by Brian Hodge
Loi pulled back the curtain. “The clouds are getting dark. That logging track won’t be passable in another hour.”
“All the more reason to get our tails in gear.”
“I’ll go,” the Reverend Oont announced. “I have my four-by-four Cherokee. We can leave the Olds here.”
Mary went to him and threw her arms around him. Others milled. Nobody seemed ready to follow them. Father Palmer wished them luck.
Brian watched Loi as she went to the table and carefully ate a hard-boiled egg. Rather than cracking it against the edge of the plate, she cut the shell with a fingernail, and removed neatly cut squares of shell.
There were hugs all around, and more than one pair of eyes went wet as the two prepared for their departure. Oont had no guns, so he and Mary split her stash. She took the rifle, he the pistol. She also had a shotgun, an old single-shot small-gauge of no particular value.
Loi also was planning an attempt to escape. But it would be carefully designed, not thrown together slapdash like this. She wished them the best, but she was filled with foreboding.
Concerned that she keep up her strength, she ate her egg. “Brian,” she said as she returned to the living room, “I want you to eat.” She handed him another egg, and he cracked it against the arm of a chair. Bits of shell went everywhere.
Mary put on her canvas hat and Oont buttoned his hunter’s vest. Together they looked about as defenseless as two human beings could be. Oont was a pallid man, small, with the eyes of a big puppy and a disposition to match. Mary had her little bit of bluff, but she wasn’t going to scare a half-blind housefly for long.
“I want you to think again,” Loi said. “We’re best off staying together.”
“So come!” Mary’s voice had a high, edgy note to it.
At that moment they heard a sort of subtle, fluttering sound— more a feeling, really—from under the house. “That’s what we had,” Jenny Huygens whispered harshly. “That precise noise.” She looked at the silent, frightened faces around her. “It’s down there right now. Under us.”
There was a hurried conference in the Rysdale family. Willie was even more vehement about putting up a fight. His mother’s face became the color of old wax. Then Jim stepped forward. “We’ll go with you, Mary.” Annie Junior buried her face in her mother’s dress.
“Thank you, Dad,” Willie said. He slapped his weapon. “I wanta get my licks in!”
The fluttering came again, this time strong enough to shake bric-a-brac on the shelf above the TV and rattle the dishes on the table. “There ain’t a lot of time, folks,” Mary said.
Along with Mary and the Reverend went the Rysdales, a total of six people. “I don’t want to be here when it breaks through,” Annie explained. “I’ve been through it, and once is enough.”
Loi went to Brian, put her hand in his. Ellen had stuck a big kitchen knife in her belt. She stood before a shelf, examining a portable shortwave radio, blinking the tears out of her eyes. “This work, Bob?”
“I can pick up China with that Sony. But remember we had trouble with my portable.”
“You couldn’t transmit. But this is a receiver.” She turned on the radio, began twisting the dial.
The Yates group went out onto the porch. Loi drew open the curtains in front of the picture window. She saw them get into Reverend Oont’s 4x4 and the Rysdales’ pickup.
As they were leaving, the earth stirred again. Nancy’s bric-a-brac trembled, the ceramic elves shook, the imitation Dresden figurines danced.
“If there’s a tunnel getting dug under the house,” Bob said, “maybe we all ought to go.”
“No! We stay.” Loi backed away from the window. One of the figurines fell with a crash from its shelf to the top of the TV. Its head popped off and rolled to the floor.
Outside, the two vehicles were moving out into the road.
From the basement came a soft grinding sound. “I think we’re making a mistake,” Bob said.
“Why don’t you join them, then?” Loi’s voice was sharp. Brian was worried about her and Bob. The more this became like war, he thought, the more the buried animosities of these two rival soldiers were apt to surface. They needed work to do, something to focus their energy. Brian searched his thoughts, trying to find a sensible way of fighting back. “We need to locate the facility,” he said at last. “That’s the key.”
Bob nodded, but said nothing.
“You have a way of doing this?” Loi asked.
