Growth (26 page)

Axel stepped on the kneecap of one of the bodies stretched between the mounds. The sudden weight twisted the vulnerable joint, pitching Axel sideways into the wall. He rolled into a mound, flailing and kicking. Sandy grabbed the back of his jeans and yanked him upright. Charlie crashed into her and they all stumbled.

Purcell fired a few rounds back down the tunnel behind them for the hell of it.

Edgar ran on ahead, panic fueling his flight. He looked back to make sure that everyone was following, and when he turned back around, his head smacked into low concrete. His feet kept going and he flopped flat on his back in the center of the trough. Sandy and Axel reached him and Sandy jerked his head out of the filthy water.

Blood ran from a gash in his forehead, spilling down between the two circular lenses of the mask. He was out cold, limp as an abandoned marionette. Axel and Charlie lifted him up and they turned to see what lay ahead.

The sewer grew smaller here; the larger pipe collapsed down into a pipe only four feet in diameter. Purcell pulled a road flare from Charlie's backpack and struck the tip. Everybody flinched from the burst of sizzling light. “Might slow 'em down,” Purcell said, and tossed it into the center of the closest mound behind them.

Sandy went first. At least the mounds of bodies had tapered off and stopped, leaving the pipe clear. She could walk through the pipe fairly quickly, keeping her head down and back hunched. Charlie and Axel had to bend almost in half at the waist; they were dragging Edgar anyway, so it didn't matter as much. The flare sent their running shadows flickering before them like black flames.

Sandy saw something coming up, some irregularity in the top of the tunnel. She got closer and saw that it was another pipe, leading up to a new manhole. She yelled, “Here!” and climbed up. She reached the cover and tried to lift it. It was too heavy. She went back down, saying, “I can't budge it.” Charlie pushed her out of the way and clambered up. They heard him grunt and a sliver of faint light spilled down around him. He came back down and together with Axel, they lifted Edgar up the vertical conduit.

Sandy followed them and crawled out to a night sky and pavement still warm from the heat of the day. She saw that they had emerged three blocks south on Fifth Street, near the high school. The sun was only a red glimmer on the horizon. The streetlights along Main Street were on. Down here, it was all residential houses, and there were no lights. Night was gathering in the deepening shadows, spreading like ink.

Edgar moaned and tried to sit up. He rolled onto his hands and knees and began to retch.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “Don't have any choice now.” He ripped Edgar's mask off. Vomit spilled out it, dripping off Edgar's nose and chin. He sucked in a ragged breath and vomited again.

Purcell jerked his legs out of the manhole and Axel helped slide the cover back into place. It settled with a loud thunk.

Edgar sat back and spat. “Dizzy,” he said.

“You've probably got a concussion,” Sandy said.

“Can you walk?” Purcell asked. “We gotta get back to the truck.”

Sandy helped Edgar to stand. He looked a little unsteady, but gave them a thumbs-up.

“We'll take it slow, but we need to get moving,” Purcell said.

They started back up Fifth Street. Sandy said, “Let's cut down Franklin. I don't want to get any closer to that damn corn than we need to.”

Purcell was about to say something when he suddenly stopped short and aimed his shotgun at one of the cars parked along the street. He squatted, sweeping the light back and forth under the car. “Huh. Thought I heard something.”

Then they all heard it. The scraping of bare feet and hands over pavement. The sounds came from all around them, creeping through the shadows, slithering through dark yards, crawling through bushes, squirming under vehicles.

Sandy spun, and they found themselves forming a tight circle in the middle of the street, shoulder to shoulder, trying to watch everywhere at once.

They were surrounded.

 

 

Charlie had two flares left. He stuck them in his back pocket, then shrugged off his backpack and gave it to Axel. “I'm going for the truck.” He racked the bolt back on his AA-12, making sure there was a shell in the breech. “Get him,” he pointed at Edgar, standing but still swaying, “someplace where you can hole up for a bit.”

Purcell reached out and patted Charlie's shoulder. Father and son shared a look for a moment. Charlie said, “You're gonna hear some shooting. Don't sweat it.” He sparked one of the flares and took off running, raising the flare over his head with his left and holding the shotgun by the pistol grip with his right.

A dozen tendrils rippled across the street and followed. More of them, maybe a hundred, seethed out of the darkness and came at them. Purcell and Axel opened up, blasting a hole in the mass of creatures. They pulled Edgar along, struggling to run, heading south on Fifth Street.

Sandy had a flash. “There!” She pointed at a hulking shape that rose above the houses, silhouetted against the stars. “The water tower! These things, they can't climb. We'll get up there and wait for Charlie.”

“I don't know,” Purcell draped Edgar's arm over his shoulders and they shuffled along. “We get up there, we're trapped.”

