J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection

by J. M. Dillard

  faces were covered with weeping sores, just like the guy at the pump, but it couldn't be that they all had the same type of cancer progressed to the same stage; Doc had had enough experience with the disease to realize it wasn't contagious. No, there was something else wrong with them, something even more horrible than the big C. Nervously, Doc took a big step backward.

  "You folks got some type of commutable disease or somethin'?"

  No answer. Maybe they couldn't talk, Doc thought frantically, because their tongues had rotted off in there. Silently, the two began to move toward him while the third continued to fill the big rig's tanks. The vile stench grew stronger; there was an evil purpose-fulness in the movements of the two that made him tremble. In a brilliant, horrifying flash, Doc realized they were corpses . . . walking corpses, much as Lucy had been in those awful final days.

  "No," he cried feebly, raising his hands in a pitiful attempt to ward off death. "Not like this." True, he took no joy in living anymore, but he'd planned on going quietly—dying in his sleep in his own bed, or maybe slumping over one day at the station—and the thought of joining these three, of becoming as they were, here, now, terrified him.

  They kept coming, and he kept shrinking away, until at last he stepped back against something firm and moist and inhumanly strong.

  Orel stirred inside the big LTD. He was powerfully thirsty, and the drunk was beginning to wear off a bit,

  so that he remembered where he was. He grabbed onto the top of the backseat—really was nice leather, some far away part of his brain realized; there was no better, kinder person in the world than ole Doc Waller—and pulled himself up. Eyes still closed, he slowly peeled his cottony tongue away from the inside of his cheek—damn, he was dry; but no point in asking for water, which would just sober him up again—and croaked: "Hey, Doc, what say we head over to Jed's for some moonshine?"

  Doc had actually gone with him once, not long after Lucy died, and they'd both gotten stinky drunk. Orel's memory wasn't too good these days, but he never forgot a detail when it came to drinking.

  It didn't come out loud enough for anyone to hear, so Orel cleared his throat and tried louder.

  "Doc?"

  He opened his eyes, forced them to focus, and peered out the back windshield. What he saw sobered him up fast. Orel blinked and shook his head to clear it, but the horrible scene remained.

  He sucked back a sob and sank soundlessly down, out of sight.

  Griff Kelsey slipped his shoes off and sat down in the black leather La-Z-Boy recliner—the one Elaine had bought him for his fiftieth birthday two years ago—in front of the television set. From the TV tray beside him Griff removed the small plastic square marked "physician's sample" and pushed two Empirin number four through the foil, put them on his tongue, tilted his head back, and washed them

  down with a sip from the large old-fashioned glass filled three-quarters of the way with Jack Daniel's.

  Years of alcoholism had left their mark in the broken veins on his nose and cheeks, in the extra weight. He still took two number fours every evening around this time, even though the migraines he started taking them for had stopped nine months before when Elaine left him for that lawyer in Palm Springs.

  Now he took them because the money was gone and there was some young bastard over in Cadiz who'd set up what they called a "family practice" nowadays and was stealing all his patients. He also took them because Elaine had taken the Lincoln Towne Car and the poodle (good riddance, actually) and the entire goddamn savings account. She'd left him only the Grand Wagoneer (though he never used it for house calls anymore) and the house.

  It was a nice house, the ritziest one in Brewster, a sprawling Spanish villa with an authentic red tile roof and two dying palm trees out front. It was near the center of town, and he kept his shingle prominently displayed.

  Griffith W. Kjelsey, M.D. General Practitioner

  The arrow pointed around to the side, where the office entrance was.

  Used to be Griff was the only doctor for miles around, unless you wanted to drive the forty-five

  minutes or so to Barstow or Hinkley. When he was growing up in Brewster, that's exactly what people had to do if they needed to see the doctor. Griff vowed to change all that. He went off to Arizona State, then to medical school—which he barely made it through, graduating dead last in his class—and came right back to Brewster the minute he finished his residency at a Las Vegas hospital. After all, he figured the only doctor for thirty miles around was bound to make potfuls of money. Which was exactly what he did until Elaine took him to the cleaners and that new doctor in Cadiz stole all his patients.

