He paced, thought, tried to think harder. Somehow he had to counterattack. But how?
In what way was the enemy vulnerable? Was it incorporeal or did it have a body of its own—perhaps dormant while it was using a host? He thought it must have a body: first, because he found it almost impossible to think of an incorporeal entity; second, because he was remembering now one strange thing in connection with the suicide of Siegfried Gross. A jar of meat stock and a bowl of gravy had disappeared from Elsa Gross’s refrigerator that night. Gross would hardly have eaten them in that form; and he would have had no reason to pour them down the sink. But they were prime ingredients for a nutrient solution that should feed anyone or anything with a bodily chemistry remotely similar to that of a terrestrial creature. Had Gross been taken as a host for the purpose of feeding the enemy before killing himself? It sounded grotesque, yes—but what, in everything that had been happening, did not sound grotesque? It seemed at least possible.
He went out to the kitchen and made as brief use as possible of the flashlight to make another pot of coffee. When it was ready he returned with a cup of it and again sat on the arm of the sofa staring out into the bright moonlight.
Where would the enemy’s body be? Quite probably, since there must be some limit to the range at which it could operate, it was nearby; this house was the focus of the attack. Quite possibly within sight of the house; conceivably even inside it. He didn’t think the enemy would have taken that chance, but the fact that it might have did open up one possible line of counteroffensive. Not tonight, but as soon as it was light tomorrow, he’d search the inside of the house thoroughly, ready to shoot anything alive that he found.
It was a long, long night, and the lonesomest night he’d ever spent. But it did end.
When it was light enough, he searched the house thoroughly, room by room, and then the basement. He didn’t know, of course, what he was looking for, or how small or how large an object it might be, but unless the enemy had the ability to disguise itself as a small household object, or to become invisible, both of which he doubted, he convinced himself that it wasn’t there. In the basement he found that his guess about the generator had been right. Something like a mouse had crawled into it through the housing and was now nothing more than a red smear. He could have cleaned it and started it again, but to what purpose? If the enemy didn’t want him to have electricity, another small something would stop either the generator or the motor the moment he went back upstairs.
Only one other possibility had come to him during the endless night. Since the enemy was the helpless prisoner, in a sense, of any host he took, and could escape to take another host only with the death of the current one, then there was one way in which he, Doc, might have a chance to turn the tables. If he could slightly wound and capture, or capture without wounding, whatever host might be used against him next—and keep that host alive under circumstances in which it could not bring about its own death, then the enemy would be helpless for a while. And that might be perhaps long enough to let him get into town alive and safe.
But would he have such a chance?
He stared up at the ceiling and felt sudden hope when he saw a moth flying around up there. Could it be? A moth was not dangerous in any way, but maybe the enemy was controlling it—was using the moth as a spy to keep closer track of him than could be done otherwise.
Casually he got up and strolled into the storage room, closing the door behind him. He went to work quickly and made a very crude butterfly net. He bent a coathanger into an approximate circle. He ripped apart a sleeping bag to get the piece of cheesecloth that was a part of it, the part that could be propped up over the head to keep insects away, and fastened it around the wire loop made from the coathanger. He managed to tie this onto the end of a broom handle. It looked like a far cry from a real butterfly net, but it might serve the purpose of one.
The moth was still circling. It took several passes, but he got it. He took it out of the net very carefully so as not to injure even a wing. Then, in the kitchen, he found a box of kitchen matches and emptied it; he put the moth inside and closed the lid. The moth would live for a while, long enough for him to make his getaway. That is, if the moth was—
He might as well find out right away, he decided. Getting the shotgun, he opened the front door and stepped through it, looked around and saw nothing to be frightened of. Not even in the air above.
He took a deep breath and started walking. He got only about ten paces before something made him look upward again. A chicken hawk, a big one, had just taken off from the eaves of the house and was rising to circle. It dived at him, and it was aiming to kill, not just to frighten him back into the house.
He got the shotgun up just in time and pulled the trigger when the chicken hawk was only eight or ten feet over his head and coming like the guided missile it was. Blood and feathers flew, some right into his face. The rest of what was left of the bird, knocked out of its straight-line trajectory, hit the ground only two feet away from him.
He ran back for the house. He washed the blood and feathers off his face and brushed his clothes. Then he opened the kitchen matchbox and released the moth—the moth that was only a moth, and not a host of the enemy. His idea had been a good one, but the enemy hadn’t intended to give him that simple a way of winning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
And then—nothing happened.
Minutes dragged by like hours. He had by now not slept for a little over twenty-four hours; and, because of his wakefulness, had slept not longer than three hours out of the preceding twenty-four.
Most of the time he walked from window to window, looking out at—nothing. His legs ached with weariness and he would have given a thousand dollars just to be able to lie down a few minutes to rest, but it was too dangerous. He didn’t even dare to sit down comfortably and lean back. When he did sit, it was either on the arm of the sofa, looking out the front window, or on the edge of a chair in the kitchen. From time to time be drank a cup of coffee, but now he drank it cold; he had realized some time ago that the soporific effect of drinking a bulk of hot liquid at least partially counteracted the effect of the caffeine.
