by Ronald Malfi
“What town’s that?”
Todd raised an eyebrow. “Town?”
“O’Hare.” Though Todd would have believed it impossible, the man’s eyes actually grew narrower. “Never heard of the place.”
“It’s an airport,” Todd said. “In Chicago.”
The man lowered his weapon. “I heard of Chicago.”
Unsure whether the man was joking or not, Todd kept the gun trained on him. He did not believe this man to be one of the possessed…but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.
“Is this your house?” Kate asked. “We didn’t mean to break in.”
“Ain’t my house. I followed you here.”
Sweat trickled down Todd’s brow. “Followed us?”
The man sauntered into the kitchen and glanced casually into the sink, which was loaded with unwashed dishes. “Saw the smoke from the church this morning so I figured I’d have a look. That’s when I saw the two of you coming out of that amb’lance.”
“Who are you?” Todd asked the man.
“Name’s Tully. Up until a week ago I lived over on Acre Drive. I’m down at the sheriff’s station now, which is across town. It’s been safe so far; they don’t know we’re there.” Tully’s eyes flicked toward Todd’s handgun. “You can put that peashooter down now, son.”
Embarrassed, Todd lowered the gun.
“How long you two been tromping around town, anyway?”
“Since last night,” Kate said. “Our Jeep broke down on the highway. We walked through the woods and found the town…found the town like this.” She paused, then added, “There were more of us.”
Tully spat something green into the sink. “There were more of us, too. Whole town’s worth.”
Again, Todd couldn’t tell whether this stranger was attempting humor—albeit morbid—or he’d been living up here in the middle of nowhere for too long. Todd couldn’t read him. “What’s that thing you got there?” he asked Tully.
“Little homemade flamethrower.” He unzipped his coat to expose a series of fuel canisters strapped to his belt with duct tape. “Can get almost twelve feet out of her if there’s no wind.”
“So fire kills those things,” Kate said. “Or does it just hurt them?”
“Oh,” said Tully, zipping his coat back up, “it kills ’em, all right.” He leaned over the counter and peered out one of the windows. Outside, the sky looked to be the color of old dishwater. “The skin-suits need rest. They sleep during the day, but they sleep light. But those tornado monsters or snowstorm things or whatever they are—they’re still out there and they’re still plenty pissed off.”
“Skin-suits?” Todd said.
Tully raised his elbows and dangled his hands like limp rags, miming a marionette. “People puppets. Whatever you call ’em.”
“I don’t call them anything,” Todd said. “This is all new to me.”
“You think it’s old hat to me, partner?” Tully stared at him hard, his eyes rheumy. He reached up and began opening cupboards, peering inside. “Like I said—a week ago I had a nice little place over on Acre. Worked days at the plant in Bicklerville and played pool down at the Blue Shue every other night.” He bent down and went through the cupboards beneath the sink. “You think I been doing this my whole life? Running around Woodson with a flamethrower strapped to my hips?”
“No, sir,” Kate said. She sounded like someone being reprimanded by a schoolteacher.
“Damn straight,” said Tully. He stood and went over to the refrigerator. Standing on his toes, he managed to peek into the cabinets over the fridge, but they were empty. “Those things came and ate the town. They blew all the power out and then our cars wouldn’t start. Phones went dead. They’ve got us quarantined.”
“How many are left?”
Tully spat a second ball of phlegm into the sink, then tromped in his heavy boots over to a new wall of cabinets. The first one he opened elicited a wry smile from his otherwise hardened features: the liquor cabinet. “How many what?” he said.
“How many people,” Todd clarified. “How many of you are still alive?”
“There’s six of us down at the station.” He was collecting the liquor bottles and loading them into a child’s Superman backpack he’d found beside the refrigerator. “I suppose you two make eight.”
“So we’re going with you,” Kate said. It was not a question. She was watching Tully like someone who’d paid a good price to step into a freak show.
