Clickers

by J. F. Gonzalez

  She’d known Conklin since she was six or seven. He might have become temporarily unbalanced, but she was hoping their personal history would cut through that and speak some sense into him.

  It took some convincing but Jack finally took off, darting across the street, moving cautiously as he headed toward Glen Jorgensen’s.

  Janice watched him go, then checked out her surroundings. The Clickers seemed to be gone; several townspeople were heading back from the beach bearing hunting rifles, talking enthusiastically as if returning from a bear hunt. Another pair of men walked up the street, three of the Clickers hung on meat hooks like fish dangling from their mouths. The Clickers’ bodies were broken and blasted away, but they still resembled the monstrosities they were.

  A sound behind her made her whirl around. It was Sheriff Conklin emerging from the station. He was carrying an semi-automatic weapon and had a pump shotgun draped over his back. There were now two pistols hanging from holsters around his hips. He was limping rather badly and she noticed his wound. Was it a gunshot? He glared at her with that look of madness in his eyes, then turned toward the pier. Janice stared at him, jaw agape. Looking at him gave her the creeps.

  She fought the urge to yell after him, to try to stop him and make him see reason. Roy kept walking in that dragging limp toward the pier, his gait illuminated by the sporadic headlights of pick-up trucks parked haphazardly in the street. His gait was so purposeful, the look in his eyes so maddening, that she thought if she did try to say something he would snap even further and use the firearms he was carrying. He looked like he was already past the breaking point.

  Jack was gone, having trotted off to fetch Dr. Jorgensen five minutes before Conklin came out of the station. The Sheriff’s limping gait receded as an idea took root in her mind and she moved back toward the car, her mouth set in a tight grimace. She opened the rear door. “Come on, Bobby. We’re going inside.”

  Bobby scrambled out of the backseat, his bandaged hand cradled to his chest. Glen Jorgensen had equipped it with a makeshift sling, and now Bobby had the hand in it. “Are we going to get Rick out?”

  “Yep.” Janice closed the back door and herded her son through the Sheriff’s station. She closed the door behind her and motioned Bobby to stop, then listened, trying to catch whatever sounds could be emanating from within the building. The Sheriff’s station was small, the first room consisting of a makeshift lobby/office. It was equipped with a small waiting area and four desks. Beyond the office to the right there was a little corridor lined with closets. Directly behind the office was a long corridor that was dark. The cells, she assumed. The place was silent.

  “Rick!”

  From faintly down the hall, his voice. “Down here.”

  She paused, waiting for the tell-tale signs of another deputy emerging from the jail, or from one of the side rooms telling her she had to leave. But none came.

  They were alone in the Sheriff’s station. Just as she expected.

  She locked the door behind her. Then she herded Bobby ahead of her and made her way down the darkened hall to the jail where Rick was incarcerated.

  * * *

  By the time Roy reached the pier, most of the work appeared to be already done. A group of twenty men were blowing the beached creatures to mush, while others stood poised at strategic points on the beach, keeping their eyes peeled for further invading creatures. The few stragglers that made their way to shore were quickly shot. Roy saw Barney Corabi, who appeared to have taken charge. Barney was a bear of a man, tall and beefy with black hair, who favored lumberjack attire. Roy approached him, waving. Barney saw him and waved back. “What we got here, Barney?”

  Barney motioned toward the beach. “We got most of it under control. Tried raising you at the station. Where were you?”

  “Rusty and I were over at the power station when they came,” Roy said. He still didn’t know what to call these things. They seemed to be the best way to describe them. “They took us completely by surprise. I’m damned lucky to have gotten out of there alive.”

