by Grant, Ann
“Five minutes,” Mike called. The light from the dome cast a green pallor over his face.
“We’re coming in with you. It’s too cold out here.”
“I told you, John doesn’t want anybody in there.”
I pulled the gun on him. “I said we’re coming in. Open the doors.”
His mouth fell open. “Oh, no, Amy. Come on, don’t do this.”
“I said open those doors.”
“You need help. I mean, seriously, let me help you—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
He pressed his mouth in a tight line, went through the keys, and unlocked the doors.
I waved the gun at him. “You first.” We entered a wide corridor with a concrete floor, whitewashed walls, and an industrial ceiling with exposed white metal beams. It looked more like the basement of a mental hospital than a resort under construction. The corridor ended at heavy double doors without windows.
Mike wheeled the boxes over to the wall beside a stack of identical boxes he must have brought in earlier. He spread his hands, the way people do when they’re trying to reason with somebody who’s lost it.
“I don’t know where Ben’s boots are. Honest, I don’t. If you want, we’ll tear all these boxes open right now, and I swear to God I’ll do that for you, but his boots aren’t here. I picked all these up tonight.”
“I know they’re not here. Open those doors.”
“I can’t do that. John told me not to go in there.”
I cocked the gun. “Do it, or I blow them off the hinges.”
He shook his head and pressed his mouth shut again, walked to the end of the corridor, looking over his shoulder at me, and unlocked the double doors. I motioned him in with the gun and followed him into an enormous space the size of an arena.
Nikki flattened her ears and bared her teeth. We were under the dome. The shadows and the whispering hit me first and then I saw the thousands of shoes.
Chapter 19
Shadows and whispers swirled around us, a ceaseless murmur of voices tumbling over each other, rushing out of the dim corners like water searching for a way to escape through a crevice, a crack, a hole, anywhere at all, no no no, urgent urgent, help me help me.
Nikki snarled at the air. Gripping the gun, I pulled her against my side and stared at the sea of shoes laid out across the vast floor.
Countless loafers stood two by two as if their owners had just stepped out of them. Empty evening shoes glittered beside satin wedding shoes with delicate beading. Running shoes that must have been laced up in the cool hours of the morning stood by construction boots with the mud still on the heels. Milk-stained baby booties lay beside men’s slip-ons, women’s high heels and casual mules, moccasins, and orthopedic shoes. Shoes from the living, shoes from the dead, discarded by the thousands.
The whispers and the shadows rushed by us. No no no, urgent urgent, help me.
Slow shock spread over Mike’s face. “They said they gave all these out. They said there was nothing in here.”
Nikki snarled at the air. I kept my eyes glued to the horrifying shadows until I realized they were flowing around and around in a bigger current toward a luminous grid where the far walls met the floor. The source of all the ominous green light under the dome seemed to be hidden under that grid.
I hadn’t come this far to turn away. With my heart pounding, I gripped Nikki’s collar and moved with her across the floor until I stood beside the grid and dared to look down into the brilliant light.
A shocking crevice dropped hundreds of feet below the Grasslands. Silvery green shapes that resembled liquid slugs writhed along its sheer walls. I saw the gears of some kind of nightmarish machinery that reached to the bottom of the abyss where hypnotic light radiated from a sickening green pool. Something was sucking the shadows down into the pool, but I wasn’t close enough to see, so I took a step forward. The light pierced my skull and my hands seemed to rise by themselves to shield my face.
The pool bubbled. Green lightning flashed across my vision. I felt if I stood there any longer I might lose my eyesight and even the ability to breathe and would topple headfirst into that hypnotic green light. Shadows spiraled down around my feet, twisting into doomed mouths and eyes and hands, reaching up, desperate, before they vanished into the hellish pool.
Nikki gave a long, vicious growl.
“Your dog seems upset,” John Savenue said behind us.
I whirled around and leveled the gun at him and his dead eyes.
“She doesn’t like assholes,” I told him.
