Stranger

by Simon Clark

  “That again, Phoenix? You are insane.”

  “List the facts, Valdiva. You’ve been in close contact with hornets, so that means you were probably infected months ago. You’re the only person we know of that instinctively knows when a person is infected . . . your two pals there can back me up on that one, hey, guys?” He steamed on, speaking faster. “When you were on the run from the things you say you fell sick. Only you didn’t remember what happened exactly because you were unconscious for weeks. Now, how can anyone survive in a coma for weeks without expert medical care?”

  “My mother and sister took care of me.”

  “You bet they did.” Phoenix glared through the TV screen, so close one eye filled it. Red veins crazed the glistening white. “You were hive, Valdiva. And Mom and sis procured men and women and children for you to feed on, just like I did with this one.” He jerked his head back at the girl.

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Am I? Look at the hair, the color of her skin. They’re just the same as yours.” He gave a triumphant snort. “Now that’s what I call a family likeness.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the voice. “Phoenix, it’s not true. I was sick, that’s all.” I glanced at Tony and Zak; they returned my gaze, but there was something uneasy about it.

  Phoenix ranted on. “You were just like this thing in here, Valdiva. And when your Mom and sister outlived their usefulness you just wished them dead . . . and they died . . . That’s what these monsters can do, Valdiva.” He stopped, but his breathing continued loudly over the speaker. “But I don’t care about that now. I don’t care if you two become the new Adam and Eve and repopulate the world with a master race . . . because all I want is out.” His voice broke. “I’ve had enough of this stinking, rotten nightmare. . . . I can’t take it anymore. Really, I can’t.”

  There was a pause. No one spoke as his breathing echoed in the lounge. I gestured to Zak to pass me the backpack. Pulling back the zipper, I saw two sticks of dynamite taped together with a length of fuse. For a moment I planned blasting through the doors into Phoenix’s communications center. But the doors were too thick. This little bundle of explosive wouldn’t do it.

  Phoenix’s voice rasped dryly, “So how you going to help me, Valdiva? Or are we going to sit here and watch each other until doomsday?”

  I closed the backpack so he wouldn’t see the dynamite through his spy cameras.

  “Phoenix, how are we going to get in there to help you?”

  “I told you, I can’t open the doors. She won’t let me.”

  “There’s got to be a way in. Ventilation ducts?”

  “Too small. Unless you can shrink yourself to the size of a mouse.”

  “Any hatches? Emergency exits?”

  “None. If this burns I’d fry.”

  He sounded weary now. On screen I saw him shoot anxious looks at the naked girl. “You have to hurry, Valdiva. I think she’s waking up.”

  “You’ve got to give me some help here, Phoenix. Think, old buddy; is there any other access to that room?”

  “None at all. No . . . wait . . . there’s one of those little elevators . . . what d’ya call them? Dumbwaiters; that’s it. There’s a dumbwaiter over there in the wall.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “What do you think? People working down here’d still have to eat even during a nuclear war. If they were too busy to leave, someone would send them down food to eat while they watched the US of A flame out on the screens.”

  “Where does the dumbwaiter come down from?”

  “The kitchen. Right next to the room you’re in . . . but wait . . . you don’t think you’re somehow gonna sneak down in that and come out guns blazing. The thing’s that big.” He held out his hands about a foot wide. “Like I said, it’s big enough for a plate of hot dogs, not for a platoon of marines. . . .” He laughed. An edge of hysteria cranked it higher. “But while we’re talking about it, maybe you could send me down a steak and fries. I haven’t eaten in days.” He laughed again. “Fucking days. Man, I can feel my ribs through my shirt.”

  Calmly, I said, “OK, Phoenix. Listen carefully. I’m going to send something down to you. Something nice.”

  He shot me a look. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to help you.”

  “Forget about sending a gun down in the elevator. She’ll know, guys. She’ll see it in my eyes. And you can bet your life she won’t let me use it on her.

  “Phoenix, trust me. I’m sending something down that’s going to solve all your problems.”

