Spawn of Hell (44 page)

And then it hit David. He was in the woods alone at night, approaching the clearing where the hybrids were even now about to mass. He must have been crazy to dart into the forest like that! At least in an automobile he would have had some protection, some means of escape. But now?

Fortunately, there was enough moonlight coming from the trees so that he could see where he was going. Just barely.

The most horrible thing was, even though he had been told what the creatures were made up of, he still didn’t know
exactly
what they looked like. Except that some had human heads.

Of course, he would know what they looked like when he saw them.

But by then it might be too late.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but you’re obviously mistaken. Is it possible that someone was playing a joke on you?”

Anna was trying very hard not to cry. She had ran out of the house, panic-stricken, filled with dread and fear, so anxiety-ridden that she had nearly cracked up David’s car more than once getting over here. The thought that David was badly injured, that she might lose him, had been too awful to even contemplate. Now here she was in Felicity Village, standing in the foyer of Ernest Dunsinger’s house, and they were telling her that there had been no accident, that no one in the house had called her.

“Pretty sick joke, if you ask me,” Dunsinger’s wife Madeline said sympathetically. “Maybe you got the name wrong. Or the address. We would have heard the sirens if an ambulance had driven into the village. Not much excitement in here, let me tell you.”

“I don’t know anyone in Hillsboro,” Anna protested. “Who would do such a thing? I just can’t imagine.”

And then she thought:
Derek ?
Is he jealous enough, nasty enough, to engineer a sick joke like this? But no, how would Derek have known that David had driven off with Mr. Bartley? Besides, she had never even discussed David with Derek. Maybe it was Bartley’s son George who was behind it. But why?
Had
there been an accident; if so, where was David and what was his condition?

Anna had felt sure that she was at the right place when she’d first walked in and seen the doctor in the living room, which was just off to one side of the foyer. A heavy set, elderly woman was lying on the couch looking pained and uncomfortable. It was Mrs. Dunsinger’s mother, who had been having chest pains ever since dinner time.

The portly middle-aged doctor was just leaving as the Dunsingers and Anna stood awkwardly in the foyer, trying to come to some resolution over David’s strange disappearance and the phone call that the Dunsingers had not made.

“Indigestion,” the doctor said. “That’s all it is. Your mother has a vivid imagination, I’m afraid. One burp and she thinks she’s having a heart attack. I’ve given her a sedative and she’ll be fast asleep shortly.” It seemed that the doctor lived next door and was friendly enough with the Dunsingers to make an occasional house call. He worked in the hospital in the nearby town of Walling-ford, and when he heard of Anna’s predicament, suggested that she call there for information. “If your friend was in an accident, he would have been taken there. Why don’t you call the emergency room?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Mrs. Dunsinger agreed. “You can use our phone. It’s right down the hall in the—” She was interrupted by her mother calling out from the living room. “Excuse me just a second.” She went in to see what the elderly woman wanted, leaving her husband- and the doctor standing in the foyer giving Anna admiring glances. Anna was beginning to think the whole thing had been a mistake, a joke, and she felt relieved. She hoped that the call to the Wallingford Hospital would not shatter her newly found composure.

“She wanted some tea,” Madeline said, returning from the living room. “But I’m afraid the poor dear will be asleep before I can bring it in to her.”

“Just see that she gets lots of rest,” the doctor reminded her. “A lot of your mother’s trouble is tension. Lack of sleep. She’ll feel better all around if she relaxes some more.”

“I’ll see that she does,” Madeline assured him.

The doctor excused himself, and Mrs. Dunsinger turned to Anna. “You look like you could use a little rest yourself. Come and have some coffee with us. You can use the phone in the kitchen.”

Anna appreciated the gesture. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry to be such trouble.”

“You’re no trouble,” the husband said, already smitten. There wasn’t a soul in the village who wouldn’t want to entertain
the
Anna Braddon for an hour or two.

They went into the kitchen and Anna had her first good look at her hosts. Mrs. Dunsinger was an attractive woman, thirtyish, with blond hair cut short and a rather pretty face and clothes; she knew how to make herself look good on a limited expense account. Her husband was kind of plain, but nonetheless appealing, with a rugged, unshaven face and a masculine build.

