"What the hell?" Bill muttered as he followed its progress across the pane.
He'd never seen or heard of anything like this creature. He felt his hackles rise. This thing was alien, like something out of a Geiger painting.
It reached the end of the picture pane and slid over the frame toward one of the double-hung windows that flanked it. Bill realized with a start that the side window was open. He was reaching out to close it when the creature lunged toward him. Bill snatched his hand away and watched as it buzzed furiously against the screen, as if trying to squeeze itself through the mesh. A foul, rotten odor from the thing backed him up a step. He slammed down the inner sash and watched through the glass. The creature hung on another minute or so, then dropped off, swooping away into the night, leaving a wet spot on the screen that steamed slightly in the cooling air.
Shaken, Bill shut the other double hung and turned down the lights. He pulled a chair up next to Nick's bed and readied himself for a long, uncomfortable night. He'd decided to take Nick's advice and stay. At least until sunrise.
WINS-AM
—now official that the sun set early for the third day in a row. It dropped below the western horizon at 7:11 p.m., robbing us of nearly two hours of daylight. The scientific community is becoming increasingly alarmed about the environmental effects of the shortened days. In a statement…
Sutton Square
"Sure," Gia said as she kissed him at the door to her townhouse. "Eat and run."
Jack returned the kiss and ran his fingertips through her short blonde hair.
"I've got an appointment at Julio's."
Her clear blue eyes flashed. "Another one of your customers?"
"Yeah. Another." She opened her mouth to speak but he pressed a finger across her full lips. "Don't start. Please."
In the past few years Gia seemed to have learned to accept the life he lived as Repairman Jack, but she still didn't like it, and she tended to let him know at every opportunity.
She kissed his finger and pulled it away.
"I wasn't going to say anything about that. I was just going to say that I wish you could stay."
"I do too. I wish we could move in together and—"
She smiled and pressed her finger against his lips.
"Don't you start."
Jack slipped his arms around her waist and pressed her slim body against him. Two people who loved each other should be able to live together. But Gia was hanging tough on her insistence that Jack find himself another line of work before she and Vicky moved in with him.
Vicky. The other bright spot in his life. The skinny little nine-year old who'd wormed her way into his heart years ago and refused to leave.
He ran his hands over Gia's back and noticed the muscles were tight. He knew she was a high-strung sort, but tonight she seemed unusually tense.
"Something wrong?"
"I don't know. I've feel jumpy. Like something's going to happen."
"Something already has. You saw the news: the sun set another couple of minutes early and a big chunk of Central Park fell all the way to hell."
"That's not it. Something in the air. Don't you feel it?"
Jack did feel it. A pervasive imminence in the still darkness at his back. The very air seemed heavy, pregnant with menace.
"It's probably all these strange things that've been happening."
"Maybe. But I don't want to be alone with Vicky tonight. Especially here. Can you come back later?"
Jack knew that the Sutton Square townhouse held both fond and frightening memories for Gia and Vicky. He'd convinced her to move in for economic reasons and because it seemed plain foolish to let such a beautiful home sit empty for all the years the Westphalen estate would be tied up in probate.
"Sure. Be glad to. I shouldn't be too—"
"Jack-Jack-Jack!"
Over Gia's shoulder Jack could see Vicky running down the hall, a piece of paper in her hand. She had her mother's blue eyes and her late father's brown hair, tied back in a long ponytail that flicked back and forth as she ran. Bony limbs and a dazzling smile that could pull Jack from his blackest moods.
"What is it,Vicks?"
"I drew you a picture."
Vicky had inherited her mother's artistic abilities and was heavily into drawing. Jack took the proffered sheet of paper and stared at it. A swarm of tentacled things filled the air over the Manhattan skyline. It was…disturbing.
"It's great, Vicks," Jack said, smiling through his discomfiture. "Is this from War of the Worlds!"
"No. It's raining octopuses!"