The morning crawled along. Surely the sheriff or the state police would come; surely Miss Talley, no later than this morning, would have notified one or the other, would have told someone that he had failed to keep an appointment with her yesterday and might be in trouble or in danger.
He couldn’t stay awake much longer. Now it was getting dangerous even for him to sit; he’d find his eyes starting to go shut and would have to force them open again. And although ordinarily he was only a moderate smoker, he’d been smoking his pipe so much that his mouth felt raw. Benzedrine would have been worth its weight in diamonds to him, but he had brought none with him; one doesn’t think of having to stay awake when on vacation.
It was almost noon, and he was standing at the front window, wishing, but not daring, at least to lean his forehead against the pane, when he heard the sound of an approaching car.
He picked up the shotgun and opened the front door, but stood just inside, ready to cover the sheriff, or whoever it was, against attack from whatever direction.
Then the car turned into the yard. A tiny car, a Volkswagen—and Miss Talley was in it, alone.
He made frantic motions waving her away, hoping that if she turned and left quickly.
But she drove on in, not looking toward him because her attention was distracted by the sight of his station wagon and the dead deer—from which buzzards rose lazily and flapped away as the car came near them. She’d shut off her engine before she looked toward the door and saw him.
“Miss Talley!” he called to her. “Turn around and get back to town, fast. Get the state police and—”
It wasn’t any use. He heard hoofbeats—a bull was charging down the road, only a hundred feet away. The Volkswagen was only a dozen feet from Doc, and suddenly he saw a chance, if a dangerous one, to win. If he could wound the b
ull without killing it, put it out of action with, say, a broken leg so it couldn’t kill itself and free the enemy to take another host.
Calling to Miss Talley to stay in the car, he ran out alongside it and raised the shotgun; if he could judge the distance just right and shoot low, hoping to hit the front legs.
His aim was good, but excitement made him shoot a little too soon. The charge hurt the bull, but didn’t stop it. It bellowed in rage and changed direction, coming straight for him instead of for the Volkswagen. By the time he shot the second barrel it was too close, only ten feet away; the shot had to be fatal, and it was. Because of its momentum it kept coming and he had to step aside; it fell dead just beyond him.
He opened the door of the Volkswagen. “Hurry into the house, Miss Talley. We’ve got a minute’s grace before it can try again, but don’t waste any time.”
He hurried with her. The shotgun was empty, and the extra shells were inside. At the door he turned and looked back and upward. A big bird of some kind, not a buzzard, was circling—but if it was about to attack it was too late. He stepped inside and closed the door.
Quickly, while he was reloading the shotgun, he told her what had happened yesterday and thus far today.
“Oh, Doctor,” she said, “if I’d only insisted that the sheriff—I called him yesterday afternoon and he didn’t seem to believe you were in trouble but he said he’d come out. I couldn’t reach him again until this morning, and then he told me several things had come up, that he hadn’t been able to make it yesterday and wouldn’t be able to until tomorrow. I guess he thought it was just my imagination that anything could be wrong, and he isn’t in any hurry.”
“Tomorrow…” Doc shook his head gloomily. “I’ll never make it—stay awake that long, I mean. And if I’m right that as soon as I go to sleep—I wish you hadn’t come yourself, Miss Talley; now you’re in trouble too.”
“Don’t you think there’s even a chance of our making it into town in my car? With me driving so you can use the gun?”
“A chance in a hundred, Miss Talley. Aside from the fact that there must be cows wherever that bull came from, not to mention more deer in the woods, I’ll bet a really big bird could dive-bomb right through the roof of a light car like that. How soon will you be missed? Will neighbors notice that you don’t get home tonight, if you don’t?”
“Oh, dear, I’m afraid not. Every once in a while I go in to Green Bay to see a show and I have a sister-in-law there who goes with me and I usually stay with her afterwards. So no one will think anything of my not getting home tonight, because my neighbors know that, and won’t worry. Oh, if I’d only thought of calling the state police instead of coming myself—I never thought of them at all.”
Doc Staunton gestured wearily. “Don’t blame yourself for anything, Miss Talley. I made the first mistake—the first two mistakes. I should never have stayed here night before last, after the gray cat killed itself; that made this house, or at least this area, a focus. And yesterday morning, after I learned about Jim Kramer’s death, I should never have come back here just to pack up my possessions. That was the big mistake, the one that caught me.” He sighed.
“Let’s have some coffee. I’ve been drinking it cold, but now that I have someone to talk to, I think I’ll risk a cup of it hot. I’ll even risk sitting down and letting you make it—if you’ll keep talking to me, or vice versa. Maybe we can come up with something. We’ve got to come up with something.”
In the kitchen he compromised by leaning against the wall while she started water boiling for fresh coffee. He did most of the talking, since he had more to tell.
“The alien,” Miss Talley said firmly, the first time he mentioned the enemy. “Doctor, why not admit we’re fighting —or at any rate defending ourselves against—an extraterrestrial intelligence? What else could it be?”
