by Ike Hamill
Nobody knew that Lily’s father had put up most of the money to save the Old South Church. They didn’t even attend that church—her father just liked the look of the bell tower. Not many people knew that Wendy’s money had purchased most of the western shorefront of the stream. If not for her purchase, someone would have cleared all that land and put up giant, obscene houses on the hillside, turning the natural setting into something like a big, watery driveway.
Lily wished that her parents were more vocal about the good things they did for the town. Her parents disagreed. They would say, “People won’t react well to money spent, even if it’s to their benefit. We’re practically From Away.”
“The Prescotts do it all the time,” Lily would say.
“The Prescotts made their money from local trees,” her mother would counter. “And they’ve been here for generations.”
Lily wondered where her family belonged, if not here in Kingston Lakes. It was the only place she had ever known as a home.
At the corner of the park, her father continued over the lawn of the Douglas’s camp. They had a tiny, one-season camp that they barely used. Still, people generally respected the lawns of their neighbors. It wasn’t usual to cut across. Lily was glad they did. Something seemed sinister about the woods when they had run through earlier.
Her father stopped when they got to the edge of their property. He looked towards their house.
“What is it?” Wendy asked.
He shook his head. The house stood at the other side of their long lawn. Lily studied the house as they followed the shore up to their dock. There was something wrong with her eyes. The edges of the house seemed blurry somehow. She figured that it must be a trick of the light. All at once, she remembered what Mr. Endicott had said about his own house.
“It was like I was looking at my house through rippling water,” Mr. Endicott had said. Lily thought that she might be getting an idea what he was talking about.
“I suppose we could take the sailboat since it’s just us,” her mother said.
“There’s not a breath of air,” her dad argued.
“Oh. Still, we could paddle.”
Lily interjected, “The dinghy has oarlocks.” She and her sister had rowed it around the lake many times before they were old enough to take out the sailboat. They still weren’t old enough to take out the inboard. Actually, Elizabeth was probably old enough, but she didn’t care about boats anymore.
“We should try the Bonnie Girl, shouldn’t we?” her mom asked.
Her father nodded. “Life jacket,” he said, pointing to Lily.
“Dad,” she said. She hadn’t worn a life jacket in years.
He pointed again while he unsnapped the cover on the inboard. Lily sighed and stepped into the dinghy. She reached under the bow of the boat, into the place where roughly a million spiders lived, and pulled out an orange life jacket. Her parents never wore them. The seat cushions would be their floatation devices if they ever capsized. So far as Lily knew, they had never been used.
She was snapping the buckles on the life jacket when her father turned the key of the inboard. An alarm came on to tell them that the oil pressure wasn’t up yet. When the tone silenced itself a couple of seconds later, her father turned the key.
The starter ground, but the engine didn’t catch.
“Is the gas good?” her mother asked.
“This is the same thing the cars were doing,” he said. He paused for a second and then tried again.
Lily reached down to fish the oars from under the seat of the dinghy. It took a few more tries before her father gave up on the inboard. By that time, Lily had the dinghy ready and the ropes untied. Her mother stepped down and took one of the front seats. Her father stepped into the rear.
Lily took the middle seat—the rower’s seat—without being asked.
“I don’t understand how engines would selectively not start,” her mother said. “Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with the power. The starter turns fine, right?”
“Yes,” her father said.
Lily admired her dad in a lot of areas, but not when it came to things like engines. He had no clue. As far as she knew, he had never even put gas in their tractor. He used it sometimes—when they wanted to till the garden, or tug on a small stump. After the rock incident, he wasn’t allowed to mow. The lawn guy was the one who changed the oil and put gas in it.
“Could you sit down?” Lily asked her father.
“Oh,” he said. He sat.
