The Grays

by Whitley Strieber

  “But the family—they’re miles out of town.”

  “They came to the fire, I know that, I identified the car. They are not there at this time, however.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Yeah, we’re in trouble.”

  “And you’re certain about Mr. Crew?”

  “He’s in a bag on his way to Wright-Pat.”

  “Was he really from another world? Is that true?”

  He glanced at her. “You might as well accept that there is no final truth in this thing. Not ever. This reality, more than any other, changes depending on the way you look at it. As far as I know, the man could be from Chicago or Denver or anywhere. But he was a good man and a useful man, which is the bottom line on Lewis damn Crew.”

  Rob stopped the car. They had come around the curve in the highway which opened onto Main Street. Smoke rose from at least four different fires. A man shot a rifle from the roof of a store. Groups of people ran through the streets, most of them armed with hunting rifles. Sirens howled, and, as they watched, a garbage truck backed at full speed into the front of the First Church of Christ. Its steeple, bells pealing, tumbled over the truck and into the street.

  Rob flipped open his cell phone, speed-dialed a number. “The situation in the town is deteriorating fast. You’d better get the governor on the horn, General, because the place is gone. He needs the National Guard out here, the state cops won’t be enough.”

  A Buick packed with kids snarled toward them, its tires leaving smoke in the street.

  Rob turned the wheel full right and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. A second later, the Buick passed behind them and raged on, swerving to snap fireplugs. Screaming laughter could be heard, full of terror.

  Rob pulled over to the side of the road. “We can’t drive through that.”

  “No.”

  “We’re going to have to cross the town by helicopter, locate the child on the other side. And I think we need to just move him. Get him out of here.”

  “What about Mike? What about the group? Won’t they keep trying?”

  Rob looked at her for a long moment. “I never said this would be easy.”

  DAN DROVE HARD, TRYING TO get back to Oak Road before the craziness spread there if it was going to. He would defend his family with his pistol until they could leave this place. For the Callaghans, Wilton and Bell College were history, and to hell with his precious tenure. Bell would probably fall apart now anyway. Who would send their children to a place like this?

  “Conner,” Katelyn said, “do you have any idea what’s happened to these people?”

  Dan thought it was a fair question to ask this child who had changed so much. You could see it in his face, a new steadiness in his eyes.

  “It has to do with me.”

  At that moment there was a snap and the car shook.

  “What was that?”

  Conner knew that it was a bullet, he’d felt the hate of the person who’d fired the gun. He pressed himself down below the level of the windows.

  “Conner?”

  “It hit the left fender just above the tire.”

  “What did?” Mom asked.

  “A bullet.”

  Dan increased their speed. “Conner,” Katelyn screamed, “why?”

  That wasn’t the right question, he knew. They needed a different energy to survive this. Fear would not save them.

  He needed the Three Thieves. Now that they were gone, he saw how they’d been his link to the collective, and how important the collective would be to him in the future. He also saw how they helped him now, watching over him, doing the small, essential things that had saved him.

  Giving their lives for him.

  There was a bang in the front, and the car swerved over to the side of the road. Dan tried to keep it going, but it slurried all over the place.

  “That’s a shot-out tire,” Conner said.

  “I know it,” Dan snapped.

  Mom turned around, and he had never seen her look like that. Her eyes were like shattered glass.

  Mom and Dad were panicked. He had to get away from them, he could not let the bad decisions they were going to make kill him.

  “Stop the car, Dad.”

  “I can’t do that, my God we’re being fired on!”

  Conner breathed hard, bit his lips to keep the sobs in, then opened the door and threw himself out into a snowbank. He rolled like you’re supposed to, and proceeded to hit Mr. Niederdorfer’s fence so hard he saw stars. He heard the car growling, and as he got up he saw it skidding around in the snowy road, its right front tire now also in shreds.

  A whisper flashed past his face, followed by an echoing crack. Far down the road, he could see a car with somebody standing on it. That person had a rifle, and he was lifting it to aim again.

