The Grays

by Strieber, Whitley

  He turned the plane on its axis and headed directly into the D.C. no-fly zone.

  THIRTY-ONE

  INSIDE THE GRAIN ELEVATOR, THREE figures, all dressed in silver protective gear with full hoods and gloves, moved carefully across the broad floor. Nobody on the outside was aware of the presence of Colonel Robert Langford and this specialized crew.

  Dr. Simpson had phoned him while they were driving into town. “If he’s dead, you will need to collect tissue, Colonel Langford. I want cell-rich tissue. Do it the way the grays do, take the eyes, the lips, the genitals. We are going to need to build a clone of him.”

  He’d wanted to ask why, but knew that he had no need to know, and therefore didn’t waste his breath. So what he had said was what duty demanded: “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re looking at imminent structural failure, sir,” a voice crackled in Langford’s ears.

  “I know it.” He lifted an electronic bullhorn to his lips. “LEWIS! LEWIS CREW!” His loss, in Rob’s opinion, would be greater than the loss of the gray that had departed the Indianapolis facility. Adam was so deceptive and complicated, there was no telling what anything they got from him really meant. But Lewis was as straight as they came, and he knew many secrets. Maybe his story about coming from another world was even true.

  A rumble from above drew his attention. Like a gigantic missile, a flaming beam arched down and hit the floor in a shower of sparks. “Careful, guys,” Rob said, “we can’t afford any attrition, here.”

  “I’ve got an organic mass.” Captain Forbes raised his viewer away from his face mask.

  “Oxygen-level warning,” Airman Winkler announced, meaning that he had five minutes before compulsory withdrawal.

  Langford moved through a forest of fallen, burning beams to reach Forbes. At his feet was a corpse. “Okay, let’s collect tissue and pull out.”

  It was so badly burned that it looked more like a black log than a body.

  “Holy moly, Colonel!”

  “Take it easy! Gentlemen, let’s bag this.” It affected him deeply to see Lewis this burned. The poor guy was almost unrecognizable, but not completely. What a way to go, what a rotten death for that good man.

  High above, a roar started.

  “Move it! Now!”

  PAULIE AND CONNER STOOD SIDE by side. Conner stayed close to the Warners, because they were not having these weird thoughts, not like the others, and they didn’t have shadows around them. They were shimmering with what he had come to see as normal colors of life.

  The others came closer. He looked for his mom and dad, didn’t see them. The haze from the spray and the smoke was like a fog bank full of looming shadows, the roar of the fire and the rumble of hoses, and strange, echoing cries.

  He dared not move, dared not call out. In his heart, though, he begged for his mom and dad, begged them to get him out of here.

  Paulie and his family had no idea that anything was wrong. He innocently pointed his video camera at the burning elevator. Amy took pictures with her cell phone.

  The whole wall of the building was now smoking. It shuddered and made a sighing sound.

  “HE’S CALLING US,” DAN SAID. “I hear him clearly.”

  “You can hear him? How can you hear him?”

  “Katelyn, I told you, it’s the implant, and I’m sure that he’s in terrible trouble.”

  “I can’t hear him! Why can’t I hear my child?”

  “You don’t have an implant.”

  “But that’s—”

  “We’ll sort it out later.” He moved off, trying to see ahead through the smoke and haze and gathering dark. “Conner! Conner!”

  CONNER DECIDED THAT, NO MATTER how it looked, half the town could not be coming after him. They didn’t even know him, most of them. So this was paranoia. He would not allow himself to react to a symptom as if it was real, he wasn’t that paranoid . . . yet.

  Nearby, two people leaped into their cars and began driving this way.

  Harley ushered the kids away. “They’re pulling out too fast in this ice,” he said.

  Then one of them skidded into the other, and they both went spinning around, slamming into each other and bouncing off amid a flying shower of glass.

  “DID YOU SEE THOSE CARS?” Dan yelled to Katelyn. “Conner! CONNER!”

  They moved through the nightmare murk, both calling his name again and again.