“Better than down here,” Sandy said, slamming her shotgun into her shoulder and squeezing off two quick shots at a couple of tendrils crawling into the street between two cars.

“Can't argue with that,” Purcell said.

Axel emptied his clip into the horde that crept across the street. He dropped it and fumbled for a new one.

Sandy heard distant gunfire.

They ran along the gym and passed a row of school buses. Sandy noticed that tendrils of all sizes were tracking them. Most were large, moving along on human limbs. Some were smaller, lower to the ground, using dog, cat, and possum legs. They flowed over each other as if oblivious to the other tentacles. The effect was like a mass of giant, wriggling centipedes, all scurrying to reach the food first.

“Over there,” Sandy said, panting. “At the edge of center field. Near the trees.” They ran onto the baseball diamond. The tendrils followed, and their scrabbling across the dry grass raised a cloud of dust and line chalk. Axel hung back and sprayed the closest fungus tentacles with another twenty rounds. The tendrils kept coming.

And more were rushing out of the darkness of the trees to meet them.

Sandy fired at those, trying to open up a path to the base of the water tower. She kept squeezing the trigger until the shotgun was empty, no way to reload now. They reached the waist-high chain-link fence and threw themselves over. She hoped the fence would slow the tendrils behind them, at least for a minute.

But it was low enough that the first few rows of arms on each tendril were able to pull the long line of limbs over and create enough momentum to keep flowing over.

Sandy's steps faltered and she almost gave up when she saw how many tendrils were swarming out from the darkness of the trees. Dozens upon dozens, maybe hundreds. Moving through the grass, they made no sound. In some ways this silence unnerved Sandy the most. There was no warning, nothing until they were crawling up your legs. A dog will growl or bark to let you know they are scared or angry, a pissed-off cat will hiss at you, hell, even a goddamn rattlesnake will shake its tail to warn you off, but these things came after you in total silence. You blinked and they were suddenly upon you.

Axel managed to reload and blew the closest tendrils into a fine gray mist. Then the water tower loomed overhead. They pushed Edgar up the ladder first. Purcell was next, sticking close to Edgar in case he fell. Axel continued to fire, sweeping the shotgun back and forth in wild, frantic movements.

Sandy turned and put one foot on the flat piece of steel that jutted from the northwest leg of the water tower. She went to push herself off the ground, and heard a cry, a sound that struck the very core of her soul. She froze. The cry came again.

“Mom!”

It was Kevin.

Sandy jumped off the water tower and whipped her flashlight around.

The tendrils crept closer, closer.

“In the tree!” Kevin yelled.

She raised the Maglite, flashing it into the branches. And twenty yards away, across a heaving mass of tendrils, she saw her son, standing in the crook of an old oak, fifteen feet off the ground. Puffing Bill carefully straddled the branch next to him.

She started toward him, lowering her shotgun and jerking the trigger. Nothing happened. Axel grabbed her. “You're empty! Get up there!” He shoved her at the ladder.

She knew he was right. She called out to Kevin, “Stay put! I'll get you. Just stay there!”

She put her foot on the ladder and started climbing. A fresh wave of emotion burst inside her mind, leaving her dazed. Sweet relief and raw fear ricocheted through her body and she had to stop for a second to collect her thoughts. Axel slapped her ass. She started moving, realizing that falling off the water tower wouldn't help Kevin.

Down below, the tendrils wrapped around the spindly legs of the tower, and even though some of the arms grabbed listlessly at the ladder rungs, they could not climb.

She yelled, “Stay there!” in case he hadn't heard her the first time. “We'll get you. Just as soon as I can.” Her promise sounded hollow and desperate. She kept going, hand over hand, until she reached the catwalk.

Axel was right behind her. They crawled out onto the narrow ledge that ran around the top of the water tower. Purcell had pulled Edgar over to make room, and now Edgar sat with his feet dangling over the edge, clutching the railing.

Sandy sidled along the other direction until she was facing Kevin. “Are you okay?” she called.

“Yeah, Mom. We're good.”

She almost wept as joy swept through her. “Just stay put until we figure something, all right? Just stay put.”

“Okay, Mom.” He might as well have said, “Well,
DUH
.” Of course they were going to stay put. Where else would they go?

She inched back to Purcell. He looked up at her and gave her a tired smile. “That your boy?”

She nodded.

“Good, good.”

Axel dropped the backpack on the catwalk and slumped back against the cool metal of the water tank, trying to catch his breath. Purcell opened the pack and inventoried the contents. There wasn't much. Three full clips for the AA-12s. Four more clips for the SPAS-12s. No water. No food.

They were high enough that they could see the entire town, and looked northwest, trying to see if Charlie had reached the truck. It was impossible, though, and all they could really make out were the streetlights spaced along Main Street.

