The Forbidden Zone

by Whitley Strieber

  "Well, maybe something like that."

  "Those old pumps over at Fisk's aren't going to move a volume of gas like that. Even if you got the line charged somehow or other, the gas'd be too heavy for 'em. You wouldn't even get a dribble out the other end."

  "We could use a tanker truck. Could we get one?" Dick looked from face to face.

  Everybody knew the answer, so nobody replied. The closest gas tanker would be at the Texaco distributor in Glens Falls.

  A sound outside set everyone to frantic activity. In moments every window in the house bristled with gun barrels.

  A blue Acura Legend came down the driveway and parked.

  "It's Dr. Gidumal," Loi cried. She went out onto the porch as the Gidumals got out of their car.

  Nobody went down the steps, though. Sam and Milly came in quickly. Their real names were Sanghvi and Maya, but the town had changed them to something easier to remember.

  There were brief greetings, people automatically observing amenities that were now meaningless. Then Dr. Gidumal was taken to Annie Junior, who was lying on the Wests' bed with a blood-splotched turban of towels around her head.

  Dr. Gidumal, it developed, had tried to call the hospital this morning. An investigation had revealed all the phone lines down. Then the power had failed. They'd been picking their way out toward 303 when they'd seen the cars here. They knew nothing of what had happened, and had difficulty believing what they were told.

  As Loi watched and listened, she grew increasingly impatient. They were letting time pass, maybe too much time.

  "To fight something this powerful," Milly Gidumal said at last, "it would seem important to know exactly where it is weak."

  Brian shook his head. "I probably ought to know, but I don't. I mean, I was working on a project in theoretical physics."

  "They are demons," Loi said. "We cannot fight them directly." There was acid in her voice.

  Ellen disagreed. "This all has a scientific explanation. It seems like something supernatural only because we don't understand it."

  "What does she know," Mrs. Yates commented sotto voce.

  Ellen heard, and turned to her. "If hell's opening up, we obviously aren't going to get away. That's the trouble with that kind of thinking."

  "Father," Pat Huygens asked, "could a door to hell actually open?"

  "Well, now, we're not sure about that. But I suppose it might."

  "I concur," Oont announced solemnly.

  "We're ignorant, helpless and we don't have much time." Brian looked from face to face. "That's the truth of it."

  "What about the judge? Maybe we ought to go over in a body and interrogate the judge." On the surface Pat Huygens' suggestion was reasonable.

  "An awful lot of people have gone there and not come back," Ellen said.

  "We stay away from the judge, folks." Brian put all the authority he could into his voice.

  Willie Rysdale flared at him. "I say we take every gun we got and go over there and shoot everything that moves, then torch the place!"

  People glanced nervously at each other.

  "I'm capable of facing who I have to face," Loi said. "But I don't think we should attack frontally." She regarded the Rysdale boy with cool eyes. "Only fools do that." Her words caused a silence. She was not used to being the center of attention, and she felt sweat tickling her temples. But she continued. "I was born to war, raised in battle. This is war, I am a soldier. And you, Bob, you also."

  "You won our war, don't forget," Bob said.

  "The Americans were brave."

  Bob nodded slowly, regarding her. The feelings now passing between these two former enemies were very deep.

  "What about your baby?" Ellen asked. "You're not exactly strong."

  Loi tossed her hair out of her eyes. "If I fight, my baby has a chance. If I don't fight, he dies."

  "I say we form a box and go out armed to the teeth. We fire at anything that moves."

  "That might work!" Willie's father was enthusiastic, but nobody else supported them. People were trying to imagine themselves winning a pitched battle, and having a hard time doing it.

  "Maybe we should wait to be rescued," Bob said.

  Brian thought that was at least as dangerous as the banzai charge idea. "Bob, that's a gamble. I mean, I'm looking at this as a minute-to-minute thing."

  "Let's go!" Willie hefted his shotgun.

  "We've got to have a more practical plan," Loi said.