"Yeah…I guess it is. What made you think of that?"
"I don't know," she said, wrinkling her brow. "It just came to me."
"Well, thanks, Vicks," Jack said, rolling it up into a tube. "I'll add it to my Victoria Westphalen collection."
She beamed and flashed him that smile. "Because it's going to be worth a lot when I'm famous, right?"
"You got it kid. You're going to help me retire."
Jack gave her a kiss and a hug, then another quick kiss for Gia.
"I'll be back later."
Gia gave his hand a squeeze of thanks, then he was out on the street, walking west.
As he headed up 58th, Mr. Veilleur's final words of the afternoon echoed in his head.
Do not go out after dark, especially near that hole.
Why the hell not? The warning was like a waving red flag. And since he'd have to pass the Park on his way to Julio's…
The area around the Sheep Meadow looked deserted compared to this afternoon. The party was over.
Maybe it was the smell.
Jack caught his first whiff of it as he passed the Plaza. Something rotten, putrid. He wasn't the only one. The hotel guests emerging from their cabs and limos, or strolling down the steps from the entrances, wrinkled their noses as it struck them. He'd thought maybe a nearby sewer had backed up, but the odor had grown stronger as he entered the Park.
And here in the Sheep Meadow it was thick.
Banks of floodlights lit the hole and the surrounding area like home plate at Yankee Stadium. As he watched he thought he saw something like a pigeon fly up from the hole, darting through the light and into the darkness beyond. But it moved awfully fast for a pigeon.
Jack spotted a middle-aged woman crossing the grassy buffer zone between officialdom and the hoi poloi; he moved laterally to intercept her.
"Is that stink coming from the hole?" he said as she ducked under the barricade. The answer was obvious but it was a good opener.
She wore a plastic badge that flopped around as she walked. Her first name looked like Margaret; he couldn't make out her last but he caught the words "Health" and "Department" above it. Her tan slacks and blue blazer had a distinctly masculine cut.
"It's not coming from me."
Ooh, a friendly one.
"I hope not. Smells like something crawled into my nose and died."
She smiled. "That pretty well captures it."
"Seriously," Jack said, matching her stride as she headed toward the street. "When did it start? There was a downdraft into the hole last night."
She glanced sideways at him. "How'd you know about that?"
"I was here when it opened."
"We already have plenty of witnesses. If you want to make a statement—"
"I'm just curious about the stink."
"Oh. Well, the downdraft became an updraft shortly after sunset. We started noticing the odor about an hour later. It's almost unbearable at the edge."
"I thought I saw something fly out of there a few moments ago."
Margaret nodded. "There's been a few. We're toying with the idea of trying to net one, but we've got other concerns at the moment. We think they might be birds that flew in during the day. Maybe the smell is driving them out. But don't worry. The smell's not toxic."
"That's hard to believe."
"Believe it. We've checked it out eight ways from—"
Screams and sho
uts rose from behind them. They both turned. Jack saw a flock of bird-like things swarming in the air over the hole. No…not just swarming—swooping and diving at the people working along the perimeter.
"Oh, my God!" Margaret said and started running back toward the hole.
Jack kept pace. He wanted to get a closer look—but not too close. Those birds appeared to be going crazy, like something out of the Hitchcock movie.
Only they weren't birds. Jack realized that when they got to within fifty yards of the hole.
"Whoa!" he said, grabbing Margaret's arm. "I don't like the looks of this."
She pulled away.
"My reports! All my test data! They'll be ruined!"
Jack slowed his pace and hung back as she ran off toward one of the control tents. He stood in the shadows and tried to identify those things filling the air…more like insects than birds. They must have come out of the hole. He sure as hell hadn't seen anything like them around New York. Two kinds darting around on dragonfly wings, some with big, pendulous translucent sacks like water balloons filled with clear jello, looking too heavy and ungainly for flight, others that were mostly mouth, little more than giant, fanged jaws attached to lobster-sized, wasp-waisted bodies. Both had strips of neon-like dots along their flanks. They looked like those weird deep-sea fish that show up every so often in National Geographic, the ones from miles down where the sun never shines. Only these were right here in Central Park. And they were flying.
