Crawlers (14 page)

“Where were
you
? I went to look see if there was any surveillance stuff up there.”

He was still a few yards away.

She said, “Did you feel like . . . something doesn’t want us to—” Then she broke off, staring.

Light swung in dual beams across the trees, strobing through their trunks, passing on. Headlights. Someone was driving into the gravel lot.

It was a black SUV. It pulled up on a sloped area, stopped at right angles to the van, almost nose to nose. Adair heard the
crick-crick
sound of an emergency brake, and then someone got out, leaving the headlights on. In the beams, stretching across the open ground, Adair saw the little dark shapes that had been moving toward her.

One was a ball of fur with little steel claws. Another wasn’t a ball at all; it was living line: a snake. But it wasn’t weaving curvily the way snakes usually do. It was moving like a centipede in a straight line. Straight as an arrow. Moving yard after yard with no rippling movement at all. Like it was dead and being pulled on a string.

“Do you see that shit?” Waylon asked, half stumbling up to her, looking where she was looking. He saw it, too.

Then the figure beside the SUV—seemed as if he’d been talking to Mason—got back in the driver’s seat, drove the SUV slowly across the rough ground, swaying and bouncing a little as it came, right toward them.

And as the vehicle approached, the little things that had also been coming toward them darted off into the woods, as if spooked.

The SUV pulled up. Waylon and Adair walked out into its headlights, shading their eyes.

Major Stanner got out and walked toward them. Mason moved slowly up behind the major.

“Are you kids all right?” Stanner asked. He stepped into the headlights so they could see him more clearly.

Mason was still coming up behind Stanner. It seemed to Adair as if he was moving stealthily. And she thought she saw something shiny in his hands.

Well, so what? Why did it bother her? It wasn’t like he was the type to get violent. He probably had a cell phone or something.

Stanner was saying, “Listen, I have to tell you, the satellite—I guess you know about that—it might’ve leaked some fuel. The fumes could make you sick. You could hallucinate, and—you just definitely don’t want to get exposed to this stuff.”

Waylon just stared at him.

But Adair was relieved. At least this was something like an explanation. “Jesus,” she said. Was that what it had been? “Actually I
was
sort of seeing some stuff.”

Mason was raising a hand behind Stanner. Adair thought about warning him. But it couldn’t be what it looked like.

Stanner was asking, “But you don’t feel—nauseated or anything?”

“No,” Adair said.

“Then it’s not serious. You’ll be all right.”

Waylon seemed to break out of his reverie then. “So that’s the latest bullshit cover story? What, a fucking gas leak?”

Unruffled, Stanner looked at Waylon. “That’s it. That’s the ‘latest bullshit cover story.’ ” A kind of steeliness rang in his voice, then. “Take it or leave it.”

Waylon hesitated, sensing the warning.

Mason seemed to twitch behind Stanner.

Adair stared. “Um, listen.”

Then Mason stepped up beside Stanner. There was nothing in his hand—though she could’ve sworn there had been.

Must’ve been the fuel stuff, affecting her mind, she decided.

Mason grinned at them. “Yo, you dudes! I try talking to you and you’re all scamperin’ into the bushes like little humpity-bumpity rabbits and shit.”

Waylon only glanced at him. Then he spoke pointedly to Stanner. “Last time I was up here, I saw some weird shit in those hills.”

Stanner nodded. “Like what?”

Waylon opened his mouth to tell him, then just shook his head. “You already know.”

“Not necessarily, Waylon. Tell me.”

“People who weren’t acting entirely like people, man.”

Stanner nodded, slowly. “That’s kind of vague, kid. You have some kind of proof ?”

“You don’t need proof, dude. You already fucking know.”

Adair glanced at Waylon, impressed by the bluff he was playing out.

Stanner looked at Waylon for a long moment. He didn’t deny anything. He looked like he wanted to tell them something. But then his mouth pursed. He shrugged, and turned to Adair and Mason. “Anyway, it’s just not smart to stay out here any longer. Another one of those fume clouds catches you—”

Waylon snorted. “Fume clouds. What bullshit. The only fume clouds up here are the ones Mason generates, man.”

“Dudes, can we go home?” Mason said. “I’m burger starved. I am, like, burger bereft. I am experiencing a serious burger deficiency.”

