by Ike Hamill
“What do you mean?” asked Ken.
“The other part of my theory—the real crazy part—might be coming true and heading right for you,” said Mike.
“Just when I thought you might not be losing your mind, you step it up a notch?” asked Ken. “Real classy.”
“Look,” said Mike. “I’m going to come over there. I should be there in a half-hour, tops. Can we talk about this?”
“Sure thing,” said Ken. “Sharon’s asleep, out cold, so don’t knock. Just come on in. I’ll be in the living room.”
“Thanks, Ken,” said Mike. “I appreciate you not just assuming I’m crazy.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Ken, “I totally did. I was completely convinced you were crazy, but then my curiosity made me check out Davey’s blood one more time. I still think you’re insane, but you may have stumbled onto something anyway.”
Mike laughed into the phone. “I’ll see you soon.” He hung up and handed the phone back to Bill.
“So you know where we’re going?” asked Bill.
“Yeah,” said Mike. “Ken’s house is right on the line. Maybe the thing knows that Ken is the kid’s doctor? At any rate, I think Ken’s house is on this thing’s agenda. But that’s good, ideal even—we can set up a trap at his house and not even worry about putting the kid in jeopardy.”
“Except we’ll be putting your friend in danger,” said Bill.
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Mike. “Ken’s a big hunter, and I think he can defend himself pretty well.”
“That’s probably what some of the other victims thought,” said Bill.
“Except that Ken knows what’s coming,” said Mike.
* * * * *
WITH MIKE’S NAVIGATION, Bill pulled his car into the driveway. Using the strength of the creature’s signal as an indication of distance, Bill calculated that they had at least an hour before the creature would catch up to their current position at Ken’s house.
The two men decided to split up—Bill would gather the supplies from the car and meet Mike inside after he had made contact with Ken. Following instructions, Mike opened the door to find Ken’s house quiet, but well lit. He left the door open a crack and slipped down the hall to Ken’s living room. He paused in the arch. Ken had fallen asleep in his chair, with his head slumped to the side. From his position, Mike could only see the back of Ken’s head and part of his arm.
“Ken?” asked Mike. A premonition crashed across his thoughts. He could picture Ken from the other side, where his friend’s throat would be slit and his robed chest would have a gaping, bloody hole.
For several seconds, Mike couldn’t move. He didn’t want to see his dead friend and perhaps come into contact with the thing that had laid him unconscious. Mike backed away a half-step and prepared to run.
“What’s up?” Bill asked from directly behind Mike, causing him to jump several inches and bite down on his tongue.
“Let’s go,” whispered Mike. “We’re too late.” His eyes welled up with tears. His flesh crawled with deep chill.
“Can’t be,” said Bill. “I just re-checked the levels. That thing will be another seventy minutes before it gets here. Unless its power is falling off, but I don’t think it is.”
Mike pointed towards the chair. Bill’s face flattened and tendons stood out on his neck as he clenched his jaw. Turning sideways, Bill approached the chair. He rounded the chair with his arms away from his body, as if balancing against the potential shock.
Bill studied Ken before announcing his findings. “I think he’s asleep,” he said.
Mike rounded the chair to see for himself. At first glance, it seemed Bill was correct. Ken had slumped in the chair, but his chest rose and fell quickly. A line of sticky drool dripped from the corner of Ken’s mouth to his robed shoulder.
“Ken,” said Mike. “Ken!” he said louder.
When Ken didn’t stir, Mike reached out and tugged at the sleeve of Ken’s robe.
“Wait,” Mike said to Bill. “Don’t touch him.”
“I wasn’t about to,” said Bill.
Mike glanced around and settled on a rolled up magazine. He used it to tap Ken’s chest. “Ken?”
Ken began to breathe more rapidly. His chest rose and fell at a sprinter’s pace.
Bill raised an eyebrow and turned to Mike. “That’s odd,” he said.