Screams of pain and terror drew his attention from the air to ground level. Suddenly everything was red in the false daylight of the lamps. Jack dropped to a frozen crouch when he saw what was happening along the periphery of the hole. The things weren't just buzzing the people stationed there, they were on the attack. People were scattering in all directions, swatting at the air like picnickers who'd disturbed a hornets' nest. But hornets would have been a blessing. The jawed things were like air-borne piranhas, swooping in, sinking their teeth into an arm, a leg, a neck, an abdomen, ripping a mouthful of flesh free, and then darting away. Blood spurted in all directions from a hundred wounds.
Amid the melee Jack saw a bald headed man go down kicking and screaming under a dozen jaw-things; a second dozen joined the first, and then more until they covered him like ants on a piece of candy. Instinctively, Jack stepped forward to help him, then stepped back. There was nothing he could do. He watched helplessly as the man's screaming and kicking stopped, but the feeding went on.
Jack turned, ready to head for the street, when he noticed a bloated, distorted, vaguely human shape stumbling through the shadows in his direction. It gave off hoarse, high-pitched, muffled noises as it approached, its arms outstretched, reaching for him. At first Jack thought it was another sort of monstrosity from the hole, but as it drew nearer he realized there was something familiar about the swatches of tan fabric visible on its legs.
The horror slammed into Jack like a truck. Margaret—from the Health Department. But what—?
The other things from the hole, the ones with the jello sacks—she was covered with them. Wings humming, sacks pulsating, a good thirty or forty of the creatures clung to every part of her body. Jack leapt to her side and began tearing at the things, grabbing them by their wings and ripping them off, starting with the pair that clung to her face. Her scream of agony tore through the night and Jack stared in horror at the bloody ruin of her face. There wasn't much left of it. It looked melted, or corroded by acid. Her cheeks were eaten away, so deeply on the right that Jack spotted the exposed white of a tooth poking through.
He stepped back and looked at the two creatures squirming and writhing in his grasp, raking at his hands with their tiny claws. Their sacks were no longer clear. They were red—with Margaret's blood. He hurled them to the ground and stomped on them, rupturing their sacks. Crimson mucous exploded, smoking where it splattered his pants and sneakers, eating through the fabric and bubbling the rubber. Jack danced away from the mess and turned back to Margaret.
She was gone. He looked around. She couldn't have got far. Then he saw her, a still form face-down on the grass. He crouched beside her. As he reached toward her, one of the sack things lifted off her back, leaving a bloody patch of exposed ribs, denuded of flesh and muscle, and fluttered toward Jack. He tried to bat it away but it latched onto his forearm like a lump of epoxy glue. And the pain! Scalding—like boiling acid poured on his skin. It took Jack by surprise and he shouted with the sudden agony. He ripped it off his arm and as it came free he felt a layer of his skin peel away.
The pain nearly drove him to his knees, but he straightened up when he saw one of the jawed creatures winging toward him. He swung the sack thing at it, right into its jagged-toothed maw. The pair left a trail of steaming red as they went down in a tangle and rolled along the grass.
Jack glanced back at the perimeter of the hole. Nothing moving there but flocks of jaws and sacks swarming in the air. Many of the sacks were blood red. As he watched, a new drove rose from the hole and circled for a moment, then massed into a rough V-formation and took off toward the east side like a flying arrowhead.
East! Gia and Vicky were on the East Side.
As the remaining creatures spread out, some heading Jack's way, he took one last look at Margaret. The sack things were still massed on her. She looked deflated, like a scarecrow with the stuffing pulled out.
