Escaping Midnight (What Goes On in the Walls at Night Book 3)

by Andrew Schrader

  Two, one . . .

  Wallace broke into a sprint, toward the shrubs, the bushes, whatever could hide him. His phone rang. He didn’t look at it, just pitched it at the garbage can and heard it bang off the sides as it clanked to the bottom.

  Where he was running, he had no clue. Why he was running, he had a better idea.

  But he was too afraid, much too afraid, to turn and see for himself, for the footsteps he heard pounding the pavement behind him, and the angry screaming that prickled his spine, were enough to convince him he didn’t need to look, didn’t need to think; he only needed to run.

  On Windy Days, I Wonder

  You can’t outrun the wind. That much I know. I see them try—the truckers, the families who never once stopped in my dusty town before all this, who spew billowing trails of exhaust in worried haste now that the main highway is closed for good.

  They seek escape. I hope they make it. But I know they won’t.

  Most don safety masks, like the ones painters wear. Others sport heavy-duty plastic ones, looking like army soldiers in a post-apocalyptic horror film.

  I don’t wear a mask. I know the truth:

  Those who fight the wind either go crazy or die.

  Take Stephen Baxter. He was seventeen, like me. Cute, too, maybe the cutest boy in all of Santa Paula. Thought he could protect himself by hiding in the cave just west of the freeway, on the other side of the train tracks where no one goes anymore. He fashioned himself a kind of bunker in there. A few others joined him.

  For a while, anyway. Lisa Cooper ditched out because her family was evacuating, heading to Santa Barbara to pick up their grandparents before driving northeast. They figured they could hide from the wind by avoiding the jet stream. She asked her parents to take me with them, but they said no. I wouldn’t have gone anyway.

  Andre followed Stephen to the cave too. He was a rebel. We all crushed on him. When he got there he just sat in the corner and smoked cigarettes. “They’re exaggerating this whole thing,” he said. “The world is a big place. We’re all the way down here. It’s just the wind.”

  But even he left for good, and soon it was only Stephen, all-American basketball player, once destined for the top schools—now rock-bound.

  The howling did him in. That cave provides some shelter, but if you stay in there long enough, you’d swear the wind was talking to you. What it said to him will have to die with him. I know only a little. Annalisa—his ex, a cheerleader, of course—told me what happened.

  Stephen’s family, in crisis themselves, had let him deal with the news in his own way. They thought he’d come out soon. Besides, Annalisa was going to check on him.

  When she caught up with him, he’d been in there three days already. Had almost sealed the entrance completely shut. Leaving himself just a small, foot-long gap between the rocks at the mouth of the cave, he’d barricaded himself inside.

  He was crawling around on all fours, she told us, sobbing, searching for cracks in the cave walls that might be permitting the wind. It was talking to him, and he didn’t like it.

  In terror, she watched him fit the last rock into place, his shadowy face slip-sliding from view.

  The rescuers surmised that he’d exhausted himself carrying the fifty or so rocks that weighed twenty-five pounds each from the back of the cave to the front. I wonder if he changed his mind after sealing himself in like that. Maybe he tried to carry them back.

  Then again, maybe not. Because when the crew blasted the entrance open, they discovered that he’d mixed his last drops of water with dirt to create mud seals between the rocks. Both his hands, now more like gnarled claws, were clasped over his ears. He went screaming, his mouth looking like a dog’s bottom. The autopsy report said he died of dehydration.

  But it was the wind, you see.

  The traffic is heavy today. People continue fleeing the cities. Why do they head north? Don’t they know they’re driving straight into the jet stream?

  I pump gas for the ones who are too afraid to get out and do it themselves. I make good money. I consider asking them for a ride, but I doubt it will be better anywhere else.

  Mom and Dad refuse to leave. They grew up here. It took them thirty years to pay off their house. It’s important to stick to your roots, they say. There’s something beautiful about that, but I don’t know what. I’m young, and I know there are things I don’t know and can’t touch. Maybe when I’m older. . . .

