by Robert Price
“Who the hell is ‘them?’”
The engineer leaned in close and put a hand on his shoulder. Talbot shrank from his touch. The gray-haired man was hardly older than himself. “You ever find out, do me a favor. Don’t tell me, okay pal?”
Talbot turned to leave, but then snapped back as something dinged his brainpan. “These things…we’re up against… What do they look like?”
The engineer shivered as he packed his pipe. “You don’t want to know.”
“But I’m supposed to believe—”
“Words don’t contain them, never mind describe them. They’re outside everything we know. You can’t be sure what you’re seeing is even real, or if your mind just threw a rod trying to perceive it. That’s what they’re like…not evil or bad in any sense like Communists or Nazis…just wrong.”
The engineer busily stuffed his briarwood pipe. He didn’t look up as Talbot leaned across the desk. “You know, we had a saying around the old typewriter pool at Warner’s. The producers drill it into you before they let you pitch.”
“What’s that?” Patting himself down for matches, the engineer looked up into a weird silver-green glow he thought was a proffered lighter.
“Spare me the labor pains,” Talbot said. “Just show me the baby.”
Cooley leaned against the DeSoto and blew smoke rings at the moon. Talbot came out of the bunker and wandered over like a sleepwalker on a dance floor. His cheek was taped up, but blood soaked through the gauze. Sleepily, he slouched against the grill and covered his face. His shoulders shook, but no sound escaped the trap of his hands.
“Look,” Cooley said, “I didn’t pick you out, see? I was just following orders. But you people…you live up in the clouds feasting on nectar and ambrosia, but your whole kingdom is bullshit. Look how quick your life fell apart as soon as we dragged it out into the light. That’s what’ll happen to all of you, if you don’t open your eyes and recognize what we’re up against.”
Talbot moaned and pounded the hood of the car, then looked up and lurched closer to Cooley. “No hard feelings, Cooley. I just—I just wanted you to know…”
He leaned in close enough to kiss. Cooley looked at the screenwriter’s hands, hanging slack at his sides. He grinned, but his hand went into his raincoat.
Talbot’s eyebrows waggled and he smiled, rueful like he’d just forgotten the punch line to a joke. Then he clenched his teeth and spit in Cooley’s face as he twisted in some kind of spasm. Cooley reflexively threw out his arms to catch him, but something like a radium-glowing winged worm seemed to appear out of nowhere and fly in his face.
He ducked and covered his head, but it was gone. A cold, leaden weight like tumbling shrapnel in the center of his skull crushed him to the ground. Talbot leaned over him. Blood flowed freely from both his nostrils, but he was smiling.
A big stupid grin, just like Talbot’s. “The thing in my head, it’s been sleeping in there ever since I stayed with my friends in the Severn Valley Circle. That was where I got them…my ‘foreign ideas.’ Funny thing, before they found me, I couldn’t write a decent sentence. It is like an idea, an idea is like a sickness, the way it spreads, makes you sick at first, and what causes sickness? Tiny bugs… They think of themselves as insects, the Shans do… ‘Bug’ doesn’t begin to describe what they really are, because on an intellectual scale, we’re the real insects.”
Circling Cooley, he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.
“We all became hosts, but they just slept inside us. For years, we’ve carried them around. Some of us you got on your lists, but most of us are still out there.”
He blew smoke in Cooley’s eyes.
“They feed on electromagnetic radiation, see? The subtle electrochemical energy of the human brain is like a drug to them. With time, they learn to run the show, to feed ideas and emotions like pulling puppet strings, or just to take over and drive the body like a car, to force more thrills to run up a bigger charge. But they were tired…jaded… Their idea of pleasure used up a lot of people, so they were only looking to hide.”
Spinning and bending over, he ground his cigarette out on Cooley’s neck. Cooley made no move to stop him. A sound escaped his trembling, riveted lips—something like a whinnying laugh that was also a wordless prayer.
“Oh, what kind of scenarist am I, anyway? I forgot the best part. See, they went to sleep inside us after our group had a little party, where the un-American principle of free love was studied at length. It inspired them, and for the first time in centuries, they engaged in the physical act, themselves. Their courtship rites are most…complicated, and many human hosts were used up in the process. They went to sleep to wait for their eggs to hatch. But that noise…that EBS stress test? You woke it up.”
Cooley brought out his gun, but his hand shook so badly that he found himself staring down his own barrel. “Make it…please…make it stop.”
“I wish I could, really,” Talbot grinned, “but you see…I’m following orders, too.”
Lila Corliss appeared behind him. Her neck was blotchy with grievous bruises from the tie still wound carelessly round her neck. She smiled like a stroke patient, watching with wonder and dread as her hand reached out to caress Talbot’s wounded cheek, then to drive her nails into it until he hissed.
The alien thing behind his eyes squirmed and barely restrained itself from retaliating. “Something screwy about its atomic structure allows them to pass through solid matter, but as you can obviously testify, they are anything but imaginary.”