Jack headed for the trees, removing his shirt and wrapping it around the raw patch on his left forearm. He spotted the lights of the Tavern-on-the-Green and veered in that direction. When he reached the driveway, he saw a cab pulling away from the entrance. He flagged it down and hopped in the back.
"Sutton Square—quick! And roll up your windows!"
The driver turned in his seat and stared at Jack's arm. He was a thin black with dreads and a thick island accent.
"What hoppen to you arm, mon? If you in trouble—"
Jack rolled up the window on his right and began to work furiously on the one to his left.
"Roll up your goddam windows!"
"Look, mon. You don't come into my cab and tell me—Hey!"
Jack had leaned over the front seat and was rolling up the window on the passenger side.
"Are you crazy, mon?"
Just then one of the jaw-things caromed off the taxi's hood and slammed against the windshield. It's crystalline teeth worked furiously against the glass, scoring it in a dozen places at a time. A windshield wiper got caught in its maw and was ripped off its base.
It took the driver only a second or two to roll up his window.
"In the name of God, what is that!
"I don't know," Jack said, slumping against the back seat and allowing himself to relax for a few seconds. "They came out of the hole—they're still coming out of the hole. The Park's loaded with them."
The jaw-thing continued its ferocious, mindless chewing at the windshield, trying to get through it. The driver stared at it in mute shock.
Jack slapped the back of the front seat.
"Come on! Let's get out of here. It'll only get worse. Sutton Square."
"Yes…yes, of course."
He threw the cab into gear and roared toward Central Park West. The jaw-thing's wings fluttered in the sudden rush of air. It slid off the hood but became air-borne, pacing the cab for about fifty yards, butting against the side windows a few times before it gave up.
"Persistent bugger," Jack said as it finally flew off.
"But what was that, mon? It looked like a creature from hell!"
"It just might be. Who knows how far down that hole in the Sheep Meadow goes? Maybe it popped through the roof of hell."
The driver glanced over his shoulder, real fear in his eyes.
"Don't say that, mon. Don't joke about something like that."
"Who's joking?"
They raced down to Columbus Circle, then east on Central Park South. The things from the hole were there ahead of them. People running, screaming, bleeding, dying, cabs careening out of co
ntrol. Jack's taxi ran the gauntlet, dodging people and vehicles, screeching to a halt as a driverless Central Park hansom cab bolted in front of them, its horse galloping madly, eyes bulging in pain and terror, a sack-thing attached to its neck. And then they were into the calm and relative darkness of 58th Street.
The driver started sobbing.
"It's the end of the world, mon! Oh, I know it is! God's finally had enough. He's going to punish us all!"
"Easy, man," Jack said. "We're safe for the moment."
"Yes! But only for the moment! Judgment Day is here!"
He stopped at a red light and fumbled with something on the seat next to him. When his hand reappeared it held a joint the size of a burrito. He struck a wooden match and puffed furiously. As the cab filled with pungent smoke, he handed the joint back to Jack.
"Here. Partake."
Jack waved him off. "No thanks. Gave that up in high school."
"It's a sacrament, mon. Partake."
The last thing Jack needed now was to get mellow. He wanted every reflex at the ready. And he wanted to beat those things to Gia's place.
"The light's green. Let's go."
Two minutes later he was flipping the driver a ten and leaping to the front door of the townhouse. He rang the bell and slammed the brass knocker. Gia pulled the door open.
"Jack! What—?"
"No time!" He brushed by her. "Get the windows! Close and lock them, all of them! Vicky! Help us out!"
A lot of running, a lot of slamming, and all three floors were sealed up tight. Jack checked and rechecked each window personally. Then he gathered Gia and Vicky together in the library.
"Jack!" Gia said, clutching a very frightened Vicky against her. "You've got to explain this!"
He did. He told them all that had happened since he'd left here a short while ago, editing out the more horrific details for Vicky's sake.
"What does it mean, Jack?" Gia said, pulling Vicky even closer.
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