  On bad days, when there were no patients or only one or two, he took a Valium along with the Empirins. But today actually hadn't gone too badly. Nine patients, and all but one paid cash. Griff celebrated by putting his favorite Swanson's in the oven: turkey with dressing and apple crunch for dessert, though he wished there were some way to keep the cranberries from getting so hot they burned his tongue.

  Waiting for the kitchen timer to go off, he settled back in the recliner and pulled the lever so the footrest came out, then picked up the remote control on the padded armrest and flicked the TV on to the cable news channel. He sipped the Jack and listened with vague interest. An item from Atlanta: blood mysteriously seeping up through the floorboards in an elderly widow's home. Police mystified . . . Three more Palestinians killed on the West Bank. Slow news day.

  They were talking about the bond market rally when he heard the noise. Not the kind where you have to ask yourself if you really heard something or not, but a boom, the sound of someone breaking the door down, and it had come from the other side of the house, where the office was.

  Griff pushed the footrest back and struggled to his feet, spilling Jack down the front of his white professional smock. He set the glass down on the tray. His heart was thumping so wildly in his chest that he couldn't catch his breath. Someone had broken into the office.

  The fear was nauseating in its intensity. It was a possibility that had always worried him: a thief or an addict searching for drugs. A few years back he'd talked to Elaine about getting a fancy security system for the house, especially the office. She'd scoffed at him. There aren't any junkies in Brewster-—present company excepted.

  No, he'd answered, but there were plenty of them traveling between L.A. and Vegas.

  And they're going to bother to take the exit and come all the way out here, to the middle of goddamn nowhere to look for excitement? Dream on . . .

  She talked him out of it, of course. The money he would have spent on the expensive system now belonged to her and her precious attorney. It was just one more reason to hate her.

  Griff ran softly back to the bedroom and pulled the .44 Magnum out from under an unfolded pile of underwear in his top dresser drawer. He always kept it loaded; now he took the safety off and held it close to him as he picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  Someone came on the line, and he gave his name, address, and said, "A burglar's just broken into the

  house. Get the sheriff out here fast. . ." But the sheriff could be anywhere in San Bernadino County right now, and although the 911 operator promised twenty minutes, Griff knew better. He kept the Magnum held high as he walked, perspiring, down the dim hallway. Maybe it'd be best to just stay put until Sheriff Deak got there, just let 'em take whatever they wanted. After all, he was fully insured . . . but then, there were thousands of dollars' worth of samples in the supply cabinet in his office. And all his Empirin and Valium. He'd be damned before he'd let them wipe him out.

  The door to the office wing was closed, but Griff thought he could hear someone two rooms down, in the waiting room. He turned the knob noiselessly and slipped inside the darkened back room he used as his private office. The supply closet was just off this room; Griff felt a twinge of relief. So far, the samples were safe.

  Beyond the office lay a short corridor that led either directly across to the exami
nation room, or out to the tiny foyer he used as a waiting room.

  Footsteps; a thump. Sounds of someone— something. Sounds not necessarily produced by a human body. Maybe it was some sort of animal.

  But what the hell kind of desert animal was capable of breaking down the door? Griff thrust the Magnum forward at arm's length, held his breath, and tiptoed out to the corridor. Beyond, in the waiting room, something moved in the shadows. He crept to the room's entrance and cried in a voice that cracked and shook: "I've got a gun, dammit! Get the hell out of there or I'll start shooting!"

  Silence. It was getting dark outside, but there was still barely enough light for Griff to make out a human form standing between himself and the wide-open door. And then a voice—-low, harsh, a man's, and yet somehow inhuman.

  "We're ill. We need . . . help." The words were articulated clumsily, as if the man's mouth were filled with pebbles, or part of his tongue were missing. Something the size of a mastiff, black, thick-bodied, skittered behind the intruder, off to one side. An attack dog, Griff thought, but he didn't hear any panting or growling.

