It was Matthew’s wife. She was bent over a bench on the far side of the fort, and one of the monsters was behind her, grunting with pleasure as it plunged its enormous organ deep inside. She had stopped screaming by now, and blood erupted from between her slack open lips in time to the rhythmic thrusts.
Matthew was right there. He always had a pistol at his side, day or night, and he slapped leather so fast that Marshall could hardly see it, his hand coming up and pointing the weapon at the monster in a single move.
He shot it.
What spewed from the bullet hole was not blood but something black and thinner, like dirty water.
Then the others were shooting, the best among them staking out positions that allowed them maximum coverage, and the creatures started to fall. One with horns and a forked tail tumbled from a turret, its body riddled with bullet holes. Another, loping across the open center of the fort, was thrown backward by the force of the blasts aimed at its chest.
Marshall returned to the storage room, poking his head in the doorway. The men were gone, but the shackled creature grinned at him and cackled, its laugh an eerie hiss that seemed low and quiet but somehow carried above the clamorous chaos outside. He went inside the room and in the light of a left-behind lantern saw satisfaction in those beady, calculating eyes, derision in the upturned corners of that cackling toothy mouth. Before Sutter returned to tell him he couldn’t do it, Marshall raised his rifle and shot the monster full in the face. That watery black liquid sprayed out from the shattered mass of flesh and skull, soaking the wall and floor, and after a few quick convulsions, the creature lay still.
Marshall stepped outside. As quickly as it had started, it was all over. There was still a lot of shouting and screaming going on—Sutter was ordering all lookouts manned to make sure they weren’t still under attack— but amid the clamor and commotion it was clear that the monsters had all been killed. Their freakish bodies lay in twisted heaps all about the fort, and a quick count told Marshall that his initial estimate had been right. There were only five of them. Why had it seemed as though there were many more?
Sutter explained something to Goose, then hurried over to the storage room. Marshall stepped aside to let him pass. The captain emerged a moment later with a stunned, devastated look on his face.
‘‘So they can be killed,’’ Marshall said to him.
Sutter looked at him, nodded.
‘‘That’s good to know.’’
Twenty-three
Kirk woke up again, his mouth so dry that he felt like gagging, but before he could even croak out a request for water, someone was carefully putting a straw to his lips. He drew in the cool, refreshing liquid, feeling it smooth over the harsh roughness of his throat. Gradually, his vision adjusted to the brightness of the hospital room and he made out the machines and monitors, the utilitarian furnishings and pastel wall decorations.
Waylon, Tina and Brad were there, Tina and Brad seated on the small square love seat, Waylon perched uncomfortably in an atrociously designed chair. Earlier, Monica, April, Orlando and Sal had been sitting by his bedside, but he hadn’t wanted to talk to them and so had pretended to be asleep, waiting them out, knowing that with their short attention spans he was certain to outlast them. He had. This time, though, he smiled at his friends and used the push button control at his fingertips to raise the back of the bed as far as he could. He was not allowed to move to a sitting position, but he was able to better see the room in front of him.
There were cards and flowers, get-well gifts galore on the dresser beneath the wall-mounted television. In front of everything, standing astride a tiny sleigh, was a toy figure that had obviously been given to him by Waylon, a little man in blue snow clothes with a curly brownish red beard. Kirk grinned. ‘‘Poontang Cornelius!’’
Waylon nodded. ‘‘Crouton Pornelius himself.’’
It was an old private joke: purposely getting the Rudolph character’s name wrong and seeing who would pick up on it. Both Tina and Brad did. ‘‘Yukon Cornelius,’’ they corrected, almost in unison.
Waylon nodded, grinned at Kirk. ‘‘Good catch.’’
Kirk leaned against the pillow. It was nice to be back, though in truth he didn’t feel as if he’d really been gone. In his mind, it had been only a few hours since his father had brought him home—where his mom had been tortured and his dad had tried to kill him. It had been weeks, though, and according to Waylon, his dad had been arrested several days ago in California, although Waylon didn’t know if he was still there or if he’d been extradited back to New York.