“Keep running around out here, you’re both liable to get yourselves killed. That’s a fact. See how easy I followed you both up from the amb’lance and right into this house? Them things out there are ten times sneakier and a hundred times more dangerous. It’s a fool’s game, wandering around out there in the snow.”
“What about getting out of town?” Todd said. “Is there any way?”
Tully stacked the last of the bottles in the Superman backpack, then turned to the refrigerator. He pulled the door open and reached into one of the compartments, worked his fingers around. “Told you,” he said. “Cars don’t start. Can’t call anybody to come and get us. Molly has one of them little handheld doohickeys—BlackBerry, she calls it. Tried to send out an email but the screen went all funny. Kept spitting out random math equations or some shit.” As an afterthought, he added, “Molly’s from town. One of the survivors back at the station. You’ll meet her.”
“That sounds just like what happened with the cell phones,” Kate said, picking the flip phone up off the counter. “No numbers, no letters. Just nonsense.”
“My guess is they’re jamming us,” said Tully. He paused to glance at Kate appraisingly from over his shoulder. “That angry-looking cloud out by the church this morning—well, where the church used to be, I guess—see, I think it’s sending bad signals down to all our electrical appliances. Anything that runs on batteries that they couldn’t knock out with the power—anything from cars to cell phones—they wind up jamming with astro-nonsense.”
“What’s that?” Kate asked.
“Garbage from space.”
“So that’s where you think these things are from?” Todd asked.
“Mister,” Tully said, “I ain’t got a fucking clue where these things are from.”
“They’re that smart?” Kate sounded dejected. “To scramble signals like that?” She tossed the cell phone back down on the counter and folded her arms over her chest.
“Smart,” said Tully, “or just driven by some otherworldly instinct. Who the hell knows?”
“Scrambling signals and cutting off power doesn’t explain why the cars won’t start,” Todd said.
“Cars got about a billion little microchips and whatnot in ’em,” Tully explained.
“So there’s no way out of here,” Todd said again.
“Figured we’d sit tight until the power company came out here to see what happened to their line,” said Tully.
“It’s been a week,” Todd said. “I would have thought they’d come out here by now.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Tully seemed disinterested. His hand returned from within the refrigerator with a handful of black olives. He popped them into his mouth like medication, then pushed the refrigerator door closed with the sole of his boot. “We should get out of here.”
They followed Tully back out into the yard. Instead of crossing back to the front and down to the street, Tully led them between properties enclosed by trees.
“Wait,” Todd said, surveying the area. “You said we’re going to the sheriff’s station? Isn’t it on the other side of town?”
“That’s right,” said Tully.
“We’re going in the opposite direction. We should cut through the town square and head up the road.”
“You don’t want to go cutting through the square, friend.” Tully was working something out of his teeth with his tongue while he spoke. “That’s their nest. They’ve claimed it. For whatever reason, they all congregate there during the day. You head that way now,
you won’t make it out alive.”
Without waiting for their response, Tully turned and continued pushing through the heavy snow. A beat later, Todd and Kate followed.
They cut between narrow fencing and through overgrown holly bushes, Tully leading the charge like a general about to overtake a hill. Aside from his camouflage coat and wool hat, he wore mud-streaked BDUs (every pocket bulged) and a bandolier of large rounds across his flannel shirt. Although he moved lithely through the snow, he jangled like a slot machine: aside from the fuel canisters at his waist and the clanking bottles in the backpack over his shoulders, his belt was overburdened with countless sets of keys. He looked comically like a janitor gone commando.
“Shhhhh,” Tully said at one point, sinking down low to the ground. Todd and Kate followed suit. Peering through dense evergreen shrubs, Tully jerked his chin at something down in the street. “There’s one now.”