Despite herself, Sandy slumped down and sat next to Axel. Exhaustion spread throughout her body, filling her muscles with lead. She watched the sun sink below the horizon and sometime later, she slept.

 

 

Sandy scared everybody, including herself, by screaming out, “Don't fall asleep!”

“What?” Purcell grabbed her. He'd thought she was falling off the tower.

Axel had a shotgun up and ready to go, “What, what?” echoing his dad.

Before Sandy could answer, reassure them, they all heard a thumping come out of the northern sky.

Three lights opened up on them all at the same time, freezing Sandy, Purcell, his boys, pinning them to the side of the tank. The lights came skimming along the horizon, and swept past them in the roaring wash of three helicopters thundering past the water tank over one hundred miles an hour.

As they passed, the lights vanished at the same time and the helicopters went dark again.

Purcell said to Axel, “You hear them helicopters come back around, you hand me one of them double As. Fuckin' black helicopters. And you thought I was nuts, telling folks about 'em.”

Two miles to the south, they could see a flash and hear a
whoomp
, as the hundreds of acres of corn around the Einhorn, Kobritz, and Johnson houses and barns started to burn. Sandy watched as the fires lit the sky with an orange glow.

Edgar said, “What the hell's that?” He pointed back to the north, back toward Main Street. They saw flashes of a pair of headlights winding their way along the parade. Heard a horn, pressed over and over.

“Charlie?” Sandy asked.

“Yeah, it is. I oughta recognize the sound of my own truck.” Purcell used the railing to help him stand up.

The sound of the rotors grew louder. The helicopters were sweeping back around. The headlights of the truck turned south on Fifth Street, heading toward the high school. If anything, it seemed to be gathering speed.

“What's he doing?” Purcell asked, mostly to himself.

The helicopters roared overhead. Gunfire crackled from underneath each chopper, splitting the night wide open with tracers. They swooped down and blew Purcell's truck apart. It was like watching popcorn explode in the microwave. Momentum carried the burning truck along, where it eventually scraped along parked cars and smashed into a tree.

Purcell brought Edgar's AA-12 up and fired at the helicopters, screaming in rage.

One of the helicopters veered away from the other two and banked toward them.

Sandy cringed. “I think you got his attention. Let's get—”

Purcell yelled, “Gimme another fucking clip. Gonna light this son of a bitch—”

The helicopter opened fire. Tracers singed through the air a dozen yards away from the tank to the west, sweeping closer.

Lightning streaked up from the ground, back near the library, and jolted the chopper. It farted pale smoke and faltered, pitching and starting to spin. The tracers sailed over the top of the water tank. The helicopter kept spinning, faster and faster. Near the end, the pilot almost got it under control, pulling it out of the tailspin, but the tail rotors clipped the edge of the roof of the baseball stand and that was all it took.

The helicopter went sideways and exploded across the pitcher's mound.

Purcell howled.

The massive spinning blades struck the grass and shattered, sending great shards of metal into the night. One six-foot piece whipped out and caught the northwestern leg of the tower, connecting with a deep, thrumming sound and shearing the strut in half.

The water tower swayed like a small boat going sideways in an approaching storm.

The other two helicopters split apart and shot away, disappearing in the night sky.

“Fight, cocksuckers!” Purcell shouted, shooting at them.

The tower started to dip and rock, easy at first, as if getting used to the idea.

Sandy took hold of the railing with both hands and squeezed as hard as she could. The water shifted and slammed into one side of the tank behind her, then the other. As it rocked back, she felt that same drop in her stomach that she felt on a roller coaster, when it slowed down at the first apex, right before plummeting at the ground.

When the tower reached the point of no return, and started to topple over in slow motion, she scrambled up the tilting catwalk, trying to balance on the tank itself as it tilted at the earth and went down. Axel braced himself and wrapped one arm around his brother. Purcell put his back to the tank and closed his eyes.

The tower hit one of center field's light posts on the way down and spun.

Sandy went flying, flung fifteen feet into the air. She hit third base with an impact that made something snap inside her right shoulder and rolled, flopping and bouncing, down the concrete steps into the visitors' dugout.

Four hundred thousand gallons of water burst from the ruptured tank, sending a three-foot wave across the infield, washing away the tendrils. It hit the low front wall of the dugout and exploded, most of it going straight up or to the sides. Still, the impact was enough to drive her into the concrete bench.

She tried to rise from the churning water. Her back had been wrenched, and it hurt to breathe. Moving her right arm sparked agony. She couldn't see any tendrils right away. She raised herself up to sit on the concrete bench. After cautiously feeling around her right shoulder, she found a lump over her right clavicle.

She'd broken her collarbone.

She carefully put her right hand in her front pocket and tried to stand. She found she could only move if she kept her arm tight to her side. Her gun was still in its holster. She reached across her stomach with her left hand and fumbled with it a while before unsnapping the strap. The Glock felt alien and heavy in her left hand.