Mike gripped my shoulders. “Leave her alone. You deal with me.”
John Savenue laughed in his face.
I pushed Mike away. “You tell me what you did to Ben or I’m emptying this gun.”
“A little macho mama. End this game, Amy.” John Savenue placed his six fingered hands together. “You know you’re turning into one of us. Look at your hands. Now, you took something that belongs to me, so you’re going to be a nice girl and hand it over.”
“And you have some serious fucking delusions.” I kept the gun steady. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Johns Avenue, you took something that belongs to me—my fiancé and my life. You stole his image and you stuck it in some sick program and caused his car accident. I know you did. He saw something he wasn’t supposed to see so you killed him.”
“You stupid little bitch. So you’re the one he called.”
I felt a jolt. “One last time, what did you do to Ben?”
“You’re about to find out when you end up in the same place.”
Nikki snarled, lunged at John Savenue, and sank her jaws into his stomach, growling and biting with all the savagery of her ancient wolf ancestors, but he grabbed her head in one swift movement and twisted. She held on, still biting, and made a terrible shriek.
Not my dog. I pulled the trigger and blew a hole in John Savenue’s neck. The impact knocked him off his feet and threw him across the field of shoes. Nikki fell off him, choking. When she lunged again with the true heart of a noble German shepherd, ready to defend me, I pulled her away, thinking he was dead.
But John Savenue was alive, lying on his back with a horrible smile even though I’d blown a hole the size of the Lincoln Tunnel in his neck. The bastard wasn’t even bleeding. Black shadows streamed out of the hole.
He raised his hand.
The dome pulsed with green light.
Mike grabbed my shoulders. “We have to get out of here, Amy. Now.”
I shook him off again, rooted to the spot. “What did you do to Ben?” I screamed.
John Savenue moved his hand a second time. The light under the dome throbbed over and over. He was still laughing even with that giant hole in his neck.
Eerie wisps of green light rose like restless souls from the empty shoes on the edge of the room. The light spiraled up in bright twisting columns shot with gold. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing and wondered if he’d set the shoes on fire.
The light in the shoes grew flesh-colored with scars and blotches and dark tufts of hair. Bones and glistening muscles formed into feet. Ankles and calves appeared.
Nikki snarled and barked.
The light rising from a pair of men’s fine leather Oxfords solidified first. Bare knees sprouted two flabby thighs, a shrunken penis atop dangling balls, bony hips, and a flap of flesh over a pasty stomach. Saggy old man breasts grew from the torso, divided by a dull red keloid scar that ran up the hairless white chest. Skin grew over the breastplate. Wrinkled arms and hands formed, then a neck with turkey wattle skin, and a head with shaggy white hair and cloudy eyes.
My heart raced. I recognized him. The demonic light had formed a copy of a man at the college, somebody in administration. I’d seen him in the corridors near the dean’s office, dressed in a turtleneck sweater and tan trousers with life in his face, expressive eyebrows, an intense frown, an engaging smile. It was shocking to see him in his old man nakedness, but the copy didn’t seem aware
of us. He just stood there as if he were drying off.
Thin columns of green light rose from the high heel shoes next to him. The light formed itself into bone and flesh, flabby legs and arms, big breasts that hung down like flat pancakes, wrinkled lips, and colored red hair. A copy of a woman, saggy and baggy, standing there in all her helpless, naked humanity as if she were drying off, too. Like the man, her face was familiar. Somebody who worked at the college, but I couldn’t place her.
Those must have been their shoes. They must have donated them.
Copies of feet and legs were forming all across the floor, the far rows first, then the next, creeping toward us in a slow wave of supernatural devilment.
I held Nikki close to my side. “They’re copying everybody in Adams County who gave shoes to this fucking place.”
“Karin donated some shoes,” Mike said.
“What did she give you?” I screamed.
“I can’t remember.” He stared in horror at the field of shoes.
I grabbed his coat. “You have to! Damn it, what did she give you? What?”
He ran his hand over his hair. “Gold ballet shoes.”
