American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Erm,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “A black Lincoln, I think?”

  “Good,” says Mona. She stands. “The way down is over here.”

  “Do you intend to catch up with them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I am not an expert in automotive matters, but I believe you’d need a car of your own to do so.”

  “I know.”

  A grunt as Mrs. Benjamin extends one wobbling, swollen foot toward a rocky purchase. “Do you have a car of your own?”

  “No. We’ll just have to… I don’t know, figure it out.”

  “I can’t imagine that there is anything nearby. You will have to do some very good figuring.”

  Mona stops. “No, I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She points. “I just have to ask her.”

  Waiting at the start of the road, just before the broken, locked doors of Coburn, is Mona’s 1969 cherry-red Dodge Charger. A skinny teenage girl is standing beside the passenger door, looking very awkward, which, after all, is a very easy thing for a skinny teenage girl to do.

  Gracie clears her throat and waves to them. “Hello,” she says.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Mona drives.

  She drives unwisely, stupidly, recklessly; she chooses to ignore fenceless bluffs and sharp turns and loose gravel roads; her foot knows only the most extreme angle the gas pedal can occupy, and refuses to release it any. On the whole, she cares not a fucking jot for physics, friction, or the limits of air bags or seat belts: all she cares about, all her weary, brutalized, angry mind can think about, is speed, speed, speed.

  That, and the sight of that mottled, bloody little face as it wrinkled up and squawked, its tiny cry almost dead in that lead-walled room.

  I have a daughter. I have a little girl.

  She’s real.

  I think she’s real…

  Behind her, Gracie is trying breathlessly to explain how Mr. First directed her to where the Charger was hidden, and how he produced (she keeps stressing that he “produced”) the keys; and Mrs. Benjamin just keeps saying, “That’s good, dear,” and, “Why, how nice of him,” and so on. Mona asks how in the hell the doughnut got replaced with a real tire, and Gracie professes ignorance; though she does say that First is fond of fixing things for her and other people, when no one is looking.

  Mona can hardly listen. She feels horribly confused. Her daughter is alive, and real, and though she feels a huge swelling of hope, it does not feel… honest.

  I wonder what her name is. What I named her.

  And again, she remembers the sight of her own face, shorn of all the years of drunken wandering, staring about the nursery as she wondered where her little girl was…

  My head hurts.

  Mona thanks fucking Christ that Wink is so small, because there’s only one street that cuts all the way through town, all the way across to the other side. So there’s only one way the doctor and her baby could have gone.

  But as they come plummeting down from the mesa, the Charger’s wheels shrieking and the engine sometimes threatening to leap out of the hood, she notices something is different now.

  The color seems to be leaching out of the sky: it is no longer the bright, electric blue that Mona first found so striking about New Mexico, but a hazy yellowish red, like the color of bloody pus. There is something wrong about the light, too: it feels like a thin gray wash, too weak to project any real shadows.

  The yards and streets of Wink are just ahead. But the town appears to be crawling with activity.

  The doors of the houses and buildings—nearly all of them—are open. And people are either walking out to stand in their yards, or they are already there.

  It is as if everyone has come outside to wait for something. And there is a sound that is audible even over the roar of the Charger’s engine—a low, loud buzz, like a dozen propeller planes starting up.

  “Something’s wrong,” says Mona.

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly. “Something is wrong.”

  Mrs. Benjamin knows this sound. She knows it better than almost any sound. Was this not the tremulous, terrifying note that always rang through the skies when they approached? And always she was in the vanguard, the most dangerous, the most frightening, the most intimidating of all of Mother’s children…

  It was a way of saying to new worlds: We are coming. We are here.

  And now she hears it echoing down these quaint suburban streets, across the green parks and verdant lawns, filtering through the tall pines and rebounding along the mountain peaks. She sees all the familiar faces: the estimable Mrs. Greer, the Elms, odd Mr. Crayes and old Mr. Trimley, Mrs. Huwell, the Dawes children. And all of them stand there, faces blank and eyes unseeing, a faint buzz rattling from their skulls and adding to the ocean of sound…

  Mrs. Benjamin can feel the pull herself. It was one that always arrived right when they were about to depart for a new place, a tickling in the back of the head as if to say—Wake up! It’s time.

