Crawlers

by John Shirley

  A white-haired lady in a flowery, white-collared dress was on the other side of the counter’s check-in window. She glanced up when he came in, looked curiously at his uniform. She wanted to ask . . .

  But instead she called the duty commander for him: a small Filipino guy, crisply uniformed, with brisk movements and bright black eyes; QPD COMMANDER K. CRUZON on the little plastic name tag under his badge.

  “Yes, Major, can I help you?” Second generation, no accent.

  They shook hands. “You’re the first guy got my rank right this week.”

  “I was Air Force for ten years. An MP.”

  “You’re doing all right here. Say—” Stanner flashed his NSA liaison ID below the level of the counter so that Cruzon could see it but the secretary couldn’t. “—could we talk in private?”

  Cruzon frowned at the ID in its little case. Stanner could tell he was reading the whole title to himself: National Security Agency: Department of Defense Special Intelligence Liaison. His eyebrows went up, and he nodded.

  “We could talk,” Cruzon said, “but that ID doesn’t get you any special privileges around here.”

  “Talk’s all I’m after.”

  “Then right through here, Major Stanner. We’ll go to the conference room. Bettina? Buzz us through, please.”

  On the way to the conference room they ran into Leonard Sprague, the deputy from the crash site. “What’s this?” Stanner said. “The sheriff ’s department crammed in here with the municipal cops, too?”

  “We were just tradin’ some notes on narcotics,” Sprague said, shaking Stanner’s hand. The black deputy towered over Commander Cruzon. “You here about the crash still? I thought you guys were outta here and gone.”

  “Could we go into the conference room? It’d be good if you could come along, too.”

  “Sure, I’ve got a few minutes, Major. I’ve been wondering about some things myself.”

  They sat around a rickety metal and plastic table, drinking even worse coffee than he’d gotten at the Cruller. The walls were painted concrete; there were some high windows, and an urban planning chart on a wooden tripod.

  “You haven’t asked why I wanted to speak to you, Commander.”

  “Call me Ken. I figured what it was about. It’s not every day we have a satellite crash around here. We were expecting a lot of press. I was surprised there wasn’t anything on the TV news.” He looked at Stanner with a combination of amusement and a kind of sharp attentiveness.

  Something’s worrying him, Stanner thought.

  “Yeah, well,” Stanner said, as if it weren’t a big deal, “we were caught off guard. We didn’t know the thing was coming down till it was already on its way. I just happened to be in the area, so I was dispatched over here. It’s a project that I did have some—”

  Shut up, he told himself angrily.

  “—some experience with. Anyway, there just wasn’t any time to warn people. There were some people at NASA who were a little embarrassed, so they didn’t want any publicity, either.”

  Cruzon nodded but didn’t seem convinced by the explanation. He kept his eyes on Stanner’s face.

  The little guy’s a human polygraph, Stanner thought. He knows I’m lying. Good for him. But he won’t call me on it unless he has to.

  “So, Major,” Sprague said. “You’re still here in town?”

  “You guys do me a favor, call me Henri, or Henny if you prefer— some of my friends call me that.”

  “Henri—like ornery?” Sprague asked, grinning.

  “I hear that one now and then,” Stanner said, chuckling politely. More like almost every day.

  “Henri, that’s French, huh?” Cruzon asked.

  “My mother was French, name of DuMarche. I’m named after her dad. He died the day I was born. I should just get it over with and change Henri to Henry.”

  The two men both nodded slowly, watching him, waiting. He’d stretched out the small talk as much as he could, and it wasn’t going to make them trust him any further.

  Stanner said, “Okay, you noticed I’m still here in town. It’s just that we want to make sure there aren’t any issues, any side effects or problems with the satellite, ah, in any of the towns near the crash site. This town is the nearest.”

  “ ‘Issues,’ ” Sprague said. “What issues exactly?”

  “Plutonium?” Cruzon asked, leaning forward. “That it?”

  Hearing that, Sprague sat up straighter in his chair.