  Father Palmer, who had been in the kitchen with Nancy trying to put together food for the group, now returned to the living room. He was carrying a tray with boxes of Wheaties and Quix cereals on it, a couple of dozen boiled eggs from the bucket Dick had brought, a bowl of pickles and some salami. "Let's all try to eat," he said. "We need food."

  "What's your take on this, Padre?" Pat Huygens asked. "The door to hell gonna close, or do we all gotta burn?"

  Brian respected Father Palmer, but a theological explanation wasn't going to work. "I think we'd better forget fighting and concentrate on survival."

  "My husband is right," Loi said. "It's getting toward noon already, and the last thing we want is to be caught in Oscola after the sun goes down."

  "God save us," Reverend Oont said.

  "Somebody sure as hell better," Mrs. Yates responded.

  That stopped conversation. Husbands and wives moved closer together, gathered in their children.

  Morning was gone, and the shadows of afternoon were emerging. The day was no longer young.

  Thirteen

  Loi was watching the street. "There are clouds forming up again off toward the Jumpers." She looked back at Brian. She feared that her husband felt helpless, that he was freezing like an untried soldier.

  She listened to the murmur of voices. So many people were here, most of them not well known to her. Except for Bob and Nancy, she had made few friends in Oscola.

  Even so, she wanted them to live, all of them. If they would not find a way out for themselves, she would do it. Her hands went to her belly, to the baby within. No demon could attack a baby, young innocence was too powerful, it drove them back.

  But she could lose her baby.

  Mary Yates, the owner of Mode O'Day Fashions, where Loi often shopped, suddenly rose from the couch. "OK, folks, this is official. I've panicked. So what I'm gonna do before the shadows get another inch longer is, I'm just gonna drive right on up the Towayda Road, turn out when I get to Corey Lake and go down that old logging track up there. I can slip right across to the Northway. I'm asking for volunteers."

  Jim Rysdale narrowed his eyes. "You gonna do it in your Oldsmobile, Mary? That logging road's probably washed out up beyond the first ridge line. God knows, nobody even hunts back in there anymore."

  "It may be hazardous, Mary," Sam Gidumal said. "If you were to get stuck, you'd be helpless."

  "I've got front-wheel drive." Again she glanced out the window. "Better than being shut up in here waiting to die."

  "Mary, please!" Nancy held her boys close to her.

  "Daddy says we gonna commit suicide," little Joey said. His voice was hushed, exactly as it would have been at a wedding or a funeral. His brother shushed him, then glanced over to their mother for approval.

  "Look," Mary said, "I don't want to commit suicide or die or end up God knows what way, like the folks that got caught out on 303. Which is why I'm going to take my rifle and my pistol and I'm just gonna go." She smiled, but her fingers were twisted together like a tangle of worms. "Jimmy's right about one thing, though. My trip's gonna be dangerous. I need another car at least, in case we have to help each other through."

  Loi pulled back the curtain. "The clouds are getting dark. That logging track won't be passable in another hour."

  "All the more reason to get our tails in gear."

  "I'll go," the Reverend Oont announced. "I have my four-by-four Cherokee. We can leave the Olds here."

  Mary went to him and threw her arms around him. Others milled. Nobody seemed rea
dy to follow them. Father Palmer wished them luck.

  Brian watched Loi as she went to the table and carefully ate a hard-boiled egg. Rather than cracking it against the edge of the plate, she cut the shell with a fingernail, and removed neatly cut squares of shell.

  There were hugs all around, and more than one pair of eyes went wet as the two prepared for their departure. Oont had no guns, so he and Mary split her stash. She took the rifle, he the pistol. She also had a shotgun, an old single-shot small-gauge of no particular value.

  Loi also was planning an attempt to escape. But it would be carefully designed, not thrown together slapdash like this. She wished them the best, but she was filled with foreboding.

  Concerned that she keep up her strength, she ate her egg. "Brian," she said as she returned to the living room, "I want you to eat." She handed him another egg, and he cracked it against the arm of a chair. Bits of shell went everywhere.

