Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (8 page)

"I can see him up here. It looks like they're talking to him. I don't see a gun. Oh, shit. Look at his arm. Dave, his right arm is broken. And I mean it's almost broken at a right angle, and Franky doesn't even act like he notices. What do you think

happ- oh, wait. Something's going on..."

A cop voice from nearby said, "Get down from there! You! Get down!" John ignored him.

There was a burst of gunfire, like a pack of firecrackers. Everybody ducked.

"They're shooting him!" shouted John. "They're shooting a lot! You can see bits of him flying off! He's still up! Holy shit he's - HOLY SHIT! He just grabbed one of the SWAT guys. He grabbed him by the ankles and is swinging him around like

a baseball bat! He's knocking the other guys down!"

"Bullshit! John, get down from there!"

Illustration b
y Nedroid

"No, I can totally see it! He's biting a guy now! He's eating him! A cop! He's got him by the neck!"

"WHAT?!?"

More shots. Screams. People were running.

John jumped down from the statue, and
ran
. Over his shoulder he yelled, "DAVE! HE'S COMING!"

I took two steps, and somebody slammed into me. My face bounced off wet grass. I climbed to my knees. It was a

stampede.

A woman nearby screamed at the top of her lungs. I spun and between running figures saw a shirt stained red with blood.

Franky stood there, left arm jutting grotesquely just under the elbow, blood dripping to the grass from a protruding shard of

bone.

I heard shouting police in the distance, commanding us to get down before we were turned into swiss cheese.

How did he beat them here? He cleared half a football field in five seconds.

Franky's torso was riddled with puckered bullet wounds, leaking red. His chest heaved with excited breaths, his punctured

lungs whistling with each inhale.

Cops ran into position. I saw one SWAT guy fumbling to cram a new magazine into the little sub machine gun he had.

They shouted orders at each other, at the crowd.

Franky opened his mouth, opened wide like a yawn. And just for a second, I thought I saw the face of the bug thing,

nesting there behind his teeth, filling the cavity with its insectile body. Then, the Franky let out a noise like I had never

heard before.

It was a shriek, like microphone feedback. But more organic and pained, like the sound a whale would make if it were on

fire.

The ground shook from it. My bowels quivered. I think I pooped a little. I saw people hitting the ground al around me, saw

guns fal from the hands of cops. I clapped my hands over my ears as the pained shriek of Franky the Monster filled the

world.

I looked up at Franky one last time, his back arched, his mouth opened to the sky, howling. Blood spurting from a dozen

bullet holes. It was the last thing I saw before the world swam away and went black.

I woke up, scrambled to my feet, realized some time had passed. People were standing around, nobody running, no sign

of the bloody, shrieking thing that had been Franky the cop. I saw John about ten feet away, on his feet but bent over at

the waist, gripping his pants at the knees. He was blinking, as if trying to focus his eyes.

The sky was a little lighter. Maybe an hour or so had passed.

"John? You all right?"

He nodded, still looking at the ground.

"Yeah. I'm thinkin' that sound he made melted our brains. Did they get him?"

"Don't know. I just came to."

I saw a white truck pul up with a dish apparatus on the back. It had a TV station logo on the side so I guess this was their

satellite uplink truck. Live TV. I tried to fix my hair with my hands.

I walked around a bit, trying to stay out of the way. The staff were walking people back into the building. It looked like

every policeman in the state was here, taking statements from people. I realized John and I should probably get going,

before we got asked a bunch of questions that, once again, we didn't have any non-crazy answers for. Not just about

tonight, either, but everything.

The sun was rolling up over the horizon, casting a glow on a layer of fog settling in the low areas like ghost puddles. I

went to find John, giving one pair of cops a wide berth along the way. I wandered around for probably 20 minutes, thought

about just going home without him. Then, dammit, I saw him standing out by the street, talking to a fucking reporter.

I stomped over there, walked right in front of the camera and smacked John on the arm.

"Come on. Let's get the fuck out of here before somebody else decides to give us an interview."

We made our way back by the exact same path we should have followed a couple of hours earlier, when we tried to leave

the first time.

John said, "Did you hear? They never found him."

"Wonderful."

"What do you think happened? You think that bug thing took over his brain?"

"Hey, why not."

"You think he's gonna turn up again?"

Yes.

"I don't know, John. I'm tired."

"So... you think it's starting again?

* * * * *

of a predator grinding through bone. I pul ed open my eyes.

I saw a dragon, standing proudly atop a hill before me.

The dragon was on a TV screen, a rectangular liquid crystal screen from Toshiba. Beneath it was a video game console

with a loop of cords snaking across stained carpet. I blinked, squinted at the sun burning in through a cracked window. I

turned, hearing my neck creak as I did, and saw John sitting at a computer desk in the corner, staring into the monitor and

holding a bottle full of a clear liquid that I'm sure you wouldn't want to try to put out a fire with.

I sat up, realizing I had been covered up with something in my sleep. I thought for a moment John had thrown a blanket

over me but closer inspection revealed it to be a beach towel.

John glanced back at me from his computer chair and said, "Sorry, I used my spare blanket when I got that leak in my

car."

I stil heard that animal crunching sound. I looked around for the source. I found Mol y laying behind the couch, with her

head crammed inside an open box of Captain Crunch cereal. She was eating as fast as she could, trying to use her paws

to keep the box in place.

