This close, Emily could see that Simon no longer looked completely human. His skin was tinged red with lighter blotches here and there that made him look like an oddly colored cheetah. His chest rose and fell in rapid succession as though he had just run a marathon. Dark varicose veins, plump and seemingly close to bursting, crisscrossed his face just beneath the skin and the exposed flesh of his arms, pulsing obscenely. Despite the imminent impact, Simon"s expression did not change.
"Sorry, Simon," Emily whispered.
When there was less than five feet between them, Emily threw the steering wheel hard left. Instead of Simon, she aimed for the darker shadows where the alien hid, and she yelled in triumph as the lights finally illuminated the monstrosity.
It was balanced on six impossibly thin legs that hung like wilted, wet stems from an elongated corpse-pale body. An extended compound eye stretched around its bulbous head.
There was no mouth that Emily could see in the brief flash of time the thing was visible in her headlights, but she could see the three tentacles attached to Simon as they writhed and flexed their way back to three nodules extruding from just above the insect-like eye.
The Durango tore through two of the creature"s fragile legs with a satisfying crack like snapping branches that she could hear even over the roar of the engine. Black liquid splattered across the windshield as chunks of the creature"s legs, the color of dried wheat stalks, bounced off the hood and spun off into the darkness on either side of her.
From the corner of her eye Emily saw the thing stagger sideways, illuminated by the bloodred paint of her taillights. She pulled hard on the steering wheel while stomping on the brake, swinging the SUV around to face the direction she had just come.
Emily cautiously edged the SUV toward the group. Emily could see the creature, Simon, and the kids he still held firmly under his arms. She had managed to smash through the creature"s two front-left legs, tearing them from the body about two-thirds of the way up. More of the black liquid spewed from the open wounds, cascading to the ground as the creature silently writhed and bucked, sending a spray of its blood over the three figures beneath it.
The tentacles suddenly detached from Simon with three wet pops and a spray of liquid, rewinding back to the creature like a power cord on a vacuum before disappearing into the nodules on its head. Instantly Simon collapsed into an unmoving heap on the ground, the children spilling from his grasp next to him. Emily saw Rhiannon pick herself up and glance at her father"s still form with a look of horrified despair, then at the towering wounded creature blocking the route to Emily, the SUV, and safety.
Emily could see the cogs working in the girl"s brain. Could she risk it? Could she make it past the thing to Emily? No, Emily thought, run, just run.
Maybe the kid was psychic or maybe she was just smarter than Emily gave her credit for, but she grabbed her little brother"s hand, pulled him to his feet, and began to run back toward the house, pulling her stumbling brother behind her, his free arm windmilling through the air as he struggled to keep up with his sister.
The thing could barely stand; its legs splayed out wide to counter the loss of the two front limbs as it teetered for a moment, regaining its balance. Emily was sure it was going to fall, but somehow it managed to stabilize itself. Its head swung from side to side in a weird caricature of Simon"s earlier head movement; the single eye focused on Emily, then swung back to the fleeing kids. It was deciding which it had a better chance with, Emily thought.
It made its decision, and, with ridiculous agility for something that had just lost two of its six legs, spun around and began to limp after the children, its remaining oh-so-thin legs undulating across the ground in a wave of motion. Emily had no doubt that if the thing had its full set of legs still, it would have caught up with the fleeing kids in a matter of seconds. While it was certainly slower, it still moved with a swift rolling flow that reminded her of the graceful movements of the tai chi pract.i.tioners she sometimes saw in Central Park. There was no way the kids were going to make it to the house before the thing caught up with them, no way.
Emily gunned the engine and drove straight at the thing. Its head swiveled momentarily in her direction as she accelerated toward it, that single extended eye boring into her with a dark malevolence that far outstripped the expressionless features of the creature, sending her stomach into free fall.