Todd maneuvered so he could see through the bushes. Down between two houses, the street sloped close to a muddy ravine, beside which rose the leafless branches of ancient gray trees. At first Todd couldn’t see what Tully was talking about…but then he happened to catch sight of a slight wrongness up in one of the trees. He squinted and leaned closer on the balls of his feet. Midway up in one tree, the air looked slightly discolored, almost brownish, and the tree branches in that particular spot seemed less defined than those around them. It was up there in the tree, perhaps fifteen feet wide, unfurled and just barely visible. The closest thing Todd’s mind could compare it to was a stingray, with those triangular fins and an ill-defined underside.
“Where?” Kate whispered, crawling closer to him. “I don’t see anything.”
“There.” He pointed and spread the bushes just a bit farther apart. “See?”
“I don’t—oh…” Her hand closed around his arm. “I see it. My God, what is it?”
“That, my dear lady,” said Tully, rising back to his full height, “is a question for the ages.”
Tully led them the long way, but claimed it to be safer. They stayed mostly hidden between shops and houses or behind curtains of trees. The only time they crossed out in the open was when Tully led them up the snowy hillside that led to the old church. “It’ll be safest to travel by the church because last night’s fire would have frightened them off.” There was a hint of accusation in Tully’s tone that suggested he knew Todd and Kate, these two outsiders to his town, were somehow responsible for burning down the church. “Yeah…they’ll steer clear of this spot for a while, is my guess,” Tully repeated, his heavy boots smashing craters in the hardening snow. Even with his backpack full of liquor he moved at a quick pace; Todd and Kate had a strenuous time keeping up with him.
“The whole thing burned.” Kate was in awe. She paused to stare at the smoldering black teepee that, only the night before, had been a church. Smoke still poured up into the false sky where it spread out along the low cloud cover as if the clouds themselves were solid, tangible things. As a teenager, Todd had once tried to light a fire in his mother’s fireplace without thinking to see if the flue was open. The result sent billowing columns of black smoke straight to the ceiling where they seemed to collect like helium balloons. Looking at the way the smoke from the church collected at the base of the clouds, Todd was reminded of that day, and how his mother had never been able to get the stink of smoke out of the sofa.
There was something that resembled an enormous scythe blade jutting up from the center of the smoldering rubble, charred black and brittle looking. Todd’s eyes hung on it for a very long time.
“That funky opening in the sky is gone now,” Kate noticed, examining the sky above her head. The clouds were the color of soot and the air itself had a tallow tinge to it.
“Nope,” said Tully, pointing out over the hill at a distant ridge. The sky over the ridge was a circle of midnight in which multicolored lights strobed. “It just moved.”
Kate staggered and came to a standstill. She stared out across the valley with her mouth hanging open in disbelief. Todd thumped her back as he passed, waking her from her daze.
“We’re starting to learn something about these things,” Tully said as he walked. “They’re mostly air, just thin air. Can’t hurt you, can’t do a damn thing except maybe blow your skirt up. But at certain times it seems they’re able to concentrate and focus their energy just long enough to make those two sword-shaped arms of theirs grow solid. You can tell when they’re getting ready to do it because that thread of light floating in their middles gets brighter.”
“Yes,” Todd said, “I’ve seen it.”
“They can’t stay solid for very long. That’s where the skin-suits come in. They grab some poor soul, jab ’em in the shoulders, and slide into ’em like a diver climbin’ into a wetsuit.”
Todd was thinking of what had happened to Chris, the crazed zealot, back at the church—the way that thing had broken through the ceiling and swooped down, to crawl inside the boy’s body to attack them.
“They do it so they can feed,” Tully was saying. “And they feed off us.” He paused, looking out over the town he’d probably grown up in—a town he’d never feel the same about. There was a melancholic twinkle to his eye. “If you shoot one of the skin-suits, they come flying right out. They’re not killed but it makes ’em real weak. You’ll see—they just spout off into the sky, probably to tend to their wounds. Or their hurt feelings or whatever.” Chuckling, Tully shook his head and continued walking.
“We’ve seen it,” Kate said. “Our friend shot one down in the square. The man died but the thing flew right out of him.”
