, game after game of Red Light/Green Light, and had even stripped down to his shirt and showed the older boys some elementary boxing. Had it been left to Hank, they would all probably be going mad with cabin fever and throwing candles at one another.

  Father Bronson had them so well jazzed up that they kept their own spirits high as he slipped away to towel off. Afterward he joined Hank on a pew, cup of water in hand.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Hank said.

  “Do what?”

  “Keep them going like that. Keep thinking of things to do.”

  Father Bronson smiled and sipped thoughtfully. “Part of devoting your life to God is devoting your life to others. Scripture and such things are only the formal part of my job. You never really know how the opportunity to serve God is going to crop up. God works in mysterious ways, so the demands on a priest can be just as unpredictable as God Himself.”

  “I wish I could believe in the whole God thing,” Hank said. “My parents brought me up to pray and go to church and all the rest of it, but…” He shrugged, afraid to offend the priest. But Father Bronson did not seem at all perturbed. He shifted around on the pew to better face Hank.

  “Why is it that you don’t believe in God?” he asked.

  “No one thing. Religion was never for me, that’s all.”

  Father Bronson uttered a sage laugh. “Don’t mistake God and religion for the same thing. Man has adulterated religion for his own nefarious purposes over the past two thousand years. God has remained God and there’s nothing mortal man can do to change Him. Don’t put your faith in religion. Put your faith in God.”

  “But this is just the sort of thing I’m talking about,” Hank said, somewhat startled to feel passion for the debate. “You say God and religion aren’t the same thing—so why are you peddling religion if it has nothing to do with God?”

  “I didn’t say it had nothing to do with God. In the beginning, it had everything to do with God, but certain people have tried to pervert His teachings and His commandments to suit their own beliefs or the trends of the day. Religion is still useful and relevant if it helps people lead better lives, to follow God’s ways. The Church just gives me a platform from which to spread the word of God.”

  “Fair point,” Hank said. “But it’s not just the organized part of religion that I don’t like. I guess, to me, the bible sounds like a mortal wrote it, for a mortal’s purposes. Would an omnipotent being suffer jealousy? ‘For I am a jealous God’? That sounds like a human trait to me. And the whole idea that the human race is made up
of sheep sounds like a nice way to keep the masses in line. ‘Do this, or you’ll go to hell, buddy.’”

  Nodding, Father Bronson said, “I can tell you’ve thought through this a lot, Hank. But let me ask you—to whom do you turn when everything goes wrong?”

  Hank opened his mouth and only emitted a squeak. For he had just lived this hypothetical scenario, and the answer had been a bottle. As he scrambled for something more academic to say, there came a rapping at the church doors.

  He and Father Bronson glanced at one another, and saw a similar understanding in one another’s eyes. The knocking had not sounded mindless or bestial…but it did not hurt to be cautious.

  Father Bronson raised his arms as though he were addressing his congregation. “Please stay right where you are, children,” he said.

  Hank hurried to the stained-glass window nearest the church doors and peered through. The green tint and its melted effect turned everything outside to blobby green shapes—and aside from that, its distance from the doors made his angle of observance too acute. When Father Bronson looked at him he shrugged and shook his head.

  “Is that you, Sheriff?” Father Bronson asked through the doors.

  “It’s all three of us,” someone said.

  Father Bronson opened the door.

  Sheriff Grayson’s arm caught Hank’s eye first; his hand was now a couple of inches closer to the point of his elbow than its creator (or its DNA, if you preferred) had intended. The fractured bone stretched the skin on the inner part of his forearm. His eyes were two dark coals pushed into the dough of his face. Derek had a deep graze across his forehead and his long hair had a damp, unhealthy look. He held a machine gun in each hand and did not seem to care for their weight. Barkley, conversely, appeared more alive than Hank had ever seen him, his cheeks flushed and his eyes flitting about as if they could not decide what to take in next. He carried an armload of radiation suits.

  “We had some trouble,” Derek said, with a strained but genuine grin.

  “We got what we needed, though,” Sheriff Grayson said.

  Father Bronson descended on the sheriff right away. “Let’s get that arm in a sling,” he said, guiding him towards the altar. Most of the children fell silent as they watched Bald Eagle’s most important citizen (to them, anyway) carry his injured limb in obvious discomfort. Seeing the sheriff vulnerable appeared to affect them in a way none of the antecedent events had. A few looked on the verge of tears.

  “We need to get this show on the road,” Derek said. “Those things are…swarming, I suppose you’d say. I think they’ve given up on converting us and they’re planning to wipe us out. They nearly overwhelmed us on our way back and I doubt it’ll take them long to figure out where we’re holed up.”

  “How many are there?” Hank asked.

  “Hundreds, maybe thousands,” Derek said.

  “Christ. And we have two machine guns?”

  “No, that’s the one piece of luck we had during our whole adventure. Come and stand guard while I bring the rest of them inside.”

  He handed Hank an M-1 and placed the other one on the floor. Hank looked at the gun and then looked at him. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I’ve never fired a gun before. Larry left out that part of my cadetship.”

  Derek grinned. “Just put this bit against your shoulder,” he said, touching the gun butt, “point it in the right direction and pull the trigger. Grayson taught us how to do it—if he can do it, how tricky can it be?”

  “Okay. But don’t blame me if you wind up with a bullet in your ass.”

