The Uninvited (9 page)

“Not funny, Al,” Vic said. “Not funny at all.”

Dr. Long looked at Vic. “You're serious, aren't you, Vic?”

“We should have gone to Baronne and seen what was left of Billy Oldroyd.”

“I'll get a chance to do that tomorrow,” the coroner reminded him.

He'll be de-bugged by then. But I'm sure Dr. Ashley took pictures.”

Slick said nothing. His stomach felt jumpy.

“All right, Vic,” the DA said. “You've dragged us out here in the middle of the night. So we'll play along. We'll ease off the jokes. Let's go see your bugs.”

Al Little started humming the theme music from
Jaws.

Vic looked at him. “Did you bring a change of underwear, Al?”

“No,” the agent grinned. “Why?”

“'Cause I hope you shit on yourself when you see what's in that house.”

“Did you go in there, Vic?” DA Williams asked.

“No. I told you all I didn't.”

“Then how do you know anything's in there?”

“I know,” Sheriff Ransonet said grimly.

Al Little began humming the music from Hitchcock's old TV programs. A favorite of his.

But the creatures Vic had seen were gone. Nothing attacked the men as they walked single file up the walkway to the house. They stood on the porch.

I don't hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet,” Al chuckled as Vic hammered on the door.

Vic felt as though a hundred of those . . . things were crawling on his skin. The sweat on his face was cold. He tried the door. Unlocked. Slowly, he pushed open the door and carefully stuck his arm inside, seeking the light switch. The room flooded with light. A strong odor wafted its way out to Vic. He knew what it was, having smelled death many times. Back on the steps to the porch, Al Little chuckled softly.

“I can see it now,” he said. “I'll head this case: ‘The Creatures Who Slither By Night.' Inspector Benning will love that one.”

Vic, some years older than the FBI man, remembered that even as a boy Al had a strange sense of humor. The boy had once come to bat in a little league game wearing a
Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon
mask. He got kicked out of the game for that stunt.

Sheriff Ransonet stuck his head inside, fought to keep his stomach from rebelling at the sight, then pulled his head back and took several deep breaths of air. He flicked sweat from his forehead with his fingertips. “Okay, Al,” he said, a flat tone to his voice. “Go ahead, take a good look inside.”

Special Agent Al Little was no stranger to harsh, bloody, and sometimes hideous sights. He'd been with the Bureau for almost ten years—going there straight out of LSU—and thought he'd seen it all.

Until this night.

Two three-quarters-eaten skeletal forms glared at him from the floor. The whiteness of bone gleamed wetly. Al Little, sickened, shaken, and suddenly embarrassed, backed out of the door and looked at Sheriff Ransonet. “Ah ... Sheriff ... I ... ah ...”

Yeah,” Vic noted dryly. “I know. I've smelled barns that didn't smell that bad. I told you I hoped you brought a change of drawers, didn't I?”

Trooper Satler looked at Al and sniffed. “Phew, Al—damn! You stink!”

“Well, stick your head in there, Smoky Bear!” Al challenged. Then he made his way carefully off the porch and out into the yard. Walking very peculiarly.

The Louisiana State Trooper stuck his head in the house, pulling it out much quicker. He walked stiffly to the edge of the porch. There, he sat down and put his head between his legs, breathing deeply.

Slick looked in, grunted, then backed away. “I never doubted you, Vic.”

“I know, Slick, and I thank you for that.” He looked at the remaining doubters.
Go on, Dr. Long, Parker,” he urged them. “Take a good long look and then I want to hear another one of your jokes.”

The DA glanced in, gagged, and ran out to the cars. Dr. Long finally clicked off the lights, plunging the room into darkness. The bare bones of the couple glowed as if charged with fluorescence.

Slick's stomach rumbled. He ate another Tums. “Somebody shut the goddamn door,” he suggested.

The door was closed.

The men filed out in the yard, all of them looking around them, their heads never remaining still.

“Well?” Sheriff Ransonet looked at the DA. Parker's face was pale in the moonlight.

“I think we all need to sit down and discuss this tragedy,” the DA suggested.

“Yeah,” Slick agreed. “And I'll buy the first round!”

The mutants watched from their hiding places as the humans loaded the food source into ambulances and drove away, leaving the night silent, free of the incomprehensible engines and flashing lights. Still, the mutants waited, wanting to be certain all was safe, for they had learned over the past two days that to attack one or two was safe, but to attack a large group was not wise. For their numbers were still growing. But soon there would be enough to attack the larger population centers, where everyone could eat.