Madeline dialed the number of the emergency room while Anna stood by her side on tenterhooks. While it rang, Madeline called out to a little boy who was playing on the back porch. “Our son Steven,” she explained. “It’s past his bedtime, but it’s his father’s birthday today.” Anna smiled quickly at Ernest. “We went out to dinner and the movies. Oh, here we are—”

Madeline handed the phone to Anna; a lump had formed in Anna’s throat. She felt nervous and prickly all over. She asked the woman on the other end about David. Not only had he not been brought to the hospital, but there had been no accidents so far that evening, and the woman would have known if there had been, unless it had happened within the past half hour or so. It had been longer than that. Anna hung up, relieved, but terribly confused.

“Have some coffee, dear,” Madeline insisted. “Then you can drive back home and wait for your friend. I’m sure they’ll be a good explanation for all this.”

“Thank you for being so nice,” Anna said. Madeline
pshawed.
She put the water on the stove, while Ernest sat in the chair next to Anna, grinning away at her. Anna couldn’t help but smile.

Suddenly the phone rang, startling them all. Ernest started to rise from his chair in response, but Madeline made a grab for it. He sank back down again, wondering what to say to his glamorous guest.

“Hello. Who is this? Oh,
Viv!
How are you?”

Ernie chuckled. “Her friend. Lives two houses down. Don’t know why she bothers using the phone all the time.”

Madeline listened carefully, then turned to her husband. “Ernie. This is
weird.
Viv says there’s some kind of crazy man running around the village telling everyone to get out. Says we’re going to be attacked or something.”

“What?”

What
now,
Anna mused.

“Ernie, go get your rifle. Just in case. Viv is scaring me.”

Ernie excused himself and did as he was told. “If he comes to this house,” he muttered, “I’ll blow his goddamn brains to kingdom come.”

Madeline was speaking again and it took Anna a few seconds to realize that the housewife was addressing her. “. . . probably someone who wants us all to leave so that they can rob all of our houses. And we left Yonkers for this?”

Anna smiled, almost too tired to wonder what it was all about. She hoped she could get out of this lovely house before too long. Guns and looters made her nervous.

The doorbell rang. Madeline gasped. Anna sat up straighter in her chair, suddenly wishing she had simply driven straight to the hospital instead of calling from here. Someone was banging on the door now. The knocking had an ominous quality to it, although Anna assured herself that in her tense state she was merely imagining things. She watched her hostess step out into the hallway, calling her husband’s name, then got up herself and stood by the exit from the kitchen, hoping the visitor was only a harmless neighbor coming by for a cup of sugar.

Ernest marched heavily past his wife as she approached the door, a rifle held rigidly in his hands. ‘‘Let me get it,” he told her. “Go look after Steven.” He advanced on the door, pulling it open with a rugged wrench. “What do you want?” he said to the figure outside. Neither Anna nor Madeline—whose curiosity had prompted her to stay there rather than follow her husband’s instructions—could see who it was. The figure was bathed in a bright glow of light from the fixture above the door, and was surrounded by a blackness punctuated here and there by glows of illumination from the other houses in the area.

“I know this is going to sound strange,” the person in the doorway began, “but I must insist that you evacuate. Your family is in terrible danger.”

Dunsinger was having none of it. “So
you’re
the nut who’s been going around spreading that cockamamie story! Our neighbors warned me about you. Why don’t you get the hell out of here before I blow your goddamn brains out with my rifle!” He lifted the weapon and aimed it, shifting his body to a more strategic position. In that instant, Anna saw who it was at the door. She ran down the hall shouting: “No! No! Please don’t shoot! I know him. He’s a friend of mine!”

David was as startled to see her as she was to see him. “Anna! I
wondered
if that was my car parked outside, but it didn’t seem possible.”

His face reflecting caution and wariness, Ernest put down the gun and let David come in, whereupon David and Anna quickly embraced. “Oh, David, thank God you’re all right. What’s going on?” Before he could reply, she rapidly explained how she had come to be there. She told the Dunsingers who David was. “What is this all about?” she asked him. “Are you the one who’s telling everyone to leave their houses?”