  Mary put on her canvas hat and Oont buttoned his hunter's vest. Together they looked about as defenseless as two human beings could be. Oont was a pallid man, small, with the eyes of a big puppy and a disposition to match. Mary had her little bit of bluff, but she wasn't going to scare a half-blind housefly for long.

  "I want you to think again," Loi said. "We're best off staying together."

  "So come!" Mary's voice had a high, edgy note to it.

  At that moment they heard a sort of subtle, fluttering sound— more a feeling, really—from under the house. "That's what we had," Jenny Huygens whispered harshly. "That precise noise." She looked at the silent, frightened faces around her. "It's down there right now. Under us."

  There was a hurried conference in the Rysdale family. Willie was even more vehement about putting up a fight. His mother's face became the color of old wax. Then Jim stepped forward. "We'll go with you, Mary." Annie Junior buried her face in her mother's dress.

  "Thank you, Dad," Willie said. He slapped his weapon. "I wanta get my licks in!"

  The fluttering came again, this time strong enough to shake bric-a-brac on the shelf above the TV and rattle the dishes on the table. "There ain't a lot of time, folks," Mary said.

  Along with Mary and the Reverend went the Rysdales, a total of six people. "I don't want to be here when it breaks through," Annie explained. "I've been through it, and once is enough."

  Loi went to Brian, put her hand in his. Ellen had stuck a big kitchen knife in her belt. She stood before a shelf, examining a portable shortwave radio, blinking the tears out of her eyes. "This work, Bob?"

  "I can pick up China with that Sony. But remember we had trouble with my portable."

  "You couldn't transmit. But this is a receiver." She turned on the radio, began twisting the dial.

  The Yates group went out onto the porch. Loi drew open the curtains in front of the picture window. She saw them get into Reverend Oont's 4x4 and the Rysdales' pickup.

  As they were leaving, the earth stirred again. Nancy's bric-a-brac trembled, the ceramic elves shook, the imitation Dresden figurines danced.

  "If there's a tunnel getting dug under the house," Bob said, "maybe we all ought to go."

  "No! We stay." Loi backed away from the window. One of the figurines fell with a crash from its shelf to the top of the TV. Its head popped off and rolled to the floor.

  Outside, the two vehicles were moving out into the road.

  From the basement came a soft grinding sound. "I think we're making a mistake," Bob said.

  "Why don't you join them, then?" Loi's voice was sharp. Brian was worried about her and Bob. The more this became like war, he thought, the more the buried animosities of these two rival soldiers were apt to surface. They needed work to do, something to focus their energy. Brian searched his thoughts, trying to find a sensible way of fighting back. "We need to locate the facility," he said at last. "That's the key."

  Bob nodded, but said nothing.

  "You have a way of doing this?" Loi asked.

  Ellen came over to them. "It could be anywhere."

  "It's here. Everything is happening here. The way I visualize it, they've linked up with some parallel universe, working from my equations and using some incredible hybrid of my equipment"

  "Could you also have done this?" Loi asked.

  "I was working with the scientific equivalent of a black-and-white photo. Whoever has control of my facility has evolved my equipment all the way to the era of three-dimensional TV."

  The group was beginning to move out onto the porch to watch the caravan leave. Brian and Loi followed them.

  The air was warm and laced with the fragrance of Nancy's roses. Birds sang, a butterfly fluttered across the lawn. The near view could not have been more normal. But there was also a long loop of ordinary telephone cable lying in the street, and a power line sparking intermittently at the intersection. Reverend Oont's Jeep rolled slowly forward, followed by the Rysdales' pickup. Willie stood in the back balancing against the cab, his Remington in his arms.

  Father Palmer began to pray, "Our Father who art in heaven..." A ragged chorus picked up the prayer. Brian joined, wishing more than believing.

  The two cars rounded the corner. As they disappeared, their engine noise was absorbed by a stand of fir.

  Even so, nobody went inside. Far from it, they kept praying.

  Not twenty seconds had passed before they heard the unmistakable crack of a rifle. The prayer gained intensity. Veins rose on necks, hands clasped hands, eyes closed. There were three more cracks, then a fusillade. The prayer died, the little group closed in on itself.

