by Kris Ashton
He squeezed the trigger and then shut his eyes. If he was to be skewered like a human shishkabob, he did not want to see it.
He heard the cry, something like a buzz saw cutting through sheet metal, but could not tell if it was a war cry or a cry of anguish. Then a blob of something slapped against his chest and he heard the clutter of a large something else tumbling down the church’s steeply peaked roof. He opened his eyes to see the creature drop off the gutter’s edge and was about to give a victorious shout when the stench hit him. It seemed to reach down into his stomach and yank back on the contents. A gush of vomit came out and he watched on helpless as chunks of tuna in a yellow sauce sprayed all over the belfry wall and dropped to the floor in a vile waterfall. He pawed at the gobbet of alien blood stuck to his shirt, uttering noises of primal, animal disgust, and then wiped his hand on the sandstone while denying a repeated gag reflex.
When he had himself under control again he looked up to see two more creatures climbing the church’s sloped roof. A man might have had trouble with such an ascent, but their steel fingers and toes dug into the terracotta. Marcus took only vague aim, dividing his bullets between the creatures as though they were ducks in a shooting gallery. He caught the one on his left with a couple of lucky bullets, bending its leg back to the reverse angle. It tottered on one leg for a moment, clawing and grasping at the sky, then fell with enough force to crack half a dozen tiles and rolled end over end until it catapulted off the roof and dropped screeching to the pavement below. The second creature, however, took shots to both arms and its chest but kept coming, as if driven on by its comrade’s undignified demise. Marcus stopped his random spray and started to fire single shots, trying to pick his target. Although he hit it twice more in the torso, neither bullet came close enough to the original dent to split its hide. On and on it came, its steel feet casting up tile fragments like splashes of solid water.
Marcus squeezed one eye shut. The other bullet dents had shrunk to the size of mosquitoes, or so it seemed. He fired one shot and hit the creature’s groin, barely causing it to miss a step. He fired again, higher this time, but missed the other dents even though he could almost have spit on them. The smell was partly to blame, that and the mucus running out of his nose and dripping onto his chin. One more shot would do it, one more shot and—
The creature leaped forward like a leopard, swallowing up the remaining eight or ten feet in the snap of a finger. Time slowed as Marcus saw the creature’s spurs coming at him, ready to shear his head clean off his neck. A blast from the gun might repel it…but what if it failed? That would be it—full time, folks, as some of the power plant workers liked to say at five o’clock.
Marcus tucked his head in armadillo-like and fell to his knees. He felt one of the spurs lance across his scalp, opening up a small wound, and then there was a scraping ring as both spurs stabbed the masonry work behind him. The creature let out an indefinable cry, and at such close proximity it razed Marcus’ brain clean, like fire in a drought-stricken wheat field. No longer thinking, just acting, Marcus pulled the trigger and prayed.
The gun raged bullets, almost deafening him. The creature’s screeching stopped right away and Marcus felt a small moment of nirvana, the kind of intense pleasure an accident victim feels when the first shot of morphine finally kicks in. Then the gelatinous blob (which he later surmised must have stuck momentarily to the belfry roof), dropped onto his head. It oozed down around his ears and seeped into his eyes and mouth. For about two seconds he was frozen in an apotheosis of unimaginable disgust, an outright loathing of his own existence. Then he sprang up, thrusting the creature’s now-headless body off the edge of the belfry and watching with mad delight as it bowled down the church roof, spurs clinking and jangling.
Marcus began to puke again, a string of spasms that at first sent washes of food and stomach acid over the tiles below, then deteriorated into a series of breathless retches. His chest still hitched and heaved as he exhausted the rest of his clip along the gutter line to discourage further assaults on the church. When he knelt to take out another ammo clip he noticed the creature’s head resting in one corner of the belfry, a single mortified eye peering up at him. He hammered a fresh magazine into his gun, spat some foul tasting slime from his mouth, and picked up the creature’s head. When he turned back to the roofscape he saw two more creatures had ventured up and were now scaling the tiles.
Roaring, Marcus tossed the severed head at them as a quarterback might toss a football. His untrained throwing-arm only hurled the head a dozen feet, but it bounced twice and rolled right between the two approaching creatures. They paused to appraise the oncoming object and let it roll past them, watching it all the way off the roof edge. When they looked forward again, Marcus had lifted the M-1 up onto belfry ledge, only just aware of the pungent belches coming from his throat and the alien blood congealing in his hair like candle wax. He closed his finger on the trigger, on some level thrilling at the heady power he got from the full magazine feeding his weapon.
Two, three, four bullets and the first creature’s head burst like a foil balloon, the contents spreading far enough to mess its comrade. Before Marcus could turn the gun on the second creature it made a hasty about-face and scrabbled down the church roof, tiles splitting and slipping beneath the erratic tread of its feet. As it leaped down to the ground it broadcast a high-frequency cry Marcus had not heard before. Some similar cries answered it from the crest of the creature-wave that had stopped in the middle of the road. From there it began to amplify throughout the entire army, developing into the tumult of a million hawks shrieking in unison.
