The Forbidden Zone

by Whitley Strieber

  At that moment a caravan of at least ten of the vehicles came lurching into view, crushing the ruins of the forest beneath their wheels.

  Loi turned away from them, heading back toward the entrance to the facility. Somehow, Brian staggered after her. "We can hide in the opening a few minutes. Then we'll think of something else."

  But the humvees were fast, and they were already stopping, disgorging their soldiers.

  Brian realized that the only thing he could still do for his family was to give them a few extra seconds. As Loi moved away, hurrying as best she could, he turned to face the creatures.

  Twenty, thirty, forty soldiers came out of the vehicles, their white chemical warfare suits rustling, their protective masks gleaming in the half light.

  With a growl of sheer hate, Brian threw himself at them.

  They grabbed him, he shut his eyes against the purple light, snatched at the white cloth, ripped at it. When they took his arms, he fought as best he could, finally yanking away the mask of the closest one.

  He came face to face with a perfectly ordinary—and very scared—kid. "Take it easy," the kid shouted. His breath smelled like chewing gum.

  "You—"

  "Fourth U.S. Army, mister."

  The meaning of this voice penetrated. These were human soldiers. People.

  "Loi?" But Loi was nowhere to be seen. From the dark entrance to the facility there came a low, ominous buzzing. He was there, his shadow clogging the opening. "Loi! Oh God, no!"

  She was not in the entrance: she rose from behind a pile of debris nearby. He watched her come warily forward, her baby in her arms. Her blouse hung in shreds, her jeans were ripped. He went to meet her and they embraced silently. One of the soldiers gave them both jackets.

  The buzzing came again, rising like the cry of an insect, then fading to a rumble, sinking. The shadow in the entrance was gone. He was fading like a nightmare with the coming day.

  "Listen, you've got to get good generators in there! That facility's got to be kept running at all costs. You've got to—"

  "Get in the truck, mister. You're gonna be all right."

  "No, for God's sake, listen to me! The waveguide, it's got to be kept on or he'll gain strength again, he'll come out!"

  "It's not your problem."

  "It's my problem and my fault."

  "Mister, this thing is too big to be any one person's fault. Mistakes were made all along the line, way I hear it. Now you get in the truck and let us do our job."

  Then Brian saw a huge vehicle trundling down Mound Road, and he recognized what it was: a massive portable generating station of the type deployed in battle. They'd had it outside the zone, waiting for their chance.

  Tears came rolling down his cheeks. Somebody somewhere had obviously understood that this would be needed. By getting the guide turned on when they did, he and Loi had given the army its crucial window of opportunity.

  They were helped into the backseats of one of the vehicles. The men had some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Soon they were lurching and bouncing slowly along the pitted roads of Oscola. Helicopters began landing in the judge's yard, troops pouring out.

  "Brian, where are Bob and Nancy and the boys?"

  "They went out by ATV."

  "They made it?"

  "I don't know."

  More quietly: "What about Ellen?"

  Brian shook his head. "She didn't get out."

  She asked no further questions. Silently, she watched the destroyed world going past the window. Suddenly she stiffened. "Stop," she said.

  "What the hell for, ma'am?" the driver asked.

  Then Brian saw the familiar ruins of the old Kelly Farmhouse, with the burned-out shell of the trailer behind it.

  "Just do it, please," she said. "This was our home."

  They stopped. "Just for a minute, ma'am."

  They got out and went closer to the remains of their old life.

  She was solemn. "Even the land is destroyed. Worse than Agent Orange."

  Gravely, she offered the baby to his father. "Take him for a second." She marched straight into the fragile, creaking wreck of the trailer. Both soldiers clambered after her.

  "Careful there, lady," the sergeant said as she entered the gray, twisted ruins. She reached into the ashes and came up with a blackened lump of an object. "My Laughing Buddha," she said. She rubbed away soot to reveal the familiar rotund figure. "He can be fixed, I think."

  The sun rose, and the first shaft of light revealed the true hideousness of the misshapen death all around them. The trees that had surrounded their trailer were dissolving into twisted masses of sludge. A brown, bloated sac of flesh with pincers and spindly legs, and the muscular tail of an opossum, moved slowly across the driveway, dropping chunks of itself, clucking and wheezing as it went.

  Dying, it sank down on itself.

  But not everything had been reached by the transforming light. A busy cockroach scuttled under a rock, and the dawn chorus began—although it consisted only of a single tattered robin.

  Coming out of the rubble, Loi took her baby and held him up to the dawn. "See it, Brian, see the sun."

  The baby stirred, smacked, turned his head, seeking instead the nipple. She cuddled him back to her breast. "Our son is going to be so strong."

  Brian heard her, but his eye had been attracted to movement in the clear predawn sky. Up very high, a golden contrail went south. "Is that a military jet?"

  "Nossir. That'll be a flight coming in from Europe. Probably on its way to New York."

  Brian and Loi watched the plane, drinking in its promise with their eyes. The baby, who had finally satisfied his hunger, fell asleep on his mother's arm.