Harry moved backwards, his eyes caught and held by the incredible sight, unable to tear himself away from the maddened throes of the beasts inside the flames. The container he carried was held downwards in his hand, the opening pointing towards the ground. As he moved back to join the others with him in the cavern, a steady stream of gasoline dripped along the dirt below his feet. He did not see this. A stray spark, a tongue of flame, flicked onto that stream of flammable liquid, and set it on fire. Harry had just reached the men when he saw the fire hurtling towards him in a straight line, following the fallen gas. He dropped the gas can in a panic, and hurled himself away from it. The three men were too slow. The stream of fire hit the can and it burst apart, igniting the other cans they held, and hence their clothes. The three agonized men darted about the cavern, beating then-shirts and pants and jackets, their arms flailing, while Harry watched in horror. There was nothing he could do. He stood there, at the entrance to the tunnel which led back to the Forester Building, watching the bodies of his three close friends turn to ash before his eyes. Before long, their blackened shapes bore little resemblance to the men he had once known, looking more like the twisting, writhing things—some of whom still struggled —burning alive in the lake.
Harry’s fragile consciousness ceased to function clearly at that point, awe-struck as he was by the horror he had seen and had innocently perpetrated on his friends. They would not have died had they not come here, had he not begged them to come, had he waited until morning when the proper authorities might have arrived. But he had seen the things moving towards the holes in the opposite wall, holes that he’d assumed led to the surface; and had surmised that there had been no time to lose. They might have devoured the entire town while everyone was sleeping.
There had been no choice, he told himself over and over again. No choice at all.
The heat was unbearable. He was sure that he had burned them all, including those who’d come rushing back in to defend the first victims. He had won. Won!
Then he saw the blackened husks of Spooner and the others, and the tears began streaming down his face. He turned and re-entered the tunnel they had come through. What would he tell them? What would he say to their children and their families? Would anyone believe him?
They would come down here and they would have to believe. They would come and see all the dark, burned, unrecognizable shapes floating on the water, and they would wonder for the rest of their days why such hell-spawn had ever chosen to inflict itself upon the quiet town of Milbourne.
David and Anna were up at nine a.m., sitting in a little coffee shop connected to the motel. They had ordered coffee and eggs and juice, and everything else that came with the two-dollar-and-fifty-cent special. David was telling her about the mysterious two a.m. phonecall. He had not been eager to mention it, afraid she’d admonish him for not waking her, for not going to the store or to Harry’s house to find him, but knew if she heard it from Harry’s lips first it would not go well for him. Luckily, she felt he had done the right thing.
“That’s the oddest thing I ever heard,” she said. “I think we should drop into his store this morning and find out what it was all about.”
“Good idea. I hope he’s speaking to me.”
“I think he’ll understand. No one would have expected you to go running off on a wild-goose chase at that time of night. He must have been drunk. Why else would he have forgotten to tell you where he was?”
David had told himself that over and over again, but the sound of the man’s voice, the manic urgency, ran through his mind almost constantly. He had heard it while he’d washed up, brushed his teeth, while they’d walked to the restaurant, ordered breakfast. Even now, he heard it. Had he done it again, ignored someone who’d needed assistance, as he had practically dismissed George Bartley? No, he told himself. Stop doing this to yourself! In both cases, he had done everything he could have been reasonably expected to do. More than anyone would have expected him to do. Stop feeling this guilt.
Anna was talking, asking him something. “. . . feel this morning.”
“Excuse me?”
“I asked how you were feeling.”
“Fine. What about you?”
“Better.”
“That’s good.” They were too tired and too preoccupied to speak very much. It didn’t matter. There’d be plenty of time later for meaningful conversation.
They left the restaurant and got into her car. Their first stop was the hardware store. Roger told them that Harry had not yet “reported to work,” an odd term for an underling to use in reference to his boss. He told them where the man lived, but warned them that he often liked to sleep late. “And with Paula out,” he rolled his eyes unfeelingly, “that means twice as much work for me.” He got little sympathy.
They drove out to his house, located on an off street near the edge of the town, right next to the river. The smell was refreshing, but somehow unpleasant. The clear, fresh scent of water mingled with the mild after-smell of pollution. The river was not very wide. Across it they could see vegetation, grass, the beginnings of a forest. No one lived over there.
They walked up the steps to the house, set apart from others on the block by a driveway and some hedges, and rang the bell. Both noticed that the door was half open.
After a few moments, they heard a grizzled voice cry out, “C’min. C’min.” David was nervous; Harry’s voice sounded as tense and frazzled as it had the night before.
Harry London sat in a chair in his living room. It was a pleasantly decorated room with two large chairs, a sofa, and lots of bric-a-brac on the bookcases, along with one or two actual books. But they were hardly able to notice the surroundings when confronted with the man himself. He was still dressed in the clothes he had worn the night before, the coat blackened and singed at the edges. He seemed to have grown ten years older than the last time they’d seen him. Gone was the respectable, level-headed businessman and store owner. In its place was a grim changeling, hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked, unshaven, spittle dripping out of his lips and onto his chin. He saw them, but did not see. There was no real sign of recognition in his eyes.