“Yes, I am. But no one will listen to me. Not that I blame them.” He looked helplessly at Mr. Dunsinger. “Look, Mister. I know you have no reason to trust me. But if you have any influence over your neighbors I suggest you use it.” As with the last few families, he didn’t bother Dunsinger with the details, knowing it was unlikely anyone would believe him. Instead he said: “There was a—a mishap—at the plant. There’s a cloud of poisonous gas heading this way. It’s extremely dangerous to human life. You must get out of here. All of you.”

Madeline stepped forward, her once-friendly demeanor replaced by a nervous hostility. “Then why haven’t the
police
come to get us out? “ She turned to her husband. “Viv told me she called the police, and they told her that this man must be a crackpot.” She looked back at David and sneered defiantly. “There hasn’t been any trouble out at the plant.”

“The police are
in
on it,” David pleaded. “It’s a coverup. Can’t you understand? This whole village is going to be wiped out just to test the poison gas. Please—”

Ernest cut him short. “Listen. I’ve never seen you before in my life, but I’ve met the sheriff on several occasions. Why should I take your word over his? I’ve put a lot of money in this house and in the furnishings and in everything we own. If you think I’m just gonna walk off and leave it, you’re crazy.”

“What good will it do you when you’re dead?”

Ernest ignored him. “Madeline! Go check on Steven.

No telling how many nuts are out tonight.”

“Please,” Anna said. “I know this man. He wouldn’t lie to you. He isn’t a burglar or a crook. There must be some truth to his story.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Dunsinger glared. “Take your boyfriend and go. You celebrities may have a different house in every city, but this is the only one I got and I intend to protect it.”

There was no reasoning with the man. Anna led David into the hallway, moving slowly. Dunsinger made a move to follow them, but was held back by his wife. , “Is this
true,
David?” Anna whispered.

“No, Anna. It’s even worse. It isn’t poison gas that’s coming, it’s creatures—horrible creatures that are being freed from a laboratory. Monsters.”

“Are you
serious?”

“Believe me, I am.” He hurriedly told her what he had learned from Mr. Bartley and from Anton, but could tell that it was simply too incredible, too much for her to absorb. He couldn’t expect her to believe it. He wasn’t sure
he
did. She would just have to trust him. “It must have been Anton who called you with that phony message. That
bastard!”

Back in the kitchen they could hear the Dunsingers conferring. It sounded as if Madeline was weakening. “What if he’s
right?”
they heard her say. The rest of the conversation was lost amid a lot of oaths and mutterings.

On the screened-in back porch, the Dunsingers’ young son sat in a garden chair and played with a plastic replica of a robot cartoon character. His attention wandered frequently, and he often turned up to stare at a smattering of mosquitoes which hovered daintily by the porch light, their tiny bodies having squeezed easily through the holes in the screen. His mother had just come out to check on him, knowing it was way past his bedtime, but was too frightened and upset by David’s unnerving pronouncement to put him to bed. Steven, a little freckle-faced eight-year-old with tousled blond hair, sat in his chair and idly worked the arms and legs of the toy. He heard raised voices inside, accompanied by angry whispers, and somehow he sensed that there was trouble, and he was glad that he was not part of it and that he had not yet been put to bed.

Barely a mile away they were stirring in the caverns, rising up from the depths of the watery quarry, coming to the surface, their bodies making ripples on the moonlit water. Most of them were still leery of leaving the lair, but had no choice, as their hunger drove them onwards. They had already consumed everything in the caverns. Some of them had gone out hunting and had tasted human flesh for the first time. They were creatures of appetite and instinct, whatever human qualities they might have had were overwhelmed by the laws of nature, by the thirsts of the non-human breasts they had been blended with. They pulled themselves out of the water with their arm-like appendages, and crawled, hopped and scurried away from the quarry.

There was an odor in the air. A distant fragrance, which they found impossible to resist. Before, the braver ones among them had gone in the opposite direction, down towards where the lights were, feeding on those they had found in the isolated homes lying along the bottom of the mountain. They had sensed the large concentration of meat in the area towards which they were now heading, but had not gone there in the past because they had still been too insecure in this new environment to want to confront a great many other life forms all at once; even if they were food. But now, driven on by the pheromones in the air, they could not possibly stop themselves. They were no longer afraid—only hungry. Their insatiable appetites had to be satisfied. The ones with pale faces, those who seemed slightly more intelligent than their faceless companions, opened their eyes wide and plunged into the forest as the others followed behind them.