The larger animals began hurling themselves against the windows. Coyotes leaped against the glass so hard they could see it bend almost imperceptibly against their weight. At the rear right window, in the corner where Lovecraft cowered with his hands over his ears, some small rodent had managed to gnaw through the rubber seal and now tried to claw its way in. When Lovecraft saw it he took the only weapon he had readily at hand-his pencil-and poked at the animal until he felt it stop moving. He drew the pencil stub back in and nearly retched when he saw it dripping red, but then he screwed up his courage and used it to jab again and again until it broke. He fumbled through his satchel, trying to find the stone dagger he knew was in it, but in his haste he resorted next to his pen.
Howard had once been inside a tin shack during a hailstorm, in a rattling, thunderous chaos of echoing collisions; he felt the same way now with the animals hurling themselves at the car. In the hailstorm he had merely waited until the stones had stopped falling and the echoes had quieted in his ears before walking out into the fresh smelling desert. He wondered how long this attack could last. It was a mere annoyance, after all. What could these small desert animals do to them in the safety of the car? Whatever force was causing their strange behavior had also dulled their natural instincts, and they seemed to have lost their animal quickness. In the worst case, Howard expected he would be trapped until the heat of day made the beasts retreat into the shade or back under the rocks from which they had crawled, and then he would have to save the car. “HP,” he said, “don’t use your flashlight unless you really got to. Don’t want to run out of juice. I think we should shut the engine off to save our gas, too.”
Lovecraft shined the beam against the windshield again at the thickening ooze of bat saliva dripping there. The sounds had diminished now, probably because the entire car was covered in animals, which muffled the assault of others. Lovecraft shut the beam off. “What shall we do?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Please,” said Glory, “you can’t shut the headlights off. I’ll go mad in the dark. How will we know if anything gets in?”
“A rat or lizard ain’t gonna kill us,” said Howard. “Just gotta be careful of snakes, though I don’t know how they’d get in.”
Glory closed her eyes and began to pray silently. She tried to control her breath to avoid breathing the rank air in the car. It would only get fouler as the night drew on. “Please,” she said again, “you have to get us out of here.”
“What is it, HP? You think all they want’s the doohickey of yours?”
“Undoubtedly. But even if we surrendered it, they would surely devour us. Cthulhu has no regard for men.”
“That’s what I woulda guessed. Get ready for a long and sweaty night, folks. It’s gonna get mighty hot and sticky in here with all them varmints outside.” He reached past Glory and shut the ignition off, and then the headlights, suddenly leaving them in a thick gloom.
“Oh, God,” Glory said out loud. “I feel like I’m in a cheese box with rats gnawing their way through.”
“Look, Glory, if it gets desperate, I’ll step out and get us out of the hole. It just ain’t a very pleasant thought at the moment.” Howard leaned back against the passenger-side door, unfazed by the vermin pressed against the glass. He could hear the muffled wheezing and rustling sounds, the occasional tap of a claw against glass, the annoying vibration of rodent teeth gnawing at metal.
Lovecraft shivered in revulsion as he occasionally poked his pen at the space in the window, each time meeting fleshy resistance, sometimes hearing a tiny squeal of pain. He did not know if he could last the night without losing his mind.
There was a loud thump on the hood-something so heavy they felt it throughout the car. They heard scrabbling noises, as if the smaller animals were getting out of the way, and then a bloodcurdling scream. The thing that had jumped on the hood was so heavy that it tilted the vehicle back to its horizontal position.
“What was that?” said Glory. Lovecraft was silent.
“I got a bad feelin’ about this one,” Howard mumbled, flicking on his flashlight. He pointed the beam at the windshield, and through the distortion of the bat saliva, he saw an earth-colored feline form. A cougar, he thought. The only desert animal that might have the strength to smash the glass of the car. “I gotta shoot this one,” Howard announced. “I’m openin’ the window here a crack, so you two get ready to block anything that tries to come in. Ready?”