“A mutant human being, one who was born with or has acquired what Charles Fort called a wild talent.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“No,” Doc said. “Nor the only other possibility I’ve been able to think of—a demon or devil. But I won’t narrow it down. Until I know for sure, or until I lose, I’m going to call him the enemy. Let’s not worry about nomenclature. Miss Talley. There’s too much else to worry about. First and foremost, what chance have we got, if any? Of course I can hope I’m wrong in thinking the enemy is keeping me—us, rather—boxed in here until I have to go to sleep.”
“Have you had any ideas at all?”
He told her his thought that wounding an animal controlled by the enemy might give them time for a getaway. “But,” he added, “it’s hard to wound a large animal with a shotgun in such a way that it couldn’t attack, or manage to kill itself. You’d have to break a leg to immobilize it.”
“You don’t have a rifle?”
“Only a twenty-two; it’s still in the station wagon, and not worth the risk of trying to get it. It would be if I had long rifle cartridges for it, but I have only shorts; I intended to use it only for target practice. I have a pistol, but I’m not accurate enough with it to take the risk of trying to wound a charging animal without killing it.”
He shook his head wearily. “I think it recognizes the risk of being wounded and that’s why it prefers to use birds. Even if I could shoot one high enough in the air only to wound it with a few pellets, it would already be diving and the fall would kill it… Lord, but I’m sleepy.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Just keep talking, or listening. By the way, I’m on a hunger strike to keep awake, but don’t let that stop you from getting yourself something any time you want. The refrigerator’s been off since yesterday evening, so don’t take a chance on anything in it. But there’s plenty of canned goods.”
The coffee was finished and she poured two cups and brought them to the table. “Thanks, I’m not hungry yet. But perhaps I should make two or three extra pots of coffee.”
“If you wish. But why?”
“Since he managed to shut off your electricity, he just might figure a way to shut off the gas too. And you don’t want to be without coffee, even if both of us will have to drink it cold.”
“I don’t think he could, short of using a human host. It takes a wrench to turn the valve on the butane tank. There’s nothing to lose, though, if you want to make a couple of extra pots.”
She put more water on the stove to boil and then came to the table and sat across from him.
“How about the water supply? Any chance of his shutting that off? If so, I’d better fill a few buckets, to be safe.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary.” He explained how the water supply worked. “He could easily enough wreck the pump that brings water from the well to the tank on the roof, but the tank itself is heavy and solid and it must be at least half full; more water than we’ll need. It holds two hundred gallons.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “Talking about water reminds me of something I’ll do when I’ve finished this. A cold bath and a change of clothes will help me; I should have thought of it this morning, but I didn’t.”
“It sounds like a good idea. And I’ll get myself something to eat while you’re upstairs. You must be pretty hungry, and that way you won’t have to watch me eat”
“Fine. But make a circuit of the windows once in a while and call me if you see anything. I’ll take a robe into the bathroom with me so I can come quickly. And that reminds me—”
He started to get up, but Miss Talley, in her best schoolteacher manner, ordered him to sit still and got up to make a circuit of the downstairs windows. She came back to report nothing new except that the buzzards were back at the dead deer. None as yet had gone to the dead bull; the deer was riper and more to their taste.
Doc nodded. “I don’t expect anything to happen. It’s a waiting game—unless one of us tries to leave. He’s made no attempt to get inside the house, in any form, and if he wanted to he could have, long ago. Any big animal could
break, through either door, unless I shot it first.”
“Or a human being. I wonder why he hasn’t sent one against you.”
“No reason to, unless he wanted to kill me, and apparently he doesn’t, unless I try to leave. In a way, I wish he would send one. It’s dangerous to try to shoot a leg of a charging bull without killing it. But with a man, it would be relatively easy.”
“Doctor, when I came—how did you know I wasn’t—the enemy? You could have shot me in the leg easily enough.”
He laughed. “It never occurred to me. And if it had, the bull coming right after you would have been proof enough. The thing we’re most certain of is that he can’t control more than one host at a time.” He stood up and stretched his arms, fighting back a yawn. “Well, to my cold tub. And I’ll make circuits of the upstairs windows while the water’s running. You won’t have to, until after you hear it stop.”
He went upstairs, and half an hour later he came back down, looking at least outwardly refreshed. Miss Talley had finished eating and they sat in the living room and took turns talking. Doc insisted on making periodic rounds of the windows himself instead of letting her do it. He explained that the danger of his going to sleep if she left him alone was a more important factor than his doing an occasional bit of walking.
The hours dragged. One or the other of them thought of a dozen things to try, but for one reason or another had to reject each as impractical or too dangerous. Once Doc verified that the siege was still on by stepping outside with the shotgun. When he saw a high-circling bird start a dive, he fired at it without waiting for it to get close. But if any of the pellets hit and wounded it, the wound was insufficient to deflect it and he had to use the second barrel when it was dangerously close. Even then he had to jump back the instant he fired or the bird would have hit him. It thudded against the doorsill. He reloaded the shotgun before using its muzzle to push the dead bird—it was, or had been, a chicken hawk off the porch.
The Mind Thing Page 18