It was closing on the kids fast. Ben"s legs just couldn"t move quickly enough, and Rhiannon was half dragging her brother as they raced toward the house. Rhiannon must have heard the monster"s click-clacking footfalls closing on her because Emily saw her throw a glance back at the creature. Then her head whipped left and right as she searched desperately for somewhere else that would give her cover. She suddenly dashed to the left, almost pulling her brother"s arm from the socket as she tugged him along after her. She was heading back toward the driveway. Did she think she could make it to the forest beyond it? Rhiannon might have made it on her own, but Ben was slowing her down; they would never make it to the trees before the creature caught up to them.
The SUV was rattling and bouncing over the rough ground as Emily fought to keep the vehicle under control. Within seconds she was alongside the thing; the broken stumps of its reed-thin legs still spurted black liquid as it chased indefatigably after the kids. It was too close to the children now for her to try to get between it and them, and if she hit it, it could careen right on top of them. The best she could do was feint at it. She pulled the wheel to the left and swerved the Durango at the creature, pulling back just before she hit it, all the time hoping she would not inadvertently run over the kids. If she could just get enough room to get the SUV between them and it, she could buy them some time to get to the woods.
Emily saw something flash from the head of the creature and crack through the air like a whip. It was one of the tentacles the thing had used to control Simon. The tip of the tentacle fell just short of the back of Rhiannon"s head, spraying liquid across the shoulders of the two stumbling children. The thing wasn"t trying to kill them, Emily realized, it wanted to capture them. Use them like it had Simon. Maybe it thought it could use them as some bargaining chip to control Emily?
Wrong. She hit the accelerator of the Durango and swerved sharply into the path of the creature. It swerved away from her, momentarily slowing its pace, giving Emily the opening she needed. It was now or never. She wrenched the steering wheel hard left and forced the SUV between the advancing monster and the children. Pounding her foot down hard on the brake, the SUV fishtailed over the gra.s.s and came to a stop directly in front of the monster.
The creature tried to stop. Apparently realizing it wouldn"t make it in time, it tried to use its remaining legs to vault over the SUV. Emily stared through the open window as the thing pa.s.sed overhead; its smooth underbelly flashed by and its trailing legs almost cleared the Durango. Then one slammed into the top rim of the pa.s.senger side door, sending Emily diving for cover and the thing crashing to the ground on the opposite side of the SUV.
Emily raised herself up and stared out the pa.s.senger window. The creature had come to rest about eight feet away from the right side of the SUV; the leg that had crashed into it was bent and useless as the thing tried to push itself upright again.
The children had come to a stop and now stood about twenty feet from the crumpled monster. Ben"s arms were thrown around his sister"s waist as he clung to her; Rhiannon"s arms held her brother close.
The creature began to crawl toward the two children, pulling and pushing itself forward with its remaining legs. It looked like a broken gra.s.shopper, she thought as the creature"s legs scissored back and forth in the dirt.
But it was still moving and the kids weren"t.
"Run!" Emily yelled through the open window.
Pulling her brother behind her once again, Rhiannon began to sprint for the house. Emily pushed the gear stick into reverse and pulled the SUV back until she was sure she was where she wanted to be. Slipping the gear back into drive, she aimed directly at the crawling monstrosity and accelerated toward it.
Emily knew it must have sensed the onrushing vehicle, must have known that she was going to send it back to whatever h.e.l.lhole of a planet it had come from, but the thing didn"t even glimpse at her, it just kept crawling toward the kids.
As the SUV"s four twenty-inch wheels rolled over the back of the creature, crushing its miserable life, Emily saw a tentacle flick out from its head into the darkness...and both kids tumble to the ground.
The SUV had barely come to a stop and Emily was out, sprinting to where she had seen the children tumble into the darkness. She was vaguely aware of something black and sticky smeared from the front wheel well all the way along the driver"s door. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she took deep satisfaction in knowing she had caused such grievous harm to the creature.