  It’s time now.

  Mother is here. She is coming back.

  “Oh, my,” says Mrs. Benjamin. She reddens as if having a hot flash. “I have a feeling that we will need to hurry.”

  As the buzz floods through the barren canyon beside the mesa, Mr. First sighs.

  He has been waiting for this sound all day. He knew it would come. It was just a matter of when. To be honest, he expected it earlier.

  It is a difficult thing, crossing the worlds. It takes incredible preparation, much like building a mousetrap from scratch; and in one moment, one cautious, creeping moment, it must all be executed cleanly, perfectly, accurately.

  And in the past few days, he’s finally come to understand what’s been staring him in the face for so long.

  Establishing the town of Wink was never Mother’s intended goal, any more than ushering Her children to safety was: those goals, while selfless and admirable, were all pretense. The point of all Her efforts, of all Her planning and scheming, was to pull Her intelligence, Her being, from one world to another.

  It would be so hard for Mother to cross in totality, he thinks. Much harder than for him or any of their other family members. It would take an amazing amount of work to build that mousetrap…

  And he now knows that Mother’s mousetrap—the whole of Wink, its place and its history—is about to spring. That buzz, that war song like so many trumpets and bagpipes, announces Her arrival. Somewhere down in Wink, the Ganymede has made the keyhole through which Mother’s essence will soon flood.

  Mr. First pulls himself to his feet. This takes some time, as there is a lot of Mr. First to pull. Then he looks to the town, sighs again, and starts off.

  It’s not all hopeless. He’s laid a few of his own mousetraps. He only hopes they’ll spring correctly.

  Once Mona hits level(ish) ground she starts using driving techniques she learned in her training as a police officer, and has never used: a bunch of really reckless shit involving the emergency brake, downshifting, and manipulating the clutch in a fashion that would give any nearby mechanic a stroke.

  Then she spots it: a low, long rectangle of brightly polished black taking up the whole lane a few hundred yards ahead.

  A Lincoln. Definitely a Lincoln.

  “I see it!” she says.

  But as she closes in on the Lincoln, she sees something else odd. Ahead of them, past the Lincoln and past the town, is a somewhat tall, sloping mountain: the very mountain Mona had to drive down when she first came to Wink. Normally Mona would not glance twice at the mountain, but something is very visibly wrong with it: it looks like something is flooding out of a very small aperture in the mountain’s side, something dark and ethereal, like the mountain is bleeding oil. Yet the more Mona looks at it, the more she realizes that it is not liquid, but a crowd of somethings that are distinctly liquidy…

  Bodies. Forms. Slouching, staggering shapes, rushing down the mountainside in a long, sluggish river. And in that river she sees
twisting necks, and writhing hands and limbs, black or silvery or chitinous…

  “What the fuck is that?” asks Mona.

  Mrs. Benjamin sits forward and shields her eyes. “Oh, dear,” she says. “I believe that would be the children.”

  “The what?”

  “You are aware of the members of my family who had been hiding in the woods and the mountains? It seems as if in recent days they have all been hiding in a cavern. It looks like they are all exiting… quite rapidly. And headed for town.”

  “What does that mean?” asks Mona.

  Mrs. Benjamin rubs her temple. “If I were to hazard a guess,” she says, “I would take it to mean that Mother is imminent.”

  “Imminent? As in, coming here? Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Mona looks at the mesa in her rearview mirror, as if expecting to see that vast, swollen form straddling the top. “Where is she? How far away?”

  “How thick is a candle flame?”

  “Jesus,” whispers Mona.

  Places layered on places layered on places… and somewhere Mother is rising up, like a sea creature bursting through sheets of ocean ice…

  “Mona, what are you going to do?” asks Gracie.