  Barney looked concerned. “Jesus, Roy, what happened?” He looked down at Roy’s injured leg. “What the hell happened to your leg and where’s Rusty, is he—”

  “Dead.” Roy’s voice was deadpan as he looked at Barney and shook his head. He sighed, trying to inject some drama in the narrative. “Those things were all over the power plant when we got there. A swarm of them attacked us and Rusty was in front of me when they came. We both backed up, pulled our guns and started shooting but they got him. They stung him…” He let that trail off, avoiding Barney’s eyes as he looked at the sand filled with so many of the broken shelled, bloodied creatures. “I tried to save him and in doing so Rusty’s gun went off and I was shot. By then it was too late…” He shook his head.

  “I know,” Barney said. “One of them stung Ritchie Wilkeson during the first wave. It snuck right by us and got him right in the hip. He—”

  Roy held his hand up, stopping him, eyes closed against what Barney meant to say next. His hip swelled up, the skin split and began bubbling. Then his hip just…exploded. He knew about that. He’d seen what those things had done to the men in the power plant and to Rusty after he shot him. He’d seen that, but he hadn’t been horrified by it. No way. Those things had their purpose in life, and Roy had seen it on the way back to Phillipsport. They were his chance to redeem himself. “What’s happening now?”

  Barney seemed to have forgotten about asking Roy how he’d managed to get out of the power plant. The burly man nodded toward the men making rounds along the shore shooting the crustaceans, others snaking along the streets that led farther inland, hunting rifles drawn. “Quite a few of them escaped our front lines and made it farther inland. I got Harvey Fisher and had him call on the guys from the Lodge to load their guns and try to corner these things. Harvey got his boys on it while he rounded the rest of the boys up. A couple of them who came out to the shore moved back inland to meet the other team. We’ve killed maybe fifty of those.”

  “Any escape even farther?” Roy asked.

  “A few I think. We’re concentrating our team on making sure no more come in from the ocean as well as keeping the town reinforced.”

  Roy nodded. He patted Barney on the shoulder. “Good work. I’ll keep watch over here if you want to take a break.”

  “Think I will,” Barney said, shouldering his rifle. “Madge Young made a pot of coffee using propane in the Hot Dog Hut on the pier. You want some?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee,” Roy said, gazing up and down the shore.

  “Back in a minute.” Barney turned and made his way down to the pier.

  Roy beamed. He turned his back to the ocean, a grin on his chiseled face. Everything was going to go just as he planned. Now that he was in control and on top of things, he’d make sure these creatures were dead, then organize a simultaneous clean-up crew and medical team to help the injured. Taking control of the war. Something he should have done before, in that other war, the one that he—

  He bit down hard on his bottom lip. Blood squirted into his mouth. The pain rocked the thought out of his mind. We’re not going to think about that. Everything is under control. Rusty is gone. That Rick Sychek longhair is in a cell where he won’t interfere like he did last time and this time I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it!

  He turned toward the beach. The shore was lined with dead crab-creatures. The men who were walking the beach, making sure they were dead, had departed for points farther inland. Not a living thing moved on the beach. There was no reason for any more men to remain at the beach.

  Roy turned his back to the ocean again, watching as the men moved down the streets, heading inland, checking to make sure the dead creatures were really dead and others weren’t roaming. He grinned wider, fully satisfied with himself and his plan.

  Barney came out of the Hot Dog Hut holding two steaming cups of coffee. Roy moved away from the strand and met him on the sidewalk. He to
ok a cup of coffee. The heat from the drink felt good in his cold, wet hands. He felt good now that things were taken care of. “All those things on the beach are dead. The men are moving inland.”

  Barney nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They went.

  They didn’t notice the large, man-like shapes a few hundred yards north rise from the sea and begin heading toward shore.

  Chapter Twenty

  There were screams coming from the beach.

  Rick turned toward the sound. Janice stepped back from the bars and turned to her son. “Stay here,” she told Bobby, who was sitting on the floor in front of the cell. She exited the jail and went to the window along the north side of the building in the office. A moment later, Rick heard her say: “Holy shit!”

  “What?” He didn’t like the way she said that.

  She hurried back into the jail, her face flushed. “I’ll be right back.”