There was another loud shriek, and they saw the cougar batting smaller animals aside as it stalked up to the windshield, attracted by the light. Its eyes flashed like red embers in its skull, and its fangs, even in the dim light, looked like stalactites in its cavernous mouth.
Howard rolled down his right sleeve and buttoned it, then he turned the window down, just far enough to allow for the thickness of his beefy arm, and stuck his .45 outside, his flashlight still pointed at the windshield. Lovecraft shined his own beam at Howard’s arm; he saw shapes moving outside, but nothing seemed intent on entering at the moment.
With the first deafening explosion of the .45, everything went deadly quiet. They could see the giant cat twitch. It stumbled, seeming momentarily confused, and then the pain of its injury enraged it and it let out another bloodcurdling scream and leaped at the windshield, its front paws hitting so hard the glass visibly moved.
“Shit!” said Howard. He quickly adjusted his awkward aim and fired again. In the explosion of light from the muzzle, they saw the cougar lurch again, hit somewhere in the shoulder. This time it growled and swatted with one paw at the window with a loud thump, leaving hairline cracks radiating from the impact. “Well damn you ta Hell!” Howard fired again, with a holler of pain this time, and the bullet caught the giant cat squarely in the head. Blood and brain tissue splashed against the windshield, and the animal fell on its side, its staring eyes still reflecting its evil intent.
Howard quickly jerked his arm back inside and rolled up the window, cursing under his breath. There were tiny tears and one lone rip on his shirtsleeve; he was oozing blood from several scratches, but one particular wound was bleeding freely. “God damn bats!” he said. “Wish I had a damn Gatlin’ gun and I’d show ‘em.” He put his pistol on the seat next to him and examined his wounds.
“Thanks,” said Glory.
“Don’t mention it. You got somethin’ for this, maybe?”
“I have a few items for first aid in my satchel,” Lovecraft offered.
He opened it quickly, and Glory leaned over to tend to the cuts.
Outside, the animals had grown quiet. When Lovecraft shifted his light to investigate, what he saw made his stomach turn. Dozens of small rodents and even a coyote had climbed onto the hood to pick at the carcass of the dead cougar. The coyote had already ripped the cat’s belly open, and hordes of tiny eyes were swarming up to gnaw at the innards. He turned away before he retched.
“Bob,” said Lovecraft.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve noticed that our vehicle is now once again in a horizontal orientation due to the weight of the animals. May I suggest we attempt forward movement?”
“Good idea. But I ain’t drivin’ but a few yards on account of we might have a broken wheel or axle or somethin’.”
“I find that quite suitable.”
With his wounds dressed, Howard awkwardly scooted to the left while Glory raised herself up, arching so that he could slide under her to get to the driver’s side. It was a tricky maneuver in the dark, and Glory couldn’t help sitting on his lap, ever so briefly, as they changed position.
“All right,” said Howard. “HP, you get yourself as far left as you can. Glory, you slide back this way. We gotta get all the weight off the rear right tire.”
They rearranged themselves, and Howard fired up the engine. In a moment he eased out the clutch in first and the car began to move tentatively forward. Howard eased up a little more, simultaneously gunning the engine, and they heard the right rear tire spinning freely,
throwing gouts of sand into the wheel well, but in a second it seemed to catch and they jerked forward. They heard the cougar’s body shift on the hood and the sound of small animals scrabbling to keep their footing. From the roof came scratching noises-the sound of hundreds of rodents’ claws.
Howard cut the engine again and wiped the sweat from under the brim of his hat. “Well,” he said, “we’re free for the moment. But I ain’t riskin nothin’ else till I can have a look. I say we take a breather.”
To save the flashlight, Lovecraft lit his candle stump. He shared the remaining coffee with Glory, though it was hard to drink in the stench that now enveloped the car. Howard leaned back once again to catch a nap. “Don’t worry till another cougar shows up,” he mumbled. “And that ain’t likely in these parts.”