  Cruzon was just saying out loud, Stanner supposed, what had been worrying the little cop, ever since the crash. Certain high-performance military satellites were powered by plutonium; solar power wasn’t enough for some orbital spying operations.

  “No plutonium,” he said. “Maybe another kind of toxin. What it is—okay, wait a second here. Fellas, you must realize that there may be national security issues involved, or I wouldn’t be here. I’m supposed to make you sign something where you guarantee that if you repeat any of this you give us your firstborn or your left testicle or something—but I’m going to skip all that if you’ll just tell me you won’t talk about this to anyone but me.”

  Cruzon compressed his lips. “I won’t gossip about it. I won’t talk to the press. I won’t consult with anyone else in the department— but that last one is a probably. It’s about, I won’t say anything unless I have to. It’s, what you call it, provisional. If I think lives are going to be at risk, here . . .” He shrugged.

  “All that goes for me, too,” Sprague said.

  They looked at Stanner; they waited.

  Stanner tried to keep his face relaxed as he came to the lie he had to tell. “All right. There was a possibility of a toxic chemical release at the crash site.”

  He shifted in his seat, unable to get comfortable. But it wasn’t the chair, it was the way these two were watching his face that made him feel like squirming.

  He gestured vaguely. “This toxin—once in the water it might come up in bubbles. Might’ve drifted over the surface, maybe a small cloud that we couldn’t see in the dark. Chances are, even if that did happen—and I don’t have any evidence that it did—nothing but a squirrel or a snake or two’s going to die before it dissipates. We detected nothing at the site when we were there. But see, we might’ve lost a canister of this stuff. It might’ve broken open down there in the water and leaked out later on—after everyone who was working out there already took off.”

  Jesus Christ, he thought. What a crock! Am I sweating? I’m having to make up one fucking lie after another. I shouldn’t be in fucking intelligence if I can’t be cooler than this, goddamn it.

  Usually he analyzed statistics, satellite imagery, sometimes directed small-scale insertions. Until he’d started working with the Facility, he’d always worked on foreign projects.

  Having to lie to American citizens bothered him. A couple of perfectly good cops, too. Maintaining a cover story hadn’t bothered him, working overseas. But here . . .

  Still, he kept his face relaxed, his voice dismissively casual, as he went on. “We doubt there was a leak. This is all just, you know, a routine health check because there were civilians around.”

  “Yeah, well, forgive me if I’m a little doubtful about this concern for civilians, there, ‘Ornery,’ ” Sprague said, tapping the side of his little Styrofoam cup. “I used to work over in south San Francisco. Military dump out there’s been poisoning some of those neighborhoods for decades. They won’t clean it up. What the hell, they figure, that’s ghetto, let ’em get cancer.”

  Stanner nodded noncommittally. “That’s not my bailiwick.”

  “What’s the effect of this chemical?” Cruzon asked. “You said maybe some dead squirrels. So it kills you dead?”

  “It would kill a man, undiluted. But by the time it reached anybody in town the gas would probably be pretty diluted, and all you’d get would be behavioral anomalies.”

  Cruzon and Sprague exchanged looks. Then Sprague scowled at Stanner. “ ‘Behavioral anom
alies’? What the hell’s that mean? I mean, that could be my wife’s whole family.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Stanner began. “No, let me just ask you. Have there been any, like, out-of-the-ordinary incidents?”

  “Such as?” Cruzon asked.

  “Violent behavior that seems to—to have no explanation. Or, are there any highly unusual break-ins?”

  Sprague stared at him. “You sure I shouldn’t be worried about my own exposure, too, Major? I feel fine but—should I have a blood test?”

  “No, it would’ve hit you by now, Deputy.” Stanner grinned. “You seem okay to me.”

  “What’s this toxic stuff called?” Cruzon asked.

  “I’ve told you everything I’m cleared to tell,” Stanner said, feeling as if he was coming out with his first honest remark all day. “Can you help me out, here?”