Kneeling next to him, tears in her eyes, was Paula Widdoes. She looked much the same as they had last seen her. She looked up at their arrival, and said: “I found him like this. This morning. I came over to tell him I felt well enough to go to work. I was going to make him breakfast. He won’t talk to me. Won’t say anything. He barely acknowledged me when I arrived. The door was open. He just sits here, muttering to himself. I was surprised when he told you to come in. The doorbell must have startled him.”
At that point, something in Harry’s brain clicked again, and he turned to look at Paula. He did not seem aware of David’s or Anna’s presence. “I killed them, you see,” he said. “I killed them.” He started shivering again, violently, remembering what he had seen and done. “It was me. I killed them.”
David came over and leaned down, his face very close to Harry’s. God, it was true. Harry had gone mad. The phone call had only hinted at the degree of mental deterioration. Something had put him into a temporary— hopefully—state of near-dementia. “Who did you kill, Harry? What were you talking about last night? We don’t understand. Help us understand, Harry.”
“You.” Harry looked straight into David’s eyes, a terrible knowledge reflected in his own. “You didn’t come.” His voice rose in intensity, as his hands lifted up off his lap. “I called you. But you didn’t come. You might have helped us. If you’d been there, maybe I might have saved them. YOU DIDN’T COME!”
Suddenly Harry sprang out of the chair and wrapped his hands around David’s neck, as if David were to blame for everything. Anna screamed and tried to push him away. David’s hands tugged at his assailant’s, but the man was too strong in his fury to be defeated so easily. His grip was like a death hug. Paula pulled at his shoulders from behind, crying for him to stop. Anna raised her fists and beat at the man, hitting him everywhere: th
e head, the arms, the neck. The fierce look in her eyes indicated that had she a knife in her possession she would have used it without hesitation.
Finally, as suddenly full of fatigue as he had been of energy, Harry released David’s throat, wheezed, and dropped back into the chair. “I’m sorry,” he said, still in a fog over the whole incident. He looked up. “God help me. I didn’t mean—” He dropped his head into his hands and openly wept. “I’m sorry.”
David went over to the sofa, rubbing his throat, which was reddened with the marks of the man’s nails and fingers. He could deal with the pain, the quiet shock that comes after a close brush with eternity, the throbbing soreness on his throat. But he could not deal with the horrible accusation in the man’s tormented eyes. He would not forget that glare—it accused him of betrayal, of cowardice. It was as if Harry knew that he would not have come even if he had told him where he was. Was that true? Had he committed an unpardonable sin—in this man’s eyes, at least? Perhaps in his own, too? He had tried, he told himself, to find out where Harry was. Should he have pulled on his clothes last night, gone to the store, to Harry’s home, looked everywhere he could, walked all over the town? David suddenly felt low and weak and pathetic. Why, he couldn’t even stand the thought of getting behind the’ wheel of an automobile. He had never felt so helpless and vulnerable before, so wretched.
“Are you all right?” Anna asked, sitting down beside him. He could sense her genuine concern and wondered if he were worthy of it.
“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. Gave me a scare, didn’t he?”
Anna looked over at Paula, who was leaning over Harry, holding him tenderly in her arms. “Have you called a doctor?” Anna asked. “I think he needs a doctor.”
Paula seemed to start for a moment, as if she had really only awakened just that second. “Oh, of course. I had better do that.” She pulled away from Harry, and put one hand to her forehead, her expression still perplexed. It was as if she were having trouble accepting that there was something really wrong with Harry. He had been her strength these last few days, her rock. Someone to lean on, to talk to. She was clearly not prepared for the situation to reverse itself so soon, so suddenly. All at once came this great responsibility, and even the thought of it was probably enough to throw her into a panic. She went to the phone in the kitchen. The could hear her dialing, talking to someone.
David sat on the couch, still wrapped up in his own thoughts. Anna touched him, her fingers rubbing the hair at the nape of his neck, silently communicating her concern.
Harry London sat in his easy chair, staring out into space, images of the night before locked inside his eyes, caught for all times, never-ending. The wound in his leg, hidden by his trousers, was infected and festering, its poison spreading through his system, setting fire to his mind, burning out his brain. Again and again he relived the evening’s horror, one part of his mind wanting to tell them about it, the other refusing to accept that it had ever happened, refusing to acknowledge any of the memories which came uninvited. Torn this way, his mind simply sank into a semi-comatose state, where no sound or smell, voice or touch, could ever reach him.
David and Anna left Milbourne, Connecticut the following day. They would have been surprised to know what was to happen to the town in the weeks to come.
Bill Spooner’s family, and the families of the other men who’d died with him that night, and the families of the youngsters who’d disappeared, and of the men who’d vanished on the mountain top while searching for them, would live in mortal fear of late-night phone calls, wondering who would be the next of their kin to walk out at night and never come back. Over the following months, they would tell themselves a hundred different stories to explain the disappearances, but none would ever really satisfy them or ease the chill in their hearts.
