by Ike Hamill
Sarah wasn’t interested in finding out. The truck had been rolling danger—she could sense it. When it had gone by, she ran back to the street and continued towards the Village Peddler. She saw a group of people gathered behind the garage and she almost slowed. Mr. Endicott’s story came to mind. She put the pieces together. He had described things attached to people. Maybe he had been referring to the lobster robots that she had seen. Maybe they were coming for her.
She found more speed and sprinted until she could hardly breathe. When she finally burst back through the door of the Village Peddler, Sarah doubled over for a second to catch her breath.
The place was empty.
She rose back up and glanced around.
It wasn’t empty. Ms. Polhemus was still sitting on the stool. She was sitting perfectly still and staring off at nothing. For a second, Sarah was convinced that Ms. Polhemus had passed away, and they had left her there.
When the woman turned to look at Sarah, the girl nearly screamed.
Ms. Polhemus’s eyes were vacant, like Shari’s, but there was a smile on her lips.
The door to the back room creaked and opened a few inches.
Sarah finally lost her composure. She screamed and tugged on the door handle, trying to get out. The door wouldn’t open.
Chapter 35 : Endicott
[ Hiding ]
JOHN’S BREATH CAME FASTER and faster. As he started to pant, his thoughts ramped out of control. They always ran to the same place—he pictured the people with the machines pumping out their life. He looked down at himself again. He had done it a thousand times, but he had to be sure that none of the things were clamped to him.
John looked back to the woman on the stool. She was like an empty shell. John wondered if maybe something had already sucked the life out of her. He wondered if everyone was destined to be like her—vacant.
“John?” Louise Townsend asked.
John jumped and nearly screamed. He had forgotten that the shopkeeper was still there. After the Dunns had left, John had thought he was alone in there with the vacant woman.
He blinked at Louise as all this went through his head.
“Maybe they’re right,” she said. “Maybe we should go in the storeroom until everything calms down?”
Louise looked over at the vacant woman and her hand went to her chest. She saw it too—there was something wrong with that woman. John found himself nodding.
Louise waved him towards the door behind the counter. He got up from his chair and felt uneasy as his damp clothes shifted against his skin. She showed him the way around the counter and he followed her into the office.
“I wish I had some dry clothes to give you,” she said. She guided him to a chair.
John shook his head. She seemed to understand that it didn’t matter. His discomfort wasn’t going to be solved by dry clothes. Louise moved over to the door and opened it a crack. John watched her carefully.
After she closed the door again, she turned back to him.
“I don’t trust her,” she whispered. “I never did like that woman. She moved to town and just insinuated herself into every social event. I can’t trust a woman like that.”
Out in the store, Louise had been so quiet.
“I just can’t imagine what is happening out there. You’d think with all the people around that nothing really strange could be going on, but what you described behind Farnham’s, and then what happened to Ricky Dunn. I can’t begin to fathom what’s going on. Of course the Sheriff is nowhere to be found. That man creates drama. He never settles it. Do you know what happened out at the Colonel’s old place last fall?”
The whole time she was talking, John hoped she would stop. Her voice just cluttered up his brain and didn’t allow him to think. Then, when she did stop, he thought of those people again. He remembered how the machines were sucking them dry. He wished she would say something to clutter up his brain.
“There was a whole thing. I’ve heard from some very reputable sources that it doesn’t pay to go east of the stream at all in October. Can you believe that? The flooding does something to the animals. It makes them go wild.”
“Louise?”
“Hmmm?” she asked. She seemed to have forgotten that he was even sitting there.
“Would you mind talking about something else?” John asked. He looked down at himself to make sure that none of the machines was attached to him. A new panic-inducing image flashed through his imagination. He imagined Mary tumbling from the ladder, but this time she failed to grab the orange extension cord as she fell. John shivered as he pictured her falling right on her head, snapping her neck.
“Are you cold?” Louise asked. From a trunk next to a filing cabinet, Louise pulled a blanket. It smelled of fir trees and pumpkin pie as she wrapped it around John’s shoulders.
John focused on the pleasant smell and tried to tune out Louise’s constant chatter.
[ Interruption ]
She stopped talking.
John looked up.
“There’s someone else out there,” Louise whispered. She moved to the door and opened it a couple of inches to see.
They heard a girl screaming out in the store.
John’s first instinct was to run. He wanted to crash through the window and just run. He got ahold of himself and moved to the door just as Louise was closing it again.
“It’s the Cormier girl,” Louise said.
She moved her hand as John reached to open the door again.
“I’ll stay here,” Louise said.
John nodded to her.
He slipped through the door. His breathing sped up again as Sarah screamed. Her panic was infectious. John approached her slowly, with his hands up to signal that he didn’t mean her any harm. She wasn’t understanding. With every step he took towards her, she fought harder to pull open the door. John could see the problem, her foot was blocking the inward swing. Regardless of how hard she tugged at the handle, her own foot was holding her back.
