by Brian Hodge
“I don’t think that’d be such a good idea,” Brian said. “Our enemy must know he can’t keep a town isolated for long.”
Jimmy stared off down the road. “Which might also mean this is the last chance.”
“It’s past that, Jimmy.”
Rysdale did not respond directly. “We’re gonna spend a couple of weeks with my sister in Saratoga, make a few visits to the track.” The races would be in full swing down there at this time of year.
He got back into the truck.
“Mr. Rysdale, don’t do it,” Ellen said. “Think about your kids!”
Jimmy looked at her in amazement. “What the hell do you know, Miss New York hotshot newspaper lady?”
“Too much,” she said.
Jimmy lowered his head, closed his eyes a moment. “Them things that’ve come,” he said in a mean voice, “we hear ’em tunneling under the house.”
“They want us,” Annie said, “they’re gonna get the kids!”
“Shut up, Annie! The less we talk about it, the better.”
“We can tell these people, Jimmy! They’re like us, they won’t go to the judge’s. So them things, they were coming up under the house. And the closer they got, the more you could hear… voices.”
“It was people screaming, Mom!”
“If we could get word to the military,” Jimmy said, “they could come in here and fix this. That’s why we have to leave, it’s not just to get away. We aren’t quitters. It’s for patriotic reasons.”
Brian shrugged his shoulders. “What’re you gonna do? Who’re you gonna tell?”
“You tell people the truth, you’re gonna end up in a padded cell like I did,” Bob said.
“We’ve been trying and trying to get physical evidence,” Brian added. “Now that we’re trapped here, it’s there for the taking. We’re up against something very smart, very careful, very determined. And why not? He’s fighting for his life, just like us.”
“With every blow, a demon grows stronger. To fight back we must be cunning also.” Lois eyes were steady. She believed in her demons as much as she did in her own breath.
Brian recalled the sound of little Lizzie Michaelson’s body falling open, the soft, tearing whisper of the skin parting, and then that hideously energetic buzzing as her contents spewed into the air. In the thoroughness of its evil, the attack was indeed profoundly demonic.
But there was another side to that, wasn’t there? The old Greek word for demon, daimon, also means soul, or source of knowledge. To look into the eyes of the demon was to see the truth.
There was movement in the pickup and Willie emerged. He was still his handsome, athletic self, but he looked as if he’d been crying. “Let’s get going, Dad.” His voice was sullen.
“The Michaelsons,” his father said, gesturing ahead. “We don’t want that.”
“So we don’t pull over or slow down or do whatever they did. Come on, Dad!” The boy hefted a shotgun, pumped a shell into the firing chamber with an efficient snap.
Now the daughter came down off the truck. “I don’t want to die.” She tugged her father’s sleeve. “I’m staying here, Daddy!”
“Shut up, sis!”
Jim Rysdale looked down the road. Brian followed his eyes. “You could go examine the Michaelson wreck, buddy. Convince yourself.”
Willie climbed up into the truck bed, stood behind the cab and ported his gun. “Let’s move out, Dad.”
Just then something shifted behind the roadside screen of trees. All eyes turned.
Loi saw it first, a slick black worm a foot in diameter uncoiling in the grass. Locusts leaped away from its gliding progress, as it exuded itself from the ground, its tip probing ahead.
How quick you are to make your point, Brian thought.
Bob was the next to see it. He cried out, an inarticulate bellow. Willie fired his gun, which discharged with a bone-jarring boom. The pellets tore through forest leaves with an angry clatter.
Pouring blood, the worm slid back into the ground. “See, Dad? Now, let’s go.”
A hand shot out of the woods on a long black arm and dug into Annie Junior’s hair. It started dragging her toward the woods. She was too stunned to cry out, but her eyes widened, her hands went up and fluttered uselessly against the thing.
Her mother’s fists went to her temples, her whole body lurched as if she’d been gut shot and she shrieked, a raw, resounding cry of astonishment and anguish. “My baby!”