"Rhiannon? Ben? Where are you?" she yelled, her flashlight dancing through the darkness.
An almost silent whimpering came from just up ahead, and Emily flicked the beam of the flashlight to the source. Benjamin and Rhiannon were huddled together in the open mouth of an aluminum drainpipe used to direct flash floods along a culvert and away from the house. Rhiannon had the little boy pulled close to her, his head pressed to her chest as they cowered in the shadows.
They were both alive. Thank G.o.d. They were alive.
"Are you both okay?" she asked, her voice breathless. Ben"s head swiveled to focus on Emily, his big eyes like two bright moons above dirty, tear-streaked cheeks. "The bad thing hit me," he said. Then, "Where"s Daddy?"
How do you tell a little boy his father is most likely dead? She couldn"t be sure if Simon was, but she wasn"t about to go over there right then and find out. So she chose to ignore the question, instead offering her hand to the children. "Why don"t you two get out of there and we"ll go back to the car, "kay?"
Emily pulled them one by one from the mouth of the drainpipe. Ben flinched a little as she pulled him to the gra.s.s beside her, but Thor instantly began licking the boy"s face, which seemed to brighten him up a little.
"Did the"-she searched for the right word-"the bad thing hurt you, Ben? Let me see." She gently took the quivering boy by the shoulder and turned him around, lifting the back of his shirt. She could see a small bruise just below his right shoulder blade, a small red b.u.mp at its center, barely visible in the light of her flashlight. It wasn"t anything serious. She pulled the boy"s shirt back down and tucked it back into his pants.
"You"ll be fine, kiddo. We have to get back to your house now and pick up the stuff we left there."
"I don"t-" he began to object.
"It"s okay, dweeb," his sister interjected, her voice rattling from her throat as she choked back tears. "We have to go with Emily and help her."
"Don"t call me that," the boy snapped back. The insult from his older sister seemed to pull him back to reality. "You"re the dweeb."
"Am not."
"Are too."
Emily took a hand of each of the children and walked them back to the waiting SUV, leading them to the pa.s.senger side so there was no chance they would see the dead creature, then bundled them inside. Thor jumped in with them and sat between the two kids, who had lapsed back into a stunned silence.
Emily climbed into the driver"s seat, glimpsing back at the shadowy outline of the dead alien, its limbs sticking up like huge broken twigs from the ground, a faint steam rising still from its spilled fluids.
Beyond the creature"s remains, Emily could see the outline of Simon"s body. He was lying in the same crumpled position as when the creature had released him. One arm rested across his stomach, the other was draped across his face, his legs splayed on the wet gra.s.s. She stared at his still form. She knew she should get out and check whether he was still alive, but she knew already that Simon had been dead long before she"d found the kids.
Her hands were trembling as she gripped the steering wheel of the Durango, pulled slowly away, and swung the vehicle around toward the gravel road leading away from the house.
Simon had said he was taking another shorter route to get to the Jeffersons". Emily scanned the trees ahead of her for any hint of a turnoff as she slowly advanced along the same road they had left along earlier; the darkness was repulsed by the SUV"s high beams. She had been too focused on keeping the big vehicle on the road when they had first traveled this road, speeding away from the creature. Now she saw the turnoff, a gravel path leading into the woods to her left. She turned on to it and accelerated gently up to twenty, still nervous and unsure of her driving ability but more concerned with the way the hand tremors had turned into a case of the full-on shakes.
The children sat quietly in the backseat; Rhiannon stared directly ahead and Ben cuddled up to Thor. The dog"s head rested in the boy"s lap.
Shock. Disbelief. Horror. Each time Emily glanced in the mirror above her head, she would see a new emotion on one of the children"s faces. If things had been normal and something of this emotional magnitude had occurred, there would be people to turn to, experts to help. Someone would know how to deal with the turmoil these kids were about to experience. Emily had no idea how to handle their feelings. G.o.d! She was only now beginning to get a grip on her own. What was she expected to do? She couldn"t stop, couldn"t hole up with them and try and explain what had happened. A storm was coming. A storm unlike any other ever experienced on this world. What was she supposed to do?
