They gathered around him, lined up like an audience, as if they wanted to listen.
“If I could fly like you guys, I think I’d go back home. I think I’m ready.” He knew he’d hit bottom then, because he was ready to start crawling back up. Find another job, pay off the credit card, tell stories for the rest of his life about the months he’d spent slumming around Europe. It almost sounded romantic.
A white pigeon with flecks of gray, as if it had been spattered with paint, cocked its head.
But why? So you start all over again. For what?
He shrugged. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”
How do you know this won’t happen again?
He gave a bark of a laugh. “Because I’ll ask her if she wants to get married before I take her to Venice to give her the ring.”
Women. They’re all the same.
He winced. Had he thought that, or the pigeons?
He was comfortable, sitting here on the steps, watching the cars curve around the loop, watching tourists crowd around the lions at the base of Nelson’s Column. He could sit here all day watching, chatting with the pigeons, who’d stay near him as long as he had something to give them. More reliable than women, for sure. Maybe he hadn’t hit bottom yet, if he wasn’t ready to move from this spot.
It’s a sad world.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“Sir, you can’t stay here. You need to be moving on.”
He started; he’d dozed off. Someone was standing over him. A man with a funny hat, smart blue uniform, yellow safety vest. Police officer. Paul straightened and blinked up at the officer, who was stern and insistent.
It made him sad. He’d begun to think of this spot of stone as his very own.
A few pigeons still lingered, though he’d run out of crumbs a while ago. As usual, they seemed oddly interested, turning their heads to look at him, then look at the officer. He could almost hear them offering advice. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hit him? Get yourself arrested? That would be different.
Then he definitely knew he hadn’t hit bottom yet, because he stared at the cop and thought, yeah, he could hit him. He could end up inside a British prison. Then at least he’d have hot meals again.
“Sir, did you hear me? You can’t stay here.”
Go on. Shove him.
“Sir—”
Paul said, “Do you ever feel like they’re watching you? The pigeons, I mean. I know they’re everywhere, they’re part of the scenery. But sometimes do you feel like they’re watching?”
Another pigeon cocked its head. The cop just looked at him.
Paul shook his head. “You probably think that’s crazy. That sounds crazy.”
After a moment, the officer said, “You’re American?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you end up here? Like this?” Here, in London, homeless, at the bottom.
He felt his mouth turn in a wry smile, his first smile in ages. “There was this girl, see.”
The officer laughed, and Paul was glad he hadn’t hit him. “Very sorry about that, sir. But I do need you to move on, right?”
Paul moved on, walking toward the river. A pigeon soared overhead.
At Ramstein Air Base in Germany, in an experimental command center situated far underground, a dozen technicians monitored computers, video displays, millions of bytes of data flowing constantly, and the satellite communications that fed the operation.
One of the techs looked up from her monitor, and the officer on duty, a male colonel in a crisp green Army uniform, walked over.
“Sergeant? What is it?”
“Sir, I have something strange going on with one of the tests,” she said. She pointed to her screen, where a dozen windows each showed a different video feed, views of streets, buildings, skies, concrete, and crowds. Clicking a couple of buttons, she brought one window to prominence, along with a list of data points.
“Subject 53872. Acquired in Venice. Initial contact showed a weakened state of mind, highly suggestible. But something’s changed. It’s like he suspects. This is the footage we’re getting.”
The colonel watched for a few minutes. The video showed a man, a ragged homeless bum, rough brown beard on a gaunt face, tangled hair pressed down by a torn knit cap, soiled canvas jacket with a collar sticking up. The man stared directly into the camera, and his expression was pensive. His brow furrowed, his gaze was searching. The sound was off, but he seemed to be talking as if the camera would answer him.
It happened sometimes. Paranoia could push test subjects over the edge.
“How much data do we have on this one?”
“Eight months’ worth, sir. It follows the usual pattern.”
Satisfied, the colonel nodded. “Then it looks like it’s time to close this one out.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sergeant moved aside so the colonel could type in his authorization code to conclude the test. The technician took care of the rest, entering a code to transmit a preprogrammed message that shut down Subject 53872 and logging the results in the appropriate Psychological Warfare Test Group file: Experiment 87, Subsonic Hypnotic Suggestion Transmitted via Remote Integrated Cybernetics.
The colonel moved on, walking past a dozen screens that showed hundreds of images, some of them static, some of them turning, whirling, as if the camera were falling off a building. In many of the images crowds of birds gathered around, a tapestry of grays and purples.
Paul climbed over the guardrail halfway to the first tower on Tower Bridge and sat on a precarious ledge, his feet dangling. He watched the Thames flow under him. It was a long way down.
You might as well end it now.
The despairing thought had followed him all the way from Trafalgar Square. It might have started when he didn’t have the guts to hit the cop. That would have been more interesting than this. But this time, the voice was probably right. He didn’t want to go on.
It’s too hard. It’ll be too hard to keep going.
“That’s right,” Paul murmured. It was all just too hard.
Even here, pigeons followed him, strutting along the ledge, cooing. One—was it the same mottled one who’d looked at him so pointedly back at Trafalgar Square? Hard to tell. Probably not, with billions of the aerial rats flapping around.