  He needed to get to the trees on the Niederdorfer land. He hopped the fence and trudged off in snow up to his waist.

  Mom burst out of the car. “No, come back! Conner, no!” She leaped the fence, surged ahead like some kind of raging lioness. Then Dan came plunging through the snow behind her. He closed the distance even faster than she did.

  “You’ve got to get back in the car! In the car, Conner, it’s our only hope.”

  “Trust me,” he said, reaching for her hand. He looked to his father. “Trust me, Dad.”

  Then he heard somebody else coming fast, their breath whistling.

  A glance over his shoulder revealed Jimbo Kelton surging through the snow with superhuman power. In his right hand was a big axe.

  Conner ran. He could only hope his parents would do the same. There were thousands of acres of forest out here that would significantly improve the odds. Staying with a disabled car was obviously not the best move.

  Then the trees were around Conner and he could dart and twist and turn and get through them fast. But Jimbo was bigger and faster, and Conner knew that it would not be long before he caught up.

  He got to a clear space and ran for all he was worth, then veered off, trying as much as possible to avoid dislodging snow from the branches of the pines all around him, and stepping in places where the snow on the ground was lightest.

  LAUREN SAT BEHIND ROB AND the pilot as the chopper moved quickly over the mad town. There was a sharp snap, then a ping, then another.

  “Incoming,” the pilot said.

  “Bastards,” Rob muttered.

  A vibration started. “Sir, I took rotor damage off that rifle fire,” the pilot said into the intercom.

  “Keep it in the air.”

  “Sir, I need to return to base immediately.”

  “Keep it in the air!”

  “I’ll go down, sir!”

  “Even if you end up crashing this thing, you have to get me where I’m going.”

  “This is my bird sir, and I’ve got to return to base!”

  “Captain, our lives are not as important as this mission. None of us.”

  “Sir—”

  “This is the single most important thing this Air Force has ever done! We cannot, I repeat, cannot fail! We must put at least one effective on the ground in the right place and nothing else matters, do you understand!”

  “Yes, sir! Losing altitude, sir!”

  “Down there,” Lauren shouted over the roar of the chopper.

  He saw it, an elderly blue car smashed into a fence by the roadside, and the trenches of runners leading off toward the woods. Three trenches, the one in the middle smaller. From another direction there came a fourth trench.

  “I don’t like the look of that,” Rob said.

  “The family’s being stalked.”

  “Exactly. One—no four. Four other tracks.” He pointed, and Lauren saw them, too, four distinct lines in the snow, all coming from the direction of a station wagon parked about a quarter of a mile behind the Callaghans’ vehicle.

  “Sir, I am losing control of this bird!”

  FIGHTING HIS OWN CONTROLS, MIKE Wilkes managed to move the TR over Wilton Road. At t
his point, it was the only route to Oak Road, because County Road Four forked off from here. If the Callaghans made it out of the maelstrom in town, he was going to have to take the boy out personally, and damn the consequences. The problem was the TR. It was leaking gas, losing lift. At some point, the computer would conclude that it was going to crash. It had a self-destruct mode that would vaporize it in seconds, and anybody inside as well. In the operational models, there was an elaborate escape mechanism that could fly the pilot hundreds of miles to safety, but it was not present in this stolen prototype.

  Then he had seen two cars coming. The one in the rear was the Keltons’ wagon. Ahead of it had been the Callaghans.

  When the Keltons had fired on them, he had experienced a surge of relief. This might yet work, and work well . . . or so he had thought.

  Now, he wasn’t so sure. He slid slowly over the woods, looking down, unable to determine the exact situation.

  There was a distant roar as the last of the elevator tanks collapsed like great, drunken giants, leaving a pall of white dust on the golden western horizon.

  So the transmitter was done, now. How much longer would his assassins last? Maybe as much as an hour, some of them, but most would revert to normal almost immediately. The nice ones.