  Mary's old shotgun boomed once, its echoes slapping off against the hills.

  Into the breathless silence that followed, there came a single scream. It was deep and awful, a man's cry. Linda Kelly sobbed. Nancy said, "Kids, get back in the house." As she went in, she herded them ahead of her.

  More screams followed, as high and lost as the voice of the wind on a wild winter night.

  "God help them," Father Palmer cried.

  Crackling sounds erupted, the angry rasp of electricity. Despite the sunlight, purple flashes were visible above the tree line. The screams went on and on, and Brian realized that he was screaming, too, everybody was, everybody except Loi and Bob, who walked side by side down the driveway. They had armed themselves with shotguns.

  Brian forced himself to follow. He passed Father Palmer, who was now on his knees, his fists closed and raised in supplication or anger.

  With a dull thud a blossom of flame rose into the sky beyond the trees. A single tire, smoking, came rolling down the slight incline and back into Queen's Road. It stopped, fell, and lay in a haze of rubber-stinking smoke.

  Dr. Gidumal held his hands to his temples, his eyes wide, his teeth clenched.

  As the screaming died, Brian was astonished to hear music. For a moment he was confused, then he realized that it was WRON, the Voice of the Adirondacks out of Glens Falls. They were playing an oldie, Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa." Only seventy miles away, and they had no idea what was happening here.

  Then he saw a long, thin coil rising out of the smoke, rising high above the line of pines that blocked the view of Main. "Jesus Christ, look!" It waved in the air like a vine, and at the end it held something.

  Loi and Bob raised their guns, calmly aimed and fired. The vine reared like a snake and a black dot came arcing across the sky, falling right toward them.

  Bob fired again and the object was deflected, spinning wildly. It fell into the street twenty feet away.

  Then there was silence. The cable or snake disappeared.

  "Bring a blanket," Loi called. "Cover it."

  Brian saw that it was a head. He recognized Willie Rysdale's young face, frozen in a drum-tight grin. "I'll get one," he shouted.

  "Brian," Nancy shrieked as he came through the front door, "Brian, something's down there!" She was staring at the entrance to the basement, her eyes wide.

  "Get out of here."

  "Oh, God, Brian, where will we go now?"r />
  "Hurry up," Loi called. Her voice was as high as a girl's. Brian grabbed the tablecloth and started for the door.

  As he returned to the porch, he saw that the head was still somehow alive, the face working.

  Loi and Bob both fired at once, fired again and again. The boy's head danced in the street, split as buckshot slammed it.

  Brian reached their side, waving the tablecloth. "Loi, be careful. That gun's got a lot of kick."

  "I can fire a shotgun, Brian." She pointed with her chin. "Don't let them see. Cover it."

  The head was still alive, its left eye blinking spasmodically, the tongue flapping in the mouth with a sound like a moth fluttering against a screen. One blast had gouged the left temple, the other torn off the forehead, exposing an interior complex with thick green folds where the gray brain ought to be.

  Brian saw then that the shattered eye was looking at him.

  He sensed that this was no longer the face of Willie Rysdale. It was him from the other side, a self-portrait.

  The eye blinked fast, then the muscle around it tightened. As Brian moved, the eye followed him.

  He thought it looked hungry.

  Loi fired. Brian threw the cloth at the head rather than covering it. He didn't want to go any closer to it.

  More shots followed, and Brian realized that Loi and Bob were not firing at the head, but rather at something farther down the street.

  A thick coil had slid across the intersection. It shone in the sun, dripping as if just washed or just born. As the echo of the shots retreated into the woods, he heard a bizarre mix of sounds, the lazy ratcheting of summer bugs, the strains of "Memories Are Made of This" from the radio, and the fan-quick fluttering of Willie's tongue.

  Nancy and her boys rushed out of the house. "It's on the stairs," Joey shrieked.

  "There's something coming from under the basement door," Nancy wailed, falling into her husband's arms.

  "Get a grip," Loi cried. "What's there?"

  "Threads," Nancy said, "long black threads."

  "They're sticky," Chris added. "Really sticky."