Strange Invaders

by Rodman Philbrick

  And the second thing was another scream. “Help,” it yelled. “Help me!”

  Jessie and I looked at each other in horror. “Frasier!” we exclaimed together.

  Both of us rammed our bikes around on the path and sped back toward the sound of Frasier’s cry, ducking our heads against the slap of birds’ wings. “That thing must have got him!” Jessie called over her shoulder.

  Frasier was thrashing around on the ground, wrestling with the caped figure. We dumped our bikes and ran to help. Jessie and I both broke small branches off a tree as we ran and aimed them like spears at the shadowy thing on the ground attacking our friend.

  “Hu-YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” we screamed, startling two grackles, which burst into the air, complaining raucously.

  The shadow thing sprang up after them, shaking its fist at the birds, its cape flapping as it jumped in rage, growling. We flinched away, scanning the ground frantically. Where was Frasier?

  “Thanks, guys.” Frasier’s voice came out of the caped monster. “Those birds almost had my eyes pecked out.”

  “Frasier?” I stared in amazement. “Is that you?”

  Jessie was already examining his face, wiping off the blood from a nasty scratch with a tissue.

  “Those birds aimed straight at my eyes,” he complained, his voice shaking. “Knocked me right off my bike.”

  I moved closer, frowning at his cape. He had on the Superboy cape from his Halloween costume! That’s the “monster” we’d seen. Frasier shrugged sheepishly. “I thought I’d protect myself with this old cape,” he said. “Keep the birds off. But it didn’t work.”

  “Sure, Frase, sure,” I said. The birds were regrouping, getting ready to swarm over us again. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

  “You heading the same way?” Jessie asked our friend, ducking a starling and slapping at a blue jay.

  “The badlands,” said Frasier, still breathing in little gasps. He shuddered. “Something is calling all the adults to Harley Hills.”

  We got back on our bikes, trying to ignore the shrill screaming of the birds and the beady, glowing stares of the squirrels. We kept our heads down and didn’t speak as we pedaled the rest of the way through the woods.

  Just before we reached the edge of the woods, the birds gathered in a swirling cloud for one big attack. They darted and raced around our heads, cawing and shrieking.

  “CAAAAWWW! RRRRAAAAAWWWW!”

  Frasier tried to hide under his cape and his bike skidded dangerously, narrowly missing a tree. Jessie almost rammed into him, and I braked hard to avoid her, then almost fell when a bird landed on my head.

  “KAKAKAKAKAKAKAKA!” shrilled the birds gleefully as the bikes wobbled and lurched.

  “Just keep your heads down and GO!” I yelled.

  I saw what I thought were nods from the others, and then we were hunched grimly over the handlebars, pedaling furiously, doing our best to ignore the slap and whisper of prickly feathers.

  We burst out of the trees and suddenly, just like before, the birds left us alone.

  We turned onto the path through the badlands. The horizon glowed ominously under boiling clouds, but we saw no sign of the adults.

  “Let’s head up that hill,” Jessie suggested. “Maybe from the top we can see which way they went.”

  It was more of a gentle rise than a hill but it was enough. From the top, we could see a snaking line of eerily silent grown-ups. They were shuffling and lurching their way toward the Harley Hills and whatever was glowing on the horizon. Some of the grown-ups carried flashlights which they didn’t aim at anything, some just stumbled along in the dark.

  “They don’t even look human,” said Frasier fearfully. “They look like windup toys.”

  “We’ve got to try and wake them,” said Jessie, her knuckles white where she was gripping the handlebars of her bike.

  “Last time we snapped them out of it by making a lot of noise,” Frasier pointed out.

  Jessie and I exchanged troubled glances. “We tried that earlier, when we left our house,” I said. “It didn’t work this time.”

  “But we have to try again,” Jessie insisted. “We have to do something. And maybe here in the hills it will work, just like it did before.”

  “All right,” I said, not having any other plan to offer. “It’s worth a try.”

  We positioned our bikes at the top of the ridge. “Ready?” asked Jessie. “Count of three. One, two, THREE!”