Willie aimed his gun. Now Annie Junior shrieked, kicked, tore at the claws.
“You’ll kill her, Willie!”
“I can get it, Mom!”
Loi started after Annie Junior. Brian didn’t even have time to call her before she had her arms around the girl’s waist. Then she was ripping at the shrieking child’s hair, trying to extract it from the monstrous fingers before the long arm retracted into the woods.
Brian could see more coils gliding up among the leaves, their hands flexing, claws spreading.
Loi and the child were moving fast now, their bodies making a rasping sound as they were dragged across the summer-dry grass. Loi’s stomach ground against the earth.
Brian ran after her. Stretching out his arms, he hurled himself at their feet and grabbed his wife around the legs.
The poor child’s hair was torn right out of her head, and she screamed in agony.
The hand shot into the air on its long, curving arm, its fist full of bloody blond tufts.
“Baby, baby,” Annie cried, dashing to her little girl.
There was a thunderous boom and the shotgun spat white smoke. The shot slapped the wall of leaves and the gray shapes within undulated.
Then Annie Rysdale had her daughter in her arms. The child was bawling, gripping her temples with fists like gnarled white nutmeats.
A moment later the two vehicles were speeding off in the direction of the town. To relieve the congestion in the Wests’ car, Brian and Loi rode with the Rysdales. Annie Junior was on blankets in the truck bed, cradled by her mother. Willie was with them, clutching the shotgun to his chest.
Brian put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Jimmy buddy,” he said.
“They are from the world underground,” Loi said. “They’ve broken loose. We must get them to return to their world.”
“That may not be possible.”
“That was a very brave thing you did, Loi. I don’t know what to say—you saved our baby.”
“You would have saved mine.”
2
All the way to the Wests’ house they saw broken telephone and power poles, lines down everywhere. Just in the past half hour, great destruction had been done. Worse, they observed half a dozen more wrecks along Route 303, and a tall column of smoke rising from the direction of the Jackson place out on the Towayda Road. This time there were no sirens raised in response.
When they arrived back at the Wests’, Pat and Jenny Huygens were waiting in their car with the windows locked. They opened them as the little caravan drove up. “Bob,” Pat said, “you gotta get the state police—”
“I’m gonna try to use my radios.”
Everybody went into the house. They made sure all doors and windows were closed, and most of the windows curtained. Nobody wanted to risk so much as a glimpse of the purple light, day or night.
During the next hour more people came, drawn to the authority represented by Lieutenant West, and because they saw the other cars there.
The growing carnage along Route 303 had been what turned them all back.
In addition to the Rysdales and the Huygenses, old Mary Yates, Brian’s cousin Dick and his wife Linda, and Father Palmer from St. Paul’s church came. He was followed by the Reverend Simon Oont, the Dutch Reformed pastor.
Dick and Linda brought a bucket of fresh eggs, which made more sense than the family heirlooms and favorite clothes that tended to clog the trunks of the other cars.
“We’re the accidents,” Brian said, “the ones who’ve been m
issed.”
The seventeen people present cramped Nancy West’s living room. “We oughta go on a rampage, kill ’em all,” Dick announced.
“That’d be smart,” Bob responded. He’d been trying his handheld radio. It appeared to be working, but he couldn’t break in on any of the calls. “Funny, the division’s still patrolling the Northway as usual. No emergency’s in effect or anything.”
“Don’t they ever come back in here?” Jenny Huygens asked.
“Not normally. Just the sheriff.”
Mary Yates barked out a laugh. “So that’s why we’re being eaten by devils from hell.”
“Let’s inventory our weapons,” Bob said. “We have to know where we stand.”
There were five shotguns, seven deer rifles, a couple of .22s and five pistols.
“We need a plan,” Mary Yates said. “We need to sit down and work it out right now.”
“The things are getting bigger and stronger,” Jim Rysdale responded. “How do you plan against that?”