Lily pulled on the oars. The motion came back to her naturally. She and her sister had spent hours and hours rowing up and down the lake when they were kids. Their parents had forbidden them to walk down the road into town. One year a local boy had been hit by a Summer Person as he tried to dodge across the road. After that, Lily and Elizabeth were not allowed to commute on foot. The boat was fine though, as long as they wore their life jackets. Of course they shed the orange jackets as soon as they were out of sight of the dock.
Lily had been as far as the Rock Graveyard, and had suffered the blisters to prove it. But it had been a couple of years since she had seriously rowed. Her parents had eventually relaxed the rules about walking on the road, and eventually Lily started riding her bike everywhere. With the oars in her hands again, the memories flooded back. She and her sister would row for hours, beaching the boat on undeveloped shores and picking blueberries from the water’s edge.
“Where are we going?” her mother asked.
Lily looked around. She had unconsciously steered north, towards town. It’s where she and Elizabeth had gone most often. She gave a strong pull on the left oar and turned the boat towards the center of the lake.
The water lapped at the bow as they headed into what little wind there was. The lake was unusually still for a summer day. As they pulled away from the shore, Lily looked around and saw that they were the only people out on the lake. Fisherman and families typically floated out there, jetting from one corner to the other and then sitting in one spot for as long as they could stand it. The summer waters were always full of people in the pursuit of happiness—never actually happy, always in pursuit.
“Do you want me to take over?” her father asked.
Lily faced the rear as she rowed, of course, so he had been looking at her pained expression as she glanced around.
“No, Dad, I’m fine,” she said.
“We’re not being reactionary, are we?” her mother asked. “Is it silly for us to flee? There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly dangerous happening.”
“That’s how people get in trouble,” her father said. “They fail to recognize a crisis until it’s too late to do anything about it. Better safe than sorry.”
“I suppose,” her mother said.
Lily sighed with relief. For a second, she had worried that her mom would make her turn the boat around. Her mom was a champion second-guesser. At the last moment of any decision, she was apt to make her husband reevaluate everything and she often vetoed the final judgement. In this case, a veto could be disastrous. Lily had seen those three yellow eyes before. They spelled trouble.
“What was wrong with the house?” her mother asked. “Why can’t we just wait there?”
“I suppose once we got inside it might be okay,” her father said.
“No,” Lily said. “Didn’t you see it, Mom? The place looked like a mirage. It was practically shimmering.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” her mother said.
“Trust me,” Lily said.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” her mother said. “But what are we going to do when we do get to the other side of the lake. We have no car, no phone, and just the cash in our pockets.”
“I don’t have my wallet,” her father said.
“Bruce! Where’s your wallet?” her mother asked.
“It’s on the counter. I didn’t think I would need it, I suppose.”
“Stop!” Lily said. “We’re not going back. We�
��re not going back for the wallet, and we’re not going back because you think it might be safe to hide out in the house. It’s not safe there. There are things around, and they’re making everyone strange. It’s not safe.”
“That sounds like mostly conjecture,” her mother said. “What have we really witnessed that was dangerous?”
“I’m not turning around,” Lily said. She rowed even faster, hoping that her mother’s objections would diminish with the proximity of the house.
“Let’s just consider this logically,” her mother said.
Lily expected an argument to ensue. Her mother was really good at arguing. If she couldn’t find logic to fit her position, she would use pure tenacity to win. She didn’t get to hear her mother’s logic. They were all interrupted by a quiet movement of air.
Lily looked up and nearly dropped the oars. Five black shapes had appeared in the sky. They were the video drones, like the one that George had thrown rocks at. She hadn’t seen them approach. They just appeared.
“Who do you suppose they belong to?” her father asked.
The lowest one dropped even more. If she waved an oar overhead, Lily supposed she might be able to hit it. When it was close enough, she saw the same configuration of three yellow eyes on the underside. Lily dug the oars into the water and rowed faster.