  I watched him on the screen. You could see the wheels turn inside his head as he thought about it. Suddenly he looked up at the camera, his face filling the screen. That was the moment when I realized he understood what I’d been driving at.

  “OK, Valdiva. Send down that steak. I like them bloody, so make it a rare one. Plenty of fries. Potato salad. And don’t be niggardly with that mayonnaise— you hear?”

  “I hear, Phoenix.”

  “I’m waiting, Valdiva.”

  “You just keep that mental image of a huge juicy steak. Think about golden fries. Onion rings. Do ya like apple pie?”

  “Good God, yes. Send me a whole apple pie.”

  “Keep that image in your mind, Phoenix.”

  Picking up the backpack, I went quickly into the ad-joining kitchen. Phoenix hadn’t been house proud. Wrappers, cans, cartons covered the table, along with around a hundred spent syringes. Boy, the guy knew how to party.

  Set in the wall was a small steel door. Beside it were two illuminated buttons. One was marked UP, the other DOWN. I pressed the UP button. Far away, I heard a click, then a faint humming.

  I pulled a plastic tray from the crud on the table, then set a plate on it. A buzzer sounded behind me. I gripped the handle on the door and pulled it down. It slid open to reveal a small steel box little bigger than the interior of a microwave oven.

  Phoenix’s voice came over the speaker. “How ya doing, Greg? Don’t burn that steak.”

  “I won’t. I’m cooking the fries now.”

  Zak came to the doorway and looked in. He gave an expressive gesture as if to ask what the hell I was doing. I put my fingers to my lips for him to stay quiet. Quickly I pulled the last two sticks of dynamite from the bag. Then he understood. He helped me unravel the fuse.

  “I’m just frying those onion rings,” I called. “Do you need mustard?”

  “Send down a whole jar. I’ll go nuts.”

  “Steak’s nearly ready.”

  “Nice and juicy, is it, Greg?”

  “It’s beautiful. You’re going to love what’s on this tray. Steak, fries, the trimmings. A whole pie. A jug of cold sweet cream. Keep that image in your mind, Phoenix.”

  The voice came back calm and genuinely grateful. “I knew I could rely on you to help me, Greg. Thanks, buddy. You’re a good man.”

  “Here it comes.” I nodded to Zak, who placed the tray containing the dynamite into the midget elevator. Loosely, I coiled the fuse inside.

  “I think you ought to speed things up. My roommate’s waking up. I think she’s gnnn . . .”

  Tony shouted from the other room. “Hey, come and look at this—quickly, guys.”

  “The food’s coming down, Phoenix,” I shouted and lit the fuse. As the sparks flew I slammed the door shut and hit the DOWN button. With a click it began to hum its way down to the sealed room below.

  “Greg!” Tony’s voice rose. “Hurry!”

  I ran into the adjoining room. On screen Phoenix rose from his chair. One look told me that thing had him in its grip. His eyes glazed. He moved like a sleep-walker. Behind him, the girl still sat as she had before, not moving so much as a finger, as if asleep.

  Tony grunted. “Looks like sleeping beauty woke.”

  I focused on the screen. Her eyes had opened. There was something cool and distant about them. They looked up at the camera that filmed her. . . . It seemed as if she gazed through t
he TV screen directly at us.

  Over the speaker I heard the buzz as the dumbwaiter descended into the Communications Center. In a dreamlike way Phoenix went to it, opened the elevator door. For a second he stood there without reacting, even though he must have seen the two sticks of dynamite and the burning fuse.

  In one fluid movement he scooped the dynamite from the dumbwaiter, then as if he was shielding a newborn baby from the rain, he hugged it to his chest before moving away from the girl. He walked to the farthest corner of the room; there he pressed himself to where the two walls joined.

  In an unearthly way things seemed to stay like that for whole moments, Phoenix pushing himself face first to the wall, the fuse burning toward the explosive he clutched to his stomach.

  The girl gazed at the camera. Her eyes were languid, even sleepy. I knew she understood what was happening. Only she didn’t seem afraid. She tilted her head to one side, as if studying the expression on my face. Her dark hair spilled down over one naked breast. Her lips parted like she was just about to speak.