The trees disappeared, and Emily found herself b.u.mping over a graveled road that followed the contour of the ridgeline; in the distance she could see the glow of the lights she had left on in the house to help guide them back.
She focused on those lights as they grew closer and brighter; this must have been how sailors felt. Lost on the sea, with only the stars to guide them until they found the light of some distant port to lead them back to safety.
She had to prioritize. There had been more orbs hanging from that tree, unopened; each one would contain one more of the creature she had just killed. They could be out there now, waiting, watching. Commander Mulligan had said they had twenty-four hours maximum before the storm caught up with them if they stayed here. The choice was obvious, she supposed, she had to get the kids out now and run. Right now. Run to anywhere that was not here.
Emily drove all night and into the next day, stopping only when the children complained they needed a bathroom break, then ushering them back into the vehicle and speeding away again. That evening, exhausted and barely able to focus on the road ahead, Emily had finally pulled the SUV over to the side of the road.
They spent the night in the vehicle, camped in the breakdown lane of Route 90. Emily had tried to sleep, but the occasional whimper from one of the children and a pounding headache had all but ensured she got little rest.
Emily woke in the morning to the storm Commander Mulligan had warned them about-it had arrived with a vengeance. The sky ahead was masked by normal clouds. But the sky behind them was choked with red and pregnant with foreboding. The storm had already consumed most of the eastern horizon. Thick tendrils stretched across the sky ahead of a main bank of billowing red that filled an entire third of the visible eastern hemisphere from horizon to horizon. An occasional flash of lightning lit up the interior, illuminating the clouds with thick bands of white light.
With the children still sleeping, Emily pulled the Durango away from the shoulder and headed northwest. They had been silent for most of the headlong flight out of Stuyvesant, the mock disdain and sniping between the siblings forgotten as Rhiannon had silently consoled her brother, cradling him in her arms.
Clots of alien trees lay in almost every direction Emily looked as she cruised up the freeway. These weren"t the half-finished variety, either; they were fully constructed and already giving off a red fog of dust that hung above the skyline like smog, scintillating in the early morning light. It was almost as if the construction had sped up in antic.i.p.ation of the approaching storm. Here and there, along the tree-lined gra.s.s embankments on either side of the road, Emily would spot stretches of red where the indigenous foliage had been converted to something not of this world.
They had plenty of supplies-despite her fear, Emily had circled back to Simon"s house before they"d left. She"d thrown boxes and boxes of food into the back of the Durango, along with the children"s bags. But there were other worries. The SUV was down to under half a tank of gas. Emily had no idea how much they had started out with, and she wasn"t sure how far what was left would get them. She was keeping her speed down to fifty, but even so, the needle on the fuel gauge quickly slipped sufficiently close to the quarter-tank mark that she decided now would be as good a time as any to start looking for gas. If she could fill the tank up, that should give them enough to get them close to Flint, Michigan, their next major goal.
A few minutes later, she spotted a Hilton Garden Inn ahead. Perfect. She hung a right at the next junction and pulled around back of the roadside inn. There were a couple of cars parked in the back lot, but otherwise the building looked empty. She was sure the kids would appreciate using the facilities despite the fact there was no water; kids appreciated their privacy. She followed the driveway around to the front of the building and pulled up outside the entranceway. There were a couple more vehicles parked in random s.p.a.ces out front, and she could see the occasional evidence that the inn had not been empty when the red rain struck; she counted seven windows that had near-perfect circles cut through their gla.s.s.
She surveyed the terrain through the window of the SUV-it looked clear-then turned off the engine.
Emily undid her seat belt and turned to face the children, feeling the bones in her stiff back pop as she twisted. Rhiannon was already awake, but Ben was still asleep.