Everyone would suspect that Harry London was the key to all the mysteries, that Harry knew the answers, and could tell the town where everyone had gone. But Harry would be silent, entombed by his own fragile mind, unable to tell a soul what had happened. Two weeks after that horrible night, he would walk out of the hospital and disappear from Milbourne without a trace, a note, or a backward glance. Months later, a body would wash up on the beach at a small lake in upstate New York, and dental records would confirm the dead man’s identity. The identity of the virulent chemical or biological agent that had raged through his system, however, would never be determined.
Paula Widdoes would not be able to stand the loss of two friends, two loved ones, coming so soon together.
She would stay home from work one day, and while the telephone rang incessantly in her ears, and the TV played at top volume, she would take the gun her father had left her for protection out of the night table drawer and blow her brains right out of her head.
The Coroner of Milbourne, Connecticut finally released the body of Jeffrey Braddon two days after his sister went back to Manhattan, his final report full of insubstantial gobbledygook and double talk. The verdict: death by misadventure. Cause: unknown. The Coroner, finding himself with extra, unreported income, would decide to take his wife and family on a trip to Europe. Unfortunately, they would be killed in a mysterious “accident” on the way to the airport.
The Forester Building would eventually be torn down, and a large chain supermarket put up in its place to compete with the grocery on the other side of town. The sub-basement would be completely filled in, and before long the residents would forget all about what had happened under the market’s shiny tile floors.
Representatives of the State Police, who took over the law enforcement of Milbourne during the interim between the disappearance of the entire police force and the appointment of new law officers, would instigate an exhaustive search for the missing parties, particularly the Chief and his patrolmen. They, too, would go through the hole in the floor of the Forester Building, would go through the tunnels and discover the cavern, with its burned human bodies, and the lake full of charred black things, unrecognizable to the eyes of those who found them. There would be much speculation as to the nature of the beasts, and the circumstances that led to their demise, as well as the deaths of the men—not to mention the origin of the many bones lying about the cavern, including the skeletal pieces of the former Chief of Police.
But further speculation, inquiry and investigation would be abruptly curtailed by a visit from the mayor and several other town and county officials, who in turn had been visited (not only this time but several times in the past) by representatives of the Barrows Corporation, a huge conglomerate that owned whole towns and thousands of officials, as well as prominent senators and influential lawyers. Money would change hands. Voices would speak in hushed tones. Pressure would be exerted in sensitive areas. And before long, even those who had seen the pool and lived to tell the story, would be suitably convinced that it was not worth the trouble to tell anyone else. An “official” story explaining the disappearances would circulate. The missing parties had been caught in a freak fire in the woods, their bodies completely destroyed. People would remember the smoke they had smelled that fateful night. But they would notice: None of the trees were charred. And they would shake their heads and wonder.
But in another town, several hundred miles away, events were already in motion that even the mighty and all-powerful Barrows Corporation might have trouble controlling . . .
Or would they?
True, the first test had been a dismal failure.
But the second?
That was another story.
Part Three
Outbreak
Chapter Ten
Hillsboro, Vermont—Summer, 1983
David Hammond woke up at three in the afternoon, quickly responding to the alarm clock buzzing on the dresser two feet from his bed. He got up, stepped across the space between bed and bureau, and pushed in the notch on the clock, shutting off the sound. He sat back down on the bed, and rubbed his eyes. Bright sunlight came in through the window on the opposite wall from the
dresser. A clear, sunny, mild Vermont morning.
He was glad that yesterday’s hot weather had abated for the present, although it was by no means chilly. He looked around the room. His clothes were lying in a little pile on the floor, and his suitcase sat on the lap of the hardbacked wooden chair over in the corner, still unpacked for the most part. The dresser top was piled up with paperbacks and library books he’d brought up to read in the quiet hours. Only he doubted he’d have time to read any of them. Today was the day Anna was arriving.
The thought of it made him feel fantastic. In just two short hours her bus would be here, pulling up to the parking lot of the Hillsboro diner. The lonely weekend would finally be over. Today was Sunday, the day she had promised she would join him.
He’d come up here on Friday afternoon to get the house ready before her arrival. At that time, Anna hadn’t known for sure when she might be able to get enough time off to come up and spend a week or two with him. But then Saturday morning he got the call. She had made arrangements, juggled an appointment or two, used all her connections, and now had two full weeks of free time—and she was coming up by bus on Sunday!
All during the rest of the weekend he had waited anxiously, afraid that the phone would ring and Anna would be calling, canceling her trip due to unexpected business. But that had never happened. Now here it was, Sunday, and Anna was already on her way.
He had called his father the week before, asking permission—though he knew he would not need it—to use the house for most of the summer. He could work up here in peace, out of the city heat and smog, able to swim and sunbathe whenever the mood struck him. He could mail the free-lance assignments he did directly to the Belmont Company back in Manhattan. (They’d already bought a couple of things, so he had a little money, and in September, he had learned, a full-time position on their art staff was waiting.) It had been easy to persuade Anna to come up and join him at the earliest opportunity.
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