  Cruzon shrugged. “Unusual violence—no. Nothing unusual.”

  “Might be best not to eat fish from that area, too,” Stanner said. “I’ll see about getting an advisory issued on fishing. Let out that it’s a sewage leak or something. Don’t eat the fish from around there for a while.”

  Sprague shook his head in wonder. “A sewage leak. That what you’re going to say? You people find it pretty easy to lie to folks.”

  Stanner managed not to show how much the remark startled him. At least, he hoped it didn’t show. He toyed with his coffee cup and didn’t reply.

  Cruzon had made a tent of his fingers. “Unusual break-ins, you said, before? Why exactly would there be—”

  “Uh, this toxin,” Stanner improvised, “affects the brain, has a sort of pack-rat effect on some people. Kind of an OCD symptom. They start obsessing about stuff. Objects. Often it’s shiny stuff. Like, say, electronic parts.”

  Cruzon looked at him. “Electronic parts. A chemical that makes you obsess about electronic parts?”

  The raised eyebrows said, Sounds like bullshit to me.

  Stanner thought, Why couldn’t I have drawn a stupider cop? Lord knows there are enough around. But not this time.

  Cruzon leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling as if he had crib notes up there. “Well, actually. There was a little vandalism at the high school. A vocational class, the electronics shop. Last night.”

  “Huh,” Stanner said. “Electronics shop. When I was a kid it was woodshop or metal shop and that was it. Anything stolen?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Stanner nodded, shrugging unconcernedly. “Well. Maybe I’ll look into it. But there’s probably no connection at all. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  He smiled again, hoping they couldn’t see him shudder.

  6

  December 3, morning

  Adair went to get some clean clothes for school from the dryer, and found her mother wandering around in the garage. Her mom was walking back and forth, in repeating patterns—like a mouse stuck in the patterns of a maze long after the maze has been removed.

  “Hi, Mom,” Adair said, bending to open the dryer door. She’d put the clothes in the night before; they were still barely warm. Her bare feet, under her nightgown, were cold on the concrete.

  Mom didn’t answer. Adair straightened up and glanced at her, yawning—but the yawn was a fake, to cover the disoriented feeling she got, watching her mom walk around, and around. Mom walked over to Dad’s tool bench. She touched the tool bench twice, shook her head, then turned around and walked across the garage, skirting a stack of boxes containing half-broken diving equipment. She stopped at the wall; reached out and touched the dusty plaster-board. She said, “Perimeter. Someone please. Perimeter. Volume. Someone.”

  “Mom?”

  Mom ignored her. She went back to the tool bench. She touched it twice, shook her head, then turned around and walked to the farther wall. She touched the wall.

  “Mom!”

  Still no response. Mom walked to the bench. Touched it twice. “Perimeter. Please.”

  Adair got a squeezing feeling, like she’d felt when Dad had his breakdown. Was Mom having a nervous breakdown of her own? Was the whole family fundamentally defective? Maybe someday they were going to find her, too, wandering around in the garage, touching walls and babbling.

  Then the door opened suddenly behind her, and she jumped. “Go to school, Adair,” Dad said, hurrying past her. He walked over to Mom, put his arms around her, and whispered something in her ear. Mom struggled—her arms thrashed—and then she went limp. Dad caught her, and she straightened up. She saw Adair watching, and she put her arms around Dad.

  They hugged.

  Then Mom said, “You shouldn’t catch us playing these little games.”

  Dad and Mom looked at her. Then both of them leered at her.

  Adair backed away and turned to rush through the kitchen door. She heard her parents laughing.

  She stopped in the kitchen, trembling, to listen.

  “Reinstall?” Dad’s voice came dimly from the garage.

  “Reinstall,” Mom said, her voice calm and cheerful.

  Adair went to her bedroom and started getting dressed. She started crying partway through putting on her socks, with one sock still halfway onto her left foot. She sat there leaning over, with her hands on the sock, and just sagged like that, her head against her knees, crying.