  "Need help, my ass," he said. The fact that the man sounded ill and weak gave him a small amount of courage. "You need help, use the goddamn doorbell." He fumbled with his free hand against the wall and found the switch. "I'm going to turn on the light. Make one move and you're dead."

  He snapped it on. He had been a doctor for twenty-five years, could drain an abcess or stitch up a cut between bites of a sandwich without losing his appetite, but the sight of the man made him cry out, a voiceless gasp.

  The skin on his face had degenerated into one huge open weeping sore. Griff had seen enough photographs of victims of radiation sickness in Hiroshima to know what was wrong with the man, and his first thought was Too far gone. He's been exposed to a lethal amount. . . The second thought was that there'd been some sort of terrible catastrophe at a nearby nuclear power plant—the man wore a white technician's jump suit, which was stained with vomit and diarrhea. Griffs third thought was that anyone at this stage of radiation sickness should have been far too weak to force the door open.

  "We need your help," the man repeated in the same gravelly voice. His eyes sparkled with fever.

  "All right, buddy." Griff gestured at him with the Magnum. "We'll talk about that in a minute. Where'd the dog go?"

  The man stared uncomprehendingly at him and took a step forward. Griff compensated by moving back. The guy was probably hot with radioactivity himself.

  "C'mon," he said impatiently. "Where's the dog— or whatever it was you brought with you?"

  The man took another step toward Griff.

  Griff took aim again, tightened his linger on the trigger. "I mean it." His pitch rose. "Stop or I'll shoot."

  Another step.

  He backed away and was about to pull the trigger when something whiplike whistled through the air and fastened itself around his neck once, twice, and squeezed like a boa constrictor. Griff gasped as the air was forced out of him. The Magnum went off, sending a bullet into the thick pile carpeting.

  There was a hot searing pain that covered his face, his torso, as if he were drowning in acid—that made Griff scream. It was followed by the sensation of something moving inside him, pressing against his internal organs, moving up inside his head. Pressure,

  horrible mounting pressure inside his skull, increasing beyond his ability to bear it, until he was sure his brain, his skull, would explode. He felt his mind dimming, like a flame dying for lack of oxygen, smothered by a flood of strange thoughts not his own.

  "We need you," the man said again.

  ELEVEN

  The scars of destruction in the quiet old neighborhood were gone now, buried under tract housing, but Harrison's mind saw them still. The darkness had taken on a nightmarish quality; in every shadow, every unlit doorway, he imagined he saw dark, ominous forms writhing.

  Harrison pulled the Bronco up into the concrete driveway in front of the modest one-story house and turned off the headlights. After dropping Suzanne off, he had headed there without even realizing where he was going. In a way, the sight of the old house comforted him; yet at the same time, it added to the illusion that he had moved backward in time some thirty-five years. Harrison switched off the ignition and rested his head gently against the steering wheel, taking deep, measured breaths in an effort to regain some measure of control.

  The kitchen lights filtered through faded yellow-checked curtains; as usual, Clayton was still up, even at this late hour. Like his adopted son, Forrester was troubled by insomnia which, instead of easing as time separated him from tragedy, steadily worsened. After Harrison was old enough to move into his own place, Clayton wandered fully dressed from room to room most nights, with all the lights on, catching an occasional catnap. No matter what time Harrison stopped by—even after a late date with Char, sometimes three in the morning—there was Clayton, fully awake, with the television blaring whether he was watching it or not. There was a time when Harrison visited him every day, then work and Charlotte kept him busy, so that he stopped by only every few days, then only once a week, then every two weeks. Work and Charlotte— and the fact that he could scarcely bear to see his idol sliding deeper into idleness and despair.

  Harrison got out of the Bronco, went to the side door, and let himself in with a key. The kitchen was filthy: garbage bags piled up by the back door, dishes covered with moldy food stacked up in the sink, crumbs on the counters, the floors—everywhere. Clayton had been a meticulous man, at least until depression had seized him; when Harrison moved out, it got worse. Harrison realized guiltily that now that he no longer needed a father to take care of him, Clayton had lost his purpose, and was simply waiting to die.