Cooley moved his mouth, but no words came out. No shrill commands, no screams for help. An MP passed along the inner perimeter fence with a German shepherd. Talbot looked and smiled even as a sudden migraine sent him into convulsions. “It hurts so much less if you…don’t fight it. Just…tell them what they want to know…”
Turning and struggling out of the soft gray matter of Talbot’s brain, an insect the size of a game hen emerged, iridescent exoskeleton wriggling with feathery tentacles, metallic black wings thrashing like a wounded vampire bat. Three beaked mouths keened a tripartite chorus like steel on dry ice. Its teeming, intangible offspring writhed and clutched and slithered in and out of Talbot’s twitching face.
Out of a monstrous cavity in its bloated, glowing abdomen that was equal parts birth canal and oozing wound came a swarm of winged larvae. The night swallowed them up just as Cooley found himself able to holster his gun and climb up off the ground.
The sentry fell to his knees and dropped his rifle. His dog barked and leapt at him, trying to bite his face. The sentry was laughing as he drove his bayonet into the dog’s throat.
“What happens now?” Cooley asked. His legs still didn’t know how to hold him up. He slumped against Corliss, who bit clean through the cartilage in his ear.
“Yours are both in the larval stage,” Talbot said, “but they know their role. And yours. I don’t think they’re going to need to change anything here, really…at first.”
“They can’t make us do this,” Cooley growled.
“You’ll get used to it,” Talbot said. “Now, I have in my head a list of names…”
FALLOUT
BY SAM STONE
Chris pulled the ribbon from the windshield of his brand new 1953 Chrysler New Yorker. The car was polished shiny red with a canvas soft-top that dropped back into the boot space. A matching leather protector clipped over the back of the vehicle and the dash was real mahogany. It shone with the newness of recently varnished wood and Chris could smell the soothing aroma of the leather as he opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“What do you think?” asked his Dad.
“I can’t believe it. Really? This is for me?”
“Sure, son. Happy birthday it’s not every day that my first born turns sixteen. Why don’t you take it for a spin?”
The engine was excitingly loud as it burst into life. Chris released the brake and pulled out of the driveway, taking the car carefully out
onto the street. Chris loved the car. It cruised smoothly, almost as though it was driving itself. He knew he would be the talk of the high school and—even better—he was now certain to get the girl of his dreams.
Ever since his father had started a new job at the base, out in the Nevada desert, they had seemed to have money to burn. In recent months his mother had completely redecorated the whole house, changed the furniture, and she was also driving a new car. Chris wanted for nothing and now he had friends and a social life that he had never believed possible.
Sometimes it seemed as though overnight he had gone from spotty geek to Mr. Popular: all because they had money. And Chris was generous with it too. Buying cokes at the local diner, handing out dimes for the jukebox, and even on occasion passing out cans of beer he had taken from his father’s stash in the ice-box in the garage. No one questioned what he did, least of all his folks. They were all glad that the dark days had ended.
After touring his neighborhood, Chris drove the car back into the drive, locked the door and headed to the house. There, his father was talking about his favorite subject. He was obsessed with the Russians and the potential threat they posed. Chris supposed it was because he worked for the government.
“Almost a decade since the War,” Dad said, “and the country is thriving again. But I wouldn’t trust those Reds. That’s why my work is so important.”
“What do you do at the base, Dad?” Chris asked.
“That’s classified, son. But maybe one day you’ll find out. Maybe one day you’ll join the team.”
Chris’s mother frowned, but he barely noticed it as he walked past her to switch on the new television set. He loved watching the evening programmes, that and the fact that they were the only people in their street to actually own a TV. He settled down on the couch as the news started.
Mom and Dad went out on the veranda, sat down on the wicker two-seater and looked out at the new car as it stood, gleaming in the drive-way.
“Well, at least he’s happy,” said Mom.
“Gotta keep your kids happy,” said Dad.
It was a warm evening and Mom sipped homemade lemonade while Dad chugged a cold beer. After a while Chris came outside and admired his car too. The sight of it brought him joy, but also an odd feeling: a kind of worry that burrowed deep into his stomach.
“Dad?”
“Yes, son?”
“You know all this talk about another war? That the ‘A’ bomb could be dropped on us at any time? Do you think that will really happen?”
Dad was quiet for a time, then he looked up at Chris over his beer can. “I don’t really think so. But just in case, that’s why we have the shelter.”
Chris cast a glance over his shoulder at the house. From the front he couldn’t see the lead-lined shutters that covered the entrance down into a blast shelter, but his mind’s eye visualized it. He imagined the shutters opening as the family raced across the lawn. He saw them all cramming inside: Mom, Dad and his sister Myra. The weeks, months, or even years might have to pass before it was safe to emerge because Dad said that radiation was something to fear even after the devastation of an explosion. Chris didn’t know what worried him more, the concept of a nuclear explosion or the thought of passing through the fallout shelter doors and heading down into the deep, dark bowels of the earth.
“I’m going to the drive-in tomorrow,” Chris told them, trying to take his mind off his morbid thoughts. “I’m taking a date. I’ll need some money.”
Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of notes. He peeled off five twenties and held them out.
A hundred bucks, Chris thought. That was enough for several dates.