Ellen came over to them. “It could be anywhere.”
“It’s here. Everything is happening here. The way I visualize it, they’ve linked up with some parallel universe, working from my equations and using some incredible hybrid of my equipment”
“Could you also have done this?” Loi asked.
“I was working with the scientific equivalent of a black-and-white photo. Whoever has control of my facility has evolved my equipment all the way to the era of three-dimensional TV.”
The group was beginning to move out onto the porch to watch the caravan leave. Brian and Loi followed them.
The air was warm and laced with the fragrance of Nancy’s roses. Birds sang, a butterfly fluttered across the lawn. The near view could not have been more normal. But there was also a long loop of ordinary telephone cable lying in the street, and a power line sparking intermittently at the intersection. Reverend Oont’s Jeep rolled slowly forward, followed by the Rysdales’ pickup. Willie stood in the back balancing against the cab, his Remington in his arms.
Father Palmer began to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven…” A ragged chorus picked up the prayer. Brian joined, wishing more than believing.
The two cars rounded the corner. As they disappeared, their engine noise was absorbed by a stand of fir.
Even so, nobody went inside. Far from it, they kept praying.
Not twenty seconds had passed before they heard the unmistakable crack of a rifle. The prayer gained intensity. Veins rose on necks, hands clasped hands, eyes closed. There were three more cracks, then a fusillade. The prayer died, the little group closed in on itself.
Mary’s old shotgun boomed once, its echoes slapping off against the hills.
Into the breathless silence that followed, there came a single scream. It was deep and awful, a man’s cry. Linda Kelly sobbed. Nancy said, “Kids, get back in the house.” As she went in, she herded them ahead of her.
More screams followed, as high and lost as the voice of the wind on a wild winter night.
“God help them,” Father Palmer cried.
Crackling sounds erupted, the angry rasp of electricity. Despite the sunlight, purple flashes were visible above the tree line. The screams went on and on, and Brian realized that he was screaming, too, everybody was, everybody except Loi and Bob, who walked side by side down the driveway. They had armed themselves with shotguns.
Brian forced himself to follow. He passed Father Palmer, who was now on his knees, his fists closed and raised in supplication or anger.
With a dull thud a blossom of flame rose into the sky beyond the trees. A single tire, smoking, came rolling down the slight incline and back into Queen’s Road. It stopped, fell, and lay in a haze of rubber-stinking smoke.
Dr. Gidumal held his hands to his temples, his eyes wide, his teeth clenched.
As the screaming died, Brian was astonished to hear music. For a moment he was confused, then he realized that it was WRON, the Voice of the Adirondacks out of Glens Falls. They were playing an oldie, Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa.” Only seventy miles away, and they had no idea what was happening here.
Then he saw a long, thin coil rising out of the smoke, rising high above the line of pines that blocked the view of Main. “Jesus Christ, look!” It waved in the air like a vine, and at the end it held something.
Loi and Bob raised their guns, calmly aimed and fired. The vine reared like a snake and a black dot came arcing across the sky, falling right toward them.
Bob fired again and the ob
ject was deflected, spinning wildly. It fell into the street twenty feet away.
Then there was silence. The cable or snake disappeared.
“Bring a blanket,” Loi called. “Cover it.”
Brian saw that it was a head. He recognized Willie Rysdale’s young face, frozen in a drum-tight grin. “I’ll get one,” he shouted.
“Brian,” Nancy shrieked as he came through the front door, “Brian, something’s down there!” She was staring at the entrance to the basement, her eyes wide.
“Get out of here.”
“Oh, God, Brian, where will we go now?”
“Hurry up,” Loi called. Her voice was as high as a girl’s. Brian grabbed the tablecloth and started for the door.
As he returned to the porch, he saw that the head was still somehow alive, the face working.
Loi and Bob both fired at once, fired again and again. The boy’s head danced in the street, split as buckshot slammed it.
Brian reached their side, waving the tablecloth. “Loi, be careful. That gun’s got a lot of kick.”