Kirk knew he was flying on some serious painkillers. His body remembered the agony suffered at the hands of his father, and the casts and bandages testified that the injuries had been major, but at the moment there was only a light numbness that made every part of his body feel just like every other. He could blink his eyes and nod, speak and drink, move his fingers and toes, but all of that was at a remove, as though his brain were telling a robot what to do. He’d asked the nurse how long it would be before he was out and about, but she dodged the question and went to get a doctor, who told him he was looking at another week in the hospital and six months of physical therapy.
‘‘It’s going to be tough, too,’’ the doctor had warned. ‘‘Recovery is not for the fainthearted.’’
Kirk looked at his friends, tried to smile. ‘‘So what’s going on in the real world? Not news. Clubs and concerts. Feuds. Fights. Gossip. Fluff.’’
‘‘Well . . .’’ Tina said. ‘‘Word is that Shelli’s looking to get back with you. She misses you terribly and realizes she made a huge mistake and feels just awful about everything that’s happened to you. Of course, the fact that you’ve been in the papers nonstop—on the front page no less—has absolutely no bearing on her sudden interest in rekindling an old flame.’’
They all laughed.
‘‘Huston’s insanely jealous over all the sympathy and publicity you’re getting, so he’s letting the world know that he’s suffered, too. He’s revealed to all and sundry that his late great father molested him as a child and that he’s been hiding this dark secret all these years, struggling alone and in silence.’’
‘‘Anal?’’ Waylon asked. ‘‘Did his dad get anal off him?’’
‘‘I hope so,’’ Brad said, grinning.
It was starting to hurt when he laughed, and Kirk wondered if it was time to receive more medication.
A nurse stepped into the room. ‘‘Excuse me, Mr. Stewart. There’s another reporter on the line. He’s from the Los Angeles Times—’’
‘‘Oh shit,’’ Waylon said.
‘‘No reporters,’’ Kirk told the nurse.
‘‘I didn’t think so.’’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘‘Thank you, Mr. Stewart.’’
Kirk sighed heavily. ‘‘That’s like the tenth one who’s called me. It’s why the calls are going through the nurse’s station now instead of coming directly here. Let them handle it. I’m supposed to be recuperating.’’
‘‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better,’’ Tina warned. ‘‘You’re the talk of the town.’’
‘‘Hold out for Diane Sawyer,’’ Waylon suggested. ‘‘PrimeTime.’’
The nurse returned moments later. ‘‘I’m sorry to bother you again, Mr. Stewart. But that reporter asked me to give this to you.’’ She handed him a piece of paper.
‘‘What is it?’’
‘‘Some questions. He said they’re not for an article,’’ she added quickly. ‘‘They’re just questions you should be asking yourself. He said your situation is not unique, that this has happened to other people, and there are things you need to know.’’
Kirk nodded at her. ‘‘Thank you,’’ he said. He scanned the list of questions she’d written down: Do you or your father have any unusual physical characteristics? Do plants or flowers grow wildly around your house or the place where you live? Are you able to read the bloody symbols scrawled on the wall where you were at
tacked and your mother was killed?
He glanced up from the paper, eyes suddenly misty at the thought of his mother. He had been repressing all memories of her, thinking about her only in bits and pieces and only from times of his childhood, not wanting to remember the last time he had seen her. That last question had jogged his memory, however, and though he hadn’t recalled it until now, it seemed to him that there had been some sort of writing on the walls of the trashed apartment, except that in his mind they had resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He looked at his friends. ‘‘Is there—’’ He swallowed hard, willing the tears not to rise. ‘‘Is there a picture of my parents’ apartment . . . where this . . . happened?’’
Tina frowned. Her voice was cautious. ‘‘Are you talking about crime-scene photos? Of you?’’
And your mother? he knew she was thinking, but she didn’t say it.
‘‘No. There should be some sort of writing on the wall.’’ He took a deep breath. ‘‘Maybe in blood. But they’ll be symbols, like hieroglyphics or something. I need to see a picture of that.’’
