Invasion (13 page)

    Hill.

    On the crest I braced myself against the wind that pummeled my back, and I stared out at the open fields of Timberlake Farm. The house was concealed by billowing curtains of snow. But it was out there, just beyond my sight, and I would be home in an hour or so. Just one more mile to go, the last mile, the easiest mile by far, right across open land, no trees or hills or briars or brambles, easy, simple, sweet, a real Cakewalk.

** *

    

    Darkness.

    Softness.

    Warmth.

    And I kept thinking:

    Death is not beatable.

    Death is not cheatable.

    Death is not mutable.

    Death is real and final.

    "I'm not dead yet!" I croaked, staggering to my feet.

    I walked perhaps ten yards before I realized that I no longer had the shotgun; and I turned right around and went back to look for it. I passed the place where I had collapsed, kept going.

    Twenty or thirty feet farther on, I found the gun. The snow had nearly buried it. The black, ice-sheathed barrel poked up out of a drift just far enough to catch my eye. I pulled the weapon free, gripped it firmly in both trembling hands, and stomped off toward the house that was still shrouded in a shifting haze of snow.

    Each step was agony. Pain shot up my legs, burned along my back.

    Only my feet were free of pain, for they were numbed by the intense cold.

    I had trouble getting my breath.

    I cursed my weaknesses as I walked.

    (I am expending too much time and too many words recounting this journey back from the Johnson farm. And I know why I'm doing that; I can see through myself so easily. There are two reasons. One: I don't want to have to write about what follows this standard scene of wilderness survival. I don't want to face up to the memory.

    Two: I am trying with all my might to convince myself that I did everything I possibly could have done, everything any human being could have done. I walked for four miles through a furious storm, seeking help. Was it my fault that there was no help available at the other end? Stop stalling, Hanlon. Will you just get on with it?)

    Darkness moved across the sky like spilled ink seeping through a carpet.

    The temperature dropped.

    Night came in full, squeezed tight around me, exciting claustrophobic fears.

    I proceeded blindly, squinting at nothing, blinking away the tears that the cold wind had pressed from my eyes and which it now turned to ice on my cheeks. I kept moving, trusting to instinct to keep me headed for home, because I was terrified that the moment I stopped I would become confused, disoriented, and would wander helplessly in circles thereafter.

    Snow: crusting in the eyelids, tickling in the nostrils, stinging the lips, melting on the tongue…

    Wind: behind like a pursuing demon, pushing, shoving, battering, whistling against muffled ears…

    I fell.

    I got up.

    I walked.

    There was nothing else I could do.

    How far to go?

    Quarter of a mile.

    How can you be sure?

    Maybe half a mile.

    I can't make half a mile.

    Then it's an eighth of a mile.

    I fell.

    I didn't get up.

    Darkness… warmth… softness like cotton blankets… a cup of warm cocoa… happiness…

    As the vision drew me in, fear suddenly exploded and blew the image to pieces. I got up, licking my lips. I started walking, wondered if I were still going eastward, kept going.

    I fell again.

    I got up as far as my hands and knees, my head hanging down-and I realized that I was kneeling in a circle of pale yellow light. A shudder passed through me as I pictured half a dozen yellow-eyed creatures closing in around me, casting an eerie luminous glow before them. But

    I looked up and found that the light was coming from one of the farmhouse windows not more than ten feet away.

    A minute later I fell against the front door, pounded on it, called for Connie, wept.

    The door opened.

    "Don!"

    I stumbled inside, leaned against her when she offered a shoulder, and said, disbelievingly: "I'm home."

    

12:00-1:00 A.M.

    

The Attack

    

    I didn't see it, of course. I cannot know. I can't retell it with perfect confidence in the tale. Never theless, it must have happened something like this:

    A small herd of deer was sheltered in the forest where the snow didn't drift to such heights as it reached out in the open fields. They fed on the tough but juicy leaves of winter brush, on crow's foot and holly, on cold weather berries, of various sorts, on tender bark, and on those mushrooms that had survived far enough into the autumn to be quick-frozen by a sudden change in the seasons.

    One buck fed at the edge of the herd. He nibbled on strips of peeling birch bark.

    The wind was high above the trees, a distant howling like wolves held at bay by mounted hunters.

    Now and again one of the deer would look up into the darkness overhead, never with fear but with curiosity.

    The pine boughs-for this part of the forest was mostly pines-protected the deer from the worst of the storm.

    The alien moved noiselessly through the trees.

    The buck paused in his meal.

    The alien came closer.

    The buck stopped chewing, blew steam, drew breath, tilted his magnificent head, listened, snorted, went back to the birch bark.

    The alien closed in on him.

    Suddenly aware of the foul odor of ammonia, the buck finally raised its proud head. It sniffed and shook its antlers and let a half-chewed mouthful of bark drop to the ground.

    Some of the other deer turned to watch it.

    The buck sniffed again.

    By now all twenty-odd members of the herd had caught the ripe scent. None of them were interested in food any longer. They were motionless, except for their long eye lashes which trembled and except for their nostrils which, beaded with moisture, also trembled. They were waiting for the worst, hearts racing, ears pricked up…

    The alien stopped ten yards away.

    Snowflakes melted on the buck's nose.

    The wind moaned. It seemed a bit louder than it had been a moment ago.

    The buck stood very still for a while until it saw the huge yellow eyes that were fixed on it. It froze for an instant, then panicked.

    The alien moved in quickly.

    The buck snorted and reared up on its hind legs -and the alien reached out and took full control of the simple animal mind.