Brian wished he had more information. But he could scarcely imagine the bizarre permutations of his elegant theories that had led to this disaster. A theoretical particle traveling back through time doesn’t lead to… monsters. “I suspect it’s going to go very quickly now. I doubt we’ll be left alone for long.” He looked around him. “My thought is, every single survivor from Cuyamora County is right here in this room. Look at it this way: we’ve been very efficiently rounded up. Now for the coup de grace.”
“I think you’re right about that,” Father Palmer said.
“I have an idea,” Dick Kelly announced. “I say we work out a fuel line from Fisk’s to the judge’s root cellar and pump as much gas as we can down there. Then just strike a goddamn match.” Dick had black hair cropped close at the back and around the sides. The curls left on top looked curiously artificial, but Brian knew that they weren’t, having yanked at them many times when they were boys.
“A two-mile fuel line—that’s a technical problem and a half,” Pat Huygens said. He’d been a civil engineer. He was retired now. “What’re you gonna do, get every garden hose in town?”
“Well, maybe something like that.”
“Those old pumps over at Fisk’s aren’t going to move a volume of gas like that. Even if you got the line charged somehow or other, the gas’d be too heavy for ’em. You wouldn’t even get a dribble out the other end.”
“We could use a tanker truck. Could we get one?” Dick looked from face to face.
Everybody knew the answer, so nobody replied. The closest gas tanker would be at the Texaco distributor in Glens Falls.
A sound outside set everyone to frantic activity. In moments every window in the house bristled with gun barrels.
A blue Acura Legend came down the driveway and parked.
“It’s Dr. Gidumal,” Loi cried. She went out onto the porch as the Gidumals got out of their car.
Nobody went down the steps, though. Sam and Milly came in quickly. Their real names were Sanghvi and Maya, but the town had changed them to something easier to remember.
There were brief greetings, people automatically observing amenities that were now meaningless. Then Dr. Gidumal was taken to Annie Junior, who was lying on the Wests’ bed with a blood-splotched turban of towels around her head.
Dr. Gidumal, it developed, had tried to call the hospital this morning. An investigation had revealed all the phone lines down. Then the power had failed. They’d been picking their way out toward 303 when they’d seen the cars here. They knew nothing of what had happened, and had difficulty believing what they were told.
As Loi watched and listened, she grew increasingly impatient. They were letting time pass, maybe too much time.
“To fight something this powerful,” Milly Gidumal said at last, “it would seem important to know exactly where it is weak.”
Brian shook his head. “I probably ought to know, but I don’t. I mean, I was working on a project in theoretical physics.”
“They are demons,” Loi said. “We cannot fight them directly.” There was acid in her voice.
Ellen disagreed. “This all has a scientific explanation. It seems like something supernatural only because we don’t understand it.”
“What does she know,” Mrs. Yates commented sotto voce.
Ellen heard, and turned to her. “If hell’s opening up, we obviously aren’t going to get away. That’s the trouble with that kind of thinking.”
“Father,” Pat Huygens asked, “could a door to hell actually open?”
“Well, now, we’re not sure about that. But I suppose it might.”
“I concur,” Oont announced solemnly.
“We’re ignorant, helpless and we don’t have much time.” Brian looked from face to face. “That’s the truth of it.”
“What about the judge? Maybe we ought to go over in a body and interrogate the judge.” On the surface Pat Huygens’ suggestion was reasonable.
“An awful lot of people have gone there and not come back,” Ellen said.
“We stay away from the judge, folks.” Brian put all the authority he could into his voice.
Willie Rysdale flared at him. “I say we take every gun we got and go over there and shoot everything that moves, then torch the place!”
People glanced nervously at each other.
“I’m capable of facing who I have to face,” Loi said. “But I don’t think we should attack frontally.” She regarded the Rysdale boy with cool eyes. “Only fools do that.” Her words caused a silence. She was not used to being the center of attention, and she felt sweat tickling her temples. But she continued. “I was born to war, raised in battle. This is war, I am a soldier. And you, Bob, you also.”