  As she walked beside him, struggling with him in this bizarre nightmare situation, she thought, If he has to, he will give his life for his family.

  As if the sudden, deep love this realization made her feel had opened a door, she remembered being in a dark space, remembered it quite clearly. At her feet there was a round opening. Far below, she could see water in the moonlight. A boy was beside her, his dark hair scattered across his forehead. His eyes were scared, but he was so attractive that a shiver went through her when she saw him. She remembered reaching out to him, and in that instant knew it was Dan when they were children. She felt then the most exquisite, most deeply poignant sense of memory that she had ever known. Without being able to put it into words, but just feeling it, she saw the role she and Dan had to play in what she perceived as a plan of some sort that she could not even begin to understand, but that involved Conner.

  “Dan, we have to find him!”

  “I know it.” Then he pointed. “Katelyn, there!”

  He was not thirty feet away, just visible through the swirling ice haze. And Kenneth Brearly, a Bell tenth grader, was standing in front of him pointing a pistol at him.

  Conner disappeared behind a billowing mass of haze from one of the hoses. “Conner!” Katelyn bellowed, “Conner, run!”

  DESPITE THE DANGER OF BEING seen by Wilkes or somebody under his orders, Lauren left the office and moved closer to the base perimeter. She had no car and dared not draw from the motor pool.

  She had to get to Conner, she knew that, but how? It was miles to the town, there was no bus. She’d tried to call the cab company, but there hadn’t been any answer. Everybody was at the fire, no doubt.

  That fire was bait, she was certain, set by Wilkes to draw the whole town. Conner was a twelve-year-old boy, he would be there. Mike would kill him and make it look like an accident.

  She pulled out her cell phone and called Rob again. It was a futile gesture. She tried to somehow reach out to Conner, attempting to communicate with him via her mind.

  Maybe he heard her and maybe he didn’t, but she certainly felt no response. She looked down the long road that led to the town, to the gigantic smoke cloud, magnificent in the fading sun.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN so long their memory of it was nothing but a few dim sparks, the Three Thieves felt love. They felt it fiercely, hanging over the burning building, for the child down there in the mist, who glowed gold in the dull, swirling crowd of other souls.

  They saw, also, the antenna and the signals flaring off it, impacting the red flaring implants in the heads of people in the crowd. That antenna was connected to a transmitter, it must be, but the live voltage would be too low to make the wire visible to them. They hung far above, their small oval ship out of sight above the smoke, watching Conner. And they saw, suddenly, somebody with a gun.

  Help me, they heard Conner’s mind saying.

  They felt something strange within them, the beating of the heart. And they understood at last why Conner was calling for help, what all these strange signals meant: Wilkes had used a primitive form of mind control to turn dozens of people into assassins.

  KENNETH WAS AN HONOR STUDENT, an Eagle Scout, and a very proud young citizen, and he was absolutely terrified at what he was doing. He remembered some kind of a nightmare with this strange, whispering man in his room and he had woken up crazy like this, and he knew it was crazy, but he could not stop himself, he’d been turned into a killing machine, and the worst of it was that he just needed to kill this geeky middle schooler and do it NOW!

  He kept losing him in the haze, but just for a s
econd or two, so he was getting closer fast; then he found a clear shot, he raised the pistol, he aimed—and, Jesus. What the hell was that? Or no, he hadn’t disappeared, he was still there. He was four feet away. He could not miss. He pressed the trigger, which did not go back. He stopped, cursed himself, thumbed the safety off, and raised the pistol again.

  Conner looked into his eyes, down the barrel of the gun—and felt his body begin making tiny movements, very quick, tiny movements that seemed somehow linked to the kid’s vision.

  Kenneth started to pull the trigger—and this time Conner cleanly and clearly disappeared right before his eyes. There was no obscuring haze. He was just gone.

  Then he saw him again, flickering back into existence as he shook his own head, as if that had been enough to make him visible again. Now he would not miss.

  Dan tackled him from behind and he went down without a sound. The pistol flew off into the murk, and the next thing Kenneth knew, the world was dark.