We ran through the rows while the green light spiraled up and the dome pulsed. Thousands of shoes lay before us. It seemed impossible that we’d find Karin’s slippers in time. I couldn’t see anything that looked like ballet shoes. On the far side of the dome copies of feet and legs were growing into butts and bellies and headless torsos.
“Got them,” Mike shouted half an acre away. He stuffed her slippers in his jacket, looked out across the floor in anguish, and then madly grabbed more shoes until he’d filled his pockets and overloaded his arms.
“Get against the wall. Get down.” I shoved Nikki behind me, aimed the gun at the dome, fired… and missed. Too low. The eerie green light throbbed as if it knew what I was trying to do. I fired again and again until all the bullets were spent and I thought I’d wasted them.
A loud crack sounded. The huge dome shattered and rained down in sheets that smashed on the floor. Feet and shoes went flying as chunks of glass sprayed everywhere. For a few seconds I thought it was over and allowed myself to feel relieved. Half-formed body parts froze with muscles and bones exposed. The floor resembled a war zone with thousands of amputated limbs.
When the last sheet fell, the stars in the black sky shone though the ruined dome.
And there was Luna near the far wall, little ancient Luna, standing over her red collar in the middle of all the mangled human limbs. The Husky looked small and lost and stiff, her white and gray fur not quite right, staring at us with cloudy blue eyes. She looked as dead as the deer in the gun store.
My jaw dropped. “Luna! It’s Luna!”
Mike grabbed my arm. “No, it’s not Luna. It’s not her. Come on, we’re out of here.”
Like a demon that refused to die, John Savenue crawled to his feet. I tried to fire the gun even though it was out of bullets until Mike dragged me through the heavy double doors with his arms still full of shoes. By the time we reached the outer doors, the double doors burst open behind us. John Savenue was lurching after us with shadows still pouring from the hole in his neck.
The Jeep was closer than Mike’s truck. We made it across the gravel when John Savenue threw the outer doors open. Nikki snarled, but we somehow forced her into the Jeep, spun through the lot, and gunned into the darkness. Round white headlights flashed behind us as the van roared out of the parking lot.
He was coming after us.
Chapter 20
I gripped the steering wheel. We were going so fast the Jeep’s wheels left the road. I kept telling myself we’d be okay once we made it to the Chambersburg Pike. Once the road widened and straightened out I’d give it everything I had.
Blinding headlights swelled up in the rearview mirror. The lights fell back when we careened past the site of Ben’s accident, but seconds later they flooded the Jeep again and everything went white.
“Load my gun,” I screamed at Mike.
“Where is it?” he screamed back.
“Shit, he’s going to hit us.” I sped through a curve, grabbed the gun out of my coat, and threw it at Mike.
The van struck us hard. Glass smashed. The sickening thud went through my whole body and flung Mike back and forth like a crash dummy. The impact knocked us into the field where we bounced up and down with the shoes flying everywhere until our tires spun around in icy mud I didn’t even realize was there.
Headlights flooded the Jeep. The bastard hit us again, but he rolled the van and skidded a hundred feet away with the engine still running and a broken headlight glaring at us.
Mike leaped out. “When I push, you hit the gas,” he shouted. One long shove and the surefooted Jeep took the hill and made it to the road.
Nikki snarled. I looked up to see John Savenue’s six-fingered hands on my door.
Mike blitzed him. In seconds they had each other in a death grip. Shadows poured from the hole in John Savenue’s neck and surrounded him in a black cloud. The two men went down, wrestled up again, and fought each other to the edge of the pavement. Mike lowered his head, turned into the football player he’d been all his life, and slammed John Savenue down the road as if they were fighting on the one yard line.
The Grassland’s distant green light backlit the struggling men. I loaded the gun, left Nikki in the Jeep, and pounded to the crest of the hill, trying to catch up, but Mike had already shoved John Savenue a long way down the road. It dawned on me what Mike was doing. He was working John Savenue away from the Jeep.
