“Yes, Josh, I get it! I know. I know they’re dead! But I—” Maria stopped mid-sentence, caught by the drift of Josh’s stare from her face to some point in the distance over her shoulder, his gaze slowly blooming like sunflowers. “What? Josh, what...?”
Josh swallowed and gave several rapid blinks, and then he frowned and looked back to Maria. “Move,” he whispered, his lips barely twitching. “Move to the side.”
The inside of Maria’s mouth shriveled dry, and she fought the urge to turn and see the threat behind her, though there was little doubt in her mind what it was. “Which...which way?”
Josh barely tilted his head to his left, Maria’s right, and the girl gave an even subtler nod in return and then quickly followed the instruction, taking a single step to her right. When she was clear of Josh’s path, she rotated slowly toward the street, and as she turned, from the corner of her eye, she saw Josh lift the shotgun to hip-level, and then a second later the towering sight of the monster entered her sightline.
Maria opened her mouth to scream, but nothing sounded there. The creature was maybe ten yards away, which seemed an impossible distance considering neither she nor Josh had noticed its approach. But as she studied the monster further, its clandestine approach seemed less improbable. The shapelessness of the monster was something she’d never seen before in a living thing; it was as if the monster existed as part of the atmosphere, like a blot on the air itself, the remnants of some dust devil that had sprung to life in the middle of the desert, picking up a slick of oil as it raged through the town before stopping to hover only paces from them.
“Shoot it,” Maria said flatly.
Josh fumbled his index finger around the trigger guard, searching for the safety pin, eventually looking down from his target to find it. He pushed the tiny cylinder in and quickly squeezed the trigger, gritting his teeth in preparation for the blast.
But still nothing happened. “What?” Josh was in a panic now, his eyes welling and his legs so shaky he could barely stand.
“Is it loaded?” Maria asked, her voice like cracking ice.
Josh swallowed and took a breath, and then he nodded in renewed confidence and slid the pump toward him and released it, chambering the round with a satisfying click. He squeezed the trigger again, finally releasing the wad of shot wildly into the air like the blast from a drunken cowboy. He missed badly, but the creature reacted in what seemed to be an expression of fear, its movements twitchy and backwards, spilling away from the kids, increasing the distance between them by double.
But it wasn’t a true retreat; the monster remained in the vicinity, watching Josh and Maria like a giant owl on a perch, appearing to measure them from its new position.
“Again,” Maria said with a bark.
Josh gave a blank look at Maria, shaking his head. “It’s too far.”
Maria gave an encouraging nod. “Do it. Quick.”
Josh emptied the shell and reloaded with a slide of the pump, and this time he brought the gun to his eye and aimed properly, keeping his head still, just like his father had taught him. And then he squeezed the trigger.
Again, it was a miss, but it was a better shot than the first, and the creature retreated another yard or two, again crouching and twisting as the gunshot rang through the air. The monster was agitated by the barrage, as before, but the reaction was diminished compared to the first blast, despite the improved accuracy. Maria and Josh looked at each other, uneased by this new resilience.
Maria looked to the creature first and then glanced quickly to the cruiser. “Cover me,” she said, not looking at Josh as she spoke, and without another thought, she dashed toward the car.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tony Radowski was in his late fifties with a head of buzzed grey hair and a body as solid as the face of a stone cliff. Ramon had always assumed he was ex-military, though he’d never had a long enough conversation with the man to find out for sure. And that was just fine with Tony—at least it seemed so from Ramon’s perspective—as the man was as coarse and off-putting as any in Garmella.
Despite the rough reputation and manner, however, Tony was, by all measures, successful, owning and operating one of the most profitable stores in the small town, a result that came from an intimate knowledge of his products and prices that were unyieldingly fair. That, and that he sold hunting and fishing gear, by far the two most popular pastimes in Garmella.