  “What is it?” He moved to the cot set against the north wall of the cell, directly underneath a small window that was near the ceiling.

  Bobby stirred, making as if to get up. “What is it, Mommy?”

  “Stay here, Bobby. Don’t move.” Her voice was stern. She meant what she said.

  Rick stood on the cot and stood on tip-toe to catch a glimpse of what had so riled Janice. He was startled by what he saw.

  Dark shapes moving forward swiftly down rain-soaked streets, man-like in their gait and walk, but strangely alien. Faint shouts of men, the sound of gunfire. Rick squinted, trying to make out what he was seeing in the gloom; the rain had picked up again, and a darker mass of clouds had moved in, making the atmosphere outside almost black. The yelling outside intensified, and he heard a terrified voice screaming “No, no, no aaaaahhhhh!” And then it was cut off.

  A sound from behind him made him whirl around. Janice was back, rifles slung over her shoulders. She put them down on the ground and headed back into the station. Rick looked out the window again, ignoring Bobby’s persistent inquiries of “Rick, what’s outside? Mommy, what’s happening?” He tried to get another glimpse of what he’d seen, but couldn’t make anything out. Just a few shapes moving to and fro in the darkness.

  Janice came back with more guns: semi-automatic weapons, pistols, and boxes of ammunition. Rick stared at the ammunition. “Jesus, what’s gotten into you?”

  “Come here a minute,” Janice said. She inched herself up along the bars of the cells, leaning against them.

  Rick stepped forward.

  “Closer.” She leaned the left side of her face to the bars, pulling her hair behind her ear.

  He stepped closer. She reached between the bars and grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him closer. With her other hand she grasped his face lightly and turned it so the right side of his face was facing her, his ear to the bars. She leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. “There’s something out there killing people, Rick. I didn’t want to say this out loud with Bobby here, but I saw them.”

  He nodded and whispered back. “I saw them, too, but I couldn’t tell what they were.”

  Her voice sounded scared now. More scared than it did earlier in the evening when he and Jack had rescued her from the roof of her house. Her breath whispered in his ear. “I only caught a glimpse of one and…it was…” Her voice shook slightly. “…green…and all scaly…I thought I might be seeing things and wanted to look more, but then I thought about those giant crabs, and figured if those were real, then these—”

  “Are just as real,” Rick finished the sentence for her.

  Janice nodded. Her eyes seemed to glow luminously in the darkened jail. They reflected deep worry. “I ducked down because I figured…if they were real, they might see me…”

  “Good thinking.” Rick was learning that, in light of the arrival of the Clickers, the fantastic had to be dealt with on the level of everyday reality.

  “The front and back door of the station is locked,” Janice said. “Maybe if we stay here they’ll…” she shrugged. At a loss for words.

  Rick attempted to finish that sentence for her, but dropped it. What he was going to say—maybe they’ll bypass us—fell short as well. Wishful thinking. If they were going to survive, they were going to have to be alert and quick thinking. “Turn off the flashlight,” he said. She nodded, and moved to extinguish the big flashlight she had brought in from the office earlier. She had turned it on a few minutes before to see what she was doing as she made Bobby comfortable on the floor, and had forgotten to turn it off. It had cast its warm glow over the hallway of the jail, making long, dark shadows along the bare, gray walls. She shut it off, and they were plunged in darkness.

  “Mommy, what’s happening?” Bobby had gotten up and was at the bars. His voice startled Rick and he jumped.

  Janice was startled as well; she flinched, her breath caught in her throat. She closed her eyes, hand on her breasts. “Jesus, Bobby, you scared the living shit out of me.”

  “Sorry,” Bobby said. His hand was still in the makeshift sling, cradled against his chest. He looked up at the two adults in the darkness with what looked like curiosity.

  Janice knelt down in front of him. She smoothed out his shirt. “We’re going to have to stay in here a little while longer, honey.”

  “I’m hungry!”

  “I know. I’m hungry too. But we have to wait here until Jack comes back for us.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He went to go find Doc Jorgensen.”