Things were quiet again for a time. Glory and Lovecraft hardly exchanged a word, but Howard could hear their breathing and their sipping at the still-hot coffee. He touched his injured arm, where the bat bite was throbbing with an uncomfortable heat under the improvised dressing Glory had made out of one of her slips. He couldn’t help a smile at the thought of that-just like the Westerns where the kindhearted saloon girl comes to the Marshal’s assistance and rips the hem of her poofy French skirts to stop the blood from his flesh wound. The stories never change, he thought as he nodded off. They just get closer to home.
He was home again when he opened his eyes. The house was lit in a weird blue light, and there was a strange buzzing sensation in the air, as if everything were charged with electricity. He took a tentative step forward from the living room into the hall and was surprised to feel his feet slipping on something. No, not slipping. His feet were gliding just an inch off the floor and he was floating forward, but because he wasn’t used to it, he felt like he was sliding on ice without skates. “Ma?” he called. “Ma? Are you home?” He continued to move forward like that, sliding one foot after the other, though somewhere in the back of his mind he was certain he could just fly to his mother’s room. “Poppa?” he called, and this time there was a muted answer. “Bobby,” came his father’s voice. “Bobby, what the Dickens are you doin’ here? Get the hell outta this place at once!” Howard kept moving, past the framed pictures of his grandparents and his parents in their younger, happier days in Dark Valley, past the odd, hanging souvenirs, until he stood at the door to his mother’s bedroom. The light in there was different warm and reddish. It clashed with the blue light in the hallway so that where the two colors met everything was tinged in a terrible violet aura. Howard slid into the aura and winced in pain-pins and needles seemed to jab at his body, and when he looked down at himself he suddenly realized he was just a little boy. His knees were all scabby and he was wearing those uncomfortable tight boots his father had bought for him. “Poppa,” he said again. “Poppa, how come I can’t see Ma?” He was past the violet fringe now, and he stood just inside the doorway looking at his father’s back. His mother’s bed had been moved, or perhaps the room had taken on some other shape, because he couldn’t see her; she was obstructed by his father’s broad back. “Poppa?” Dr. Howard turned, revealing his face, which was spattered with black fluid. He was moving something up and down with his right arm, as if he were pumping something. “Bobby, I told you to get the hell outta here. Now listen to me, boy!”
“But, Poppa, I wanna see my Ma! I wanna see Ma!”
“You want to see her? You really want to see her?” said Dr. Howard, his eyes widening into frightful circles. “Then look at her, damn you! Look!” He stepped aside, and suddenly Howard saw what he had been obscuring with his body. His mother lay propped up on the bed, all naked, shriveled, and deflated. Protruding from under her right breast was a giant needle attached to a length of black rubber hose, and that led into a large hand pump the size of a bicycle pump. His father slowly pulled the lever, and there was a nauseating sucking sound; his mother’s body deflated a bit more, shriveling more tightly around her bones. Already her cheeks had the sunken look of a mummy; the flesh had pulled back from her eyes until they were no more than glaring white balls that couldn’t close. “No!” Howard shouted. He suddenly leaped at his father with clenched fists, but his father merely swatted him away. When he tried to attack again, Dr. Howard pulled the giant needle out of his wife’s chest and pointed it at his son. Howard drew back, afraid his father would impale him with it, but instead, he pushed on the handle and sprayed him with a fountain of bloody tubercular phlegm, laughing all the while. On the bed, his mother began slowly to collapse in upon herself, the black hole in her chest leaking out her vital fluids. “Ma!” Howard shouted. “Ma!” He reached out for her, but she was behind a barrier of glass. “Ma!” he shouted again, but he was helpless. Her body was slowly dissolving, bubbling, leaving a disgusting skeleton covered in clots of foul meat and pus-laced blood. He pounded and pounded against the glass, but it only thudded hollowly under his helpless fists.
“Ma!” Howard screamed. “Ma!” There was a thud against the inside of the windshield.
Lovecraft and Glory bolted upright, spilling what was left of the coffee. Lovecraft switched the light on, revealing Howard slamming his injured hand against the glass. Just beyond that were the remains of the dead cougar, barely visible behind the dried blood and saliva that caked the windshield.