  Then the flame reached the detonator. With a cracking thump a blossom of flame erupted in the corner of the room where Phoenix stood. A second later something wet and red struck the lens, smearing it so thickly we could no longer see the interior of the room.

  For a moment no one spoke. The thick concrete floor that separated the lounge from the room beneath our feet shielded us. Even so, it knocked enough dust out of the carpet to mist the air. Electric lights flickered, then steadied again. The computer faithfully compensated for any damage; the backup systems kicked in, the air conditioner hummed steadily as before. Even with its human controller dead, the bunker’s electronic brain would automatically maintain everything as before. Probably for months, if not years.

  Zak looked ’round the room. “I guess all this is ours now.”

  Tony grimaced. “We still have to evict the bad guys, remember?”

  I knocked the dust off my arms. “They can’t spoil anything now. Besides, Phoenix will have made sure all the storerooms were locked up tight. First we need to get hold of those antibiotics for Michaela. And we need to fix Tony’s leg.” I smiled. “Then we can all come back here, clean the house and maybe enjoy a vacation.”

  “First, how do we find a way out of here?”

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Zak put his hand on my forearm. “There was something else, too, Greg.”

  “Oh?”

  “What Phoenix said about you being from a hive. That you were the same as the girl.”

  I shook my head. “You saw the state that guy was in. It was all a delusion.”

  “Was it?”

  “Keep believing it was.” I gave a grim smile. “Because that’s what I intend to do. OK, Tony, old buddy? If you can manage it, it’s time to take a little walk.”

  Christmas

  On the day I carried Tony out of the bunker on my back, trying not to knock his busted leg against the walls, it all changed. Only you never seem to know that you’ve reached one of those pivotal times in your life until much later, do you? Ben drove Tony back in the Jeep. The bottom of the vehicle almost dragged through the dirt, we’d piled so many supplies into the thing. All I knew then as I followed the Jeep was that I was grateful to be alive, that my buddies were alive and that the afternoon sunlight never seemed more beautiful to me than right then.

  I rode alongside Zak on the Harley. For a while he’d talked about Phoenix and the girl in the bunker and asked me if she had some kind of telepathic powers. Would she have been able to reach inside our heads and control us, too? At last I smiled at him and called out over the noise of the motors, “Forget them, Zak. They’re dead. We’re not. That’s all that matters.”

  So we rode on, seeing birds flying overhead. A deer ran alongside us for a while, as if wanting to join the pack, before peeling off to disappear into the heart of the forest. It still seemed then as if we’d carry on fighting for survival every single day of our lives. But that was the day we turned it all around.

  Zak gave Michaela her antibiotic shots. It seemed in no time she was back to her old self, with those darkly erotic eyes and a smile so full of good humor you could almost light up a room with her. Tony’s leg healed. Before long he was hobbling ’round with a stick. Now it doesn’t bother him at all unless it rains; then he grumbles that it aches and he winds up growling like a bear with a sore rear end.

  We know we would have starved if it weren’t for the bunker. First we had to clear out what was left of the hornets . . . dead ones, too, so they wouldn’t stink up the place. After that every few weeks we’d return with the Jeep (that now pulled a huge trailer); then we’d go crazy piling it high with fuel, food and ammunition before returning to the cabins on the hillside. What about Phoenix? Well, we never tried to break down the locked door that sealed Phoenix and the girl into what had become their tomb. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” was Michaela’s advice. Good advice, too. That episode was over. It was time to forget and start to live the rest of our lives.

  And get this: The second half of the summer was a long and peaceful one. No hornets came our way. The biggest warm-blooded creature I saw was an elk that snuffled ’round the cabins one morning in the fall just as the leaves were turning red and the dawn mist bore an unmistakable chill. It was times like that I half believed I could climb on the Harley and roar all the way back home, where I’d push open the door to see Mom busy in the kitchen, and she’d smile up at me and say, “Hi, Greg. I made pizza for supper. Would you be a honey and go help Chelle with her homework?”