    One of the does squealed.

    Then another: contagion.

    The herd thundered away down the forest trail, white tails puffed up behind them, their hoofbeats silenced by the blanket of snow that misted up around them.

    Only the buck remained.

    The alien came out from the deep brush, shoving aside the jagged brambles and blackberry vines, snow pluming up from its many legs. It stepped onto the narrow path between the pines and approached the deer.

    The buck blinked, quivered.

    The other being immediately soothed it. Standing before the animal, the alien carefully examined it for all of half a minute, as if learning the uses of the beast, then turned away and lumbered down the trail in the direction that the herd had gone.

    Head lowered, large brown eyes wide, the buck followed without hesitation. Its tongue lolled between its lips. Its tail was tucked down now: brilliant white side concealed, dull gray-brown side re vealed.

    The two creatures eventually left the woods and came out on a long slope where five other yellow-eyed beings were waiting for them.

    The buck snorted when it saw the others.

    Its heart thundered, threatened to burst.

    The alien responded quickly, stilled the terror, slowed the heart-and kept rigid control.

    Silently, they climbed the hill.

    The buck was forced to jump through a number of deep drifts that nearly proved too much for it. It kicked and heaved. Its thick haunch and shoulder muscles bunched painfully. Steam spurted from its black nostrils.

    Steam rose, too, from the broad, dark, slanted, shiny backs of the six aliens.

    Shortly, a house came into sight atop the hill.

    A farmhouse.

    Timberlake

    Farm.

    The attack had begun.

    

    I took a quick, hot shower, sluicing away some of the chill which had curled like a segmented worm of ice deep inside of me. The worm had anchored it self with a thousand tendrils and could not be entirely torn loose. When I came out of the shower, I discovered that Connie had left a double shot of whiskey, neat, in a squat glass tumbler on the edge of the sink. I sipped at the first shot while I toweled off and dressed. Just before I went downstairs, I finished the second shot in one fiery gulp that scorched my throat and made my eyes water.

    However, not even the whiskey-although it brought a bright flush to my face-could burn out every segment of the ice worm.

    Connie and Toby were in the kitchen. They had both eaten earlier, but she was re-heating some homemade vegetable soup for me. Toby was sitting at the table, intently studying a large, half-completed jigsaw puzzle; I winced when I saw that it was a snow scene.

    Even a stranger, stepping into that room without knowing anything about our situation, could have seen that we were living under siege conditions. The curtains had been drawn tightly over the window, and the sun porch door was closed, locked, and chained. The rifle lay on a chair near the table, and the loaded pistol was beside the water glass at the place Connie had set for me. But most of all there was an air of expectancy, a thinly masked tension in all of us.

    I sat down, and she put a bowl of soup before me. I drew a deep breath of the fragrant steam and sighed. I had not been very hungry until the food was before me; and now I was ravenous.

    While I ate Connie dried, dismantled, and oiled the shotgun which had taken a beating in the blizzard.

    Toby looked up from his puzzle and said, "Hey, Dad, you know what happened?"

    "Tell me."

    "Mom put a spell on me."

    "A spell?"

    "Yeah."

    I looked at Connie. She was trying to suppress a smile, but she didn't glance up from the shotgun on which she was working. I asked Toby: "What sort of spell?"

    "She made me sleep all day," he said.

    "Is that so. After you slept all the night before?"

    "Yeah. But you know what else?"

    "What else?"

    "I don't believe it was a spell at all."

    Now Connie looked up from her gun.

    I said, "It wasn't a spell?"

    Toby shook his head: no. "I think she slipped me one of her sleeping capsules in my breakfast orange juice."

    "Why, Toby!"

    Connie said.

    "It's okay, Mom," he said. "I know why you did it. You thought as long as I was asleep the aliens couldn't get me to run away again. You made me sleep to protect me."

    I started to laugh.

    "Boy child," Connie said to him,

    "you're really too much for me. You know that?"

    He grinned, blushed, and turned back to me. "You going to tell us some more about what all you found over at the

    Johnson farm?"

    The only thing I had told them thus far was that the aliens had been there ahead of me and that Ed and Molly were dead.

    Connie quickly said,

    "Let your father eat his dinner, Toby. He can tell us later."

    When I'd finished three bowls of soup, I told them about the skeletons at the Johnson farm and about the dead bull lying in the generator shed. I tried to stay calm, tried to leave out most of the adjectives and adverbs, but now and then I let the tale become too vivid, so vivid that they recoiled slightly from me.

    After I had finished Toby said, "Then I guess we have to hold them off all by ourselves. We can do it."

    Connie said, "I'm not so sure of that, general."

    She looked at me, crow's feet of worry around her lovely eyes. "What are we going to do?"

    I had been doing a great deal of thinking about that. "Just one thing we can do. Get out of here."

    "And go where?"

    "East."

    "The county road?"

    "That's right."

    "You think it's been plowed open?"

    "No."

    She screwed up her lovely face. "Then you intend to walk to the nearest house?"

    "We're all going to walk to the nearest house," I said. "The big white frame place in toward Barley."

    "That house is four miles from here."

    "I know."

    "We already discussed that possibility-"

    "We did?" Toby asked.

    "Last night," she told him patiently, "when you were sleeping on the couch."

    "I miss the interesting stuff," he said.

    She said to me: "Toby can't walk four miles on snowshoes in this weather."

    "I'm tough," he said.

    "I know you are," she said. "But this is a blizzard. You aren't that tough."

    The hall clock struck midnight.