Tony and Ramon sat at a small metal picnic table outside the front entrance of KD’s, Tony with a pre-packaged cold cut sandwich spread out before him, dissected on the thin sheen of plastic in which it had been wrapped. He squeezed the contents of a mustard packet on a slice of rye bread and then looked up at Ramon, cutting right to the chase.
“They’re aliens, right?” Tony asked, his tone indicating the answer was as obvious as the sun in the sky above. “I mean, what else if not?”
Ramon hadn’t settled on an answer to Tony’s question, though he had his own ideas, ones he wasn’t yet ready to share with the store owner. “Could be.”
Tony frowned and looked away, unsatisfied with Ramon’s lack of opinion on such an existential matter as the one currently before them.
“But we can’t just sit here and wait for it to come back. We need to get moving.”
Tony popped the top slice of bread on to the deli meat and took a bite of his sandwich, never looking at Ramon or acknowledging his command. He stared up the long empty stretch of Quarry Hill, chewing his lunch as if he had nothing but time. “Well, whatever they are, I knew they was coming,” he said casually. “Or that something was?”
The words landed like a punch to Ramon’s gut. He cleared his throat. “Knew they were coming?”
Tony nodded. “Oh yeah. For five months or so. Maybe a little more.”
Ramon squinted and shook his head, disbelieving. “How?”
“Signals have been different. Scrambled or something.”
“Signals? What are you talking about?”
Tony clicked his chin toward the sky and then looked at Ramon. He shrugged his shoulder sheepishly. “I figure I’m gonna live in a town quieter than the surface of the moon, I might as well make a hobby out of it. ‘Course, I don’t get the same signals as that monstrosity up on the hill, but I wasn’t really looking for Martians anyway. At least not to start.”
“I’m not following. What are you talking about?”
“Space signals. The telescope. You’ve seen it. That big dish-shaped leviathan that sits up the road?”
“What about it?”
“I got my own little receiver at home. Built it myself. Like I said, little hobby of mine.”
Ramon hadn’t figured Tony for a man of science, though he conceded that was probably just his own bias and stereotyping at work. “So what were you looking for?”
“Hmm?”
“You said you weren’t looking for Martians. What were you looking for?”
“Nothing in particular, I guess. Just browsing the airwaves, really. And I get some crazy shit from time to time too.” Tony smiled. “Mexican radio—that’s always interesting—and even a few broadcasts from Canada. Shit, I think I even heard a traffic report from Hawaii one morning.” He paused, a quizzical look replacing the smile. “But these last six months, it’s been a whole lot...cloudier. Lots of blips and pings and crackles. Like goddam Rice Krispies. Total fucking Space Invaders shit. Pissed me off at first, thought my receiver had gone to shit. But then I figured it was something...I don’t know, something to pay attention to maybe. Like maybe it had to do with whatever that behemoth of a telescope has been lookin’ for for the last thirty years.”
“Signals were from space.”
Tony nodded matter-of-factly. “Exactly.”
“But how? How do you know?”
Tony shrugged. “Cuz what I said before, Sheriff. You been listening? I been catching airwaves on and off for over eight years now. I know everyone here thinks I’m some redneck good ol’ boy that doesn’t kn
ow nothing past Merle Haggard and bass fishing. But I got a college degree, Sheriff Thomas. Did you know that?”
Ramon pursed his lips and shook his head, generally surprised at this addition to Tony’s resume. “I did not.”
Tony let this news of his education set in fully before continuing, making sure appropriate consideration would be paid to him going forward. “Anyway, after these blippy noises kept on—and getting louder and more frequent—I started doing a little research. Library. Online. Trying to find out what it all meant.”
Ramon waited for the reveal, and when it didn’t come, he asked, “So, what is it? What causes them?”
“Well, shit, Sheriff, they don’t know that. But it ain’t all that typical. These sounds, I mean. Maybe if it was an isolated night it wouldn’t be nothin’ to think twice about, but not when they go on for months at a time.”
Ramon processed this revelation carefully, trying to piece together whatever connection there was to be made between Tony Radowski’s pings and pops and the murky murderers from Hell. “So, you think they’re aliens?”