  I finish filling up an SUV. Three small children sit in the back. They have big eyes. Someone’s sealed the windows with duct-tape. It’s futile, I want to tell them. But I don’t.

  I pump another tank, then another. The people need gas, and this is the only working station within fifty miles. The passengers stare at me like I’m a freak, a mutant, because I refuse to wear a mask. The drivers roll down their windows just enough to pay me. They never speak to me. I don’t take it personally.

  The air is calm today. That’s rare.

  Because for six months now, since the nukes destroyed most of the California coast, the wind has been our master, striking us like a whip, carrying invisible particles here, there, everywhere, all according to its whim. We are its slaves. Perhaps the gods are angry.

  They say cancer is inevitable. It may take some time to form, but I’m definitely exposed. We all are, even the ones who run.

  I won’t run. And I won’t wear the mask. I know they don’t work.

  Instead, I smile at the sun. I don’t want to think about all that today.

  I don’t want to wonder about my father’s cough. My mother’s sigh. How much time we have left.

  I save that for windy days.

  Sheckley’s Asylum

  “Alright then, bring in the wackos,” Sheckley said.

  Iris, the co-pilot, sighed. “Let’s see who we got. Sector Seven’s a strategic point, looks a little lax. We could add one more serial killer to the mix for every hundred thousand subjects. Should be enough to make the local news, maybe spike their adrenaline for a while.”

  Sheckley turned to the screen that was illuminated with flashing sector lights. Above the screen, through the cockpit window, revolved the blue planet. “One in a hundred thousand? Seems light. Not sure that’s going to be enough. The parasites are getting stronger, and we have orders.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she snapped.

  “Add a mass murderer, too,” Sheckley said. “Better yet, two for the next three generations in Sector Seven. Start an urban legend, turn neighbors off from one another.” He paused. “Let’s make it one in fifty thousand. Something tells me we’re going to need it.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.” Iris punched a few more buttons, set the coordinates for the DNA module, and continued scanning Sectors 1 through 797, looking for weak points where the parasites might get in.

  Sheckley yawned and helped himself to another cup of coffee. These four o’clock slumps were always the hardest, even after thirteen years as a company man. He knew Iris felt them, too, after only five days on the job. He brought her her own cup without being asked, and set his creaking joints in the captain’s chair.

  “How’d that take?” he asked.

  “Four generations in and looking strong. The parasites are staying far away from Sector 7.”

  “Good.” He instinctively checked his watch again. “Thank God we’re almost done. I’m getting hungry and—”

  Beep. Beep.

  Their eyes went to the white phone that was hanging up on the left side of the cockpit. And the little yellow button beneath it that blinked in time with the horrible noise. It could only mean one thing.

  Iris groaned.

  Sheckley shared the sentiment but said nothing. He thought of his wife, and how she was going to kill him if he was late again. He picked up the call and began speaking to their superior.

  Iris watched blankly, expecting nothing good.

  “I understand,” Sheckley said. “Thank you.” He hung up and faced Iris. “The parasites have found a way in
.”

  “But that’s impossible! I’ve searched every sector. All our analyses—”

  “The poles, Iris.”

  “The what?” Her face dropped. “But they’re guarded by miles of ice.” She punched into Sector 49, the Antarctic region. “Oh.”

  Sheckley leaned in and pointed at the screen. “See? The humans heated things up too much, too fast. That’s why we missed it.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Boss says for us to come in and debrief at the office. Another long night ahead of us. Damage control. Melissa’s gonna be pissed.” He popped a pain reliever.

  Iris stewed. “Stupid humans.”

  “Crazy experiment, if you ask me. Gather every nut job in the galaxy and set them in Earth bodies; things are bound to get a little out of hand. Whoever thought using humans as intergalactic scarecrows was a good idea?”

  Iris grinned. “I think you did.”

  “Hmm, that’s right. Oh, well.”

  “Think we’ll get fired for this?”

