by Brian Hodge
Brian recalled the tall figure he’d glimpsed in the woods, the time he’d been pulled to the judge’s house. There was that same grave stillness, that same sense of evil dignity.
“Now listen up,” the judge shouted into the dark. “We’ve got the U.S. Army here to help us out!”
Loi noticed that he wasn’t shouting in any particular direction, or using names. They had not yet been discovered.
That wouldn’t last. The oncoming soldiers were bound to see them.
“It’s all over and we’ve won,” the judge continued, his voice radiating authority. “There’s been a tragedy here. An experiment being conducted by a scientific institute failed and a door was opened into something that we don’t understand. But the military has things under control and we’re safe. You can come out now. There’s even a field dressing station set up outside town. So come out, come out all of you!”
Loi saw movement in the dark interior of the drugstore. Two women and three men whom she didn’t know appeared. Then came Sam Young and his sweetheart, Henrietta Lohse. Others followed, hidden by the dark.
“Don’t any of you move,” Loi said to her group.
“That’s bull,” Fisk said firmly, speaking for the first time since he’d reached the alley. “Judge terBroeck is a fine man.” He walked past them and joined the small knot of people now clustering around the judge.
Ellen saw this as a rapidly deteriorating situation. “If we stay here, the soldiers are gonna notice us.”
“We have to assume that they already have.”
Things were changing quickly in the street. The soldiers had abandoned their building-to-building search and were hauling an ungainly black device out of the back of the judge’s car. It did not have the appearance of a weapon. Like the Humvees, it was so black that it was hard to see. Thick, tapering cables jutted up from it at odd angles and drooped down around the sides. It began to clank, then to emit a low humming sound. The soldiers stepped away. Apparently under its own power, the thing began gliding toward the knot of survivors.
Brian thought it was the ugliest object that he had ever seen. It was squat and fat like the body of an old-fashioned furnace. There were bars on its sides, and behind the bars something shiny, like black glass. It had the squat, dense appearance of something designed for work with great heat.
With a hiss like a bus door opening, its cables stiffened. They pointed at the survivors who had accepted the judge’s promise and begun to approach. “Hey, Judge,” Young began.
“Now just take it easy,” the judge said. “Come on ahead.” Again Brian felt that august presence.
A leader, a general, a monarch. Concealed in the body of the judge, him.
The tips of the cables adjusted themselves with great finesse, until each one was aimed at a specific individual. Two were not needed and they retracted with the sound of somebody sucking up spaghetti.
One of the women from the drugstore suddenly broke and ran. “Calm down now, Joanie,” the judge called in a gentle voice. “This is just high-tech testing equipment, it won’t hurt us.”
“That’s Joanie Dooley,” Father Palmer whispered. “She’s one of my deaconesses.”
“Honestly, Joanie,” the judge said, “I thought you had better sense than this.”
She was running like hell now, right down the middle of the street.
Suddenly the judge’s left arm slid outward, extending from his sleeve as if made of rubber. As it got longer and longer, people screamed, began to cluster together.
It grabbed Joanie Dooley around the neck and dragged her back with such speed that both of her shoes flew off and spun away. He dropped her in a heap at the feet of the weeping townsfolk, and in the next instant the black glass in the machine glowed a roiling, angry purple, and flashes of light spat from the tip of each extended cable into their faces.
“Shoot him,” Brian cried.
The head turned, the eyes flashed. He saw them, the soldiers saw them.
Loi hopped on an ATV. “Go, go, go!” To her horror, the Wests went charging for the street, followed by Ellen. They should have turned around and gone out the alley, the fools! She had no choice but to follow. “Go, Brian, stay with them!”
A series of extremely bright purple flashes erupted as the ATVs worked their way around the blocking Humvee. Ellen closed her eyes, but still felt a shudder of unwanted delight.
When she opened them again all nine of the people who had gone to the judge were down on their knees gagging, their fingers gripping their throats. Knotted masses of dark mucus were pouring from their mouths and noses.