Waylon took a step toward Stanner. Adair could see he had made up his mind to confront the government guy. But Stanner turned on his heel, walked briskly to the SUV, and got in.

“Wait, tell me one thing,” Waylon began.

But Stanner just waved and backed up, drove his SUV up to the road. He stopped there and waited, engine running, his brake lights burning—to make sure they left.

Adair managed not to run to the van. The others came along behind. She started to get in, then decided to look through the van first.

She bent over and looked under the dash, behind seats.

There weren’t any weird little ball things in it. Maybe it had been fumes.

Mason drove them home. And he seemed just like Mason. Mostly.

11

December 4, late night

Vinnie was out of pickles, but he’d brought along the little pickle jar because it had vinegar juice in it. Watching the bank, he drank vinegar juice and nodded to himself sagely.

He said aloud but discreetly, “Yes. Yes, it does appear to be the case. Reality is what is the case.”

After all, what else was there to be said? They
were
, yes, weren’t they? Certainly they were.

He was standing just under the small porch roof that sheltered the front entrance to the Presbyterian church, behind the bank in Old Town Quiebra, at about one in the morning. He hadn’t been able to sleep, and he often went for walks at night when he was restless. He had come the long way, down the road, around a corner, down another road, around another corner—all in order to avoid the woods. He didn’t wish to take part in the woods; he had seen the wrongness of the squirrel and the wrongness of the blue jay, and he sometimes heard them muttering and conspiring outside his bedroom window. He had once seen, at the edge of town, the crawling man who hadn’t quite grown into himself right—judging from what some of the animals were saying—and he didn’t want to take part in that, either.

And as he wrote in his backwards journal, he did not wish it to take part in him.

He thought about that, as he watched a team of casual, unhurried people empty out the bank. “The world always seems to find another way to be intrusive.”

There they were, emptying the bank, taking all the money from it at one in the morning. There was the nice lady who worked at the front desk of the police department, and there was Mrs. Bindsheim from the Cruller, and there was that old hippie garbage-head Sport, and there was Mr. Andersen the insurance agent, and there was Mr. Andersen’s ten-year-old daughter, and there was a child of about five, a Hispanic child he didn’t know, and there were Mr. and Mrs. Swinchow, and there was that red-haired Malley girl, and there was Mr. Funston, and there was that fat lady who sang so loudly in the Catholic choir you could hear her on the street when they had those special masses, and there was Reverend Grindy, and there was Mrs. Chang, and there was that man from the Sikh temple with the turban who owned the liquor store, Mr. Roi. There was Bubbles Gurston, and there they all were, emptying all the money out of the Bank of Quiebra. They were bringing out money and—he could glimpse this through an open door—they were rifling safe-deposit boxes.

The thing was, Mr. Funston and Mrs. Chang both worked at the bank. So they were in on it. And Mr. Andersen, as Vinnie well knew, hadn’t spoken to Mr. Funston for ten years, but here Mr. Anderson was, cheerfully handing Mr. Funston a bag. Now a policeman came out of the bank, handing a big bag of money to that small child, who didn’t act like any child at all as he took the bag of money and carried it up a ramp to tuck it neatly in the back of the big U-Haul truck along with the other bags and boxes. No one spoke as they went about this work. They seemed friendly and efficient—they even smiled, some of them—but no one spoke.

In eleven minutes and twelve seconds, by Vinnie’s watch, they were quite finished, and they closed the bank—which Mrs. Chang locked back up with her key—and they all got in the back of the U-Haul with the money, except for Mr. Funston who was driving the truck. Even the kids and the policeman, whose name Vinnie didn’t know, got in the back of the truck.

Then Mr. Funston drove the truck away. All without saying a word.

Eleven hours and twenty-two minutes later, Vinnie heard people on the street talking to a
Contra Costa Times
reporter about how the bank had been looted in the night by unknown persons.

Vinnie told people all about it, of course, saying right out loud, “I saw the whole procession like a pageant with everybody marching together, the people who work at the bank and the cops is what stole it, the red hand was helping, too, but I saw it happen not on TV but in a parade, someone could ask me who did it.”

But they just made those snorting sounds and turned away, or else plain ignored him, like he was babbling. He didn’t get worked up about them ignoring him. He was used to it: people around here made a point of not listening to him, though he was nearly always right.