“Sarah,” he said. There was no recognition. At least she stopped screaming. Tears streamed down her face. “Sarah, it’s me, John. You know my daughter, Ruth. You’ve had dinner at my table.”
Her hand went up and her finger pointed at him, as if to dispute his claim. She was mistaken, he knew it. John took another step and realized that the mistake was his own. She wasn’t pointing at him. She was pointing over his shoulder. John turned and saw her. The vacant woman from the stool was advancing. The three yellow lights on her chest were pulsing with an angry intensity. He didn’t know what she wanted, but based on the hateful look in her eyes, it couldn’t be good.
He turned back to Sarah. “Out of the way.” John pushed her out of the way and tore the door open. He shoved Sarah through the door before he followed her. He slammed the door before the vacant woman caught up.
Sarah was already running across the lawn.
He jogged after her.
“Where are you going?” he called.
She looked around. Without answering, she kept running. Sarah was headed towards the shore.
John looked back at the store. He expected to see the door swing open and the vacant woman to come out. She stayed inside. With growing horror, he realized that Louise was now alone in there with the woman. Something even more terrible occurred to him—he wasn’t going to go back and help. It made him sick just to think about it. He turned his back on the store and headed after Sarah.
Chapter 36 : Hazard
[ Chase ]
THE BLACK DRONES DOVE and dipped as Lily tried to outrun them with her rowing.
“Look out!” her father said.
Lily ducked. The warning wasn’t for her. She saw her mother batting at the swooping drone as it came at her head.
“Mom, don’t hit them,” Lily shouted. Her mother wasn’t listening. One of the drones came close enough to get tangled in her hair. Her mother screamed when the thing pulled her hair with an awful whine of its propeller. It shot free and f
lew away as another dived down.
Wendy hit the thing and it made a terrible sound. The drone skipped across the surface of the water before it regained control and flew away again. Wendy slumped down between the seats, holding her hand to her chest.
Her dad started to come forward. The boat sloshed from side to side as he moved.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Lily looked up. Now that she wasn’t rowing, the drones seemed to be keeping their distance. Maybe they feared being hit. She thought the one that her mother clobbered was having a hard time staying aloft.
“You might have taken out one of the propellors,” Lily said, turning towards her mom.
Her father was hanging over the middle seat. He was pulling her mom’s hand from her chest. Lily saw the blood. She saw the split meat of her mother’s hand. The propellor had taken a chunk of flesh and the blood was flowing fast down her mother’s arm.
“Do we have a first aid kit?” her father asked.
Lily shook her head. “It’s on the big boat.”
She got her oars back to the water. Her stroke was off—her father was in the way—but she managed to get the boat turned and start to propel it back towards shore. She kept her eyes to the sky. Now that they were headed back towards the house, the drones weren’t attacking at all. But they followed. The buzzing drones orbited the boat as they headed towards shore.
Her father was ripping the hem from his shirt to use as a bandage. Her mom had her eyes squeezed shut. She didn’t like to deal with cuts or scrapes. Her dad finished what he could and straightened up, knocking one of the oars from Lily’s hand.
“Dad!” she said.
“Sorry.” He climbed back to the stern and caught the oar before it floated too far away. One of the drones swooped down and made a close pass at his arm while he lifted the oar. That settled Lily’s opinion—the drones wanted them back in town. They didn’t even want to see a hint that her family was trying to escape.
She took the oar from her father and kept a close eye on the flying machines as she rowed.
[ Dock ]
The bleeding was slowing by the time Lily wrapped the rope around one of the steel poles and jumped out onto the dock. Her father helped her mother up out of the little boat. Lily tore the cover back from the big boat and ducked under it to fetch the first aid kit.
Her mother took in a sharp breath as her father cleaned and wrapped the wound.
“Now what?” Lily asked.
Her father saw it first—the shape coming up the shoreline at a full sprint.
“Sarah?” Lily asked herself. She began to walk up the planks until she was sure. Then she ran. She caught Sarah as she crossed the lawn. The two girls held each other’s arms.
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked.
Sarah couldn’t answer. She was sobbing and panting.
“Sarah, tell me what’s wrong.” She looked over her friend’s shoulder and saw a man coming up the shore line at a fast walk. Lily took Sarah’s hand and pulled her out onto the dock so her parents could protect them.
Lily finally recognized Mr. Endicott. He didn’t look like himself. His shoulders were slumped and he looked nearly as frightened as Sarah as he walked across the lawn.
“Is it Mr. Endicott?” Lily whispered to Sarah.
“No!” Sarah finally managed to say. “It’s everything. They are everywhere. Why is this happening?”
“Somebody will figure it out,” Lily said. “We just have to keep safe until everything gets back to normal.”
“Nothing is normal,” Sarah said. She pulled her hands from Lily’s. “Nothing! You can’t just put your head in the sand and pretend that everything is going to be okay. People are changing. Ms. Polhemus isn’t right. Shari isn’t right. Who knows who they will get next.”