"You're letting her do that?"

"Oh, yeah. Cereal is stale anyway. I don't have any dog food here."

The dragon sat frozen on the television, the intro screen for a video game he had apparently been playing while I slept on

his couch.

"What time is it?"

"About ten."

I stood, felt my head swim, rubbed my eyes, almost screamed in pain from rubbing the wounded eye. My shoulder felt like

it had taken a bullet and it felt like a pair of elves were trying to escape my skull through my temples using tiny pickaxes. It wasn't the first time I had woken up at John's place feeling like this.

A musical chime emerged from my pants. I reached into my front pocket and pul ed out my cell phone. The display read,

"AMY." I closed my eyes, sighed, and answered.

"Hey, baby."

"Hi! David! I'm watching the news! What happened?"

"Shouldn't you be in class?"

Amy had failed a pretty basic English class last semester because it was an eight o'clock class and she kept

oversleeping. I mean, that's her native language and she failed it.

She said, "They cancelled it. Oh, it's on again. Turn to CNN."

I talked around the phone to John, told him to switch over the TV. He did, found CNN, and watched as an early-morning

shot of the chaos at the Hospital fil ed the screen. The name of the city was displayed along the bottom. National news.

John turned up the sound and we heard a female reporter say,

"...No history of drug use or mental illness. Frank Burgess had been with the department for three years. Authorities are

combing the area for Burgess but police say the number of wounds he sustained in the standoff make his turning up alive,

quote, 'highly unlikely.'"

They cut to a shot of our enormously fat chief of police, giving a sound bite in front of a bank of microphones.

To Amy I said, "Man, our chief of police is getting huge."

"Did you guys hear about this last night? When it was al going on? They said thirteen people were hurt and I think three

people died. Could you hear shots and stuff from your house?"

A pause on my end. Too long. I could hear the same news broadcast playing simultaneously on this TV and from Amy's

TV over the phone. Finally I said, "We heard about it, yeah."

"Uh-oh."

"What?"

"David... were you there? Were you guys in on this?"

"What? No, no. Of course not. Why would you think that?"

"David..."

"No, no. It was nothing. Guy just went crazy, that's all."

"Are you lying?"

"No, no. No."

She said nothing. An old trick of hers.

Fil ing the silence, I said, "I mean, we were
there
but we weren't real y involved..."

"I knew it! I'm coming down."

"No, Amy. It's nothing, really. It's over. We just happened to be in the area."

"What's that sound?"

"Mol y's eating a box of cereal."

I heard John say, "Hey! It's me!" I turned to the television.

Sure enough, John's face filled the screen. The reporter's voiceover covered the audio, saying, "...And for every hour

Burgess remains at large, fear and paranoia are bound to keep growing in this small city."

On TV, John's voice faded in:

"...And then we saw a smal creature crawl into his mouth. I wasn't two feet away. That thing wasn't from this world. I don't mean alien, I mean probably interdimensional in nature. I think it's obvious from what happened tonight that this being

possessed some powers of mind control."

I closed my eyes again, groaning audibly this time.

Amy said, "I'm coming down. I'll take the bus."

Amy had never learned to drive.

"Forget it, you're not gonna spend three hours on the bus. Your classes are more important. If you fail English again I

think they can kick you out of the country. I think it's in the Patriot Act."

"This weekend, then. I'll be home on Friday."

"Amy... I'm gonna be honest with you, okay? I don't know that it's safe here."

"Ooh, I'll definitely be home then. You need me."

"Amy..."

"Gotta go, honey. I'm late for class."

"You said you didn't-"

She was gone. I closed the phone and stuffed it back into my pocket. I looked for my shoes.

"You goin' back home?"

"I can't stay here, John."

"Yeah. But, you know. You had that thing in your house."

"You think there's another one?"

"I don't know, but-"

"-What do you want me to do, have the place sprayed?"

"No, I'm just sayin'. That thing, it crawled inside Franky and seemed to take him over. Well, that thing turned up in
your
bed. Are you assuming that's an accident? Because maybe we should consider that it was there for you."

I can always trust John to think of things like this.

"It don't matter. Okay? Your couch ain't long enough. It kills my neck on the armrest. So, it's moot."

"Well, you ain't gettin' the bed."

I took away Molly's cereal box, which was now just empty cardboard bent in the shape of a dog head. We headed out.

* * * * *

lane, one house without a front door, another sealed shut with yel ow police tape. My little bungalow usual y had my 1998

Ford Bronco parked in the front, the vehicle I was driving now. Sitting in the driveways of the next three houses was a

1985 Pontiac Fiero, a '95 Geo Tracker and a PT Cruiser woody. At least my property taxes were low.

The porsche was pewter, crouched low along the gravel shoulder in front of the doorless house I thought was abandoned,

three doors down from mine. The gleaming machine looked like it had been warped here right off a showroom floor. Even

the tires looked scrubbed down to a pure layer of factory rubber.

I made it to my driveway, stepped out and made a walk-around of the house with Molly. Nothing unusual. I was going to

have to clean those gutters soon. The gigantic tree back there was dying and dropped every leaf by the first week of

November. The leaves were ankle-deep but I knew they'd eventually blow into my neighbor's yard. The old guy who lived

there seemed to like doing yard work so I think that worked out for everybody.

I let the dog poop in the yard and let myself in the back door. I passed into the living room and there was some fucking