December 5, late afternoon

Having labored through a thicket of willful student disinterest in his morning class at Diablo, Bert was driving his repaired Tercel through Quiebra’s suburban streets under a diffused-blue sky, the clouds charcoal smudges. Slowing for speed bumps gave him time to examine the reason for the speed bumps: local kids. Baggy-clothed junior-high-schoolers on the sidewalk practicing skateboard jumps, “ollies, grinding”—terms he knew from working at the high schools. He passed them and found himself peering into open garages.

It seemed to Bert that the occasional open garages displayed cross sections of personalities: this garage immaculately ordered; that one ordered but they never throw anything away; here was one more like his own, a repository for whatever he didn’t want in the house, disarrayed.

He passed the high school, kids with backpacks, others peeling their cars out of the driveway, crossing the street to cadge cigarettes. Mixed couples, but rarely black and white in friendly groups; Hispanics in both groups; Asians mixed, probably only if they had good English. All the kids trying out their posturing, or boldly darting across the street in traffic.

That squat Hispanic kid with the shaved head and the droopy pants—Bert remembered seeing him and his friend there in a “sideshow” he’d stumbled on, when he’d worked late in the Diablo library. The sideshow had taken over a corner of the stadium parking lot, car stereos providing a hip-hop soundtrack for the drunken, laughing crowd.

They were watching six or seven cars spinning donuts, the cars taking turns—sometimes two at once—squealing in tight circles, roaring in and out at one another. Some of the kids darting into the path of the cars like toreadors with bulls and jumping out of the way just in time, laughing, bottles in their hands, all in a cloud of blue smoke from exhaust and burnt rubber.

Bert worried about these kids. He wondered if the ones he was going to meet, Lacey’s niece and nephew, went to sideshows.

He veered with his usual sloppy turn onto the freeway, into the stream of hurtling dusty metal; he went two exits up the freeway, left the freeway for Pinecrest, followed it around past the dark, thicketed ravine the kids called Rattlesnake Canyon.

Two blocks more and Lacey and the kids were there, waiting outside a sun-faded ranch-style house more or less like the others except it was the only one on the block that’d let its grass grow wild and weedy. Lacey and a teenage girl and a boy who looked like he was just about college age. The boy wore a black hooded sweat-shirt and multipocketed black pants; the girl wore a jeans jacket, an untucked white blouse, white jeans that had been elaborately drawn on with a blue ballpoint.

Lacey wore a navy-blue sweater-jacket that zipped up, jeans just tight enough to show some curves.

They crowded into the little car, Lacey introducing Adair and Cal. “You got your car fixed. Was it serious?”

“Serious, no. Embarrassing, yes. I’m still mortified.”

“I had a good time. Eerie but good. Hey, I read the Thoreau biography.”

Lacey and Bert talked about the Thoreau biography he’d loaned her. She had brought it along, to his astonishment. In the back, the kids maintained their distinct silences, Adair tensely listening to the adults; Cal sullen, making it obvious that he’d been dragged along.

They ate at one of those places that decorated with weathered junk nailed to the walls, sleds and baseball bats and antique toys and outdated signs, in an attempt to fabricate a carefree atmosphere. The waitress recited her canned greetings, then the specials—“like a hostage with a gun to her head, reading the kidnappers’ demands,” Lacey said—and that made the kids grin and loosen up a bit. The food seemed to have been prepared, frozen, and then microwaved. But the kids seemed to enjoy their Thai chicken quesadillas—a “contradiction in cuisine,” said Bert—and Lacey seemed amused by the argument two drunken balding men were having at the restaurant bar over the Oakland Raiders versus the 49ers.

“Niners are saggin’ with Rice gone,” Cal said solemnly.

“I wish I knew more about sports,” Bert said, a bit apologetically. “Maybe we could go to a game. You guys could give me a lesson.”

“The Niners’ starting quarterback and the backup quarterback are both learning fast,” Lacey said, and went on exchanging arcane football wisdom with Cal for twenty minutes.

Cal talked about how he was getting back into playing guitar— Lacey had prompted that, showing him some chords she knew—but when Bert asked them about their dad’s diving business, both kids got quiet and glum, and he sensed he’d made some kind of faux pas.

“So how’s school?” Bert asked, somewhat desperately. “Is there a class in school you don’t hate? I mean, I shouldn’t assume you hate school.”