  “Dan, don’t kill him!”

  “He’s just knocked out. Where’s that pistol?”

  “Oh, God, Dan, look!”

  Linda Fells did not know why she had brought her dad’s deer gutter. She loathed the ugly, hooked knife, hated it when he brought home does to carve up. But now she had to use it, and she knew on who and even though she was screaming in revulsion and fear, she marched toward Conner Callaghan, raising it as she went.

  She screamed and shook her head, trying to get rid of these thoughts, but the thoughts only got stronger and stronger.

  Dan ran toward her with all his might, but he tripped on a hose and went sliding in the ice, screaming for Conner to watch out, that she was behind him. Katelyn howled, “Conner, Conner,” and struggled as if through mud, crossing the slick of ice, hoses, and fallen people that lay between them and their boy.

  THE THREE THIEVES MOVED DOWN toward the roof of the grain elevator. They had to reach that antenna and the transmitter connected to it, but the collective was horrified to see that they could not reach it unless they descended into flames and certain death. But they couldn’t die, they mustn’t. No other triad was prepared to replace them. This had not been anticipated.

  The One said, We have save him. The Two said, We have to save ourselves. The Three leaped out of the craft and dropped down through the air. As he fell, a great mass of fire enveloped him and the whole collective howled his pain and his loss. He saw fire all around him, a red haze. He felt his bones growing hot, felt essential processing systems in his body begin to boil.

  He reached the lip of the great tank. The whole structure was unstable, he could feel it shaking, could see the flames licking at it. It would not last long, but even another moment was too much time. He ripped off the antenna, pulling it away from the concrete lip of the huge tank to which it had been affixed.

  As he looked for the transmitter, a great tongue of fire enveloped him. His skin began to pop and shatter, his limbs to shake, then to gyrate wildly as millions of micromotors lost control of themselves. He broadcast, Alarm, alarm as he felt himself ceasing to function. He dropped the antenna, which went sailing off into the flames. His left eye exploded in a shower of sparks. He fell farther.

  The One went after him, dropping also into the flames, attempting to save him, struggling against the fire. And he, too, caught fire. His head exploded in a flashing mass of sparks.

  The antenna was gone, but not the transmitter. It remained taped to the lip of the tank, its red diode gleaming, still sending its signal—although weakened—to every one of Wilkes’s killers.

  The Two took the craft up fast, faster than a bullet, all the way to the edge of space.

  CONNER FELT THEM LEAVING HIM. Don’t go, his mind cried, don’t cut me off. But he was cut off, there was now no sense of the presence of the collective within him. He felt it as a silence at the center of his being. “Come back to me,” he screamed, but the Thieves could not hear him, not the dead, not the frightened, confused survivor far away.

  DAN AND KATELYN REACHED CONNER at last.

  “Mom, Dad, something’s wrong, we have to go!”

  “Oh, Conner, dear God, Conner, I couldn’t find you!” Dan said. Katelyn threw her arms around him. “Let’s go home now,” she said. “Right now!”

  “Hi, Mrs. Callaghan.”

  Katelyn backed away from the girl. She knew what was in her hand, she had seen it.

  “Stay right there,” she told her. “Don’t you come near him!”

  The girl stepped closer. She was a pretty girl with a sweet, open smile. “There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Callaghan.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why are you carrying that knife?”

  The girl raised it and leaped straight past Katelyn. Conner stepped to one side and she slashed down where he had been standing. Snarling, she raised it again, looking around as if she couldn’t see him.

  Katelyn grabbed her arm, then Dan leaped on her from behind and got the knife out of her hand. “Who are you? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  The girl crumpled, bursting into tears. Here and there other people, freed by the weakening signal, began screaming, holding their heads, throwing down weapons.

  ON THE ROOF OF THE grain elevator, the metal skeletons of the two grays smoked and sparked in the licking flames. They moved, though, flickering and twitching, as if they wanted to stand. High above, the Two concentrated, his head down, his hands over his face.