“Mike, get out of the way!”
His voice came up the hill. “Run, Amy.”
“Get away. I have the gun.”
“It won’t work,” he shouted. “You hear me? Run!”
Heart pounding, I aimed the gun, but I couldn’t fire it. They were too entangled for me to get a clear shot.
An ominous rumble came over the field from the Grasslands, an ominous ebbing and flowing of pressure. The thunderous sound built to a crescendo. Metal screeched and groaned as the walls bowed out and crashed open and a tsunami of body parts poured over the parking lot. A gruesome cascade of severed feet and legs swarmed the construction trucks and crane at the back of the lot and toppled them over onto the gravel. The wave surged under Mike’s black Toyota, lifted it up like a toy, and tossed it around, tires in the air and the cab upside down, before the truck sank, trampled under the mass of moving flesh.
The demonic tsunami kept pouring out of the Grasslands. My efforts to shoot out the dome had been useless.
Thousands of lower legs and bodies sliced off at the waist hurtled over each other. They surged against the chain link fence and ripped the posts from the ground. The mangled fence rode the top of the wave, sections twisting and bobbing, until everything fell under the stampede.
They were coming at us.
“Mike, look at them!”
“Run,” he screamed back and pinned the laughing John Savenue to the pavement.
“You run. Let him go!” I knew he could see what was coming. Tears streamed down my face as the wave of flesh swept up the hill. My friend for years, the man who’d tried to give me his grandmother’s necklace, the man who fell in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time, held his ground. Body parts rushed across the dark earth with truck parts and gravel and chain link, sweeping up everything in their path.
Horrified, I stared at the doomed men on the road as the wave of flesh bore down on them. I had to save Nikki and Ben. I started to run. The wave rushed up the road with the fury of a murderous army, but at the last second John Savenue mutated into green smoke and left Mike alone on the pavement. Mike held out his empty hands in shock just before the tide of crushing body parts enveloped him.
Screaming, I made it to the Jeep. I was screaming so hard I don’t know how I managed to get the door open, but somehow I did and then I was driving, tearing down the black road, beating the steering wheel with my fist, trying to see through
my tears. “Damn you, Mike, why did you have to be so fucking good all the time? Why, damn you, why?”
The impossible wave of fleshy stumps and severed bodies thundered behind me. A flying foot bounced off the windshield. Legs and arms rained down on the hood. I couldn’t stop screaming. Every few seconds something horrible hit the roof, another grisly chunk that shot into the headlights and thumped when the Jeep struck it and knocked it into the night.
I reached the woods. Trees cracked and snapped in the darkness as the wave overran them. More chunks hit the back window.
Somehow I made it to the Chambersburg Pike and floored the Jeep.
My gruesome pursuers kept coming, but they fell away one by one until I was left with a single hellish pair of legs racing in lockstep. The lower half of a man’s body chased me over the highway, pale legs pumping down the yellow line for miles, until a tractor trailer truck ran over the thing and flattened it across two lanes.
* * *
I found Route 15 and was still screaming when I crossed the Maryland state line.
Shadow stations. They were turning people and animals into shadows and making copies of them and doing it in more than one location. They must have made a copy of Ben and burned it in the car, which was why the dental records were a perfect match. For six terrible weeks I’d been taking flowers to a copy buried under his headstone.
They’d tortured Ben because he wouldn’t give up a name.
“One last time, who did you tell?” the calm tormentor asked.
The prisoner shook his head.
“Not too smart.” The tormentor’s voice rose. “Give me the name.”
When the prisoner held his head high, the second tormentor squealed with laughter.
It was me. He’d called to tell me he’d seen something outside the Grasslands.
I turned off at tiny Thurmont, Maryland, took a wooded road to Catoctin Furnace, passed the historic furnace stack and the ruins of the iron master’s house, and headed into Cunningham Falls State Park. The deep woods towered over the dark road, but I knew exactly where I was going. My body was changing rapidly. The hot alien matter streaming through my veins guided me there.