  Harrison walked through the kitchen into the hallway. The smell of aging garbage gave way to a familiar, musty old-paper smell that Harrison found nowhere else except this house, one that he associated immediately with Clayton Forrester and his beloved files. In the living room, the old black and white Motorola was tuned to Johnny Carson with the volume at full blast. Six feet away, Clayton Forrester sat snoring on the sofa, his slippered feet propped on the coffee table, head thrown back, mouth open. His cheeks were covered with a several-day growth of silver beard, which meant he hadn't been out for a while. He wore the beige cardigan Harrison had given him last Christmas, and while it fit him then, now he seemed swallowed up by it. He looked frail, bony, shrunken under his clothes. On the end table next to the sofa were three plastic prescription bottles—two of Clayton's heart medicine, one of Elavil for the depression.

  Harrison sat down in the sagging green armchair with the broken spring and watched Clayton sleep.

  Clayton, I need your help—

  The thought pulsed in his mind so strongly that he almost expected to hear it. He wanted to reach out, shake Forrester awake, force him to listen.

  Clayton, it's happening again. I need your help— He actually leaned forward and reached a hand out to touch the old man, but something stopped him.

  Look at him—he's a beaten old man. What more can he do to help? What right do you have to expect anything more from him? Harrison realized that he had come for reassurance, a terrified child running to his father for protection, for comfort. He rubbed his face with his hands.

  Why did I come here? What am I, crazy? Clayton

  doesn't deserve this. He's tired, old, not well—he's been through enough already, and this would kill him. What possible good would it do to tell him?

  Nothing, Harrison knew, except make himself feel better. He was behaving like a selfish child, running to his parent for comfort and reassurance, thinking only of himself. He sat in the armchair and stared at Clayton, unable to move.

  On the television the audience roared at some off-color double entendre Carson had made to a comely guest. The sound of raucous laughter struck Harrison as offensive. He rose, leaned over toward the set, and snapped it off, intending to leave. Clayton could sleep—he had already given
Harrison all he needed by way of the files. There was nothing more to be gained by terrifying the old man with the news of what had happened at Jericho Valley.

  The screen went gray, then black; Clayton stirred. "Harrison?" Looking disoriented, he raised his head. There was a frightening vagueness in his dark eyes where there had once been brilliance. Harrison looked away, unable to meet that gaze for long.

  "Sorry, Clayton." He tried to smile, tried to keep the fear from showing in his eyes. "I didn't mean to wake you."

  "My God." At the sight of him, Clayton sat forward on the couch and rested a hand on his chest. "What time is it?"

  "Almost midnight." Harrison walked over to the side of the couch, but didn't sit. "Did I startle you?"

  Clayton grunted and shook his head. "Supposed to

  The Resurrection take my pill a half hour ago. Dammit, I guess I slept through my watch alarm—" He fumbled with one hand for the glass on the end table. His tone was carefully casual, but Harrison detected the shortness of breath.

  "Let me get you some water." Harrison scooped up the glass and hurried into the kitchen across the creaking wooden floor. As he held the glass under the tap, he saw that his hands were shaking.

  Jesus, I've damn near startled him into a heart attack just by turning off the TV. I can't tell him what's happened—it'll kill him. What the hell was I thinking of, coming here tonight? What did I expect him to do?

  His own breath was coming in short gasps, but there was no time to calm himself—Clayton needed the medication now. He returned to the living room so fast, water sloshed over the side of the glass.

  Clayton was sitting with his eyes closed. His skin looked gray and waxy.

  "Clayton? Dad?" Harrison leaned over him.

  Forrester opened his eyes and tried unsuccessfully to smile. "You haven't called me that in a long time." He took the glass, sipped some water, then tilted his head back and swallowed. One of the medicine bottles was uncapped; apparently, he'd already put the pill into Ms mouth. "Thanks," Clayton said. He drank some more water and set the glass down with an unsteady hand.