“If you can set ’em on fire just as they’re vacating a skin-suit, you’re in good shape. That’s the best way to do it.”
“I saw a little girl,” Todd said. He felt Kate look at him. “She had no face.”
Still walking, Tully turned his head so that Todd could make out the man’s sharp profile. He had a nose like a bathtub faucet. “Something about mixin’ them with little kids doesn’t take. Like the kids’ bodies can’t handle it or something. They lose their features. Most of the little kids around Woodson who changed ran off into the woods. They’re all mad now. Down by the fire hall and the sheriff’s station you can hear them rustling around in the trees. They ain’t got no mouths so they can’t make a sound, but you can hear ’em movin’ around, sure as the day is long.”
“Stop it,” Kate said. Her eyes were on her shoes now. “Please. No more about this.”
Tully shrugged, the bottles jangling in the Superman backpack, and lit a cigarette. He didn’t offer one to either of them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Todd had glimpsed the sheriff’s station from the church bell tower last night: it was a squat, square building made of brick, with very few windows, at the end of a winding, icy road. It sat between the fire hall and a run-down gas station that had probably looked just as run-down before any of this madness had come to the town of Woodson. Partially concealed by black firs, the station was hidden from the main road on three of its four sides, making it a good place to set up camp.
Tully led them to the large double doors—the kind of doors one would find on a gymnasium—that stood beneath an alcove of slatted wood. Metal trash cans stood like guards on either side of the doors; they were empty but reeked of kerosene. There was a shield fixed to the bricks, which read WOODSON SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. Tully paused just before the doors and consulted the collection of keys dangling like gypsy charms from his belt. He quickly found the one he was looking for and shoved it in the lock, turned it. Then he looked over his shoulder at Todd and Kate while one hand unzipped his camouflage coat.
“They’re gonna want your shirts off,” he told them. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Inside, the place was as dark and as quiet as the surface of the moon. A tiled hallway stretched off into the distance, the tiles alternately black and white like a checkerboard. There was a bulletin board on the wall in the entranceway, crammed with papers t
hat fluttered in the wind. Tully shut the doors and wove a heavy chain around the handles. He clamped it shut with a padlock, then pulled off his wool cap. Tight black curls sprouted from his head.
A light came on farther down the hall, from one of the offices. Tully made a whippoorwill noise and the silhouette of a head appeared out of the lighted doorway.
“That’s Brendan,” Tully grumbled, pulling his coat off. The tone of his voice suggested a distasteful attitude toward Brendan.
The man called Brendan exited the room and hustled quickly down the hallway toward them. He carried the light with him in the form of a halogen lantern. Halfway down the hall, Brendan called, “Who you got there, Tully?”
“Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck,” Tully retorted.
“Don’t fuck with me,” said Brendan. “I want to see your shoulders.”
Tully removed his bandolier and unbuttoned his shirt. The grim look he gave Todd and Kate suggested they follow his lead. Todd immediately began tugging off his shirt, while Kate moved a bit more reluctantly.
As Brendan drew closer, Todd could make out his features—pale, gaunt, vaguely studded with beard. His hair was a mop of unruly black coils and his eyes swam behind the lenses of thick glasses. He stopped a few feet in front of Todd and Kate, the lantern held up close to their faces for examination. Brendan licked his lips like a reptile.
“Let’s see,” said Brendan, shifting his gaze to Tully. Tully bared his exposed shoulders, which were loaded with pimples but otherwise normal, then climbed back into his shirt. Brendan turned back to Todd and Kate. “Both of you, too.”
Todd removed his shirt and turned around so that Brendan could examine his back.
“And the lady,” Brendan said, addressing Todd, for some strange reason. For the first time, Todd noticed a revolver poking out of Brendan’s narrow waistband.
“Better do it,” Todd told her.
Kate turned around and lifted her sweater over her head. Brendan held the lantern closer to her, illuminating the cuts and scrapes along her back. He reached out and hesitantly touched a particularly angry cut just below her right shoulder.