  One skeleton actually rose a few inches, stretched an arm toward the transmitter, trembled, and fell back. The bones fell into the the maelstrom. Now the other moved a little—its hand scraping along the lip of the tank, then touching the edge of the transmitter, the black claws scrabbling at its power switch—then falling to a jumble of gleaming metal bones and black claws. The tiny red diode on the transmitter remained lit.

  At that moment, the grain elevator collapsed, leaving only the three enormous tanks standing. The light on the transmitter flickered, went out—but then came on again, glowing steadily. Huge pieces of concrete began falling off the tank.

  INSIDE, ROB AND HIS TEAM threw themselves into the cellar where the elevator’s motors were housed. A massive tongue of fire roared at them from above, coming through the hatchway like a living, questing monster, grasping for their lives. The space was long, the far end collapsed and burning. The floor above them groaned, ready to buckle. He thought he had perhaps twenty seconds to get these men out of here.

  THE CALLAGHANS BEGAN MOVING AWAY from the debris, Katelyn and Dan shielding their son as best they could.

  As they headed for their car, Jimbo Kelton came over to them. He was smiling.

  “Hey, Jimbo,” Dan said, “watch our backs, we—”

  Jimbo lifted his arms over his head and brought a rock down on Conner.

  Conner ducked, but not fast enough to avoid getting hit in the shoulder. A stab of pain went through him and he cried out.

  Jimbo raised the rock again. Then another rock hit Conner in the neck and bounced off. It had been thrown by Mrs. Kelton, and she and Jimbo were both gathering more projectiles, fragments of lumber, of tin—anything to throw at him. Their faces were gray, their eyes watery and crazy.

  As a third rock hit Conner, he ran toward the car. Now Terry Kelton tackled him and tried to drag him down, but he pushed him off. Catching up with him, Katelyn grabbed his jacket and dragged him toward the car as Dan fought off the Keltons, screaming and kicking, backing toward the car.

  “Dan, John has a rifle!” Katelyn shouted as she and Conner reached the car. “Run!”

  Conner jumped into the back of the car and crouched down on the floor. His head and his back throbbed where he’d been hit. Katelyn and Dan got in and slammed the front doors. As they pulled out, a rock hit the back window, transforming it into a haze of cracks.

  “What in damn hell is the matter?” Dan yelled.

  “Look, please, I’m sorry, I know I did something, and I
’m so sorry.”

  “You didn’t do a damn thing, son.”

  As they drove away, Conner came up from the floor. He sat hunched against the door, staring out the window at the bizarre scene, which faded quickly into the gathering winter evening.

  They went toward Oak Road, turning up Wilton, taking the lonely way.

  “This is a mistake,” Conner said.

  “What do you mean?” Dan asked.

  “The lonely way.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  LAUREN WAS ALMOST INSANE WITH worry and fear when at last a two-car convoy appeared at the main gate. Rob’s car was in front, a Cherokee behind full of specialists in fire control gear.

  As he pulled up, he opened his window. “We’re not out of the woods, and I need you right now.”

  She ran around and got in the car. The Cherokee headed off into the base.

  “Why in hell didn’t you call me? My God, I almost lost my mind.”

  “You had orders, Colonel.”

  “Orders? Dear God, the military mind is—oh, forget it. What’s our situation?”

  “Crew is dead and Wilkes is at large. He may have made an escape in a stolen TR.”

  “What’s a TR?”

  “Classified vehicle,” he replied tightly.

  “He killed Lewis Crew?”

  “Details later, we’ve got a hell of a situation back there. I don’t know exactly what else he’s done, but we’ve got to get that kid to safety or we’re gonna have another dead body on our hands right away.”

  At that moment, the base siren sounded and the guards began closing the gates. Rob turned the car around and headed back toward town.

  “What in the world is going on?”

  “It seems that Wilton is rioting.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “They’re killing each other.”

  She closed her eyes, playing move after move, and came to a conclusion: “Wilkes couldn’t identify exactly which child, so he did something that would turn the whole place violent, in hopes that all the children would be killed.”