  They close the distance between the Charger and the Lincoln. Mona can see numerous shadows in the car’s windows. And someone in there has the child, possibly her child…

  Mona thinks. There are about twelve .30-06 shells in her pocket, and about fifty more in her bag. “Are you buckled?” she asks.

  “No,” say Gracie and Mrs. Benjamin.

  “Then hold on to something,” says Mona. “And if something happens, go limp.”

  “Wh—” says Gracie, but it’s a bit too late.

  Mona noses the car into the oncoming lane, which is empty.

  She drops the stick from fourth to third.

  The engine screams. The Charger pounces forward like a very large cat.

  They fly by the Lincoln. Mona catches a flash of the face of the doctor peering out the window, looking slightly incensed to see this display of automotive engineering.

  Mona waits for the right distance. Then she stomps the brake, pulls the emergency brake, and cuts the wheel.

  Everything in the Charger shrieks: the wheels, the engine, Mrs. Benjamin and Gracie. All except Mona, who has gauged this pretty damn well, she thinks.

  When the car slides to a stop, it’s blocking the road far enough ahead of the Lincoln to give it time to brake, but not far enough ahead for it to do something evasive or drastic.

  Mona throws open the car door, hops out with the rifle, takes a knee, and puts the optic square on the driver’s side door of the Lincoln. She hears Mrs. Benjamin and Gracie piling out of the passenger side behind her. (Ordinarily Mona would have maneuvered it so that the driver’s side was away from the Lincoln, allowing her cover behind the Charger, but since she was driving with a wounded old lady and a teenage girl she decided to be charitable.)

  The doctor looks quite perturbed at Mona’s driving techniques. He does not slam on the brakes, or try to cut across the park at the center of town: he just slows to a stop and gets out with a “Well now, what is all this?” look on his face.

  “Good gracious!” he shouts at Mona. “What could possibly be the meaning of your driv—”

  But he doesn’t finish, because then Mona shoots him in the calf.

  For a doctor he seems totally unaware of the nature of physical injury: he stares quixotically at his leg, which pumps blood for a while before collapsing underneath him. He’s so confused he doesn’t even shout. Somewhere behind Mona, Gracie screams.

  Mona finds herself thinking, That girl really should be used to this by now.

  She doesn’t waste a second more: she reloads and advances on the Lincoln. She knows she saw more people in there. It’s just a matter of time until…

  A short, plump, dark-haired woman jumps out of the back of the car and runs at her, seriously runs at her, head-on. Mona has no idea who she is but she tags her anyway, putting a round in her right hip that sends her tumbling to the ground.

  Mona keeps advancing. She wants to put a round through the windshield to try to flush out anyone else, but she’s not willing to send broken glass flying throughout the car, not with the child in there.

  “Get out of the car!” she shouts.

  She feverishly hopes they won’t hurt her daughter. But she knows they won’t—they need her.

  “Get out of the fucking car!” shouts Mona.

  The other back door of the car opens up.

  Mona puts the optic on it.

  But when she sees what emerges from the car, her pose relaxes, and the scope falls away.

  “Oh my God,” she says softly.

  What steps out of the other door of the Lincoln is not a person. It is not even vaguely shaped like a person. Rather, it looks like the curled back of a lobster: segmented plates of black, chitinous armor bow away from her to form a twitching half-ball. Mona can see dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tiny, hairlike legs or swimmerets squiggling underneath the armor, each one thrashing as if it has a mind of its own.

  That, she guesses, is probably the bodyguard sent along with the convoy. So that’s what the children look like, thinks Mona. Or one of them, at least.

  The balled-up, arthropodan thing stands in the street with its back to her, shuddering. Then, with a sound like someone crinkling wax paper, it begins to unfold.

  Mona sees a head that is far less rigid than its body: though it is not facing her, she sees something pendulous and flabby, with scarab-like pincers protruding from the trembling flesh. Four spindly legs tipped with tarsal claws hesitantly reach out and begin tapping the asphalt. But the most horrifying feature of this thing is what emerges from either side of its midsection: two quivering appendages that very distinctly resemble human arms and hands, each one with seven fingers, the first two fingers bearing flagella or antennae that are over a foot long.