“You have to treat the ladies right,” said Dad.
Mum said nothing. She sipped her lemonade. Chris noted that she never drank beer but sometimes, when they had a dinner party, she would like to drink fancy wine that made her giggle like a teenager. At those times he would go to his room and play his 45’s on his Victrola because he didn’t like to see her like that.
“Thanks, Dad,” he said as he took the money, but his heart hurt a little: it almost felt like he was losing a piece of his soul. He stuffed it quickly into his trouser pocket and tried to ignore the burn that seeped through the fabric into his leg. He couldn’t explain the oddness of the moment or the feeling of anxiety that accompanied every gift. It was as if he felt that he would have to pay some awful price for their current happiness.
“Who’s the lucky girl?” asked Myra.
Chris turned around to see his sister lurking in the doorway. She barely surfaced from her room these days. She was younger than him by a year, but Chris always felt as though Myra knew more about the world than he did. He didn’t know why.
“Elizabeth Penrose,” Chris said.
“Fancy,” said Myra.
“Yeah. She is.”
“I’m so proud. My boy courting a Penrose,” said Mom. “This is worth celebrating, don’t you think, Charles?”
Dad nodded. “Sure, Lucy. Whatever you want.”
“We’ll have a dinner party. Maybe we can invite the Penroses…”
Chris went back inside the house and left them planning his future. He didn’t point out to them that this was only one date. Nothing more might come of it. Although he did like Elizabeth. A lot. And he was hoping that the new car would impress her tomorrow.
“Chris, don’t you find it odd sometimes?” asked Myra following him into the kitchen.
“Find what odd?”
“How good things have become. Why I remember only last year Dad could barely pay the bills and now suddenly…”
Chris felt that knot in his stomach again. A sick, dark fear scurried around the recesses of his subconscious. The answer to a riddle that he just couldn’t find but knew all the same, hid somewhere there. He tried to shake the feeling away. He opened the fridge and took out a beer, snapping open the top.
“You know that’s illegal, right?” said Myra.
Chris couldn’t even bring himself to tell her to shut up. He was rapidly learning he could do as he pleased. No one stopped him. In fact his father encouraged him by indulging his every wish. His new car was proof of that. But still.
The thought of the car made his heart lurch and not in a good way. It was the sinking feeling of the drowning man who is waiting for the final moment to take away the screaming pain in his lungs. It was the inconsolable cry of a frightened infant in the night. It was the dread of death that faces the dying.
Chris shook his head, sipped the beer and the fear receded but Myra didn’t leave him.
“I just feel…” she said.
“What?”
“Scared somehow,” Myra shrugged. “I guess you think I’m crazy.”
Chris said nothing but his eyes fell on the kitchen window. The yard was lit up all night with security lights and they illuminated the shelter. Chris shuddered.
Myra moved next to him and looked out. “You feel it too. I know you do.”
“We have everything to be grateful for, and nothing to fear,” Chris said, but he didn’t believe his own words.
Myra didn’t answer and the two of them stood there looking out the window until the lights suddenly went off in the yard. Their trance broke. Dad was standing at the door, his hand on the outdoor light switch.
“Myra, don’t you think you ought to go to bed?” Dad said. “School tomorrow.”
Myra slunk away, but not before she cast another glance at the window. It was too dark to see the shelter but somehow Chris knew she felt its presence there. Just as he did.
Chris and Myra had never seen inside the shelter. All they knew was that one day, soon after Dad started his new job, a team of workmen arrived and began to dig up the ground at the back of the yard.
“It’s a fallout shelter,” Dad had explained. “When this is done we’ll have enough space and supplies down there to last for months if the Reds jump the gun and send out the ‘A’ Bomb.”
Chr
is had been excited at first; he saw the shelter as a new place where he could hang out. Maybe he would be able to use it as a den when his friends came over. But as the structure began to take shape, he started to feel odd.
One time he went out into the garden as the workmen laid the foundations. A deep hole had been dug into the ground at least thirty feet down, and Chris could see a pattern that resembled a spider or octopus taking shape. Most of the yard was exposed, but he had heard his father say that once the shelter was built the lawn would be laid again on top of it.
“Why’s it like that?” he had asked one of the men.
The men all turned their heads in unison and stared at him. They had blank, empty, expressions on their faces.
“Come away from there, Chris,” his mother called from the back door. “You shouldn’t bother the men while they are working.”
Chris stayed long enough to see the men return to work. He never heard them chatter or laugh and joke. He thought they were the oddest construction workers he had ever seen. Of course they were all probably military and sworn not to talk to anyone during the work. After all the fallout shelter had to be some perk of Dad’s job, didn’t it?
Sometimes in his dreams he found himself in the garden looking down into the foundations. He would be standing swaying at the edge, a terrible vertigo sweeping up like an invisible claw that wanted to pull him down into the dust. He would try to back away but his ankles felt as though they were held by some imperceptible force. He felt that he had lead feet and knew somehow that this always happened in dreams when you tried to escape something horrible, or run from some imagined terror. So he rarely fought the feeling. All he could do was gaze down into the pit.