"Are we staying here tonight?" the girl asked, looking out at the hotel.
Emily had intended to try to get a couple more hours of driving in before calling it quits, but the storm was now just a distant collar of red around the eastern horizon, and this seemed like the perfect place to spend the night. Besides, Ben did not look right to her. His face looked puffy around the eyes, and he looked paler than when they had first set off that morning.
"Sure," she replied. "Looks nice, doesn"t it? How"s your brother doing back there?"
Rhiannon gave her brother"s shoulder a gentle shake. His eyes fluttered open-they were a little bloodshot, Emily noted-and swept around the interior of the SUV as if unsure of where he was before finally settling on Emily. She gave him a broad smile. "How you doing there, kiddo?"
"I wanna go home," he croaked, his lips dry and cracked.
"I know you do. I know. But we"re going to spend the night at this motel, and then, in the morning, we"ll talk some more, okay?"
Ben nodded from behind a pout.
They found a room on the second floor. With the power out, the electronic locks had all automatically failed to the locked position, but they lucked out. The room they would spend the night in had been occupied. Whoever had been staying there had died and transformed into one of the spider-aliens, but instead of chewing through the window, it had exited through the front door. The hole it left was large enough for Emily to reach through and use the internal handle to open the locked door.
There were two queen-size beds in the room, both empty, thank goodness, but Emily found the desiccated husk of a pupa behind the love seat at the opposite end of the room. When she tried to pick it up to move it, it crumbled to dust between her fingers, leaving nothing but a black shadow of powder on the carpet.
They were all still wearing the same dirt- and alien-gunk-stained clothes from the previous night. Both the kids looked like bedraggled street urchins, their faces spotted with mud, their clothes dirty and stiff with sweat. Emily tried the faucets in the bathroom, but nothing came out, just a deep rattle of empty pipes. They would have to make do with the baby wipes tonight.
Emily caught a glimpse of the old Rhiannon"s petulance when she handed her the packet of lemon-scented wipes and suggested she might like to grab her bag of clothes and head into the bathroom to clean herself up. In the meantime she would help her brother, Emily told her. She smiled as Rhiannon s.n.a.t.c.hed the wipes from her hand, grabbed her bag, and stomped into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
Ben was lying on the second bed, his back to her. She made her way to the opposite side and knelt down beside the boy. His face was bathed in the gray sunlight flowing through the room"s only window.
"How are you feeling, Ben?" she asked softly.
"My tummy hurts," the boy said weakly.
Emily smiled rea.s.suringly. "Would you like a little water?" The boy nodded. "Let"s sit you up then, and I"ll bring you some, okay?" She slipped her hands under Ben"s armpits and raised him upright. The kid weighed about as much as a sparrow; she was going to have to make sure he ate regularly if he was going to stay healthy. She pulled a disposable cup from its wrapper on the side table and poured it half-full of water from her bottle. Ben took it and gulped it down in three swift swigs. He held the empty cup out for more, and Emily happily obliged, pouring in the remainder of the water. It disappeared almost as quickly as the first time, and Emily thought she saw a little color returning to the kid"s face.
"Hey, Ben," she said as he handed the cup back to her. "How about we get you into a change of clothes?" Ben raised his arms above his head and waited for Emily to pull his shirt over his head. He unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, and wriggled out of his jeans. Emily pulled off his socks, holding her nose in mock-disgust as she deposited them into the trash can at the side of the bed, which elicited a brief giggling fit from Ben.
"Okay, big guy. Let"s get you cleaned up." She pulled a fresh towelette from a second packet of baby wipes and began to methodically clean the dirt from his face and his neck, then down his arms to his fingertips. She gave his chest and legs a quick once-over. "Up you get," she said when she was done with his feet. "Let"s get your back next."
Ben stood and turned.