The purple light flickered continuously now, bathing them in its glow. They were moaning, but it wasn’t a sound of pain. Far from it.
The ATVs roared into the street. “You,” the judge roared, “you!”
Bob pulled the trigger of the AK-47 and bullets sprayed, sparked off the hood of the lead Humvee, exploded against the sputtering machine, sent four of the soldiers flying up against the far sidewalk, apparently lolling them.
To get out of town they had to pass not only soldiers and Humvees, but also the judge and his machine.
Ellen could see that the victim nearest her was full of moving humps, kicking and flopping his arms and shaking his head with a furious, impossible energy, like a windup toy gone crazy. The intensity of this motion caused him to rotate slowly in the street. She glimpsed his face, but did not recognize it, such was the distortion.
Henry Fisk made noises like a bird caught in a net, squawks punctuated by piping shrieks. His muscles were full of bulges the size of grapefruits, his face was oozing down the bones of his skull. He struggled, he shook, he groaned like a man in the extremity of sexual excitement. Then his head began to go back and forth, faster and faster, until his pop-eyed stare was just a blur, and spittle and raw muscle and gobs of melted skin were spraying like a multicolored fountain. Now his lips sounded like some kind of berserk lawn-mower motor. A long, thin leg or mandible popped out of his mouth, extended upward, and began sailing round and round his head like a lariat.
“We’ve got to help them,” Father Palmer managed to gabble. Behind Ellen on her ATV, he threw his arms around her, trying to reach the brake.
“No!”
She gunned the motor, but the machine swerved violently. He’d gotten hold of the handlebars.
The sight of their confusion caused two of the cables to exude from the machine and begin swaying toward them. The sizzling grew louder. There was an almost human quality to it, as if a ten-year-old was trying to sound like the biggest, meanest snake he could imagine.
The machine focused on Ellen and Father Palmer. To give it room the soldiers pressed themselves back against the walls. “It’s not painful, Ellen,” Judge terBroeck said. She saw now that his mouth didn’t move when he talked. His face was a mask. Behind the eyes she could see black, gleaming material, rushing and seething.
“Ellen, come on,” Loi cried.
Once more the AK-47 chattered. This time the bullets went through the judge, causing him to flounce but not to fall. Again his arm stretched, and suddenly it had the rifle and was hurling it off into the dark. “We have a right to do this!”
“You have no right,” Ellen shouted back.
The judge rose to his full height, lifted his arms. They went up and up, far into the sky, and then came snaking down toward Brian and Loi. But Brian hit the gas and their ATV darted ahead. The arms flopped after them, the hands snatching at Loi’s back. She clutched Brian and screamed as they ripped at her shirt, trying to reach around and get to her stomach.
Behind the judge the machine continued its busy cooking of the ones who had been captured. It was not only sizzling but making sighs, metallic shrieks, and a light, continuous thumping like the excited beating of a heart.
Meanwhile, another part of the machine stiffened a cable toward the departing ATVs. Purple light flashed and Loi felt it like angels caressing her neck and head. She did not turn around, resisted the urge to look into it
.
Inside her, the baby began kicking and squirming. “Hurry, Brian!”
But Brian slowed down. “Ellen.”
“They’re after the baby, Brian! I can feel it!”
Just then Ellen screamed, a long, despairing howl.
The machine had pointed cables at her and the priest. As they weaved about on the roaring ATV, the cables swayed, trying to aim. Behind them the Humvees were deploying in a line abreast to block escape back toward Mound Road. To surround their ATV, soldiers trotted up both sidewalks.
Brian dismounted. He and Loi were trying to shield their eyes from the light the machine was shining at them, but it was very hard.
Just behind Brian and Loi, the Wests also stopped. “I’ll cover you,” Bob shouted as Brian went past. He didn’t have the AK-47 anymore, but Brian could hear his pistol banging steadily away.