  That was when ghosts came as stealthily as the dawnmist. But when all’s said and done ghosts are only memories. And memories are nothing more than movie clips from the past, right? They can’t—or shouldn’t—take control of your life. Even so every now and again old phantom memory would rise up. Once I dreamed of Phoenix. He was sitting on the end of the bed as Michaela slept beside me.

  “I never thanked you for what you did, Valdiva,” he said. “Thanks, buddy; you set me free. . . . You know she had me like a puppet . . . pull the string, pull the string . . .” Smiling, he pulled an invisible string.

  “Phoenix?”

  “Yes, old buddy?”

  “I never asked you . . . why did you paint your face like an Egyptian pharaoh?”

  He grinned. “Intimations of immortality . . . intimations of immortality . . .” He kept repeating this as he began to sprinkle rose petals from his fingertips. They covered the bed in red splotches. Just like the red splotches that covered the camera lens after the dynamite had exploded against his stomach. In the morning I recalled the dream. There were no red rose petals on the bed, though. Not that I expected there to be any. Phoenix, along with the thing that had squirmed from the hive, was dead.

  Of course the time had to come when I dreamed about the girl. It was a day in October. One of those last warm, sunny days when you make the most of the heat. Boy and Tony had gone fishing. I walked with them by the river; then, when they chose a good place to cast their lines, I decided to walk on, following the flow of the stream. After a few minutes I found a sunlit spot on a bank protected from the cool breeze. It seemed a great place to relax for half an hour or so. I sat on the deep, soft grass at the edge of the river. Fish jumped for insects hovering above the surface. It was so peaceful my eyes closed.

  “Greg Valdiva.”

  I opened my eyes to see a woman standing on the far bank. She had long dark hair and big almond-shaped eyes that fixed on me from across the water. It was the girl from the bunker, the one Phoenix claimed had hatched from the hive. More phantom memories.

  “You took some finding,” she said.

  I yawned. “Well, you’ve found me now.” My dream self was calm, cool and very collected. “What do you want?”

  She studied me like an expert appraising an antique. I noticed she was no longer naked. The prude in my unconscious had slipped her into a white dress. Water splashed against the rocks; another fish j
umped to snap a fly from the air.

  At last she said, “You are the same as me, Greg Valdiva.”

  “I don’t think so. You’ve got the wrong guy. You must be mistaking me for someone else.”

  “No, Greg. There’s no one else to mistake you with.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “That’s a fact, Greg. You see, we’re the only ones who made it through the hive state.”

  “You don’t say?” My dream persona was like chilled silk—cool, smooth.

  “None of the other hives were viable. They became dessert for rats and snakes.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “But it leaves you and me, Greg.”

  “So you say.”

  She looked at me steadily across the rush of water, her almond-shaped eyes huge luminous lights. “You’re not ready to join me yet, are you, Greg?”

  “Nor will I ever be.”

  “You will. One day. When you truly wake up and realize what you are.” She began to walk away, her bare feet pressing lightly against the sandy shore. She paused beneath the trees, a single beam of light picking her out, surrounding her in an unearthly radiance. “We’ll meet again in the future, Greg.”

  The bushes seemed to fold ’round her and she was gone. Her feet made no sound as she glided away into the forest. After a while the eerie silence ended as the birds began to sing.

  “Hey, Valdiva, are you going to sleep there all day?”

  “Yeah, look at what we caught.”

  I opened my eyes to see Boy and Tony standing over me. I squinted up against the light as Boy held a bunch of fish that dripped all over my face. Laughing, I waved him away. “Come on; we’ll make a barbecue of it.” I wiped water from my chin. “The way that wind’s shifting, I figure it’s going to be the last cookout this year.”

  That should have been it. But as they roasted fish on the barbecue I went down to the river again, crossed it by the stepping stones, then followed it downstream to where I’d been sleeping on the far river bank. And there, where the girl in my dream had been standing, I saw a bare footprint in the sand. I scrubbed it out with the heel of my boot, returned to the barbecue and never mentioned it to another living soul.