  We tore off down the hill, feeling the wind whistling past our ears, screaming at the top of our lungs.

  “YYAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!”

  The light in the far sky pulsed brighter, like sheet lightning. Something was out there. Something that wasn’t human. Could it see us? Did it know who we were?

  The feeling that maybe it did hit me like an icy fist in the gut.

  29

  Screaming like banshees, we reached the line of adults, but none of them flinched or turned in our direction. They just kept marching along at the same jerking, sleepwalker’s pace.

  We yelled louder and called out their names as we wove our bikes through the line. But there was no reaction. Our eardrums were aching from our own noise, but these people never even noticed. It was beyond weird, as if we were invisible.

  The townspeople staggered on, toward the hills and the glowing light.

  Frustrated, angry, and scared, I picked out gray-haired Mrs. Pringle, our nice school librarian, and put my face right into hers. “Mrs. Pringle!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Wake up! Right now!”

  Her eyebrows twitched. I was so startled, I almost fell off my bike.

  “Wow, I think she maybe heard you,” cried Jessie excitedly. “Let’s try again.” She picked out Mr. Forester, the fire chief, and began to scream his name right in his ear. Frasier did the same to Mr. Wilcox, and I tried again with Mrs. Pringle.

  “Mrs. Pringle,” I shouted in her ear. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  This time her whole head turned toward me. My heart soared. We were going to win! We were going to wake up the adults and keep them from walking into the light! “Mrs. Pringle,” I yelled joyfully.

  Her mouth opened and out came a deep, gruff voice. “Follow-meeee,” it said, with as much expression as a robot. “Follow-meeee.”

  Mrs. Pringle had never had a voice like that in her life. Her eyes were on my face but they didn’t see me. Those eyes were flat and dead. They didn’t see anything.

  Slowly her hands floated up from her sides like they didn’t belong to her. Her fingers jerked and spasmed. “Follow-meee.”

  Those bony old hands were reaching for me.

  I jerked back in shock and nearly fell off my bike. Mrs. Pringle kept coming. Her outstretched hands clutched at me, her fingers straining to get me. Twisting to get away, I lost my balance. My foot got tangled in the spokes of my bike and all I could see was those fingers twitching as they neared. I tried desperately not to fall.

  Ignoring the pain in my mashed toes, I yanked my foot free of the bike spokes. “Mrs. Pringle, wake up!” I pleaded as I ducked away from those clawlike fingers.

  Mrs. Pringle hissed as her fingers raked the air, right where my head had been a second before. We had to get out of here. Our plan to wake the adults was not working.

  I started to hop on the bike but something tugged at the bottom of my jeans. I looked down. My pant leg was caught in the chain!

  “Follow-meeee!” chanted Mrs. Pringle in her flat bass voice. I was certain I heard a note of gleeful triumph.

  I jerked at my leg but it wouldn’t come free of the chain. And then I felt Mrs. Pringle’s fingers fasten on my T-shirt and curl around the material.

  She had me. It had me. For an instant I froze as a bolt of terror flooded through my body. What if I turned into a sleepwalking zombie like Mrs. Pringle?

  I was so limp with fear my knees were knocking together and buckling.

  “Help!” I yelled, thrashing around to get free. Wher
e were Frasier and Jessie? Why didn’t they help?

  With my pant leg stuck in the chain, I couldn’t let go of the bike to fight off Mrs. Pringle. The bike was a heavy weight attached to my ankle. If I let go, it would drag me to the ground.

  Holding the handlebars with one hand, trying to keep the bike upright, I grabbed at the old lady’s wrist with my other hand and pulled.

  Amazingly, her grip loosened on my shirt instantly. There was no strength in that zombielike hand. But her other hand fastened on my wrist. Her flat eyes seemed to gleam in the darkness. “Come-to-the-light,” she said in that strange voice. “Follow-meeee. Follow-usssss.”

  “No!” I screamed, jerking my arm out of her weak grasp. I stumbled, dragging the bike, and felt her fingers twist in the fabric of my shirt once more.