Tony shrugged. “Didn’t at first. But after this morning? Can’t think of nothin’ else.”
Suddenly, Winston Bell popped into Ramon’s head.
“Wait a minute!” he blurted, his eyes wide with recollection. “Mr. Bell! Winston Bell! He’s been...interfering these last few months. Blocking up the airwaves like a road full of boulders. Way over the ordinance limit.”
“Winston Bell?”
Ramon nodded, his eyes wide and eager. “He’s been...into his music lately. His radio. That’s what he told me last time I was there anyway.”
Tony unleashed a staccato burst of laughter and nodded his head sardonically. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. His music. What’s he been listening too, China’s top 40? The greatest hits of Zimbabwe? No sir, the kind of interference I been hearing ain’t the result of no ham radio trying to pick up Golden Oldies from Palm Springs.”
“Well, whatever he’s been up to, it’s been giving the monitors fits for the last several months. HQ’s been on my ass to fine him. They’ve laid off the last couple months, but it started about the same time your Rice Krispies started.”
Tony pondered the new information in silence, trying to place the meaning of it and how it related to his theory. Finally, he looked at Ramon and asked, “So you think Winston Bell is purposely trying to mess up the signals. Why?”
“They don’t give me the details,” Ramon answered, “just the orders.”
Tony considered the answer for a few beats and then asked, “How did he know?”
“Know what?”
“How did he know they were coming? How did he know to disrupt the signals? To throw the analysts of track?”
“Maybe it’s just coincidence,” Ramon offered, unconvincingly.
Tony grimaced at the suggestion. “Old man Bell doesn’t make a peep during his entire residence here in Garmella. Which is what? A decade now? And then suddenly he starts buzzing like a chainsaw these last six months or so. I don’t think so?”
Ramon frowned and shook his head. “So he was purposely interfering with the Grieg to provide cover for these creatures to arrive? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, I guess I am saying that.”
“But...why? If that’s true, why would he want...aliens to come? Or whatever they are?”
“Don’t know that part, but I do know if that kind of commotion came from anyone else other than the man in the high castle there, they’d a been served, searched and seized three months ago.” He gave a pragmatic shrug of his shoulders. “But, I guess, what, fifty grand in property tax revenue a year gets you a little distance from the man in this town. Most towns, I suspect.”
Ramon doubted Winston Bell paid quite that much in property taxes, but still, he got Tony’s point, and Ramon released his stare on the man, understanding that the jab about leniency was mainly directed at him. And he was right, of course; anyone else in town would have been penalized after the second violation, and after a third, his deputies would have served the warrant and begun traipsing around the suspect’s living room looking for contraband. “Well, Mr. Radowski, if you’re about done here, how about we go pay Mr. Bell a visit.”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
“HAVE YOU SEEN ANYBODY else in town today?” Ramon eased the cruiser up Quarry Hill and merged on to 91, headed north.
“Nope,” Tony answered, “but I get to my shop at 5 am. Every morning. Nobody out at that time in this town—present company excluded, of course. And the rest of our brave police force.”
Ramon ignored the gibe. “5 am, huh? Your shop doesn’t open until what, eight o’clock?”
“Seven-thirty. But I ain’t like most of the pansies in this town. Soft and lazy, that is. Army slapped that pussy shit out of me forty years ago. And thankfully, it stayed out.”
“So, anyone who sleeps past 4 a.m. is a pansy?”
Tony frowned and shrugged. “I just know that I don’t. And I definitely wasn’t gonna start today. Not with all that beautiful rain falling from the sky last night. That was a nice surprise, wasn’t it? I forgot what that smelled like.”
Ramon conceded the feeling. “It was.”
“But no, to answer your question, I ain’t seen a soul ‘sides you all day. ’Cept for that that alien I blasted back at the truck.” Tony then added, “I’d been tracking that son of a bitch for hours.”
Ramon flashed a quick glance toward Tony, locking in on him for several seconds before focusing back on the road. “Tracking it? What...what does that even mean?”