Howard pounded the glass again, just in front of the cougar’s skull, a discolored white mass with black eye sockets. “Ma!” he called again, then, “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!” He reached for the window.
“Stop him!” cried Lovecraft.
Glory leaned forward and tried to restrain Howard, but he was too strong for her. He grabbed his pistol in his left hand and started to roll the window down with his right.
“He’s having a nightmare! Wake him up!”
Glory pulled at Howard. “Bob! Wake up! Wake up! You’re okay!”
Howard merely swatted her away, stuck the pistol out of the window, and pulled the trigger. Light and sound exploded just outside the window, and the recoil, in his loose grasp, snapped the metal barrel against the window, leaving a long crack in it. Howard suddenly froze. He looked around him, quickly, then drew the gun inside and rolled; the damaged window back up before anything could get inside. “I’ll be God damned,” he whispered.
“Bob, are you lucid again?”
“Where the hell are we?” Howard asked.
“We’re in New Mexico. You were having a nightmare,” said Glory.
She reached over to feel his forehead. “You’re feverish, Take your hat off.”
Howard brushed her hand away. “He killed Ma,” he said. “Who?”
“That bastard killed her.”
“It was a nightmare, Bob. It is the doing of Cthulhu. Wake up.” Howard blinked at the flashlight beam in his face. He frowned. ‘
Then his face relaxed, and he appeared wide-awake. He looked at’ Glory, then at Lovecraft, in the dim light, reflecting from the inside of the Windows. “I ain’t lettin’ no WIld animals kill me,” he said very soberly. “They can eat my dead carcass for all I care, but they ain’t killin’ me. No, sir.” He lifted his pistol again, this time pointed at his head. ,
“Put it down” said Lovecraft. “Put the gun down, damn it!”
“Look,” Howard replied with a deadly calm, “I saved three bullets. One for each of us. I say we use ‘em while we can. I’ll be glad to do the honors before I shoot myself. Glory?”
“You’re a raving maniac!” said Glory. “Shoot the damned animals, not us!”
“You’re sure?”
“You’re out of your mind!”
Howard rolled the window down again, this time just a crack, and fired; a coyote fell dead, punctured through the eye.
“HP?”
Lovecraft wasn’t as quick to reply. He could see the cold logic of it. Indeed, it was heroic logic, to be sure, and he wished he could participate in it like a man, but some primal instinct for self-preservation, even with the knowledge of imminent d
oom, prevented him. “No, Bob.”
Howard fired again, and something screeched in the near distance. He rolled the window back up, and when Glory reached for the gun, he slapped her away with the side of the barrel. “Keep on your side,” he warned, pointing it at her. Glory scooted back to the passenger’s side and waited. Howard put the pistol barrel just above his right ear and, without a moment of hesitation, he squeezed the trigger. Glory closed her eyes involuntarily at the explosion, the flash, the sharp smell of cordite. When she opened her eyes again she saw Howard and Lovecraft looking at each other over the seat back in a stunned silence. There was a thud on the roof, and blood began to ooze down through the bullet hole-animal blood.
“You stupid son of a bitch, look what you done!” Howard shouted.
“That was my last bullet!”.
“You’re a coward!” Lovecraft shouted back hysterically. “You’re just a big coward! I’m not letting you kill yourself!”
“Now how am I gonna—” Howard stopped abruptly and seemed to get his bearings once again. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he whispered.
Glory looked at the expression on his face. “Bob?” she said. “Are you awake?”
“I’ll be God damned,” said Howard. “Did I just do what I think I did, or was I just sleepwalkin’?”
“You weren’t exactly walking,” Lovecraft replied, unable to stop a smile at seeing his old friend back to himself.
As Howard loudly berated Lovecraft for causing the hole in the roof of his car, the tearful Glory closed her eyes and prayed for God’s help. In all the excitement inside the car, they had forgotten to pay attention to the animals outside, and when Glory opened her eyes again, she noticed she could see outside without the help of a flashlight. At first she thought the sun had risen, but the light was the cold light of the moon. “Look,” she said.
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