  Then a heavier, stronger hand fell on my shoulder. There was a grunt, and I felt myself ripped out of Mrs. Pringle’s grasp. The glow on the horizon shone right in my eyes.

  This is it, I thought, distantly feeling my bike fall away from me. I’m being taken to the light.

  30

  “Come with me,” said a familiar voice. “Quick!”

  My heart skipped. The light receded back to the far horizon over the hills. “Frasier?” I whipped around.

  My friend was breathing hard. His eyes behind his crooked glasses were huge and his Superboy cape was tugged half around his neck. Out of breath, he pointed.

  A little ways ahead, a knot of adults was bending over something on the ground. As I watched, more adults stepped out of the moving column. No, they didn’t step, really. It was like they got to that point and were yanked out. They closed in around the struggling figure on the ground.

  “It’s Jessie,” panted Frasier. “They’ve got her. Come on!”

  Jessie! Panic seized me. What were they doing to her? “Leave her alone!” I shrieked as we raced toward the growing huddle of adults. “Get away from her!”

  They paid no attention to us. More dropped out of line. They crowded together, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. We couldn’t even see Jessie any more.

  “Move,” shouted Frasier, shoving at an old man.

  “Out of my way,” I yelled, shoving nice Mrs. Stowe as hard as I could.

  But they didn’t budge. They didn’t even seem to know we were there. The people made a solid, immovable wall around my sister. We kept pushing and shoving and yelling, but we couldn’t get through.

  Suddenly all of them bent forward at once. A murmur went up from them but we couldn’t make out what it was. All we could hear was Jessie’s piercing but shaky voice. “Let me go, you creeps!” she demanded. “Let me go! Let me go!”

  Suddenly all the adults stood up together. As if thinking with one mind. They had lifted Jessie off the ground. She was balanced on their shoulders. Some held her ankles, more of them held her arms, and another bunch supported her back. Jessie could barely wriggle, although even in the dark we could see her straining and struggling.

  “Noooooooooooooo,” she screamed as they began to move forward, rejoining the line and carrying her off.

  Frasier and I screamed, too, as we punched and pummeled their backs, jumping up to try and get a hold of Jessie’s foot or her ankle. If we could only reach her, we thought, we could save her. But the adults were too tall and there were too many of them.

  We rained blows on their shoulders and backs, but they didn’t feel a thing. They just kept going. Jessie went quiet. I hoped she was just saving her strength for struggling.

  And then we could hear what the adults were chanting.

  “Bring-her-to-the-light,” they were saying all together. “To-the-liiiiight.”

  Frasier and I looked at each other in horror. “We have to do something,” said Frasier. “We have to find a way.”

  “Let’s try tackling them,” I suggested.

  Frasier nodded. We bent down, braced ourselves, then hurtled forward, cannoning into them with all our might. The wall of bodies wavered, sagged, and then straightened, going on with hardly a ripple.

  My chest felt hollow with fright and dread. “Maybe we can wedge our way through,” I said desperately. “Push in between two of them and then fight from the inside.”

  Dark as it was, I could see Frasier go pale. “But then they’ll have us, too,” he said. “There are so many of them.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But they’re not strong. One-on-one we’re stronger than they are. Mrs. Pringle’s hands were hardly more than cobwebs on me. I know we can fight them. Besides, we have to try.”

  Frasier nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  I tried to think of myself as an arrow. Holding my hands together in front of me like a diver, I aimed for a crack between two of the people. Then I threw myself between them as hard as I could. I could feel the shock wave as Frasier did the same.

  For a second I felt the bodies give, and then it seemed as if the whole wall of people felt us and pushed back. Frasier and I just popped out again and landed on the ground.

  But Frasier looked excited. “I think I’ve got it,” he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “They’re not like separate people, right? They act like one organism, responding to everything together. That’s the only way they’re strong enough to pick up Jessie and carry her. We’ve been going at it all wrong, attacking their strength, not their weakness.”

  Frasier was right. They didn’t look or act like individuals. And from here on the ground the organism they most looked like was a giant centipede. For a second, almost hypnotized, I watched their legs, shuffling along in step. I felt my own excitement growing as I saw what Frasier meant.