“Means what I said. Saw it not long after I opened today. I usually got a couple of boys out front waitin’ for me to open. And almost always on Thursday. Fishermen usually. But not today. I went out around seven and wasn’t nobody there. So, I stepped out, taking in the moist air or whatever. And that’s when I saw it.”
Tony’s cocky persona, on full display since he’d arrived behind the delivery truck, waned, and he gave a noticeable swallow as he recounted the sighting.
“Yeah, I was scared. Shit yeah, I was. No shame in admitting that. I didn’t know what I was seeing—still don’t, I guess—but I knew whatever it was, it wasn’t there to bring me flowers.”
“Where when you saw it?”
“Just come out of that house ‘side Meredith Looney’s—don’t know who lives there now—but the way it moved was like nothing I’d ever seen. My mind tried to make sense of it, to fit it into some kind of box that worked with what I knew about people and animals; but...I don’t know, my brain wouldn’t allow it.”
Ramon understood the feeling and nodded knowingly.
“And then it went to Meredith’s house next—just glided there like...like it was part of the air itself, but still solid, you know? It was...” Tony couldn’t come up with the words, so he shook off the sentence and took a breath. “And then it pushed in the door like it was made of paper. Easy.”
Ramon thought back on the strength of the creature, how it had crumpled Riley Tackard’s torso effortlessly.
“I was frozen, Sheriff; I’m telling you, I couldn’t move. And when that thing disappeared inside Meredith’s, all I could do was just stare at the open door. For the first time in my life, I really thought I was dreaming, even though I knew I was awake. I never believed that shit when it happened in movies—where people think they’re sleeping when something bizarre happens—but I actually thought that exact thing. You know what I mean?”
Ramon did and nodded. “I think I do.”
“I just kept standing and staring, waiting for the thing to come back outside or for me to wake up, whichever was gonna happen first. And not a full minute later it appeared in the doorway and bled out to the yard, and then it was on to the next house, moving there like a shadow.”
Ramon pictured the movement of the creature in his mind, remembering how it almost melted into the forest, fleeing from the explosion of his gunshots.
> “And that was when I finally snapped back to life. When my military training finally reignited. It’s been a long time since them days, you know, and sharp as I try to stay, physically and mentally, sometimes it takes a while to come back.”
Ramon gave a wry smile. “Understandable. I would think the appearance of a demon moving through town might delay your reflexes a bit.”
Tony smiled back, but the look faded quickly. “It’s always there though, you know. Even after a few decades pass. You’re a cop. Relatively young still. One day you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Ramon grinned, but his eyes were sad, doubtful, and the two men flashed knowing looks to each other, understanding that Ramon’s retirement party was unlikely ever to happen.
“Anyway, I got my shit together and went back inside and grabbed this boy here.” Tony ran a hand over the shotgun on his lap as if it were a sleeping Pekingese. “But by the time I came back out, the thing had already moved on and was four houses past Meredith’s. It was like a fire was spreading.” He paused. “And when I went to check on Meredith, I didn’t realize how appropriate my metaphor was. She was burnt to a crisp. But hard like stone. Like she’d been dipped in liquid iron or something.”
Ramon nodded, and he could see that Tony had expected a different reaction from him.
“You’ve seen it then? The bodies?”
Ramon swallowed and nodded. “Not only a body, Tony. The whole thing soup to nuts.”
Tony chewed on this for a while, staring toward the roof, attempting to fathom the transformation. “Damn, Sheriff. Jesus Christ.”
Ramon pulled the cruiser to the shoulder about a hundred yards from the driveway that led to Winston Bell’s estate. He shifted the car into park and stared hard at Tony. “Oh no, Tony. It was much worse than anything He could have done.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Allie’s heart sank at the noise of the car horn, and she stood frozen for just a beat before dashing through the hallway to the front of the house. She opened the door and pulled her Glock from its holster as she pattered down the porch stairs, Antonio in her left arm as silent as a mouse.
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