“There has to be something otherworldly at work here,” he said. “I know, I know – it sounds crazy. But is it really that crazy? After all, how big is the universe? We can’t even put a number on it. What do we really know? There’s every possibility – probability in fact – that there are other intelligent life forms out there. And who knows? Maybe they’ve been coming to Earth for years. And now, at last they’re making themselves known to us. Well, sort of. They’re kicking our asses.”
Jack gazed out of the window.
“It’s an invasion alright,” he said. “But it’s not a human one.”
He lifted up the notepad and scribbled fast. His handwriting, usually so neat and coherent, was a mess.
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Is that what’s going on here? Are the waxworks like some kind of seed pods that are going through a change? Is there something alien growing inside them?
Jack gasped quietly.
Meta…what’s the word?
Metamorphosis!
DO NOT TALK TO THEM ANYMORE!
Jack looked over at the waxworks. Slowly he backed away from the service desk area, inching slowly to the door. When there was a comfortable distance between them, he continued to write.
All these people have been frozen for a reason. But what? What are they hosting inside?
What’s going to hatch out of them? And when?
Whatever they’ve done, why hasn’t it affected me? What is it about me – Jack Murray – that made me immune? Surely it can’t be genetic if my mom and dad are frozen too.
One thing’s for sure – they haven’t forgotten about me. The Snowman’s appearance in the Octagon is proof of that. Maybe now they know I’m immune so they have to get rid of me some other way.
So this is what it boils down to Jack.
They’re coming after you.
Jack shook his head. He pressed down hard with the pen.
WHAT THE HELL DO I DO NOW?
“Can’t stay here,” Jack whispered. He looked at the waxworks as he spoke. The thought that something was growing, mutating under those mundane surfaces, was terrifying.
He leaned the notepad against the wall.
Okay. Now that you know there’s some kind of extraterrestrial invasion taking place – AND YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THAT – you have to think of a plan of action.
Can’t just stay here running around Alexandra Falls until they get you. There must be other survivors out there further afield – IMMUNITY CANNOT BE RESTRICTED TO ONE BOY IN A NATION OF OVER THREE HUNDRED MILLION.
You must find the others. Find help.
Jack stood gazing at a tall middle-aged man in line number one. The man was stylishly dressed in a black fedora hat and matching suit. His neatly trimmed goatee gave him a slightly devilish appearance. The man was studying the address on the padded envelope in his hands with a look of intense concentration – it looked like he was trying to break a hidden code.
“I’m forgetting something,” Jack said, staring intently at the man. “There’s something I haven’t covered. What is it?”
He turned to a fresh page in the notebook.
Think damn it.
“Of course,” Jack said.
Donna.
He had to check on Donna. Well, he had to find her first. What were the odds she’d slipped through the waxy net and was still moving around like Jack? Slim, but he had to try. She was his girlfriend and he couldn’t leave town without checking on her. Jack had a pretty good idea where he’d find her too. She’d be at school, quite possibly waiting for him in stuffy old Room 11, where they always met before class.
PLEASE GOD LET HER BE OKAY.
He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Donna like everyone else. It was bad enough seeing his parents turn into mannequins, pods or whatever the hell it was they were now. But not Donna. It was stupid to hope that she was alright but Jack wasn’t ready to give up on her, not yet.
Check the school, find Donna. If she’s okay you have to get the hell out of Alexandra Falls.
“And go where?” Jack said, turning over to a blank page.
Find a car. Drive to Portland and see if this thing is widespread. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Portland. That means there’s more chance of finding someone else that hasn’t been frozen.
It can’t just be you. You have to try.
Jack looked at the words and gave a final, curt nod of agreement. He tore the first few sheets out of the notepad and stuffed them into his back pocket. Now that he’d formulated a plan of sorts he felt better, like he’d taken some fraction of control back. At the very least, Jack could at least shake off the hopelessness and do something.
“I’m coming Donna,” he said.
After all, that’s what the hero was supposed to do, right? Get the girl and ride out of town.
Jack nodded. He walked outside, back into the bright sunlight.
Chapter 5
It didn’t take Jack long to find a car.
There were plenty of vehicles parked out on Main Street, lining both sides of the road. Most of the cars were empty, their drivers absent and presumably frozen elsewhere, but a couple still had someone sitting behind the wheel.
Jack walked towards a blue Honda Civic parked directly opposite the post office.
He stopped to check for traffic before crossing the road and almost laughed out loud. Getting hit by a car was the least of his worries.
There was a woman inside the Civic. Jack pressed his face up against the cold glass window and looked into the driver’s side. He’d never seen her before. She was probably in her late twenties or early thirties. She looked like a young businesswoman, dressed in a conservative blouse and trouser combo. She might have been on her way to Portland like so many other commuters in Alexandra Falls. There was a large envelope sitting on the passenger seat. A brief stop in the post office before work perhaps?
Jack didn’t like it but what choice did he have? He pulled on the handle and the door clicked open.