Marcus had to blink to believe it when he saw the mercurial mass of creatures dropping back, seeking the sanctuary of the forest once more. He began to laugh, a lunatic cackling that he garnished with a run of gunfire.
“They’re falling back!” he shouted as much to himself as anyone else. “Those nasty sons of bitches are running scared!”
6:53 p.m.
Gunsmoke filled the church, giving it a dreamy, mystical quality. Close to a dozen alien bodies lay slain around its hallowed floor, some piled in threes and fours below the windows (whose beauteous pictures were now just something to be swept up).
Bert covered the window closest to the door, Brolin the other, their guns tense and motionless in their hands. They peered through the haze, their eyes searching for the minutest sign of movement. But only the smoke stirred, rising indolently up to the cathedral ceiling.
“What are they doing?” Brolin asked.
“Steady,” Bert said.
A second later Barkley’s voice drifted down through the heavy ceiling. Bert and Brolin both dared to turn their eyes upwards.
“Is he…screaming?”
Bert listened some more. “I don’t think so. They sound like words.”
There came the crash of a slamming trapdoor and then the soft patter of footsteps descending the stairs. Barkley’s voice resolved itself into distinct words.
“…fallen back! Guys, are you guys okay? The creatures have fallen back, they’re retreating for some reason.”
He burst through the pulpit door, his eyes alight with a hysterical elation. “Yes, you’re okay! The creatures are all heading back into the forest. I don’t really understand—”
“Barkley,” Brolin said, in a flat voice, “are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right, we sent those bastards packing!”
“But you’re…” He gestured at Barkley’s head and shoulders, which were pasted and damp with half-dried gore.
The inference appeared to confuse Barkley at first, and then he looked at his right shoulder, on which a lump of blood had caked like porridge. He coughed once, tried to swallow, and then gagged, bending over as the gag progressed to a retch. Nothing came out, save for a string of saliva that formed a small puddle on the floor. Wiping his mouth, Barkley said, “I could really use a shower.”
“I think we all could,” Bert said. “Jesus, y
ou just never get used to that smell, do you?”
“It’s almost like it changes every few seconds,” Brolin said. “Like it…evolves, so your nose can’t ignore it.”
Bert rested his gun against the altar and scratched his chin. “I can’t understand why the creatures retreated. They had us trapped in here like rabbits down a hole.”
“I think the church acted as a fortress for us,” Barkley said. “They couldn’t just swarm in here and overcome us.”
“But they could have eventually,” Brolin said. “We couldn’t have held them out forever.”
Barkley contemplated this. “I think they probably decided the casualties weren’t worth it. They would prefer to kill us if they could, but they know they have us outnumbered by a thousand to one. Numbers are what matter to them, I reckon. Like ants. On its own, an ant is weak and easy to kill, but not even someone the sheriff’s size would want to take on an ants’ nest with his bare hands. And numbers are even more important to these creatures, because that’s what they rely on for reproduction. The more of them there are, the faster they propagate.”
“Do you think they’ll lie in wait for us?” Brolin asked.
“I don’t know that they’ll bother. I’m sure they’ll try and kill us if they see us again, but I doubt they’d bother to wait and ambush us. They could spend their time more productively. I’ll bet the ones that still aren’t transmogrified are making their way toward Laymon as we speak.”
“Richard and his men would probably have something to say about that,” Bert said.
“We’ve been lucky then,” Brolin said, shaking his head. “It’s by pure dumb luck that we’re not as dead as dodos right now.”
“I prefer to think we were spared by the grace of God.”
They all turned to see Father Bronson striding across the altar. He walked down the stairs and out to the aisle, surveying his church, which was now as holey as it was holy. Some children poked their heads out from Father Bronson’s residence, perhaps told to stay put but too curious to obey to the letter.
Father Bronson rested his hand on a pew.
“It goes to show you should not underestimate the power of prayer. It’s okay, children, you can come out now—the immediate danger is over. God’s power is limitless, and it is through prayer that we, the mortal sinners, might access God’s power. For he loves us though we are sinners, because we are his children, and he would not allow a blight such as this to take those who are faithful—”
The spur emerged just below his ribcage, ripping a hole in his smock and sending out a small fountain of grue. The children, just emerging at Father Bronson’s insistence, screamed and tried to trample back into the safety of the priest’s quarters. Bert started forward, drawing his plain old service revolver, and moved with lithe steps into the aisle. There he saw the creature, prostrate beneath one of the pews, blood pulsing from its chest and its black insect eyes focused on Father Bronson’s back.
Bert took aim and squeezed off a single shot, using one of those dark, shiny walnuts as a bullseye. The black window disappeared in an instant and more thick blood purged through the hole. The creature went limp and its spur slipped out of Father Bronson, dropping to the floor with the clank of a sword. The priest let out a grunt of pain. Rivulets of blood started to flow down his smock front and rear, a gaudy lipstick red in contrast to the bleached whiteness of his religious attire. Barkley lurched forward and caught Father Bronson beneath the armpits before he could drop to his knees. An alarming amount of blood spurted from the wound in his stomach; it was as though someone had turned on a tap within. Bert had seen this sort of bleeding once before, when attending a serious road accident back in 1959. Such uncontrolled spillage could only mean a severed artery.