  “Nah. It happens. Besides, it only took one work day to figure out humans don’t ward off the parasites.”

  “Where do you think we’ll go tomorrow?”

  “Not sure.” Sheckley buckled himself in, pulled the lever with his tentacle, and set their ship loose from Earth’s moon. By the time he blinked his four eyes, the blue planet was a distant dot in their rearview mirror.

  “Too bad when you think about it,” he continued. “Man seemed perfect. They’re easy to control, and implanting their DNA is simple stuff. Plus, they procreate quickly—7,500 generations in one work day.”

  Iris nodded and tried to relax, her fourteen barbed suckers stretching along the cockpit floor. “Yeah, what can you do, I guess.”

  “Let’s stop in at Pluto. I got a hankering for an orc burger. My treat.”

  Iris brightened. Maybe this job had its perks after all.

  Croakman

  The past is like a fossil that shouldn’t be dug up. Sometimes there are consequences. You really should let it be. Bones like to lie silently, you know?

  Croakman? Why do you want to hear about him? Yeah, he lived up on Dinosaur Hill, in the one-story brick place with the oak tree and swing.

  You’ll have to speak up a little, I’m hard of hearing these days . . . Yes, you heard right. Many went crazy afterward. Most did.

  What did they do wrong? Why did they go crazy?

  No harm in telling you. I’m eighty-four now, and no one’s gonna prosecute us. Hell, we’re still considered heroes in most circles.

  What are you so scared for? I’m just leaning in to readjust myself. If you’re gonna film this and we’re gonna talk, I need to be comfortable. You don’t trust me, you can take my bowie knife . . . There you go. Feels good in your hand, right?

  Okay, then, “the practice.” We heard about it from Solomon, a buddy of mine who grew up on Sycamore Valley Road, back when it was farmland. He’d heard about it from someone else, and I think it went all the way back to some foreign country long ago, who probably heard about it from someone else, and so on, and so on.

  But we’ll get to that. We’ll get to the blood later.

  Croakman, he lived up on the hill when the war broke out. He’d been one of the good ones, never going out of his way to hurt no one. He just minded his own business, wasn’t involved in the revolution, or so we thought at the time.

  Folks thought he was a little weird on account of his hunchback. You ever seen somebody with a real hunchback? I don’t know if it’s just a deformed spine that causes it, but it’s like a camel’s hump.

  We’d gone up there that night to see about using his hill as a lookout point, set some folks up with binoculars who could see down into the valley. You got a 360-view of the town, and also of old Beckman Road, so it was easy to spy an ambush coming from the forest.

  There were three of us that night: me, Joseph, and Red. We brought our guns, of course. You had to, back then.

  The porch light came on. The door opened. There was Croakman.

  His eyes, that was the other thing—those massive eyes that seemed to leap out at you from all directions. They protruded from his eye sockets. I could see the back halves of his eyeballs when he did that, and they were all yellow.

  It was the damndest thing.

  “Mr. Croakman,” I said. “Us boys from the 43rd Regiment were wondering if you wouldn’t mind us using your hilltop for a lookout, which would help us against the damn Martians.”

  His eyes bugged out again. Looked like he was thinking about something awful. Put the fear of God in me. But we had orders, and we needed that perch.

  “I don’t like to get involved, son.” He had a heavy smoker’s voice. Deep and scratchy and wheezy, but more exaggerated, like someone had run sandpaper down his throat.

  Red stepped up behind me. He was the runt of us three, but only in height. “This is enemy-hiding territory, and the country sure as shit is taking sides. Choose wisely, old man.” He spat on the porch. “Your country needs you.”

  Croakman stared at us. I could hear him wheezing.

  I turned and looked over my shoulder. Joseph had stepped back; uneasy, I think. We all were, except for Red; he was a fighter. A bully. If he got scared of someone he would just get bigger and meaner. Soldiers—real ones—are like that.