‘‘My laptop’s in the car,’’ Brad said. ‘‘I might be able to pull up something on there. Do you want me to go get it?’’
‘‘That’d be great,’’ Kirk said tiredly. He smiled, closing his eyes for a second, but it must have been more than a second, because when he opened them, Brad, Tina and Waylon were all clustered around Brad’s laptop.
‘‘You’re up,’’ Brad said simply.
‘‘Yeah.’’ He glanced at the clock but couldn’t remember what time it had been, so he didn’t know how long he’d been out.
‘‘I can’t access anything here in the hospital—it screws up the machines—so I checked it out in the parking lot and saved what I found. Look at this.’’ Brad brought the laptop up to the bed and adjusted the screen until it was visible from Kirk’s angle.
He didn’t know where it had come from, but it was a photo of his parents’ living room wall. The Chagall that had been hanging there was gone, and in its place what looked like a child’s scribbles mixed with words written in an alien alphabet had been inscribed in red. Bloody handprints that had to have been his father’s were pressed onto the wall below and to the right of the strange symbols, probably where he had supported himself while writing.
Oddly enough, it was the placement of the handprints and the image of his dad leaning awkwardly against the wall in order to write that made him suddenly miss his father. The two of them had not been close, and his conception of the old man now and forever was as an inhuman monster, but he realized nonetheless that he would miss him.
Tears were threatening again, and Kirk looked at the photo, concentrating on those scribbled hieroglyphic symbols. He found that he was actually able to read that writing, though he had never seen it before in his life. He spoke the words aloud, saying them slowly, and everyone in the room stared at him in shock.
‘‘What . . . was . . . that?’’ Tina asked.
‘‘I was reading those words.’’
‘‘You were screaming like a wild animal.’’
‘‘I was—’’
‘‘Screaming,’’ Brad said.
He looked at Waylon, who nodded. ‘‘I didn’t know human vocal cords could make those sounds.’’
He would have thought his friends were joking were it not for the circumstances—and for the fact that the expressions on their faces looked genuinely horrified.
‘‘Let me do it again,’’ he said.
‘‘Shoot,’’ Waylon told him.
He spoke even slower this time, and in the middle of the sentence two nurses ran in with looks of concern on their faces. ‘‘What is it?’’ the first one demanded. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’
Tina was plugging her ears and grimacing.
Brad pulled away the laptop.
To Kirk, the words he’d spoken sounded perfectly natural. Not English, certainly, but another language, one not nearly as loud and cacophonous as the reaction of the others made it seem.
He didn’t finish the sentence. ‘‘Nothing,’’ he told the nurses. ‘‘Everything’s okay.’’
‘‘Then why were you screaming like that?’’
‘‘I . . . I don’t know.’’ He couldn’t come up with a believable explanation.
‘‘Maybe we need to adjust the dosages of your medications. I’ll call Dr.—’’
‘‘I’m fine,’’ he assured them. ‘‘Just . . . let me talk to my friends. If I need anything, I’ll ring you.’’
‘‘Are you sure you’re—’’ the first nurse began.
‘‘I’m fine.’’
The nurses retreated reluctantly. The second they were out of the room, Waylon closed the door behind them. ‘‘Check it out,’’ he said, pointing.
The plants that well-wishers had left in his room had grown. No, were growing. Even as they watched, a rose-bud opened into a flower and a fern frond uncoiled to its full extension.
‘‘It happened when you screamed like that.’’
‘‘When I read those words?’’
‘‘Yeah.’’
‘‘Keep the door closed,’’ he told Waylon. He remembered one of the words he’d said, and he tried to whisper it, but he could tell from the reaction on Tina’s face that either he did not succeed or else the sounds required to make that word were so harsh and unpleasant that it made no difference at what volume he spoke. He watched the flowers, and before his eyes they became brighter in color, doubled in size, grew offshoots.