Crouching down behind their ATV, Loi noted that Bob really did seem to have overcome the power of the demon. But this was not easy to believe, and she resolved never to let down her guard.
Ellen was down, Ellen was off the ATV. The judge’s hands were extending toward her, racing across the ten feet between them.
Where the survivors had been there remained only masses of waving arms all tangled up with clothes and shoes and hair. Faces were visible in the tangle, faces slack with rapture. The cables from the machine had plunged into the mass, and their sensitive tips raced here and there, buzzing angrily as they flooded this or that remaining bit of human flesh with their light.
A complicated stink rose from the mass, of scorched clothing and melted hair, of sweat, of blood and urine, feces and hot meat.
Suddenly Loi realized that the machine had turned its attention away from Ellen and Father Palmer.
One of the free arms was pointing directly at her. The baby was kicking more than he had ever kicked before. She clutched her stomach. “Brian, get us out of here!”
He dashed back to their ATV, leaped on.
Ellen watched him go. For the moment she’d stopped trying to escape. Loi’s desperate cry had gone through her like a white-hot blade.
3
Bob’s pistol snapped and the judge began to choke, wrapping his long hands around a hole in his throat.
Loi and Brian disappeared into the darkness, their ATV screaming.
The machine turned its attention to Father Palmer. He was still sitting on the ATV when one of the cables jutted right into his face, flooding it with light. His eyes widened, his arms waved, he began rocking back and forth oozing sighs that belonged to night and the bedroom.
Ellen got back on the Suzuki, pushing in front of him, feeling tingles of delight where the light touched her skin, gasping with pleasure when it entered her eyes. She gunned the motor and the vehicle wailed to life, shot ahead. The soldiers, who had just come up, grabbed at them. Then the Humvees snarled to life and began weaving around the spitting machine, coming fast.
Ellen didn’t like having the old priest behind her with his arms around her waist. Being touched by the poor man was disgusting. She could hear his breath whistling, could feel his fingers kneading the flesh of her sides as he hung on to her.
She followed the ATV in front of her, staying with it when it turned off the road behind the others. Ellen was clumsy with the unfamiliar machine. It was extremely responsive and she had to drop a good distance behind Chris and Nancy to avoid running them down.
Behind her she heard engines. The Humvees had come off the road, too. But surely they were much too wide to maneuver in the forest.
Suddenly the Suzuki screamed and slid sideways. Her reflexive hitting of the brakes only made things worse. They skidded between two trees into the thick woods. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered. There was nothing out there ahead of her, nothing but darkness.
Her heart practically flew out through her mouth—she was lost in the woods with a half-monster clinging to her back and at least one Humvee from hell somewhere behind her.
Father Palmer coughed. “Where are we?” he asked.
“In the woods.”
His hands slid up onto her shoulders. “Are we lost?”
“No!”
He clasped his hands together behind her neck. She could feel his hard, knobby cheek pressing against her back. Sharp things protruding from his torso worked through her clothes, pricked her. She leaned as far forward as she could.
Then she saw a wonderful sight, the tiny red dot of a taillight. “There they are!” The ground sloped up so steeply that she was afraid they’d topple over backward. They went through thick, lashing undergrowth. As best she could she kept her head down. At this speed a twig could put an eye out, a branch hurl them both off the vehicle.
The path grew so narrow that trees scraped their legs, but still they climbed, up and up, seeking that flash of red.
Far off up the ridge ahead, she saw bobbing lights. She took out after them, cursing the ATV because it wouldn’t go faster. They bounced across boulders and cracks and the great, gnarled roots of pitch pines. She shouted and Father Palmer hissed and made deep, popping noises in his throat.
The lights went out.
She didn’t even slow down.
A moment later the nearest ATV appeared in her headlight. Chris was there, waving. She took her hand off the gas and the Suzuki stopped so fast that she was almost thrown across the handlebars.
“Shut it down,” the boy whispered, his voice urgent.
“I have no idea how to do that!” She got off, followed by the priest. He clambered down, his breath a busy whistle. She tried not to look at the black, misshapen hulk of his head.