  “Their legs,” I said, jumping up.

  Frasier grinned. “You’ve got it! You take one side and I’ll take the other.”

  “Let’s go.” Energy was coursing through my veins once again.

  I picked the tallest man on my side, and when Frasier yelled, “Ready!” I darted in, grabbed his foot and yanked it off the ground.

  A shudder went through the human centipede.

  “Yes!” yelled Frasier, and I glanced sideways to see him step backwards with a foot in his hands. We grinned at each other and held on. I could feel the foot I was holding jerk as if it was still walking. The man’s other foot hopped, faltered, buckled.

  The “centipede” lurched one way, then the other. The man toppled to the ground, knocking two others down with him like dominoes. I let go, quickly grabbing another foot and jerking it up. In an instant, it seemed, the “centipede” fell apart and was nothing more than a confused mass of churning legs and tangled bodies.

  “Jessie!” I called, gingerly picking my way through the confusion.

  “Here, I’m here!”

  I hardly recognized my sister’s voice. She sounded so hoarse and worn out. But I saw her familiar figure rising from the tangle. She hopped and jumped in panicky little steps, trying not to touch any of the people who’d held her captive.

  Frasier and I reached her at the same time and hoisted her over the scissoring legs. “They think they’re still walking,” said Frasier wonderingly.

  Jessie shuddered, then kept shuddering. “I know those people,” she said. “It’s like their bodies are there but they’re not.”

  It sounded confusing, but I knew exactly what she meant. These zombies were only the shells of people we knew. Something else was making them behave like this. Something not human.

  Once we were out of range, we slumped down against a boulder to catch our breath. “We’ve got to get Jessie out of here,” whispered Frasier, wrapping himself in his Superboy cape and rubbing his bristly hair thoughtfully. “For some reason, whatever is out there really wants her. It’s too strong now for us to stop it.”

  “No way,” said Jessie sharply. “We have to save our parents.” She pointed at the shambling line of people. “We’re going to stop whatever is doing this.”

  “Unless they stop us first,” muttered Frasier into his cape.

  Jessie ignore
d him, staring fiercely at the light glowing ever more threateningly from the clouds over Harley Hill.

  “For some reason, it can’t seem to take over our minds,” I said quietly. “I think we’re the only ones who can stop it.”

  “Suggestions?” asked Frasier, his voice cracking.

  “We go to the source,” I said. “To the light.”

  “Then what?” asked Frasier hopelessly.

  “We’ll figure that out when we get there,” I said, standing up and dusting off my jeans.

  We walked back to where we’d left our bikes. All the adults were gone now, even the ones who’d had Jessie. We could just see the last of the line of sleepwalkers, snaking down through a cut between hills.

  As I hopped onto my bike, I felt the hum in the earth start up again. It startled me. I hadn’t noticed when we’d stopped feeling it. But now it seemed stronger than ever.

  There was a dull, heavy feeling in my chest as we headed into the Harley Hills. Something was up there. Something not of this earth.

  And somehow I knew what it wanted.

  Us.

  31

  “There it is,” I said softly, a fist clamping around my heart. “The source.”

  We were at the top of a rise just before the triple peaks of the Harley Hills. The glowing light was brighter here and the clouds billowed over one another like steam in a witch’s cauldron.

  “That’s the same spot where the lightning struck during the weird storm,” said Frasier, pointing to a dark shadowy area just below the middle peak of the Harley Hills. “I think this is trouble.”

  I nodded, remembering the strange beauty of the star-shaped charred patch that marked the lightning strike. It was different now. Emanating from its center was a cold white light. The light was steady, but it seemed to cast long, flickering shadows that licked at the hillside as if tasting it.

  “What is it?” Frasier asked in a hushed voice.

  “Looks like the opening to a cave,” I said, my mind searching for reasonable explanations.

  “Or an old mine,” Jessie suggested. “There used to be mines in these hills a long time ago. Maybe the lightning from those clouds opened one up again.”