“Get something to staunch the bleeding!” Bert barked. “A towel! A shirt! Anything!”
Brolin stripped off his shirt, covered though it had to be in filth and germs and micro-organisms no one had ever identified. As Brolin pressed his inadequate first aid against the wound, Father Bronson tilted his head up so he could see Bert in his peripheral vision. The priest already appeared pale, and a crown of sweat beaded his forehead. His voice was crackly, as though he had developed bad bronchitis.
“God works in mysterious ways,” he said.
Then his head fell forward, on a limp neck.
7:14 p.m.
They had held Father Bronson sitting up while Brolin pressed his shirt into the wound at the front and Barkley volunteered his own business shirt for duties at the back. Bert had kept his finger on the priest’s wrist, monitoring his pulse, but they all knew these were symbolic gestures. They did not have a doctor among their number, not even a nurse, and for all the difference their first aid made they might as well have been undertakers preparing a body for viewing.
Father Bronson did not stir again. As the sun slipped behind the mountains and plunged Bald Eagle into darkness, the priest’s breath began to rattle and stutter. Bert felt the beat beneath his fingers quicken to a sprint, which held for half a minute or so. Then it slowed and became shallow. Father Bronson’s dying breath came with no fanfare or ceremony but rather a cloying silence, broken only by the murmur of children’s voices—small, fearful, deferential.
Bert left his fingers on Father Bronson’s wrist a full minute, knowing he would not feel another pulse. But he was an official, no matter the lunatic circumstances in which he might find himself.
“He’s gone,” he said, placing Father Bronson’s left hand beside his right in the small culvert of his lap.
After a few moments of reflection, Bert and Barkley took Father Bronson into his residence and laid him out on his bed, covering him up with a blanket.
“Should we say something?” Barkley asked.
Bert observed the blanket’s grey hills and valleys. He had never seen a relief map of Bald Eagle and wondered if it resembled the shape now on Father Bronson’s bed. He made the sign of the cross.
“Peace be with you,” he said.
7:30 p.m.
They were all people.”
Marcus glanced up at the sound of Sheriff Grayson’s voice. Father Bronson’s death had punctured the balloon of elation they felt after driving off the army of creatures and the church seemed stuffy and humid. Brolin had taken it upon himself to distribute food among the children, who were becoming restless again. He could hear some of them complaining that they didn’t like tuna and didn’t want beans again, either.
“What do you mean, Sheriff?” Marcus asked. They sat alongside one another on a pew, perhaps two body lengths apart. The sheriff had his arms folded, his legs stretched out straight and his chin squashed down into his neck.
“How many of them do you think we killed today? How many creatures?”
Marcus made a rough mental count. “I think I took down nine or ten. Maybe more.”
“Let’s say ten,” Sheriff Grayson said, although it didn’t sound as though he wanted to say anything. “Brolin and I took down an even dozen. That’s twenty-two. Add to that all the others we’ve had to take out, plus God knows how many Richard and his soldiers have killed in skirmishes on the perimeter. Let’s say a hundred. That’s a hundred citizens of Bald Eagle County dead. A hundred people I spent most of my adult life protecting. Real people, Barkley. I knew just about all of them, congratulated them when they had kids, commiserated with them when a loved one passed away, helped settle their disputes. They’re all dead and they’re not coming back.
“It’s so easy to shoot them when they look like those things, you know? They’d just as soon kill us as we would them, I know that, but holy Christ, I turned my gun on innocent human beings.”
Marcus offered a little shrug. “They weren’t human beings anymore.”
The sheriff did not seem to hear him.
Brolin wandered over carrying tins of tuna. He offered one to the sheriff, who just shook his head and did not unfold his arms. The last thing Marcus felt like right then was more cold, oily fish, but h
e took a tin anyway. He peeled off the lid and scooped a fingerful into his mouth.
“So what do we do now?” Brolin said.
Sheriff Grayson did not appear disposed to answer, so Marcus replied, “I guess we go back to the drawing board and try to think of something else.”
“Oh, yeah? And what would that be?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s what I mean. We need to put our heads together and come up with a plan.”
Brolin glanced at the sheriff, as if to get verification that Marcus had indeed spoken these words. “A plan, huh? Like Batman comes up with on TV every week? Listen, man, let me paint you a real clear picture. There are now a total of three adults left in this rebel band of ours. Your bright idea to change those creatures back into humans flopped like an old drunk on a cold night. We might have scared them off today, but there are still more of them than we have bullets. If we set foot outside this door, it’s only a matter of time before they get us. Even if they leave us alone, Grayson’s good friend, The Man, will make sure we don’t get past town limits. Now, so far as I can see, that leaves us with one option—kill every last one of those things. Which of course means we have no options left at all.”
Marcus stared up at Brolin, taking in his staring eyes, his flaring nostrils and the trails of unkempt hair that framed his face. “You know, for a hippie, you can be very pessimistic sometimes.”