The woman’s eyes were serene and thoughtful. She was staring through the windshield, her lips curled into a soft smile.
“Hey I’m really sorry about this,” Jack said. His voice was loud in the confined interior of the Civic. “But I need to borrow your car.”
Again, Jack paused as if waiting for a response from a waxwork.
He leaned in through the driver’s side, wrapping his arms around the woman’s upper body. When he had his hands clasped together he pulled her towards him gently. She was stiff. He might as well have been trying to pull a real statue out of the car – one carved out of marble or rock.
Jack tilted the woman’s shoulders at an angle. Then he pulled harder, almost dragging her through the open doorway. He brought her out and laid her down on the sidewalk. As he looked at her lying there, a cold shiver went through Jack’s body. This was a real person, not a piece of furniture. And yet there she was, lying in the same sitting position she’d adopted in the car – her legs bent, her hands clutching onto an invisible wheel.
He couldn’t leave her like that. Not when he was taking her car. With an uncomfortable sigh, Jack scooped her up again, locking his hands around her slim waist. He then carried her backwards and propped her up against the front of Phil Masterson’s baker shop.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “I’m really sorry about this.” He felt like a dick for abandoning her on the side of the street like a trash bag. If she snapped out of this freeze and woke up anytime soon, she wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. She would think someone had stolen her car, which was kind of true.
Jack pointed a thumb back at the blue Honda.
“I’m not stealing it,” he said. “It’s just a borrow. Can’t say if I’ll get it back to you anytime soon but if this thing blows over I swear to God I’ll do my best to find you.”
Jack gave her an awkward wave. Then he climbed into the Honda and did a U-turn on Main Street.
At first, he felt rusty sitting in the driver’s seat.
Jack hadn’t driven much since he’d passed his test six months ago. He’d been hoping to fix that however. His parents had dangled the gift of a car if he got good grades coming out of high school. That’s why Jack was hitting the books so hard recently. He wanted that car more than anything. With a car of his own, he could drive himself out of Alexandra Falls and take a cross-country road trip to whatever college he ended up attending.
All those plans. It felt like reminiscing about somebody else’s dreams.
It wasn’t long before Jack’s driving rhythm came back. Once he was comfortable, he picked up the pace a little. Not that there was much to worry about on the road like other traffic or pedestrians. There were some crashed cars poking out at the side of the road and some multi-car collisions elsewhere, but Jack avoided these by skillfully weaving the Honda through the obstacles at a steady pace.
He traveled west along Main Street towards the school. The car smelled clean, almost brand new. Either it was fresh out of the dealership or the young businesswoman took exceptional pride in her ride. When he hit a clear stretch of road, Jack turned his attention to the radio. There had to be something transmitting over the airwaves – news, information, emergency bulletins – some form of communication to let people know what was happening and what they should do next.
But the radio was dead. There wasn’t even any white noise crackling. It was like contact with the outside world had stopped altogether.
Jack sighed and turned his attention back to the road.
“I’m coming Donna,” he said.
It was like driving through a life-size museum of small town America. People lined the sidewalk, frozen in mundane snapshots, going about their everyday business with a smile. Jack noticed a lot of dogs mooching back and forth, free from their humans, their tails wagging as they explored all those fun places they weren’t allowed to go on a normal day.
He drove past a beautiful old house where a black and white cat was perched on a tall wooden fence. The cat looked at Jack with a bored expression. It seemed to be saying something with its eyes:
I know something you don’t.
Jack glanced in the rearview mirror, checking for any sign of the Snowman. He wanted nothing more than to believe he’d imagined the whole thing back at the Octagon. Who knows? Give it enough time and he’d probably believe his own lies if he tried hard enough.
He passed more cars that had come off the road. Some had crashed fender first into the tall trees that ran along the sidewalk in a neat row. Their drivers were hunched forwards in the front, their heads pressed up against the steering wheel. A few vehicles had slipped past the trees, crashing through garden fences and stopping only after they’d rammed into the houses.
Jack paid little attention to the chaotic scenery. His mind was on the job at hand. School, Donna, get out of here.
He turned off Main Street and drove up the steep hill that led to Alexandra Falls High School. The school was located just a short distance from the town center and it was surrounded by lush green fields and rolling hills that stretched for miles in all directions.
The Honda Civic slowed to a stop outside the front of the school. Jack turned the engine off and everything was silent. His eyes scanned the immediate surroundings. The school itself wasn’t much to look at. It was a wide, low roofed construction that resembled a military barracks.
Jack opened the car door and stepped outside. His shoes scraped against the dry concrete, making a loud shrieking noise.
“Hello!” he called out, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Is anyone here?”
He sniffed at the air. Nothing. Had he imagined that strange smell earlier on?
“Can anyone hear me?”
His eyes darted back and forth across the front yard. Empty. It was like walking through the school on a Sunday afternoon, not another soul in sight. But any second now, Jack thought. Any second now and someone would step out from behind the corner of the building, run towards him with their arms wide open, repeatedly thanking God that he’d come.