  He unbuttoned his holster and dropped the ship to ground level. He moved slowly past the Callaghans’ car, making certain that it was absolutely disabled. As he was ascending again, he noticed that the Keltons’ wagon was occupied. Their dog was in the back, barking to be let out. The animal would not revert. Unlike a human being, it would remain savage for the rest of its life.

  He climbed down onto the road and opened the wagon’s rear door. He didn’t need to break the glass, nobody had thought to lock this car.

  The animal snarled at him, then began to come forward. Quickly, he returned to the TR, and turned toward the forest. Alarms were tinkling in the cockpit.

  He would stalk Conner and watch, and if the Keltons failed, he’d go in for the kill.

  CONNER, DARTING THROUGH THE WOODS, heard a helicopter. Then a shot clipped a tree beside his head. He threw himself down as another three bullets hit all around him. Jimbo, about a hundred yards away roared, “Way to go Dad, I’ve got him now!”

  Very suddenly he was swooped down on and arms went around him. “Mom!”

  As Katelyn’s arms closed around him from behind, she cried out with joy.

  “Mom, no! Mom, we have to keep on!”

  “Honey, it’s the Keltons, it’s our friends, honey.”

  Then Dad was there and he was not confused at all. He scooped Conner up and ran like hell.

  But a shot crackled and Conner felt his dad’s whole body lurch. With a gasp, Dad went down. Conner disentangled himself, but not before Jimbo arrived, his face purple, the axe flashing. Light the color of pus flowed out of his eyes.

  “Get back in the woods,” Dad said.

  Jimbo hurled the axe, which slammed into a tree, its handle ringing from the vibration of the blow. Then Conner heard the helicopter again, this time very loud. He looked up.

  INSIDE THE CHOPPER, LAUREN REALIZED that it was counterrotating. She knew that this was the worst possible thing it could do short of losing its blades and falling like a rock. The forest whirled, then she was thrown against the window and almost out the open door. The world was racing now and she could hear Rob howling in rage as the pilot made the engine shriek, and the trees came closer and closer. She watched, mesmerized, until finally they were sweeping past twenty feet below, all immaculate with snow.

  In herself she became quiet. She was not afraid. She thought, It’s a perfect world, and peace overcame her.

  “Go! Go! GO!”

  “What?”

  “Jump, woman! Jump or burn!”

  There was fire all over the place. Where had that come from? Then she knew that the chopper had hit the trees and she’d been stunned. The pilot cried out and began to struggle, and was enveloped in flames.

  She leaped out into a frigid cacophony of snapping pine boughs and sighing snow, snow that took her into itself like a freezing womb. In summer, the fall would have killed her, but she went down now in a curtain of snow, and struck the ground almost silently.

  She got to her feet, looked around. “Rob?”

  Then she saw him. He was bleeding from his back and both arms and his hair was burned off, but he went charging off anyway. She started to follow him—and then saw out of the corner of her eye a blue flicker as small as the flutter of a bird’s wing. It was not spring, there were no birds.

  It was a child’s blue car coat, over there through the trees. “Rob, this way!”

  Lauren ran out into a small clearing, and there before her was a tableau, for the instant frozen as if by the cold: a boy kneeling in the snow, his face flushed, pleading silently toward a much larger boy, who stood with froth on his mouth like a mad dog. In his hand was an axe.

  A man lay in the snow, the red of blood around him. Dan.

  Lauren ran toward them.

  THE AXE CAME DOWN, CAME with blinding speed, like the striking head of a snake.

  Katelyn saw Dan grab the handle of the axe in both hands, and in doing so give Conner time to get to his feet and stagger toward the deeper woods. Jimbo roared with frustration as he took off after him.

  She ran to Dan, knelt over him. His eyes met hers. “Help him,” he said, “help our son.”

  She looked toward the woods, got up, and ran on.

  Rob struggled frantically for his gun, and Lauren saw that he was fighting an arm so broken it was almost snake-like. His lips twisted, his face went ashen, but he used it anyway, getting to the weapon, dragging it out of the holster.

  “Your left hand,” she screamed. “Rob, your left hand!”