Tendrils twisted and flailed around the dugout, all those rotten limbs quivering in the muddy water.

The Fitzgimmons rose from the receding water near second base in various states of consciousness.

Axel helped his brother and father up and they went staggering back to the crumpled tower. Sandy didn't understand why they would try for the tower again, until they passed the heap of metal and headed for the trees.

She looked up, wondering if she could climb onto the roof of the dugout with one arm. Water trickled into the dugout down the steps. She got one foot on the front wall, stood on it and got her chest and left arm over the edge, hung there for a moment, then managed to throw her left leg onto the roof. She pulled herself over from there, right shoulder jolting her with every movement.

Soon the water had washed away, leaving nothing but wet grass and muddy sand. It only took a few seconds for the first tendril to explore the dugout roof. The tip came up from the home base end, a dozen fingers open and grasping like a bristling flower. Gnarled arms clawed at the cement and hauled more of the tentacle onto the roof.

Sandy squeezed off four rounds at point-blank range, pumping bullets into the cluster of fingers. The tendril shuddered and curled to the side. Broken and torn fingers dropped off the tip like ejected shells.

Drawn by the gunfire, more tendrils appeared, crawling up over the edge. Sandy emptied her Glock at them and only attracted more. She didn't bother trying to put the handgun back in its holster and dropped it, feeling around her belt.

She found the Taser, fired at a tentacle at her feet. The limbs twitched for a second, then shrugged it off and crawled closer. She realized she couldn't reload a new cartridge with one hand and dropped the Taser. That left the Mace.

She pulled it out and spun, finger frozen just above the trigger. The dugout was now completely surrounded. Beyond the grasping, clawing tendrils wriggling onto the roof, she could see hundreds more, all swarming closer. Her hand shook. She didn't want to turn around and look at the tree where Kevin waited. She hoped he couldn't see what was about to happen.

She abruptly reversed the can of Mace and sprayed her legs, moved up to her stomach and back. It started to sputter and hiss air so she tried to get the remnants into her hair. She was grateful that she wore the gas mask.

The tendrils shrank back at first, but then hunger overcame the stench of the Mace and they crawled even closer. They came up from everywhere.

Sandy tried not to scream.

A pair of headlights burst upon her as a tow truck roared through the parking lot, towing an old tanker trailer. Holes the size of golf balls had been blown in its sides, and some kind of liquid was spilling out, spraying the outside of the truck and at least six feet into the air on each side. It smelled like bleach and dried kale. The truck whipped around and jerked to a stop near the dugout, splashing the chemical everywhere.

The tendrils shrank away.

“Run!” Charlie shouted from the driver's seat of Axel's garage tow truck. Sandy jumped off the dugout and went to her knees in the liquid. It seeped into her cuts and burned. She threw herself into the front seat and Charlie hit the gas, slipping and sliding through the mud. Once in the outfield, he did his best to run over the tendrils, crunching the arms and legs under the wheels.

The whole time, liquid continued to spray from the tanker trailer. If any part of the tendrils touched the liquid, they would immediately shed that part and pull away.

Charlie drove over the outfield fence and pulled around the trees in a tight loop. He kept going, circling around and around, creating a kind of soggy DMZ, free of the tendrils.

Eventually, Axel climbed down out of the tree with his shotgun and blasted the closest tendril into three pieces. Purcell followed and got close enough to the smaller chunks and put one or two well-placed rounds into the center, leaving the limbs to mindlessly twitch in the grass.

Sandy yelled out of her window at Kevin. “Don't you dare come down until I come get you.”

Charlie pulled close to the base of the tree and everybody piled into the back of the tow truck. Kevin helped Puffing Bill down onto the roof first, saying, “Once I helped him up the first couple of branches, he climbed like he was part squirrel.”

Sandy pulled off her own mask and put it on her son. She knew it was probably too late to make a difference, but didn't think it would hurt. Then she pulled him tight. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks. Puffing Bill sat quietly and leaned into her.

They heard the distant sound of helicopters. After a moment, though, the noise faded and was gone. She said, “We should go.”

Purcell knocked on the roof. “You waiting for them to come back? Move it.” Everyone in the back arranged themselves around the large boom and got comfortable.

Charlie pulled away, and they dragged the old, leaking tanker back through the town, following his original path through town. It was easy to see; he'd left a swath of broken limbs and ash-like decaying tendrils.

“That's your pesticide,” Sandy said to Purcell. “From your barn.”

Purcell nodded. “But I wasn't using it in the fields. No, no. I emptied all my fertilizer and pesticide into that tank so I could show 'em the empty containers for the certification. Thing is, you know how expensive it is to dispose of all that shit? Figured I'd find someplace safe for all of it.”