You should just end it now.
The thing was looking at him. They’d always been looking at him. They’d been following him, begging from him, bothering him. Ever since Venice, where this whole escapade started. What had gotten into him? He really was crazy—not because he thought pigeons were spying on him, but because no one acted this badly when a woman dumped him. That was the crazy part, letting the whole thing get to him like that.
But what if . . . What the hell, he thought. He was sitting on the edge of Tower Bridge getting ready to jump. It wasn’t like he had anything to lose.
He waited, very calmly, very quietly, barely breathing. The mottled pigeon didn’t move. It just watched him, head cocked, peering out of one eye, which shone like glass. Paul counted slowly to three—then grabbed it. Whipped out his hand and clamped it hard over its neck.
“Gotcha!” He clutched the thing in both hands and slammed it against the steel ledge. He pounded it over and over again, until its skull burst, its skin split, until blood and bits of flesh splattered out, until he was sobbing with despair and exhaustion. Because it really was just a pigeon, and he really was crazy.
But no—he spread the bird’s remains in front of him, picking away bone and feather, peeling back skin, pulling apart its head. He found wires inside, a few coils of copper. A couple of microchips. Thin tubes where its eyes should have been—tubes with rounded glass ends. Camera lenses.
He wasn’t crazy.
He looked around. A dozen more pigeons walked, strutted, flapped their wings. And how many of them had cameras for eyes? How many of them were spying on him? On everyone? It was brilliant—pigeons were ubiquitous, found in every city in the world.
They could go anywhere, completely inconspicuous. No one would ever suspect.
“I should tell someone,” he said. Oh, God—this was some kind of conspiracy. Who was behind this? Some government? Or worse—terrorists? Was that how they did it? They could go anywhere—“I have to tell someone!”
Rushing, he wiped his bloody hands on his coat, scrambled to his feet, reaching for handholds to pull himself back to the road. That cop, the one that had actually stopped to talk to him, where was he? Paul could tell him, he’d tell everyone, sell his story and make millions, he could start over again—
A pigeon landed on his shoulder, just like at St. Mark’s in Venice. It picked at the fabric of his coat with its claws. Like it was trying to keep Paul from leaving. Like it didn’t want him to go. He hesitated; it was just a bird. But what was it saying? He could almost hear it pleading.
But that was crazy, so he kept climbing. Then, the pigeon nipped his ear. Crying out, Paul batted it away, and it flew. But then another came, pecking at his hand. It hurt, but Paul couldn’t let go.
The pigeons were everywhere.
A dozen of them flew at him, dove at him, wings flapping, beating at him. Individually, they were rats with wings, easily defeated, but together, like this, a swarm of them, all thrashing at him—it was too much. Paul screamed, crouched to try to escape, put up his arms to protect his face—and lost his grip.
He fell. Then, he hit bottom.
THE THINGS THAT CRAWL
By Richard Lee Byers
Richard Lee Byers is the author of over thirty fantasy and horror novels, including Unclean, Undead, Unholy, The Rage, The Rite, The Ruin, and Dissolution. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A resident of the Tampa Bay area, the setting for a good deal of his horror fiction, he spends much of leisure time fencing and playing poker. Visit his website at richardleebyers.com.
“Mrs. Porter is hysterical,” the dispatcher said, “and not making a lot of sense. But apparently somebody named Molly collapsed.”
“Shouldn’t you send EMTs?” I asked. Like most cops, I’d once learned CPR. But I hadn’t practiced in a long time, and anyway, what if CPR wouldn’t do the job?
“I tried, but there’s a tree down between them and Chiles Road. They’ll have to go the long way around. You’re close. I’m hoping you can get there faster.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
I pulled my patrol car out of the Circle K parking lot and headed down a flooded two-lane road only barely distinguishable from the overflowing drainage ditches on either side. The tires threw up dirty water. Broken branches littered the roadway or dangled above me. A telephone pole leaned to the side.
That was because it was September, 2004, and just hours ago, Hurricane Frances had hammered the little central Florida town where I was trying to make a new start. If you compared the damage to what Katrina did later to New Orleans and Mississippi, you might say we got off easy. But I’d never gone through any sort of hurricane before, and I was pretty damn impressed.
Despite the miserable driving conditions, it only took a couple minutes to reach Chiles Road, and Mrs. Porter had white numbers painted on her green plastic mailbox to point me to the proper dirt-and-gravel driveway. It dipped down, so the standing water was even deeper there than it was on the highway. Worried that the car was going to stall or get stuck, I made the turn anyway, managed to keep rolling past the live oaks growing on either side, and ended up in the yard—except that currently, it was more like a pond—in front of a doublewide trailer.
A woman knelt over a motionless body lying on its side and held the head up out of the water. I assumed I was looking at Mrs. Porter and Molly. Mrs. Porter was obese, fifty-something, and wearing a pink housecoat. Molly was a Labrador retriever.
For a second, I was annoyed. You don’t call 911 because a pet is sick, especially in the aftermath of a natural disaster. But when Mrs. Porter looked up at me, I could read the fear and pain in her round, red, blotchy face even from yards away, and then I just felt bad for her. I climbed out of the cruiser and sloshed toward her through brown water and the sucking mud beneath.