Chapter 33 : Dunn
[ Awake ]
VERNON WOKE UP AND registered a few facts the instant his eyes opened—he was on the floor of his bedroom, there was something on his chest, and it was stabbing into his skin. He batted at the metal object on his chest. It lifted, but didn’t fly. The thing had a dozen little legs and each one was grabbing his shirt or his skin. In addition, he saw flexible tubes coming out of the metal bug. Most of the tubes waved around, like seaweed caught in a current. One of the tubes was the thing stabbing into his chest, just below his nipple.
Vernon didn’t hit it again, he grabbed it. He pushed with all his power. The legs began to let go, one by one. The claws attached to his skin were the last to release, and the pain intensified as he tore the metal bug away from himself.
Finally, the last claw popped free. Only the flexible tube remained. It looked like an umbilical cord, connecting the metal bug to his skin. Vernon felt the end worming down into his muscle. It was excruciating. Meanwhile, the bug’s legs waved frantically, looking for something to grab onto.
Vernon screamed as he pushed. The tube stretched, but wouldn’t give way. His skin tented as the thing held fast to his flesh. Over near his bureau, the metal cylinder was visible. Maybe it had no reason to hide now that Vernon was preoccupied. Vernon rolled to his knees and shuffled towards the cylinder, holding the metal bug out in front of himself. He lurched towards it, pressing metal to metal and hoping that the…
The thought left his head as he was shocked again. This time, the electricity had to travel through the metal bug before zapping through his arms. The effect must have been muted by the resistance of the bug because it didn’t knock Vernon out.
The metal bug’s legs went stiff. Only the umbilical tube seemed to remember its mission. It was still trying to burrow deeper into Vernon’s chest, and was held back only by its connection to the bug.
Maybe the umbilical read Vernon’s thoughts, or maybe it simply came to the same conclusion coincidentally. He watched as the metal tube detached from the bug. Vernon’s arms straightened instantly—there was nothing holding back the bug now. He threw it at the wall and used both hands to catch the tube before it could disappear into his chest.
He kept constant pressure pulling on the tube, like he was trying to extract a tick. It hurt too much to tear out, but he refused to let it burrow any deeper. Slowly, he made progress and saw the tube coming out of his chest. It was smeared with his blood. Vernon stood and moved to the bathroom. When the tube popped free, he hurled it into the open toilet and shut the lid. Before it could find its way out, Vernon ran for the door, slamming it behind himself. Vernon bolted down the stairs, hitting every third tread in his haste.
He had forgotten about the cylinder in the yard.
Vernon jumped down the porch steps and saw the uneven outline of the cylinder against the grass in his peripheral vision. When his eyes snapped to the thing, it wasn’t there. The illusion worked best when he looked right at it. Vernon didn’t have time to puzzle out the ramifications. He sprinted around it and ran for the woods.
Just before he reached the cover of the low maple branches, Vernon thought he heard something whir by, just behind him. He didn’t stop to find out what it was—he ran.
Vernon burst out onto the road and settled into a fast jog.
[ Return ]
He pushed through the door to the Village Peddler. His eyes swept over the surprised people in the shop. Louise was behind her counter, carefully keeping it between herself and the entire world. John Endicott looked weary in a chair next to Ricky. George was sitting on the floor next to his brother.
Mary was mid-stride—she had probably been pacing—when he interrupted. She limped to him quickly as he saw the new inhabitant of the shop. It was Peg Polhemus. The last time he’d seen her, she had jumped from his truck and run off at an inhuman pace.
“What’s she doing here?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
Mary glanced at the woman, who was staring off at nothing.
“She wandered in. She has barely said two sentences since.” Mary leaned even closer to her husband. “And she has these strange dots.” Mary gestured at her own chest to illustrate. “They scared the bejesus out of the Hazards.”
Vernon looked over Mary’s shoulder and stared at Peg until he understood what Mary was talking about. The lights were hard to see from his angle, but he saw them.
“We can’t go home, and I don’t want to be near that woman if we can help it,” Vernon said.
“Why can’t we go home?” Mary asked. She grabbed his shirt and noticed the blood there. “What happened?”