  Cal was walking by. He stopped at her door and stared in at her. “What the fuck are you crying about?”

  It sounded harsh, but she knew it was as close as he could get to letting her know he was worried about her.

  She made herself stop crying. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. There’s something wrong with Mom and Dad.”

  “What? They’re fine. They started spending a lot of time together again. They go off together for hours. Shit, they hardly hung together at all before this—this—”

  She turned to look at him. “Before what?”

  “I don’t know. Before they started—hanging together. I guess.”

  “You haven’t seen them do anything weird? Or felt like they were—I don’t know—it’s like they’ve been brainwashed, or joined a cult or something.”

  “They’re not in a cult. Those people make their kids join, too.”

  She picked up her shoes and stared at them. “Yeah. What if they do?”

  “Do what?”

  “Make us join, too.”

  He growled in his throat with exasperation. “Join what?”

  “Mom was doing this weird thing in the garage, then Dad made her stop, then they acted like it was some kind of sexy role-playing game or something.”

  “Oh, so they were getting sexy with each other? Fuck, mind your own business. How the hell you think you were born, Adair? If they’re getting, like, all intimate and stuff, it’s a good thing.”

  “You don’t understand. But I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “You know what’s going to happen?”

  She could tell he was getting really angry. His voice got all flat, and he was hugging himself in that bottling-up way he had.

  He went on, “You’re going to fuck things up. You’re going to make them all self-conscious or something. You’re just freaked out because they’re giving each other more attention than little baby Adair for once. And it bothers you and you’re going to fuck up their getting back together. Just cut it out! Leave them alone! Or they’re going to fucking break up!”

  He turned and stormed away down the hall.

  She thought, It’s me. It’s not them. Maybe. I’ll ask Lacey. I’ll talk to the counselor at school. But except for that I’d better shut up because it’s probably something wrong with me.

  And she pulled on her other sock.

  December 3, late morning

  “How come we have to move, Dad?” Larry asked.

  They were just getting into the station wagon. Gunderston put the key in the ignition as Larry got in beside him, buckling his seat belt.

  Larry asked him again, “Serio
usly, Dad, I mean, an hour ago we were fine at home.”

  Larry paused, thinking, Maybe not fine. But at home.

  He went on, “Then the big rush, some emergency. I never did get what it was. I mean it’s dumb—are they going to pay for our hotel?”

  “Yes. They are.”

  “But what’s it all about? Why do we have to leave?” Gunderston shrugged. “Because . . . there’s some kind of toxic leak or something—from a pipe under the cemetery.”

  Larry thought, The cemetery.

  He hadn’t mentioned what had happened that night. Where Buddy was. None of it—not since they started taking him to the doctor. That creepy doctor had hinted that if he didn’t stop talking about it, they might put him away somewhere.

  Larry expected his dad to start the car. Instead he just sat there, looking gravely at Larry—a long look, unusual for him. Dad rarely looked right at people.

  Then he looked quickly away.

  Larry wanted to tell his dad something, and couldn’t figure out how to say it. The medication made it hard for him to think. Finally, he said, “Well, shouldn’t we call Mom first, before we just go?”

  “It’s only temporary. I’ll tell her we’re staying at the hotel for a few days. Everyone on the street is going somewhere. It’s just . . . temporary.”

  Larry looked at his dad again and tried to decide what had changed in him. True, Dad wasn’t interested in talking Trek or Star Wars or Harry Potter or the Civil War or role-playing games anymore. He didn’t watch the sci-fi channel with Larry—or he hadn’t until Larry had asked why he wasn’t watching it. Then Dad had said, “Of course I’ll watch it with you.”

  But it wasn’t all that so much. It was more like standing in the bright sun but feeling like you were in the shade. Things didn’t feel the way they should where they should.

  He decided he was going to stop taking the meds. He wasn’t sure why he’d made the decision. But he knew he had to get his head clear so he could think about this.

  But maybe I should be taking them. Maybe there really is something wrong with me, he thought.