The Uninvited (37 page)

“Get those people transferred!” Vic yelled. He stood by the side of his cruiser. Through horrified eyes, he watched the pasture change in color, from shimmering green to a dull brown. “Hurry!” he yelled.

A small girl, no more than three years old, ran from her mother's grasp, slipped under the fence, and darted into the field, where wild flowers had opened their colors to the heat of the sun, spreading tones of blue and yellow and red to the warmth.

The mother screamed at the child to come back to her side. The little girl waved. The brown clicking filth drew nearer.

Vic and Slick both left their cruisers at the same time, running toward the field. “Stay back!” Vic yelled. “Not both of us—not this close.” He climbed the fence, tearing a gash in his leg on the barbed wire. He ran toward the child, two seconds ahead of the mutants' frantic pursuit. Grabbing up the little girl, Vic flung her toward the fence, grunting with the effort. Slick had ignored his orders and climbed the fence. He caught the child in his arms and tossed her to her father. Chief Deputy Riggs turned back to the field and screamed his outrage.

Sheriff Vic Ransonet was covered with mutants.

“Slick!” the sheriff yelled, his voice pain-filled. “For the love of God—shoot me!”

With tears in his eyes, Slick jerked his .44 magnum from leather, leveled it, and blew off half his friend's head.

Slick ran back to his car, yelling orders. “Get it going. Move it.”

He got in his car just as the road was covered with mutant roaches.

The convoy pulled out raggedly, lurching down the concrete, tires crunching over thousands of bugs, filling the hot air with popping sounds.

“Floorboard 'em!” Slick yelled into his walkie-talkie. His windows were covered with mutants. He turned on his windshield wipers.

“General!” Colonel Randy Matthews yelled over the radio. “Get your chopper out of the field of fire. Climb, climb!”

The helicopter flung itself upward as if jerked by a giant cable. The air was filled with the flapping, humming sounds of incoming shells.

“God!” Colonel Matthews prayed. “Don't let my boys be off a hair. Bring 'em in straight and true, God. Please!”

The fields on both sides of Highway 28 erupted in fire as the tank-mounted 90mm's and 105s shattered the late afternoon with chemical explosives. The buses and vans and cars and pickups rocked under the waves of impacting shells. The screaming of the occupants not heard over the blasting as the shells hit the ground, sending waves of white phosphorus over the earth, searing anything within reach of the deadly fingers of fire.

“Walk ‘em in! Walk 'em in,” the forward observers yelled into their headsets. “On target, on target. Now up! Walk 'em in and up. Keep 'em coming!”

At the bridge, the chemical warfare team was suited up and burning the ground around the bridge with flamethrowers. Colonel Dickson looked up from repairing the bridge with equipment stolen from the Highway Department depot.

“Sweet jumpin' Jesus!” Colonel Dickson said, gazing far down the highway. “Look at them coming!”

The mutants stayed away from the live burning fire on both sides of the highway, but they continued racing parallel to the road, one long brown horde that seemed to stretch for miles. Cutting across the pasture, in front of the creatures, ran half a dozen people.

“Who in the living hell is that?” General Bornemann shouted from his observation chopper. It was the reporters, running for their lives.

“Don't run into the field of fire, you shits!” General Bornemann shouted, as if they could hear him from thousands of feet up.

Only one of the six made it to the road, just seconds ahead of the mutants and the searing fire: Lee Chang. He leaped into the back of a truck that had pulled off the road, waiting for him. He clutched his bag of film.

“Have you been bitten?” the driver shouted.

“Bitten? No!”

“Then hang on, you crazy Chinaman. How do you say good luck in Chinese?”

Lee looked at him. “Christ, I don't know. I was born in Omaha!”

The convoy hit the bridge at sixty. High pressure hoses washed the vehicles clean as they approached the bridge, almost knocking Lee from the back of the truck. He hung on with all his strength.

“Hold 'em, baby!” Colonel Dickson implored his bridge. “Hold 'em, you beautiful bitch!”

The last of the convoy, Slick Riggs, roared across.

“I love ya, baby!” the combat engineer shouted, as his men stood and cheered.

The bridge trembled, then collapsed into the Velour, once more sealing off the Parish from the outside.

The ordeal was over.

“Seal all Parish lines with fire,” General Bornemann ordered. “Work from the outside into the center. Cover every inch with napalm, then do it again, then again. Burn it to ash. I don't want a living thing in there when you're through.”

The Air Force and Navy bombers, standing by at England and Barksdale and Keesler AF bases, screamed in, dumping their loads, then headed back to their bases for more.

Colonel Randy Matthews's tanks took up the slack, dropping round after round of white phosphorus in the two-Parish area.

Careful eyes watched the area around the Parishes, but no mutants were found. And that puzzled the scientists. And worried them.

The Navy dumped thousands of gallons of high octane fuel into the Velour and the Mississippi rivers, and the Lost Swamp. Then they cleared out, watching from a safe distance as the planes ignited the fuel. The thudding
swoosh
was heard for miles as flames shot up hundreds of feet into the air, killing everything that lived on and around the waters.

To be safe, the Parishes around Baronne and Lapeer lost some valuable timber and farmland as General Bornemann ordered a two-mile area cleared and evacuated. Then he burned it to the bare, smoking earth and ordered it kept burning for days. President Hospon told the residents, personally, on a visit to the devastated area, they would be compensated, fully, for their losses, and relocated at government expense.

One disgruntled resident in the audience gave the President the raspberry. Loud and juicy.

 

 

Bob, Tanya, and Sarah moved to north Louisiana. They plan on farming.

Brett Travers and Kiri got married, honeymooned in Colorado, and plan to work there.

Slick Riggs went to work for another Parish Sheriff's Department after punching his first cousin on the nose.

Dr. Billings was fired from government service.

All the survivors tried to forget the nightmare. But some could not and were committed to mental institutions. Others killed themselves. All had been touched in an unforgettable manner.

On a warm, summer's evening, just upriver from New Orleans, a piece of planking drifted ashore from the Mississippi. Clinging to the planking were a dozen female mutant roaches. They were ready to lay their eggs. They leaped off the water-soaked board onto the shore and scurried to an old house. Within twenty-four hours they had devoured all the smaller roaches residing in the old house and laid their eggs in safe locations. Soon, if nothing disturbed the eggs, there would be hundreds of baby mutants; in weeks, thousands; in months, millions. They would invade homes, crawling under refrigerators, in the walls, under sinks, into attics and crawl-spaces.

They would find a leader. And the leader would discover he could signal the others by clicking his jaws.

And they would be hungry.

Late August. Click.

ClickClickClick.

ClickClickClickClickClick.

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