Mike tucked the magazine under his arm and cupped his hands around his mouth. “KEN!” he yelled. Ken’s eyes flew open at the sound. Ken looked in Mike’s direction, but his eyes were parallel and unfocused, making Mike wish they would shut again.
“Mike?” asked Ken. His head and eyes didn’t change position, and his arms never moved. Only his voice betrayed his consciousness.
“Yeah, Ken, what happened?” asked Mike.
“So tired,” said Ken. “I see him,” he said. “He’s coming for me. He’s drawn to me,” he informed Mike and Bill. “And Sharon, too.”
Mike and Bill exchanged another worried look.
“But what’s wrong with you?” asked Mike. “Are you okay?”
“Infected,” said Ken. “Figured it out. After we talked. Sharon down first—she’s upstairs—can’t move.”
“What? How?” asked Mike. He inched away. Bill was much less subtle. He quickly moved to the other side of the coffee table, to put space between himself and everyone else. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“Look,” said Ken. “No needles. They can’t help. Careful.”
“Ken?” Mike asked. “What do you mean?”
Ken’s eyelids fluttered. He didn’t answer.
“Shit,” said Bill. “This is bad news. We’ve got to get him out of here. Call the hospital or something.”
Mike disappeared through the door to the kitchen. Bill looked around for a place to sit and then decided to remain standing. When he returned, Mike was wearing yellow rubber dish gloves. He took Ken’s wrist and felt for the pulse.
“Racing,” he said.
“Who do I call?” asked Bill. “Nine one one?”
“No, don’t do that,” said Mike. “You heard what he said. No needles. He’s afraid it will spread if we take him to the hospital. How much time do we have? An hour?”
“About,” said Bill. “But this is too big. We’ve got to get your friend help before that thing gets here.”
“Help with what?” asked Mike. “He’s totally infected. Every cell is undergoing a change so fundamental that it has completely altered his physiology. The best we can do is make him comfortable and hope the change doesn’t kill him. A hospital would do no better than that. Besides, if the monster attacked at the hospital, Ken would be a sitting duck.”
“What do we do then?” asked Bill. “We can’t just leave him here. We’ll never be able to defend him from that thing. You didn’t see the size of it, and we know the monster has no qualms about killing.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Mike. “We have an hour, and we should have the element of surprise. This thing is old, it probably doesn’t even understand cars, and as far as it’s concerned, it already left us behind. What’s it going to be worried about? All we have to do is set up a trap, like we talked about, and we get a chance at this thing without having to put the boy in jeopardy. Ken’s my friend, make no mistake about that, but if we can use him as bait, so much the better.”
“But the police…” Bill started.
“Will never in a million years believe us,” finished Mike.
“True,” said Bill, defeated.
“Between what we bought and what you’ve got in your trunk, what can we rig up?” asked Mike.
“Well…” Bill paced around the living room. “Not much to work with here. Do you think we could get him upstairs?” he waved at Ken.
“No problem,” said Mike. “I’ll make a stretcher, but you’ll have to help with the stairs.”
“Okay,” said Bill. “Let’s do that quick, so I can put some traps on the stairs.”
“You hav
e some ideas already?” asked Mike.
“I think I do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Davey
“I JUST DON’T KNOW what you were thinking,” Melanie said. She pounded the steering wheel and tried to catch Davey’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t know,” said Davey. He looked down at his lap and wished the car ride would end. His sister, Susan, remained uncharacteristically silent as their mother grilled Davey.
Melanie pulled off the road into the parking lot of a gas station.
“What possessed you? Why would sneak out of the Career Center and start hitchhiking south? Where were you even going?” Melanie turned around to face Davey. She reached out to lift his chin so he would look her in the eye, but he pulled back when he saw her hand. She ended up bumping his nose as he moved away. Davey’s hand flew up and he grabbed his nose, more from surprise than pain. “Davey?”
Tears welled up in his eyes. He had felt both powerful and frightened that day. Looking into his mother’s eyes, he only felt shame.