“I can fire a shotgun, Brian.” She pointed with her chin. “Don’t let them see. Cover it.”
The head was still alive, its left eye blinking spasmodically, the tongue flapping in the mouth with a sound like a moth fluttering against a screen. One blast had gouged the left temple, the other torn off the forehead, exposing an interior complex with thick green folds where the gray brain ought to be.
Brian saw then that the shattered eye was looking at him.
He sensed that this was no longer the face of Willie Rysdale. It was him from the other side, a self-portrait.
The eye blinked fast, then the muscle around it tightened. As Brian moved, the eye followed him.
He thought it looked hungry.
Loi fired. Brian threw the cloth at the head rather than covering it. He didn’t want to go any closer to it.
More shots followed, and Brian realized that Loi and Bob were not firing at the head, but rather at something farther down the street.
A thick coil had slid across the intersection. It shone in the sun, dripping as if just washed or just born. As the echo of the shots retreated into the woods, he heard a bizarre mix of sounds, the lazy ratcheting of summer bugs, the strains of “Memories Are Made of This” from the radio, and the fan-quick fluttering of Willie’s tongue.
Nancy and her boys rushed out of the house. “It’s on the stairs,” Joey shrieked.
“There’s something coming from under the basement door,” Nancy wailed, falling into her husband’s arms.
“Get a grip,” Loi cried. “What’s there?”
“Threads,” Nancy said, “long black threads.”
“They’re sticky,” Chris added. “Really sticky.”
“They’re getting thicker,” Joey said, “like earthworms get if you touch ’em.”
“Bob,” Loi asked, “have you got any gas in your garage?”
“Well, yeah, for my lawn mower.”
“We have to burn the house.”
Nancy’s mouth dropped open. “The hell you’re gonna burn my house, you damn gook!” She planted herself before the door, her legs spread.
From inside came an ominous sputtering.
“Burn it now,” Loi shouted. “Do it, Bob!”
Bob hurried into the garage, came out with a five-gallon tin of gas.
“You are not gonna do this, Bobby West.” His wife took the can from him. “Not you.” She put it down.
“Get it, Brian. Pour it in the basement window. But you be careful. If anything down there starts toward you, run!”
Brian felt the gas sloshing in the can, looked into Nancy’s raging eyes, at their diamond-hard anger, their wet, glistening fear. She spat. Nancy West, a woman he had known since they were babies, spat right in his face. He felt it against his cheek, trickling slowly down. With his free hand he wiped it away, advancing toward the basement window.
“Cover him,” Loi told Bob. Then she smashed in the window with the barrel of her shotgun. Methodically, she put it to her shoulder, braced and fired two shells into the basement in quick succession. The response was a dense splash, as if a huge bladder full of oatmeal had burst.
“Dick, Linda, let’s go in and get the weapons,” Bob said. “But don’t take any chances.”
The three of them ran into the house, returning moments later with rifles and pistols. “Those things—they’re all over inside,” Linda said, “oozing along like slugs.”
“One of them touched me,” Dick said as he distributed the guns.
Brian stepped forward and started pouring in the gas. He could see coils undulating, thick and wet. A segment of heavy black flesh passed the window, and he saw goose bumps form on the skin where the gas splashed against it.
Then the can was empty. Brian looked to Loi. “How do we—”
Before he could protest she squatted, producing a book of paper matches. As she lit one and tossed it into the basement, he jumped back.
A blast of fire roared out of the window and Loi was rolling away, struggling to protect her belly from the violence of the motion.
He grabbed her, brought her to him, pulled her away from the fire-choked window. “I could’ve done that!”
“This is no time for discussion. We have to act.”
A great surging movement began in the basement, in the fire.
“We’ve got to go to another house.” With that Loi got a rifle and crossed the street to the Gilbert Swanson place. Gil and Erica were just gone, like most of the rest of Oscola.
Ellen, who had taken the shotgun Loi had been carrying, now blew the lock off the front door. They entered the house.