  He raised it past his body so she could see the useless hunk of meat that dripped there. She saw his chest heaving, saw a froth of bile appear between his lips, but saw him still struggling, still trying to raise that pistol.

  WHEN MIKE SAW ROB APPEAR at the edge of the clearing where this thing was coming to climax, he pulled the TR back quickly. Rob was familiar with the TR and he just might spot it despite all the optical camouflage. As he maneuvered the craft, a soft female voice began a countdown. “Alert. Destruct in thirty seconds. Alert. Destruct in twenty-nine seconds . . .”

  Mike hammered at the controls, increased the velocity of the plasma, the speed of the fans, and brought the lift level inching back up. “Countdown ends.” For a moment, he sat absolutely still, hardly breathing, but the countdown did not resume.

  He activated the secure communications system. It didn’t matter much if the Air Force found him now. They were going to be too late, and he needed to let Charles know the situation. “This is TR-A1, I am going to burp coordinates.”

  “Negative that.”

  “Charles! Can you reach me?”

  “Three hours.”

  “I’ve got progressive damage. This thing is going in sooner than that.”

  “Do you have the kid?”

  “Just about.”

  “Mike, the president’s arresting the Trust. Until further notice, consider yourself a fugitive.”

  What in hell had happened? The president couldn’t arrest the Trust, could he? Mike wasn’t sure, but he was sure that he had a battle to fight, so he forced the issue out of his mind and instead concentrated on working the TR closer to the boy. He took out his pistol.

  CHARLES GUNN, STILL OVER WASHINGTON, did not like that “just about.” To him, that meant that the child was not secure, and if that was true, he might never be secure. Charles must not end up in the situation that had destroyed der Wolf in the forties—a two-front war. For the Trust, one front would be this monster of a child, using his powers of mind to stay ahead of them and undermine their plans. The other front would be the president and his powers of arrest.

  He had hesitated to do what he now knew he must. He’d hidden the TR by hanging in a wooded draw in Rock Creek Park
. He rose up to the level of Glover Bridge and headed down Embassy Row. He cleared his vision. It was as if the plane around him had disappeared, except for the three control panels and his immediate seating area. He moved low over the buildings, stopping above the Prince Mansion. Just a few voices. Very well, the president was in the White House.

  As he aimed the TR down Massachusetts Avenue, he opened a small cover under his right hand, revealing a black button. He adjusted his altitude, then activated listening devices. Much clearer voices filled the small area, a press officer on the telephone, two Secret Service agents chatting about their house cats, the First Lady discussing colors with her dressmaker.

  Finally, he heard the president’s voice in the Oval Office talking to somebody through an interpreter.

  He pressed the button. He held it down.

  THE WHITE HOUSE KITCHEN WAS organized pandemonium. Last night had been the Thai prime minister. Tonight, it was the sultan of Qatar, the second state dinner in a row. The pastry chef was the first to notice something awry: a meringue was shaking wildly. Then he realized that he was shaking, too.

  In the press room above, Press Secretary Roger Armes said, “We appear to be—” as ceiling tiles began to come down. Then the lights went out, immediately replaced by emergency lighting. Voices rose, shouts and screams, and some of them terrible screams.

  In the Vermeil Room, the portraits of all seven first ladies fell at once. A moment later, the ceiling followed. In the Oval Office, the president, his chief of staff, and two, then three, then four Secret Service agents were thrown with ferocious energy to the floor along with the elaborately robed sultan and his translator. The Resolute Desk, made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute and used by such presidents as FDR, Kennedy, and Reagan, now crashed with a crackling thud into the floor. A moment later, the walls came in, and the whole contents of the office thundered through into the Blue Room below.

  From thirty feet away, Charles watched the carnage, directing pulse after pulse toward the building. The private apartments on the roof shuddered and caved in, then the whole West Wing sank away into a cloud of dust.

  Charles traveled over the mess, heading for the Mall. He moved just inches above the Reflecting Pool, aiming toward the Washington Monument.