Chris turned off the ATV by pulling a wire.
They were received back into the group, now haphazardly armed with two shotguns, a rifle and three pistols. “I thought I’d never see you guys again,” she said.
Silently, Loi touched her on the shoulder. Nancy came up and pressed a small pistol into her hand. “The safety’s in the butt,” she whispered.
“Why are we stopping?”
“We’re shaking the Humvees,” Brian murmured.
“But—”
“Whisper,” Nancy hissed. “You’re louder than I was, Ellen.”
“They are looking for movement and light,” Loi added softly. “Sound.”
“Where are we?”
“About a mile and a half south of town, by my reckoning,” Bob murmured.
The night wind blew steadily. To the north, the horizon was now bright purple.
Father Palmer, who had moved off into the dark, groaned. Loi came up to Ellen. She whispered low, barely breathing. “What’s his condition?”
Ellen shook her head.
Loi went over to him, draped her arm around his shoulder. There was a murmur of conversation. After a moment she jumped back, uttering a small cry. She returned to the group. “He’s not good.” She was rubbing the back of her hand. “He says he feels the same as always, but he’s beginning to hear a voice in his head. He hears a voice shouting instructions at him. It’s telling him to keep us here, not to let us move.”
“I’ve started hearing it, too,” Bob said.
Turning away to hide the movement, Loi took out her pistol.
“But it doesn’t affect me,” Bob continued. He knelt and put his arms around his nearest boy. “This affects me.”
Chris threw his arms around his father’s neck.
Loi looked down at him, now with both of his sons beside him. She thrust her pistol back into her belt.
Ellen, who had seen the stealthy movement of the weapon, realized that Loi would have killed Bob if he’d said the wrong thing. She could kill—even up close, even a person she’d known for years. Ellen found herself feeling a little worshipful toward her, and shook it off angrily.
“How about you, Father?” Loi asked softly, going over to the priest. “Can you resist the one who calls to you?”
“It’s angels,” he said faintly, his own voice barely understandable, “angels singing the glory
of heaven.” He raised his tortured face, and in the starlight its mosaic surface looked like a dry, cracked riverbed. His eyes were heavily filmed, his mouth full of what looked like wet modeling clay filled with pumping veins. Then he gobbled out some words. “I’m about done. I want to—want to…” His voice sank away.
Loi went back to the others. “He’s dangerous.” Again her pistol was in her hand.
“Oh, no,” Nancy said. “He baptized my babies.”
“He baptized all of us,” Brian added.
“Whisper! Please!”
Ellen stepped up. “He didn’t baptize me.”
“I’ll do it,” Loi breathed.
“I can do it. Give me the pistol.” Ellen held out her hand. They all saw how it was shaking.
“Jesus Christ, I’ll do it,” Brian said, snatching the weapon.
“Go in at the base of the skull, buddy. He’ll drop like a bag of flour.”
“That’s professional advice, Bob?”
“Hell yes it is!”
“Here we go again,” Joey said, putting his hands over his ears.
“Wait. We must do it silently.” Loi gestured toward the night.
There followed another hushed discussion. They could have hit him with a stone while he knelt praying, but nobody would.
He had begun pulling at his face and making small sounds of chagrin.
Brian was gazing out into the night. “The thing is, I remember we used to come up here and look at the lights of Ludlum.”
“So?”
He gestured toward the southern horizon.
There were no lights.
Nancy stifled a sob. Welling up from deep inside Loi was a sensation of obliterating sorrow. If there were no lights in Ludlum, maybe there were none in Albany or New York City or anywhere.
They heard a noise, all of them at the same moment: the rumble of an engine.
“It’s a Humvee,” Loi said in a quiet voice. She pointed along the spine of the mountain. “There.” She sighed. “We were too noisy.”
Three of the shapes came quickly and quietly along. They were not half a mile away, coming down from the north.
“Let’s move out,” Loi said.