“I don’t drive!” Mrs. Porter wheezed. “You’ve got to take her to the vet!”
I suspected it might be too late for that. Molly didn’t look like she was breathing. Still, I asked, “What vet does she go to?”
“Dr. LaSalle,” she answered, and then I glimpsed a rippling curl of motion in the water on the far side of her.
I grew up in the city, so I don’t know why I was instantly sure I’d spotted something dangerous. Maybe because of the Lab. Anyway, I pointed and yelled, “Watch out!”
Mrs. Porter looked around, and her reaction proved my instincts were on target. She yelped and tried to flounder in my direction. But one swollen, slipper-clad foot slipped out from under her, and she splashed back down into the water.
I lunged forward—as much as you can lunge, when you’re wading—grabbed her by one doughy forearm, and heaved. Somehow, heavy though she was, I managed to spin her around behind me. Which gave me my first good look at the animal that was swimming after her.
It was a dark, mottled snake about two feet long, with indentations between the nostrils and the places where the eyes must be, though I couldn’t actually see them while looking down from above. It darted at me, I kicked it, and it bit my foot.
Fortunately, the fangs didn’t pierce my shoe leather. I kicked a second time, shook the snake loose, and flung it several feet away. It immediately swam at me again, and two others followed right after it.
I really wanted to run. But even if I could have made it back to the cruiser ahead of the snakes, I couldn’t have managed it while dragging Mrs. Porter along. So there was nothing to do but draw my Browning and shoot.
Even at short range, it’s not easy to hit a target with a handgun, not when it’s small and moving and you don’t have time to aim. I emptied the whole magazine, and by the time I killed the last snake, it was right at my feet. Scared as I was, I was lucky I didn’t blow my toes off.
Standing in a haze of smoke and the smell of cord ite, I looked around for more snakes and didn’t see any. Hands trembling, I reloaded anyway, then turned to Mrs. Porter, who was still on her hands and knees where I’d tossed her. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said, her breathy voice shaky like my hands. “Did the cottonmouths bite Molly?”
“I don’t know,” I said. But I figured they probably had, and hours later, when the vet examined the Lab’s body, it turned out I was right.
But at first, I didn’t think much more about it, and neither did anybody else. One poor snake-bitten dog didn’t count for much when we had a whole town to put back together. City and county government focused on getting the power back on, the roads open, and the debris cleared. I worked a lot of overtime, craved a drink, and settled for attending early morning and late night meetings instead.
Meanwhile, water moccasins killed one person and diamondback rattlesnakes, another. I didn’t see either of those deaths. But when a guy named Kropp called from Michigan to report that his mother had stopped answering the phone, I was the patrolman who went out to check on her.
Like many in the area, the house was a sort of ramshackle bungalow with a tin roof. Overall, it looked as if had been built decades ago, although the roll-up plastic storm shutters—which currently were up—had to be a recent improvement.
A dozen bright green lizards clung to the brick fa çade. Their black eyes stared as I picked my way over ground that was no longer underwater but still soft and sticky nonetheless.
The mere presence of the lizards wasn’t odd. They lived all over the area, anyplace there were plants and bugs. I saw one or two whenever I went out of my duplex apartment during the day. But they generally skittered for cover whenever a human being approached, so it did seem strange that this bunch was staying put. Strange and, after my previous confrontation with local wildlife, maybe even a
little bit creepy. But unlike the cottonmouths, the lizards were tiny and completely harmless, so I managed to find the raw courage to step up on the concrete stoop and ring the doorbell anyway.
Nobody answered. I knocked and shouted, and no one responded to that, either. The lizards kept on staring.
I decided to walk around the house and see what I could see. I headed right, took a few steps, then glimpsed motion from the corner of my eye. I pivoted.
The lizards I’d been walking toward had held their positions. But the ones I’d started walking away from had darted along the wall and followed me. They stopped moving when I did, but it took them a second. Just time enough for me to see what they were doing.
But had I really seen it? It seemed more likely that my eyes were playing tricks on me. I headed left.
Now the lizards on the right scurried after me. The ones on the left stayed put until I passed them, then joined the parade. And whenever I stopped, the reptiles did, too.
Okay, this really did seem weird, but I reminded myself I knew nothing about lizards. If I did, maybe I’d understand that what they were doing was normal.
In any case, it couldn’t have anything to do with Mrs. Kropp, and she was the reason I was here. I took a breath and went back to checking the house. The lizards continued to supervise.
The air conditioner was a stumpy metal box with rounded corners sitting on the ground next to the east side of the building. It wasn’t running, which came as no surprise, considering that Mrs. Kropp had left a number of windows open. The one above the AC unit had a hole poked through the bottom of the screen. A small hole. I couldn’t have stuck my hand through without tearing it bigger.
But a snake could slide through.
Not that there was a bit of evidence that a snake actually had. But once the thought occurred to me, it stuck in my head.
So you can imagine how eager I was to go inside the house. But the son had given permission, and it seemed that someone should.
Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Page 11