  Mona doesn’t wait for it to turn around: she puts a round just below the thing’s head, where she thinks its neck should be. There’s a dull thud, like a hammer striking wood, and a spot on its plated back turns a somewhat lighter color. But the shot does not penetrate.

  She reloads, fires again. Another thunk, another divot in the thing’s back. It does not seem to notice or care at all: it just keeps unfolding, until it is well over seven feet tall, a shuddering, hunched thing that slowly begins whipping its antennaed fingers about, as if it’s using them to smell the air…

  It starts buzzing, making the same nauseating whine that seems to be echoing throughout all of Wink right now. Then it turns around.

  It is like nothing Mona has ever seen before: the bottom half is four spider legs, the top half two distended arms with feathery fingers, and there’s an eyeless lump of a head. Its mouth is a gash, a rent, dripping something quite runny that hisses on the asphalt. Swimmerets and feelers and all sorts of tiny appendages line the edges of its underbelly, each squirming like mad.

  Mona dimly realizes she is somehow related to this thing, and feels sick.

  The thing makes no noise, no hisses or screeches: it simply scutters toward her, its four clawed legs daintily picking their way around the car and over the road. It is such a queerly delicate, teetering thing, like a dancer.

  Mona picks what she thinks is a weak spot in its armor—right where its shoulder merges with its underbelly—and fires again. It nicks the creature a little more deeply, but it still does not penetrate. The thing hardly twitches at the shot. It waves its feathered fingers toward her, as if trying to see her.

  Mona starts backing away. She tries to draw a bead on its legs, but they move shockingly fast. Does she run? Draw it away from the car, then circle back for her child?

  “Oh, goodness,” says Mrs. Benjamin’s voice. “Must I handle this myself?”

  The old woman stumps around the hood of the car and toward the scuttering black creature.

  “No!” shouts Mona. �
�Get back, goddamn it!”

  “You are mistaken,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I am not the one in over my head here.”

  She walks to stand directly in the creature’s path. Its feathered fingers swish in her direction.

  The thing pauses. Then, in a move that is blindingly, blindingly fast, it gallops toward her, and when it’s mere feet away it rises up on its back two legs, the top two legs shooting forward like giant pincers, and leaps.

  Mona ducks down. Yet Mrs. Benjamin is ready: she dodges to the side, grabs one of the pincer-legs, and yanks the thing to the ground. Then she grasps the top of its armor, plants her foot in the small of its back, and pulls.

  The thing shrieks, and it is a terribly human sound, like that of many children. There are pops, like stitching popping in a pair of jeans; its many arms and feelers wave wildly, trying to find flesh to tear; one of the segments begins to separate; and then, with a sound like a sewer line breaking, white, creamy intestines spill out of its body to flop onto the ground, where they begin sizzling on the asphalt.

  Mrs. Benjamin—and though Mona knows what she is, she can’t help but think of her as “old” and “doddering”—has just torn this horrific monstrosity in half. She holds its top half aloft, as one would a severed head, though this is about the size of a municipal garbage can and God knows how heavy.

  The thing is still somewhat alive, however, its arms wheeling back and forth and its dollop of a head thrashing about in its carapace, and one of its feathered index fingers just happens to whip around and catch the slightest bit of Mrs. Benjamin’s neck…

  The spray of blood is obscene, spurting nearly seven feet. Mrs. Benjamin angrily shouts, “Oh!” as if she’s just stubbed her toe. She drops the top half of the creature, which curls up on the ground like a wood louse. Then she staggers back a few feet and falls on her ass, blood spurting arrhythmically from just under her jawline. She holds her hand to the tiny nick—which must be just on her jugular, or something just as important—before taking it away and looking at it: her hand is coated in blood.

  Mona, keeping a safe distance from the twitching thing on the ground (which does not appear to be mortally wounded as much as disabled; but then, Mona remembers, killing in Wink is not allowed), circles around to her. Mrs. Benjamin looks up—she is already paler—and hoarsely says, “Tell me—is this fixable?”