  “You with the Martians,” Red asked, stepping up to Croakman, “or with us?” He peered into the house. He saw Croakman’s daughter, Priscilla, back in the living room, and flicked his head at her. “What about you?”

  Croakman stepped in front of him. “The Martians haven’t hurt anyone.”

  “That a fact, old man? What about the young boys who got run over by them last month? Was in the news. In Arizona, yeah?”

  “That’s One-State propaganda, son.”

  Red turned to us, grinned. “He’s with them. Selling out his own race.” Then he whipped around and fake-lunged at Croakman. Trying to scare him. You know, kid stuff.

  Croakman didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.

  “How do we know you ain’t hiding any of ’em in here now, huh?”

  “I’m not.”

  Red held up the One-State declaration. “This says we’re justified in entering the homes of any ‘suspected sympathizers’.”

  “You can’t come in.”

  “The government says I can, old man.”

  His daughter must have been getting nervous, because she backed up and bumped into the end table by the couch, the one that had the lamp on it. It fell on the floor. She yelped in surprise.

  Red’s hand instinctively pulled out the gun in his waistband. “Don’t move, Priscilla.”

  Everything happened slowly—

  Priscilla edging backwards.

  Red hollering at her.

  Another step back.

  Croakman’s eyes getting bigger.

  One last warning from Red.

  —and then all at once.

  Croakman tried to slam the door, but Red barreled in anyway and knocked him down. The back of Croakman’s head slammed on the hardwood with a heavy thud.

  The girl froze. She wanted to run but didn’t want to leave her father. Red made her decision easier. He caught her around the waist and tackled her to the floor.

  I was the last one inside. Joseph had rushed to the old man and was kicking him in the gut with his steel-toed boots. Croakman’s eyes bugged in and out of his sockets. Each kick seemed to push them out farther. Looked like he was in a kids’ cartoon.

  “Check the house!” Red yelled at me. He was busy tying up the girl.

  I ran down the hall. It was lined with pictures of Croakman and his wife and daughter. Looked in the bedrooms, behind the beds, the closets. No Martians hiding there.

  Then, on the bookshelf, something caught my eye. The collected writings of Orenshenko, one of the unofficial leaders of the Martian resistance.

  Now, it wasn’t illegal, strictly speaking, to have that particular book, but it wa
s commonly known that reading their literature could turn normal-thinking Americans into Martian sympathizers. It’d been documented many times. It was one of the ways our soldiers would go turncoat on us.

  I paused. I had to decide whether I would show the others. If I did, it would for sure mean death for Croakman and the girl. But if I didn’t, I’d be, how you say, endorsing their behavior. That book might help someone sow discord in the future.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Red and Joseph had already finished tying them up and were making the final preparations. When I showed them the book, their suspicions were confirmed.

  I gathered the pictures on the walls and threw them in the hall closet. They shouldn’t have to see the things we do.

  I won’t describe what Red did to the girl. Men do things in war.

  Don’t look at me like that. You weren’t around then. You don’t know what it was like.

  What did you say? Do I regret it?

  I don’t like the question. You gotta understand, this thing is like inputs and outputs. Nothing more. That’s all that governs human behavior. You with your college degrees or whatever else you got that makes you think you know something about people—you don’t know shit. It’s all theory with you.

  We think in boxes. Say you’re a fisherman, and you get paid for all the fish you bring in. The fish aren’t fish no more. You look at them like they’re money because catching them means you can buy food and keep a home and send your kids to college to read all those funny books about “people.” And if the ocean’s runnin’ out of fish, you don’t really care because you need them to make money for your family. You’ll fish ‘em right out of existence.

  Or, say that the North American government declares war on the Martians. Say that it’s our duty to root them out, and whatever happens don’t count as crimes. They’re justified because it’s war, and all’s fair in it. When you see a Martian, you don’t see a Martian. You see a parasite, something that’s gonna leech off you and your family. And the power of the state is behind you, telling you what the Martians are, and the state takes all the responsibility. No, actually, it’s on the Martians themselves, for being Martians in the first place.