“You can assume that,” Cal said, sticking a finger in the dregs of his virgin strawberry margarita, sucking the syrup off.

“I’ve finally got a computer science teacher who knows more than I do,” Adair said. “For years, every time any of us took one of those classes we always knew more than the teachers, and they made us do stupid stuff we’d already done when we were, like, babies.”

“I use a computer for work, and when I try my hand at a little academic criticism,” Bert said, “but I understand them about as well as a cargo cultist understands an airplane.” The kids looked at him blankly; he decided not to explain what cargo cultists were. “What is it you like about the class?”

“Computer science?” Adair smiled, staring off to the side at a fakily rustic NO SWIMMIN’ AT THIS HERE SWIMMIN’ HOLE sign, hung cockeyed on the wall above her. “I like how you can write code, and it’s all, logical, or it’s like communicating with something. I don’t know, it’s like we have this artificial-life program where you make these fractal patterns react with each other in certain ways, and you set up actions and reactions and it just gets a life of its own and it comes from math, from numbers—from just the way things
are
.”

Cal grimaced at Adair; Bert and Lacey smiled at each other. “That’s a great way to think of it. Computer science giving life to math—or finding the life in math.”

Adair shrugged and Cal snorted, as if to say,
The adults are patting us on the head, oh, how nice.
But Bert could tell Adair was pleased, and even Cal seemed surprised by what went on in his sister’s head.

Bert thought,
They’re so caught up in technology. Computers, MP3s,
CD burners, downloading whole movies, laptops, augmenting their own
videogame platforms with chips ordered on-line, doing most of their homework research on-line, spending hours in chat rooms and instant-messaging
— he’d heard kids talk about all that and more. Not to mention television, cars, portable CD players.

He wanted to quote Thoreau.
We are conscious of an animal in us,
which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile
and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled.
He wanted to talk about the idea of a higher nature and a lower nature. He wanted to ask them when they’d last looked beyond the digital landscape; when they’d really opened up to the sky and the sea and the forests, and to one another—and ask if it were possible that their obsession with the technology of distraction was deafening them to the message of God’s creation.

But Bert kept quiet. He kept his mouth shut because he knew he’d just come off pompous, and because teenagers justly despised self-righteous lecturers. Too, teenagers knew that if they were addicted to all these things, it was because they’d been conditioned to them by adults who were just as bad, or worse; who reduced them to a consumer demographic.

So Bert just smiled and nodded and said they did well to hone their skills.

After dinner, it was just getting dark when they drove to the Quiebra waterfront park for a view of the predicted meteor showers. As the sun moved toward the ocean, they walked along the sandy path between clumps of muck-reeds and stiff spare beach grass, watching for the legendary green flash in the otherwise neon-tangerine sunset.

When the teens had walked on ahead a little ways, Lacey asked, “Bert, you know that metallic stuff we saw the other night, that seemed . . . like it was moving by itself ?”

“Well, yeah. I remember. It did sort of seem—I’m not sure.”

“Have you seen any more of it? Or anything else strange?”

“Lots of strange things. Well, that night when my car died on us, there were some things. I thought we were being followed a couple of times. Just a feeling of being watched. But my imagination was working overtime out there.”

She chuckled. Then she became thoughtful, her voice hushed as she went on. “You know, the Bank of Quiebra was looted. I heard a weird story about it. Something someone saw out their window. And Adair . . .”

She told him about Adair coming to her with stories of her parents’ strange behavior. Mom’s behavior in the garage.
Reinstall?
Reinstall.

“I told her that it was probably something perfectly normal going on—and she was just, you know, misinterpreting. That she should talk to her parents about it. She said she was . . . scared to. Not uncomfortable talking to them—
scared
.”

“Scared to talk to them? Why?”

“She said it was hard to explain. She seemed so sincere. And it’s not like I didn’t notice a lot of strange things lately about Suzanna and Nick myself. I did. I feel like I let Adair down. Like I turned my back on her when she needed me, Bert, by not taking it seriously enough. Now I wonder if it could be to do with all this other stuff.”

“All what other stuff, exactly? What do you think it is?” Privately wondering if the other shoe was dropping here—if he was finding out Lacey was actually a bit crazy. That would be his luck with women, all right.