“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he said.
“That’s absurd,” she dismissed. “Don’t you think it hurts us, your family, when you put yourself in danger and get picked up by the police.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Something in her tone helped him regain control of his own emotions.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, turning around in her seat and removing her seat belt. “Davey, stay put. Susan, make sure he does.”
Davey could see her head over the back of the seat as she nodded silently.
When their mother exited the vehicle and approached the store, Susan spoke without facing Davey—“Do you remember when Dad told us about riding a bike?” she asked.
Davey nodded and then realized she couldn’t see his gesture. “Yes,” he said eventually.
“Dad told us that our arms were like the steering wheel. And our legs were the spark plugs. Remember?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Davey. He puzzled at the memory she had recalled for him and wondered why his normally bossy and sarcastic sister had become so contemplative.
“I bet you do,” she said. “But somehow you missed the bigger lesson.”
Davey stayed quiet.
“Dad tried to teach us how to be good people, but you missed something. What you did today was really mean,” said Susan.
“I know,” Davey admitted.
“I don’t think you do,” she disagreed with him. “There’s something missing in you. Something that Dad didn’t have a chance to teach you before he died.”
“That’s not fair,” said Davey. “You’ll see what I’m talking about. He’s coming for all of us, and he’s going to kill us. You’re not going to be able to stop him, and if Dad was here he wouldn’t be able to do anything either.”
“Whatever, Davey,” said Susan. “You’re not even making sense. You never knew that when Dad talked about all that scary stuff it was just stories; it was supposed to be fun. You were too young to understand.”
“I wasn’t,” Davey yelled, losing his cool but unable to maintain his aloof demeanor in the face of the attack. “Sometimes I hope the monster does get to you. You’re such a bitch to Mom all the time, how could you possibly say I’m the one who doesn’t care about Mom? I hate the way you act all the time. I’m not going to be sad at all when he gets you.”
“Davey, that’s enough,” Melanie ordered, opening the car door. “I could hear you halfway back from the store. Susan, take this bag and hand me the bottle.” Susan handed the plastic bottle to her mom and took the bag. Melanie shut the driver’s door and climbed in the backseat next to Davey.
Still shaking with anger, Davey’s face spelled out his anguish.
“I want you to take one of these,” said Melanie. “Dr. Tooley said you should take them if you have extreme anxiety. I think this counts.”
“You said I didn’t have to take those,” said Davey.
“I said I didn’t want to treat phantom symptoms,” explained Melanie. “Your symptoms tonight are certainly not phantom. It won’t hurt you. You like Dr. Tooley, remember?”
Davey shook his head, and a tear finally escaped each eye.
This time Melanie didn’t miss when she reached for his chin. He opened his eyes to her look of concern. “Just one,” said Melanie. “The label says you can take two, as needed. Let’s start with one.”
Davey let his head rest in his mother’s palm as he capitulated. With her other hand, Melanie pressed a pill between his lips and Davey took it into his mouth. She grabbed a water bottle from the cup-holder and Davey took a sip.
“You might get sleepy,” said Melanie, reading the label. “And it says to take with food, so we’ll have to stop somewhere. You’ll feel better soon, I promise.”
Davey felt a rush of heat building up in his cheeks and the back of his neck.
“Mom?” he said.
Melanie raised her eyebrows.
“Can’t we just go stay down at Grandma’s house tonight? Please?” he asked.
“That’s an hour away,” she explained, “and I have work tomorrow. Plus your sister has dance class, and you’ve got catcher’s camp. What would she think, us just showing up on a weeknight?”
Davey gave her his most sincere and grave expression. “I’m asking because it’s really important.”
“I know, honey,” she said. “But what seems important at your age is not always the best thing to do.”
Davey lowered his head. He wondered if he was imagining the effects, or if the pill was already working. When he spoke next, his voice was low and mature. Melanie shuddered at his tone. “He’s coming,” said Davey, keeping his head bent but raising his eyes.