“Bad robots,” he said.
Mary looked away with a concerned brow.
“Is there somewhere safe in this building? A storeroom or a cellar?” Vernon asked.
Mary glanced at Louise. “Safe from what?”
“Good question,” Vernon said. “Boys!” he called. George popped up from the floor. Ricky looked in their direction. Ricky got up when George pulled at his hand. The four of them collected over near the door.
“We’re going to hoof it out of town,” Vernon said.
George looked up at him with wide eyes. Mary nodded.
“We’ll go south on 270 until we get to Christy’s, and then we’ll cut through the cemetery and take the back way down to the train tracks. From there, we’ll go to Prescott’s and then straight out.”
“Why not stay on 270?” Mary asked.
“It’s not as straight a shot,” Vernon said. “We’re going to move as fast as we can, but in case we have to break up into groups, that’s the route. Mary, stay with George no matter what and go as fast as you can on that ankle. Ricky and I will try to keep up.”
“Dad?” Ricky asked.
“You’re with me,” Vernon said.
“There’s something I have to show you,” he said.
“Can it wait?” Vernon said.
Ricky shook his head slowly. He looked like he was about to cry.
“Mom,” he said, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I told you they were inside me.” His borrowed shorts were loose on his skinny frame. Ricky pulled them down enough to expose the top of his right thigh. Mary took in a sharp breath when she saw. At the top of Ricky’s right thigh, he had a triangle of little yellow lights.
Vernon looked over at Peg. She was smiling in their direction.
“We’ll deal with that when we get out of town, Ricky,” Vernon said. “Nothing we can do about it now.”
“They’ve been helping me,” Ricky said. “At least I thought they were helping me. Actually, I thought it was all just me. I guess I was fooling myself.
”
“Ricky, mind your father. We’re going to get out of here and then we’ll think of what to do about your leg,” Mary said.
“No, Mom,” Ricky said. “They’re not going to let us leave. They need us here. We have to help them set everything up—that’s why they haven’t…”
“Stop,” Mary said. “Mind your father. We’ll get out of here and then we’ll figure it out.”
Vernon studied his oldest son and then looked back to his wife. “You’re right, Mary. We’ve got our plan.”
He looked at Louise, John, and Peg. John might be useful, but he looked pretty shaken. Louise was well beyond her prime. Vernon doubted that she could make it beyond the edge of her own lawn at anything more than a fast walk. He would deal with Peg if he had to, but his plan was to ignore her.
Vernon didn’t dismiss what his son was saying, but it didn’t affect his plan. Regardless, he needed Mary to maintain her confidence that everything would be okay. That would lead to the best odds for her and George. Vernon would deal with Ricky’s problem only if he had to.
“I’ve got to swing by the truck on the way out. Mary—you and George go. Don’t slow down until you get to Prescott’s. We’ll catch up when we can.”
She nodded.
“Louise,” Vernon called, “I suggest that you and John hole up in your office. Lock the door and don’t come out until the police call you out.”
Behind her counter, Louise seemed to shrink back. Peg was still smiling in Ricky’s direction. Vernon wanted to put a stop to her smiling, but settled for ushering his family through the door.
“Go, Mary,” he said. His wife took their son’s hand and the two of them moved fast for the road. She was doing admirably well, despite her limp. They wouldn’t last long at that pace, but at least they might get out of sight quickly.
“Come on, Ricky,” Vernon said. “Head for the truck.”
His oldest son looked weak, but he managed to keep up with Vernon as they ran across the lawn. The truck was over near the park, where it had rolled into a tree. Vernon had his big hunting knife under the seat. He thought he might need it before his trip was through. His own chest hurt when he thought about those yellow lights under Ricky’s skin. He wondered if the boy remembered getting them. He wondered if the process had been the same. There was no time to ask now. They both needed to focus their breathing on supplying oxygen to their legs, not to conversation.