“You won our war, don’t forget,” Bob said.
“The Americans were brave.”
Bob nodded slowly, regarding her. The feelings now passing between these two former enemies were very deep.
“What about your baby?” Ellen asked. “You’re not exactly strong.”
Loi tossed her hair out of her eyes. “If I fight, my baby has a chance. If I don’t fight, he dies.”
“I say we form a box and go out armed to the teeth. We fire at anything that moves.”
“That might work!” Willie’s father was enthusiastic, but nobody else supported them. People were trying to imagine themselves winning a pitched battle, and having a hard time doing it.
“Maybe we should wait to be rescued,” Bob said.
Brian thought that was at least as dangerous as the banzai charge idea. “Bob, that’s a gamble. I mean, I’m looking at this as a minute-to-minute thing.”
“Let’s go!” Willie hefted his shotgun.
“We’ve got to have a more practical plan,” Loi said.
Father Palmer, who had been in the kitchen with Nancy trying to put together food for the group, now returned to the living room. He was carrying a tray with boxes of Wheaties and Quix cereals on it, a couple of dozen boiled eggs from the bucket Dick had brought, a bowl of pickles and some salami. “Let’s all try to eat,” he said. “We need food.”
“What’s your take on this, Padre?” Pat Huygens asked. “The door to hell gonna close, or do we all gotta burn?”
Brian respected Father Palmer, but a theological explanation wasn’t going to work. “I think we’d better forget fighting and concentrate on survival.”
“My husband is right,” Loi said. “It’s getting toward noon already, and the last thing we want is to be caught in Oscola after the sun goes down.”
“God save us,” Reverend Oont said.
“Somebody sure as hell better,” Mrs. Yates responded.
That stopped conversation. Husbands and wives moved closer together, gathered in their children.
Morning was gone, and the shadows of afternoon were emerging. The day was no longer young.
Chapter 13
Loi was watching the street. “There are clouds forming up again off toward the Jumpers.” She
looked back at Brian. She feared that her husband felt helpless, that he was freezing like an untried soldier.
She listened to the murmur of voices. So many people were here, most of them not well known to her. Except for Bob and Nancy, she had made few friends in Oscola.
Even so, she wanted them to live, all of them. If they would not find a way out for themselves, she would do it. Her hands went to her belly, to the baby within. No demon could attack a baby, young innocence was too powerful, it drove them back.
But she could lose her baby.
Mary Yates, the owner of Mode O’Day Fashions, where Loi often shopped, suddenly rose from the couch. “OK, folks, this is official. I’ve panicked. So what I’m gonna do before the shadows get another inch longer is, I’m just gonna drive right on up the Towayda Road, turn out when I get to Corey Lake and go down that old logging track up there. I can slip right across to the Northway. I’m asking for volunteers.”
Jim Rysdale narrowed his eyes. “You gonna do it in your Oldsmobile, Mary? That logging road’s probably washed out up beyond the first ridge line. God knows, nobody even hunts back in there anymore.”
“It may be hazardous, Mary,” Sam Gidumal said. “If you were to get stuck, you’d be helpless.”
“I’ve got front-wheel drive.” Again she glanced out the window. “Better than being shut up in here waiting to die.”
“Mary, please!” Nancy held her boys close to her.
“Daddy says we gonna commit suicide,” little Joey said. His voice was hushed, exactly as it would have been at a wedding or a funeral. His brother shushed him, then glanced over to their mother for approval.
“Look,” Mary said, “I don’t want to commit suicide or die or end up God knows what way, like the folks that got caught out on 303. Which is why I’m going to take my rifle and my pistol and I’m just gonna go.” She smiled, but her fingers were twisted together like a tangle of worms. “Jimmy’s right about one thing, though. My trip’s gonna be dangerous. I need another car at least, in case we have to help each other through.”