The bruise on his back from where the creature"s whiplike tentacle had hit the boy was ugly; a mix of angry purple-and-black blotches overlapping each other around a raised b.u.mp of skin. Emily carefully probed the area with the baby wipe, cleaning the wound as gently as possible. The wound looked a little inflamed to her. She"d need to disinfect it.
She finished cleaning the boy up, then led him over to where she had set her backpack down. She opened a side flap and pulled out the first aid kit, then opened it and unwrapped an antiseptic wipe.
"That itches," he said as she used the wipe to go back over the welt and bruised area beneath his shoulder.
"All done," replied Emily, balling the antiseptic wipe and tossing it in the trash. She pulled out fresh clothes for him from his backpack and helped him into them. By the time she was finished, the kid looked a lot more like the little ball of energy she had come to adore over the past couple of days.
She stared into his eyes for a moment, pushing an errant lock of hair from his face. There was so much sadness behind those young eyes. She was about to ask him how he was feeling when Rhiannon flounced out of the bathroom dressed in bright-pink sweats.
"Your turn," she said to Emily, tossing the half-empty pack of baby wipes to her.
Emily pulled another antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit and headed into the bathroom. The gash on her forehead was ugly looking and inflamed. She cleaned the area with the antibacterial wipe. By the time Emily was done wiping the grime from the rest of her body and slipping into her fresh, if rather wrinkled, clothes, the kids were sitting together at the small table. They had helped themselves to a can of fruit each and were happily spooning the contents into their mouths. A third can sat on the tabletop, a plastic spoon resting next to it.
Emily pulled the lid off the can and joined them for dinner.
That evening, Emily placed a sat-phone call to Jacob from the corridor of the hotel. In the confusion and headlong flight of the past few days, she had completely forgotten her nightly commitment to update him. And in her earlier rush to pack, she realized as she pulled the equipment from the backpack, she had somehow managed to turn the phone off, so there was no way for him to contact her.
Emily knew he would be horribly worried.
"All that matters is that you are all okay," he said after she had explained. "Tell me more about the creature and what happened."
Emily ran through how she had managed to rescue the kids but how Simon had been overcome by the creature. Jacob, as always, found the subject matter fascinating.
"I"m sorry," he said after he realized he was more concerned with the process of Simon"s trans.m.u.tation by the creature than the loss of the man. "Sometimes the scientist gets the better of me."
His embarra.s.sment quickly dissipated when she told him she was now driving. "That"s fantastic." Jacob"s voice took on a new dimension of cheerfulness at the news. "You"ll be here in no time at all now."
But Jacob"s tone fell back to one of concern when he heard the conclusion of her battle with the creature and that Ben had been struck by the alien as it died. "Is he all right?"
"Yes, a little bruised and in shock. But the kid has his sister looking after him. He"ll pull through."
After the call ended, Emily found both the children already asleep. She replaced the phone in the backpack and climbed into the second bed, lulled quickly to sleep by the children"s steady breathing.
Daylight gently woke Emily, dancing across the lids of her eyes.
She stretched, dressed, and let Thor out into the corridor, waiting at the door as he wandered first up, then back down the corridor. When, for reasons known only to the dog, he settled on a particular door to pee against, he looked back at her and she nodded once, giving him her permission to do his thing indoors. When he was done, she ushered him back in and allowed the door to click closed behind her.
Rhiannon must have already been awake when she"d let Thor outside, because when Emily turned around, the girl was pulling on the top to her sweats-even more shockingly pink in the daylight, Emily noted-but Ben was still asleep, bundled up beneath the blankets next to where Rhiannon had been sleeping.
"Ben," Emily called as she searched the supply bag for something other than granola bars for breakfast. She was sure she had seen a couple of Fiber One bars in here somewhere. "Rhiannon, wake your brother," Emily asked when the boy didn"t answer or stir.
"Emily!" The concern in Rhia"s voice made all thoughts of breakfast disappear, and Emily found herself instantly at the girl"s side.