“Hello!” Jack yelled.
Nothing.
With a loud sigh, Jack walked through the front door and into the school. He moved cautiously. The sole of his shoes made a slapping noise on the corridor floor.
There were waxwork kids everywhere. They were standing at their lockers, their teenage bodies scattered up and down the corridor in small, pack-like groups. They were staring at their cellphones, mouths open wide and frozen in mid-conversation. They’d probably been waiting for the morning buzzer when the big freeze hit.
Jack looked at them – how many of these kids would take this? How many would choose to be waxworks over the trauma of another day at school? There were a few stupid ones kicking about who’d definitely prefer to be doing nothing all…
He shook his head.
That was a shitty thing to think. What the hell was wrong with him? These kids had families – they were people going through Hell for God’s sake and all Jack could do was belittle them. That wasn’t like him.
“You’re an asshole,” he mumbled.
He saw the gym door lying open but there was no one inside. There was no sign of Donna either.
She was in Room 11. Waiting for him.
Three electronic beeps blared out of the loudspeaker.
Jack almost jumped out of his skin. It was a sound he heard every day in school but at that moment the beeper was like a blaring siren running wild inside his head.
He was about to start walking again when a loud thudding noise at his back made him jump for a second time. Jack spun around, looking down the corridor towards the front door.
“Hello?” he said.
The noise came from outside. It sounded like someone approaching the school.
Jack stared at the door. His legs were shaking.
“Hello?”
There was another thud. Jack listened to a clumsy, plodding one-two rhythm that was coming towards the building.
Footsteps.
There was someone out there, standing in front of the door.
Jack’s heart was racing. His muscles were like taut wire, his body trembling uncontrollably. But why was he afraid? This was everything he’d hoped for wasn’t it? There was somebody else out there. He wasn’t the only person in Alexandra Falls still walking around and yet in that moment, Jack had a terrible feeling that something wasn’t right.
There was a loud crack.
Gunfire.
“Oh shit,” Jack said, putting his hands over his ears.
The front door swung open.
Someone staggered inside the school. A masked gunman. There was an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in his hands.
Jack’s eyes were wide with horror. He couldn’t move his legs even though he wanted to run.
The gunman was dressed in a long black jacket with matching khaki pants and Doc Marten boots. A navy blue shawl was wrapped around his face with two triangular shaped eyeholes cut out at the front. The shooter could have passed for an old-fashioned highway robber if not for the bright red baseball cap that sat back to front on his head.
There was something grotesque about the way he walked. The shooter staggered forwards a couple of steps and then back again. There was such an exaggerated clumsiness in his movement that Jack doubted he was looking at a human being. It was more like watching a robot with faulty wiring attempting its first steps.
Jack tiptoed backwards. The robot shooter’s head tilted, as if triggered by this sudden movement.
There was a loud blast of gunfire.
“No!” Jack yelled throwing his hands up in surrender. He dropped to the floor, face down, covering his head in his hands. When the shooting stopped, Jack stayed on the ground, curled up in a terrified, motionless ball.
He raised his head off the floor.
The robot shooter was standing still. It didn’t seem to be living or breathing in that moment, much like all the other waxworks in town.
Jack didn’t dare to move. He was
certain that even the slightest twitch would trigger the robot and then the bullets would start flying again. But of course he had to run. He couldn’t stay there on the floor forever, pretending to be a waxwork. His heart felt like it was going to explode. If he didn’t get out of there soon he was going to pass out.
And then what?
Jack pressed his palms against the cold floor. There was a squeaky noise as his damp hands tried to secure a grip on the surface.
His body stiffened. He kept his eyes on the shooter.
Three-two-one…
Jack sprang to his feet like a startled panther.
The shooter came forward. Fortunately its awkward stride slowed it down. As it walked towards Jack it lifted its legs so high that it looked like someone trying to step over a series of invisible tripwires.
Jack didn’t hang around to ask what its problem was. He turned his back on the shooter and ran down the corridor, pumping his arms and legs as hard as he could.
Room 11. He had to find her.
He heard loud thudding footsteps at his back. Just as Jack turned the corner at the end of the corridor, a loud banging noise exploded in his ears. The shooter was firing at will.
It was now a straight run to Room 11. But Jack had to be fast – he had to reach the door before the shooter turned the corner as that would give it a clear shot at Jack’s back. With that in mind, Jack sprinted like he was going for the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl final. He didn’t let up until his shoulder crashed into the door of Room 11. The door was next to a rear fire exit. It was only a few meters away – it was a way out, a lifeline.
But Jack couldn’t leave the school. He had to check on Donna first.
He pushed the door open and hurried into Room 11.
She was sitting on the table.
A waxwork.
“Donna,” he said.
Jack closed the door quietly. He kept his back up against it, like he was single-handedly responsible for holding off an army. For now, the gunshots in the corridor had ceased. So had the footsteps.
“Donna,” he whispered, looking at his girlfriend with a pained expression.
The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Page 19