“That’s enough, Davey,” she said, frightened of her pre-teen son, and ashamed of it.
“He won’t stop until we’re all dead,” he continued.
Melanie stifled an urge to slap her son to make him stop talking. She tried to recognize her son, her baby, as she scrambled from the seat. When she climbed back into the front seat, she had regained some of her composure.
“You’ve had a hard day,” she said over her shoulder as she started the car. “You’ll feel much better in the morning.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Mike
“THOSE TWO SEEM SAFE ENOUGH,” said Mike. “What have you got going out here?”
“I couldn’t set the alarm system,” said Bill. “You need the code to engage it, and he’s not talking.” Bill cocked a thumb at Ken’s unconscious body.
After muscling the unconscious Ken up the stairs, they had decided on the master bath. It was the only room on the second floor that didn’t have windows. Mike shoved a dresser in front of the door from the bedroom, and drew the curtains in all upstairs rooms. Their plan involved narrowing the creature’s options and forcing him up the stairs. Mike’s other big contribution to the defense involved breaking the lock on Ken’s gun cabinet. He found Ken’s shotgun and a few boxes of ammunition.
Ken and Sharon had stabilized into a fast-pulsed unconscious state. Mike maintained his earlier proclamation that they were no worse off than they would be in a hospital, and they wouldn’t be affected by waiting for Mike and Bill to dispatch the thing that hunted them.
While Mike prepared the upstairs, Bill lugged the contents from the trunk of his car into the second-floor hallway. With that inventory arrayed on the carpet, Bill set about booby-trapping the steps.
“Let me show you the stairs,” said Bill, as he pulled shut the hall door to the master bath. Mike followed his new partner over to the landing.
Each step bore strips of aluminum foil taped to the tread.
“Touch it,” said Bill, pointing to the closest sheet of foil. “Lightly,” he added.
“No way,” said Mike. “It’s electrified, right?”
“Yeah, but it won’t do much to you,” said Bill as he tapped his finger lightly on the tread. “Every other stair is grounded, and
the other ones are hot. So you’re not going to get a real shock until you touch an odd an even stair together. The thing was still barefoot—you can see the print on the roof of my car—so it should hit him pretty hard.”
“Will this carry enough current?” asked Mike.
“I’ve got it hooked up to a twenty amp breaker, and I’ve layered the foil with conductors. So yeah, it should give a good punch,” he said. “I’ve also got these paintball guns.” He picked up one of the air-powered guns and demonstrated by shooting a ball at the front door. “I assume one of us will have the shotgun and the other one can try to hit it in the eyes with these.”
“What else?” asked Mike.
“That’s about it for direct weapons,” said Bill. “If we can stun it, then we’ve got all these ropes and straps. But that’s a big if.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mike.
“Oh, and I do have that.” Bill pointed at a round metal case with a power cord and a thin, branching antenna.
“What is it?” asked Mike.
“I don’t know if it will work, but that’s the suppressor thing I talked about. It’s basically the opposite of that amplifier that you and Gary built. Instead of emitting energy that the creature can absorb and use as power, it emits the opposite, which I think should deplete the thing’s energy.”
“Huh,” said Mike.
“Only problem is, I don’t really know if it will work as intended. There’s a chance that it will just power the creature in a way I don’t expect. It’s still an amplifier of sorts, it’s just trying to put out an opposite energy. You know what I mean?”
“I think so,” said Mike. “How will we know?”
“Well,” said Bill. “We should be able to see the effect on the detector, but having them both in close proximity might give us strange results.”
“I wish we had tried that back at the sewage treatment place,” said Mike.
“Couldn’t,” said Bill. “It takes too much power—has to be run on house current. Even with an inverter it would have been too much of a draw to use in the car.”
“Oh,” said Mike. “So, what, we’ll just try it and see if the thing looks weaker?”