  “I trust you, man,” Derek said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  Hank put his back against one of the church doors and held the gun with both hands, letting his eyes rove. He liked the feel of the M-1 even better than the service revolver—it had a greater latent power and felt safer, more controllable. It would be easy to believe you were invincible wielding such a weapon. It was a shame so many GIs had found out the speciousness of that belief.

  Derek panted as he trundled back and forth lugging a bountiful stream of ammo boxes and guns. Hank’s eyes almost fell out when he saw a machine gun augmented with a grenade launcher. “Jesus, did you rob an army base? Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “I never reveal my sources,” Derek said with a wink.

  He was still shuttling items in when Father Bronson and Sheriff Grayson emerged from the priest’s live-in quarters. The sheriff had a crimson flourish and his brow shined with sweat. Father Bronson had sourced a couple of sticks (by the look of their tips, they might have been artistic paint brushes) and they were employed as splints. The sheriff’s undershirt now acted as a sling, holding the arm immobile.

  “That looks a lot better,” Hank said.

  “It feels better too. But if I never have to go through a bone resetting again, it’ll be too soon. I think the Father here learned some new swear words.”

  “Nothing some contemporary writers have not already taught me,” he said.

  “You read potboilers?” Hank said.

  “I try to stick to those of some literary merit. But we all need some roughage now and then, don’t we?”

  Hank and Sheriff Grayson both laughed.

  “Right, that’s the last of it,” Derek said, putting down an ammo box.

  “We should be able to hold out anything with this array of weaponry,” Father Bronson said.

  “I wish you were right,” Derek said, “but as I just told Hank, I think there might be as many creatures out there as we have bullets.”

  “The guns will only serve as a last line of defense,” the Sheriff Grayson said. “If we try and go on the offensive we’ll be dead before our lovely little deadline is up. Let’s just test Barkley’s idea and keep our fingers crossed. The sooner we test it, the sooner we’ll know if we need a plan B.”

  “It’s probably smart to come up with a plan B anyway,” Barkley said.

  “Nothing like a vote of confidence from the project designer,” Hank said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Where’s Stan?” Sheriff Grayson asked.

  “I’m here,” he said, having appeared beside them like a wraith. Something about the kid’s eyes made Hank’s heart leap and his skin crawl at the same time.

  “Okay, let’s get you into this suit.”

  Because Stan was lanky, the legs of the suit did not pose much of a problem (they just bunched up a little around the ankles) and the window-faced mask would fit anyone, but the arms were another matter. Unless he kept his hands fisted all the time, the arms would slip down and become encumbering yellow tentacles.

  “The last thing we need is for him to get all twisted up when he’s trying to spray one of those things,” Sheriff Grayson said. “Father, do you have something here we can use to…”

  “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Father Bronson said.

  When he returned from his living quarters he had a handful of elastic bands of all colors, sizes and thicknesses. He tugged up the radiation suit’s arms until the plastic stretched snugly over Peter’s clenched hands, then slipped elastic bands around the top of his biceps so the material could not creep down. Stan looked like he had sunflowers tucked beneath his armpits, but otherwise it all seemed satisfactory.

  “What do you think, Stan?” Derek asked. “Is it okay?”

  “It smells like tuna in here,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

  They all laughed. “But you can breathe okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Derek turned to Hank. “So that leaves you, man. You sure you’re up to this?”

  Hank sniffed. “Why the hell not? If I ever get my article published in Rolling Stone I’m going to need an encore.”

  “That’s the spirit…I think,” Barkley said.

  “Hank—perhaps a prayer before you leave?” Father Bronson said.

  “No thanks, Father,” Hank said. He smiled. “But if you want to pray for me, I won’t hold it against you.”

  Stan
said, “I’d like to pray with you, Father Bronson.”

  “Okay,” Father Bronson said. He stood close to the boy, put his hands together and closed his eyes. “Our Father who art in heaven…”

  Barkley and the sheriff joined in the Lord’s Prayer. Hank and Derek waited respectfully with their hands behind their backs and their eyes turned down.

  When it was done, Father Bronson added: “Watch over these brave men as they risk their lives to save our souls and the souls of Your children who have been afflicted with this curse. Amen.”

  “Amen,” responded those praying.

  “Amen,” Hank whispered.

  5:35 p.m.

  They trolled Main Street at no more than ten miles an hour, the cruiser’s beefy engine grumbling at their tardiness. Rain clouds, gathered at the wind’s behest, darkened the afternoon to dusk. They also threatened to cry and perhaps ruin the experiment.

  Stan sat in the passenger’s seat with his mask in the footwell and an Uzi in his lap. The kid gazed out the window with flat, hard eyes—eyes Hank had never seen on one so young. He wanted to say something to take the starch out of those eyes, but a parent’s empathy was not in him.

  “I think there’s a pretty good chance this will work,” he said.

  If this affected Stan one way or another, he did not show it. He did not even respond to Hank’s voice.

  “You must miss your mom and dad,” Hank persisted. “If the heavy water works, we’ll do our best to track them down first and get them back to normal. All of us have—”

  “They’d kill me if they had to, wouldn’t they?” Stan said. He turned to Hank now, eyes as fierce as bonfires. “My own mom and dad would just kill me on the spot.”

  “They’re not really your mom and dad—don’t forget that, Stan. They’re just sick. You know how a rabid dog will attack his owners, even if he loves them? Or if someone has a fever and they do strange things? That’s what your mom and dad are like. That’s what all the people in Bald Eagle are like. They’re just sick, and we’re the doctors who are trying to cure them.”