‘‘Open the door,’’ he told Waylon. He pressed the call button to summon a nurse. One came running.
‘‘What is it, Mr. Stewart? Is everything all right?’’
He nodded, trying to keep the quaver out of his voice. ‘‘Let me talk to that guy from the Los Angeles Times.’’
Twenty-four
Merritt left for LA on an early-morning flight. He needed to print the photos he’d taken and also head back for a Rolling Stones concert that he wanted to shoot—and attend.
Seconds after he’d gone, Brian’s cell phone rang.
It was Carrie, and he was about to ask when he should stop by and pick her up—their plan was to spend the day visiting with Haskell’s illegitimate children, one of whom she knew and another who had been identified— but she didn’t let him say anything other than ‘‘Hello.’’
‘‘Turn on your TV! CNN,’’ she ordered. ‘‘Quick!’’
He did, dropping the phone as he fumbled with the remote, but the only thing on was a commercial for some sort of allergy drug.
He picked up the phone again. ‘‘It’s a commercial,’’ he said.
‘‘Shit. You missed it.’’
‘‘Missed what?’’
He heard the frightened intake of her breath over the phone. ‘‘They did a story on something weird that happened here in Northern California. I don’t know what made me think it was connected. I guess the fact that it involved plants and you said growing vegetation was one of the signs. But . . .’’
‘‘What was it?’’ Brian asked.
‘‘An area of clear-cut forest sold off in the last decade to timber companies. Fifty square miles of it.’’ There was that sucking in of breath again. ‘‘It’s grown back. All of it. Overnight.’’
Merritt shouldn’t have left, Brian thought. He’d probably love to get a shot of this. But it wasn’t exclusive, was all over the TV news channels, and he’d probably have more fun at the Stones concert anyway.
The chartered helicopter flew over acre after acre, mile after mile of dense green forest. It was the same thing he’d seen on CNN after that commercial break, and on every news channel and major network since then, but familiarity with the sight did not lessen its impact. If anything, seeing it in person brought home to him how simultaneously real and flat-out impossible this was. Of course, if he hadn’t seen those ‘‘before’’ shots, he never would have known how great the difference was between yesterday and today.
/> The terrain below did not look like California. No, this looked more like a South American rain forest. Instead of oak and ponderosa growing amid dried grasses and hardy drought-resistant bushes, there were leafy umbrellalike trees that formed an almost unbroken blanket of bright green over the land. Here and there, through the binoculars, equally lush and dense underbrush could be seen in the few open spaces visible between the trees. Far off, in each direction, small black specks that looked like birds but were actually the helicopters of various networks and news organizations flew through the sky.
The noise in the copter was deafening, the chop-chop-chop of the rotors giving rhythm to the roar of the wind.
‘‘Is there anyplace you can set us down?’’ Brian shouted.
The pilot shook his head.
‘‘I thought that was the point of a helicopter! I thought you could set it down anywhere!’’
‘‘I need a clear space!’’ the pilot called back.
Brian peered once more through the binoculars, searching for an open meadow or field, but every square inch of ground appeared to be covered with some sort of vegetation. Whether this was connected to the story he was pursuing or not, the event was truly astounding, and he was glad that he had come. Gut feeling told him that it was connected—he got the same creepy feeling from the overnight reforestation that he’d gotten from seeing Stephen Stewart leap around his mom’s yard in the moonlight—but he could not for the life of him figure out how. The only idea he could come up with was that a millionaire or billionaire had bought up this land and was building a house or compound down there, with the regeneration of all the trees occurring as a freakish side effect. It was why he wanted to set down and look about the new forest, to see if he could find a sign that such a project was being built, but it didn’t look as though that was about to happen.
Maybe he could rent a Jeep or something and drive in there.
And explore some fifty square miles? That was looking for a needle in a haystack. Who knew how long it would take?
Brian continued to scan the land below. He thought he saw movement for a quick second—a dark shadow skulking through the forest, visible briefly in the space between two trees—but then the helicopter had passed on and he lost it.
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