Nancy hesitated, looking sorrowfully back at the flames roaring out of her basement windows.
“You would have been caught,” Loi said, attempting to console her.
At that moment a gigantic object rose past the smoking living room windows, burning with deep red flames, yellow smoke pouring off its black flesh. It came slopping up out of the basement amid clouds of smoke and steaming, pearl-gray masses of what appeared to be boiling mucus. The house around it disintegrated into kindling, couches and beds and books and appliances tumbling down its sides like foam on a wave. For a moment the humping thing had a roof.
The refrigerator, still festooned with messages and Chris’s prized drawings, smashed down into the yard five feet in front of the West family. When it hit it flew open and covered them in frozen steaks and Healthy Choice dinners, vegetables and cans of Coke, leftover green beans and low-fat desserts. “I got a ice cream sandwich,” Joey yelled.
Nancy staggered back, soaked in milk and orange juice, and went stiffly in the front door of the Swanson place without so much as a glance at Loi and Ellen.
“Now it knows we’ll fight,” Loi said. “It knows.”
“He knows, Loi. I was with a person. Somebody.”
“Very well, Bob. He knows.”
Brian realized that his wife had just saved them all. She’d fought, just as she said she would, and Bob had fought beside her. He hoped their alliance would last.
This house was not as full as the last one had been. Seventeen people had dwindled to thirteen. Loi inventoried the little cadre. There were Wests, with Nancy in tears and her boys clinging to her. Then Sanghvi and Maya Gidumal, gentle souls, incapable even of firing a pistol. Brian’s cousins, the Huygenses, who would probably fight like dogs if called upon. Then there was the priest. She tried to visualize Father Palmer in battle. Forget it.
Her question was, would these people respond to her as a leader? They needed her, she saw that. Unless she gave orders, nothing happened. Not even Bob could assume the role of the officer.
Very well, she would try. “We will wait until sunset, then get out on all-terrain vehicles. We know that things are OK in Glens Falls, from the radio. If we move fast, maybe we can use the cover of dark to make a run for it.” Her idea was a good one, she felt, if it could be carried out. “We need to f
ind some ATVs.”
“I think we ought to be as quiet as we can, too,” Brian added.
“Why?” Father Palmer asked.
“Something operating from underground probably uses sound to find things on the surface. The quieter we are, the better.”
“We could create a diversion,” Ellen suggested. “Go across the street, turn on the radio in that other house.”
“The Cobb place?”
Loi joined in. “After we’ve found the ATVs, we go upstairs, stay absolutely silent until dark. Then we move.”
Would it work? Brian had no idea. But he did know one thing: by their calm courage Loi and Bob had pulled the whole group together. They were no longer a helpless rabble of scared civilians, they were an organized band.
“The hard part’s gonna be getting the ATVs,” Dick said. “If none of the houses around here have them.”
Loi addressed Ellen. “You go turn their radio on. Turn two radios on. And the TV, and the dryer. Leave it on its longest cycle.”
“The dryer?”
“Put a shoe in it. We want voices and thumping. Like we’re all in there.”
Ellen met Loi’s fiery eyes, and did not even consider refusing.
“Now,” Loi said, “please, at once.”
Ellen went into the yard, watching the raging destruction that was still unfolding across the street. The Wests’ house was unrecognizable, an exploded belly choked with burning worms. The air was thick with oily smoke that stank like fish that has dropped down into the coals at a cookout. She turned away, her throat closing, and coughed—gagged, really—into her hand.
“Hurry up,” came a sharp voice from behind her.
“Right, Loi.” As Ellen hurried toward the Cobb house, others fanned out through the neighborhood searching for ATVs.
Only when she had reached her destination did Ellen think of something that even Loi had missed. It was stupid and obvious, too. They couldn’t turn on radios and appliances because there was no electricity. They’d been listening to a battery-powered Sony at the Wests’.
There had to be an alternative. What would make noise in a house with no power? Turn on the water? Not in Oscola—each house had its own well, and the pumps were electric.