“Did she do something?” Lily asked. She looked north, towards the Village Peddler. It was behind the trees and across the park. “Is she coming?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I hate this stupid day.”
Lily looked back to the sky. The drones were gone or hiding. They moved so rapidly, they could hide almost anywhere.
“Maybe we can get away on foot. Or take bicycles,” Lily said. “We have some bikes in our garage we could use.”
She looked to her father.
“It’s not a terrible idea,” he said. “I’m not sure all the tires are filled, but it’s not a terrible idea.”
Sarah was pushing away her tears with her palms.
“Yeah, okay,” Sarah said.
“Can you ride?” her father asked her mother.
Her mother looked down at her own hand.
“I can take the back of the tandem,” she said.
They headed back up the dock and met John Endicott on the way.
Chapter 37 : Prescott
[ Discovery ]
THEY WERE WALKING BACK up the main drag when Gerard pulled Trina’s shirt. He tugged hard enough that she lost her balance and crashed into him.
“Shhh!” he said into her ear just before she had a chance to yell at him.
Gerard pulled her behind a tree and held her by her shoulders. They shuffled left as Gerard tracked something on the other side of the street.
Trina pushed herself away from the tree enough to see what he was looking at. They were just a blur at first. She stared until her eyes resolved the shapes. It looked like a column of giant ants, marching up the other side of the street. The one in the lead veered around a utility pole. As the followers got to the same position, they all veered in the same way. There were a dozen or more of them, moving like a single organism.
They all stopped at once. The lead creature rose up and waved its many legs in the air. Gerard’s hands tightened on Trina’s shoulders and they both held perfectly still as they watched. After a second of waving, the thing dropped back to all its legs and the column began marching again. They took a left and moved down towards the shore of the long lake.
“We shouldn’t walk through the middle of town,” Gerard said. “It’s a thoroughfare.”
“Where then?” Trina asked.
“I don’t think they like the water.”
She didn’t have any reason to disagree with his assertion, so she let Gerard lead the way. They passed between buildings, stepped over a fence, and walked through someone’s flower garden until they reached a strip of shorefront shared by a row of houses. They moved in the shadows of the buildings, glancing carefully around the corners before they jogged from house to house.
Gerard was so focused on where they were going that he missed what was right next to them. Trina put her hand on his shoulder and then pointed when he turned to look. They were next to one of the older houses. By the looks of the place, it had started life as a three-season camp and had been upgraded and expanded through the years. Trina pointed through the window at the group of people assembled inside.
She could only see their backs. The people were standing in the middle of the room, all facing the center of their group. Gerard stepped up the porch stairs and reached for the door handle.
“What are you doing?” Trina whispered.
His answer was a beckoning wave. Gerard opened the door and slipped inside.
[ Detachment ]
Trina moved inside and shut the door most of the way. It was stuffy in there. All the windows were closed and the place smelled dusty and hot.
“They don’t even know we’re here,” Gerard whispered. Nobody turned around. He approached and touched one of the people. It was an older man who wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked like the typical Summer Person who came to town for a couple of hot months and then disappeared south as soon as the first cool evening hit town.
Gerard pulled on the man’s arm and turned him around. His face was blank. As Trina got a good look at him, she nearly screamed. She put her hands to her mouth to hold back the sound.
“It’s like that guy was saying,” Gerard said.
The old man had one
of the little machines fixed to his belly. The thing was about a foot long and had tubes connecting its gray body to the flesh of the man. She saw where the tubes pierced through his clothes and imagined that they were embedded in his skin beneath.
“What is it?” Trina whispered.
“Same as the others,” Gerard said.
None of the people reacted to their voices. Trina took a step closer as Gerard started to pull the man’s shirt up from his waistband. He tore it away to reveal the destination of the tubes from the gray machine. Where a tube entered the man’s flesh, his skin pulsed.
“It is sucking something from him. Look at it. It’s like a liposuction machine.”
Trina doubted his assessment, but acknowledged his point. The man was plump, and he seemed to be deflating, especially in the areas where the tubes entered him. At those points the man’s skin was wrinkled and sagging.
“Why?” Trina asked.
“Maybe that’s what they feed on. Maybe it’s a stage in their progression. How should I know?”
“How did you guess that the people wouldn’t know that we’re here?” Trina asked. All the victims standing in the circle remained oblivious to their presence.
“I didn’t,” Gerard said. “I just wanted to see one of them up close.”
As if to illustrate his point, he crouched down and leaned closer to the old man. He got even bolder, tearing away more of the man’s clothes to see how the machine was attached.
“You wouldn’t believe what else this thing is attached to,” Gerard said as he investigated. When he turned to look at Trina, he actually had a smile on his face. She was repulsed by the whole thing. It was like he was playing with a corpse. “There are numbers on it!” he said. “And words.”
Gerard began reading what sounded like a long serial number. After the digits, he read, “Controlled Scientific Devices, Incorporated. Con Micro LED Ton.”