  “Where’s that dipshit Sheriff?”

  Rick laughed aloud. Janice giggled herself. “Bobby, don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Yeah, why not?” Rick asked, feigning seriousness.

  “Rick!” Janice looked up at him, making a slashing motion across her throat with her finger. Cut it out!

  “Jack will be here any minute now, and we’ll be out of here,” Rick said, trying to steer the conversation away to something more constructive.

  “How will he get you out of the cell?” Bobby asked. That was a good question. Fortunately, Janice was acting to help the two of them formulate a plan for that one by herding Bobby down the hall, toward the rear of the jail.

  “We’ll get him out somehow,” she said, herding him down to the end of the hall in front of the next cell. “Now let’s sit you down on these cots I brought in from the station so you can take it easy. You know what the doctor told you.”

  “I know…” The voice of dread.

  While Janice settled Bobby down on the cot and gave him his pills, Rick turned his attention back to the window. He climbed up on his cot and looked out the window again. It was a good thing the walls were thick in this place, and the glass was just as thick and strong. That probably muffled the sound, which helped shield them from the carnage that was going on outside.

  The dark man-like figures were running amok now. Despite the fact that it was dark outside and it was hard to make things out, he could tell what was going on. It was easier to tell them apart from normal people; while they might have been mere shadows, these things were bigger than men, and moved much quicker. Besides, they were attacking everybody they came across and tearing them apart.

  Rick watched in numbed shock as one grabbed a short, squat middle-aged woman whom he recognized as one of the waitresses at Shelby’s drug store. The thing throttled her, its claws sinking into her throat until her head was lolling on strips of flesh. Blood fountained from her neck, gushing black. The thing put its green, scaly face into the flow and drank, eating at the flesh.

  Dark Ones, Rick thought. They’re like the Dark Ones out of a Lovecraft story.

  Similar events were happening along the two-block view Rick had from his jail cell window.

  Two Dark Ones played tug of war with a teenage boy, one eating him as the boy screamed, their tugs finally pulling the boy’s arms from their sockets with a ripping of flesh and cracking of bone. Blood gushed from the cavities as the boy continued screaming, even as more of the Dark
Ones gathered around him and began feasting.

  A group of four Dark Ones were feasting on the remains of what appeared to be a man dressed in military gear. His rifle lay useless next to him…

  A Dark One chased a man up Main Street, finally leaping through the air to catch him, bringing him down, strong claws ripping his back open as the man squirmed a dance of death.

  Rick turned away from the window. His breathing was harsh. Sweat dotted his forehead. Jesus Christ, what the hell were they going to do now?

  Janice finished tending to Bobby. He approached the bars again. She came up to him, her features downcast, heavy with stress. “Maybe he’ll rest a little bit now.”

  Rick nodded, mustering a smile. “He’ll be fine.”

  She smiled back, though it was strained. “I’m worried.”

  “I know.”

  “Jack should have come back with Doc Jorgensen by now,” she said, looking at him. “I just hope that…” She looked toward the entrance of the station, obscured by the corridor that turned into the jail ward. “…those things weren’t out there when Jack left, and…”

  “I know,” Rick said. He reached his arms through the bars of the jail and took her hands. She returned the gesture and they held hands for a moment, content with just reassuring each other that they were there. The physical contact was welcomed. They needed each other.

  “We have weapons, right?” Rick asked. “I mean, this is a police station. We’ve probably got a whole arsenal here.”

  Janice nodded. “We do.”

  “Then we should be able to hole up in here until these things go away.”

  “Maybe I could shoot you out,” Janice said. She gestured toward the lock of the jail cell door. “You know, take one of those Magnums or something to that lock. Blow it away.”

  Rick nodded. “Good idea, but those things might hear or sense the reverberation of the gun going off.”

  Janice sighed. “You’re right.”

  “You’re sure the key to the cells are nowhere to be found in the office?”