They waited, until they heard the clicking, signaling that it was safe to move.

With the rain and the mist gone, the storm now over Mississippi, charging toward Alabama to dump its rain and fury, the mutants began their march toward food, for they were voracious eaters, eating not only for subsistence, but also because it was their nature to destroy.

They crawled into telephone boxes and relay stations, ate through wires, and knocked out communications in a few spots in Baronne and Lapeer Parishes. Not enough to cause any panic—yet—but enough to create mild annoyance among some of the rural subscribers to Ma Bell.

The creatures crawled up telephone poles and chewed through the wires; the material was most palatable to their taste. A roach will eat almost anything. They've even been known to eat the eyelashes and eyelids from sleeping people.

They crawled up high-tension poles and ate through the lines, electrocuting themselves in long chains, ground to top, shorting out multi-voltage, high-tension lines. For every five thousand that were fried into pieces of dark ash, ten thousand took their place. They covered transformers, fifty deep, creating a living bridge from pole to pole, shorting out power.

They ate everything warm-blooded that got in their way during this first massive march: cats, dogs, pigs, chickens, horses, and people. In their original form, much smaller, and much less aggressive, and with only mouthparts, they had been known to eat leather, soap, glue, wood, cloth, paper, and any food that man ate.

But these creatures were mutants, five inches longer and much heavier than even the largest of their species. And in a very primitive fashion, due to the change in their body chemistry from
N-A-N-1-D
, these mutants could reason and organize. And they had teeth.

 

 

Three radio stations served the two-Parish area from within their borders. One, in Barnwell, an AM station that was on the air from five in the morning till ten at night, and an AM/FM combo in Bonne Terre. The station in Barnwell played country music. They ran the gamut, from genuine artists to local amateurs.

The combo in Bonne Terre was split in its format: the AM band playing rock and roll mixed with soul, the FM playing a mixture of everything.

On this night, while the radio stations in the two-Parish area rested their tubes and transistors, Sheriff Ransonet and the men who had accompanied him to the Cole house raced back to Bonne Terre. Vic, Rollie, and Slick had bagged the remains of the couple before the ambulances arrived. The drivers knew only that the people were dead. Sheriff Grant and Sheriff Ransonet spent many minutes on the phone, trying to work out a plan of action against an unknown enemy. The citizens of Baronne and Lapeer Parishes slept through this first night of horror.

Most of them.

Some of them would go to sleep forever.

 

 

“Sarah!” the father called from the upstairs bedroom. “For the love of God and dear ole Dad's eardrums,
please
turn down that radio.”

The volume was cut by at least two db's, which to the teenager's ears was tantamount to near silence; but the father heard no lessening of the clashing and banging and screeching which battered its way to the master bedroom of the two-story home.

Bob Campbell turned to his wife. “I'm telling you, honey, that kid's gonna be deaf by the time she's eighteen. Stone, stark deaf.”

His wife, Tanya, smiled at him. “Yes, dear.” She heard the same complaint every morning, Monday through Sunday. She didn't think the modern music was all
that
bad. But, she mused, it wasn't all that good either. No variety to it.

“I seem to recall,” she said, smiling, “us dancing to Little Richard.”

“We didn't! I don't remember that.”

“You don't
want
to remember that,” she laughed.

“Well,” he admitted grudgingly, “I guess we did, at that.”

“Six points for me!” Tanya clapped her hands.

“You'll never make the PAT,” Bob called from the bathroom.

“Bob,” she warned, trying not to grin, “that better mean Point After Touchdown.”

Pussy After Tasting, Bob grinned, remembering the old locker room joke. “Of course, dear, what else?” He sobered. “Is Sarah staying home tonight and eating with us and our company?”

“No. She has a date.”

“With whom?”

“Dean.”

“That cretin!”

“He's really a very nice boy, Bob.”

I'll take your word for that, babe. I've never heard him utter a sound except for an occasional yawp, which I assume is some strange new language of the young. How do kids nowadays converse? Do they just sit and look at each other, grunting over the throbbings of what is laughingly called music?”

Tanya laughed silently. How to tell him that most of the boys in Bonne Terre were scared to death of Bob Campbell. The Big BC: a college football star in the late fifties; a combat Marine during the early days of Vietnam—technically an advisor to the mountain people of that region; a decorated war hero; then a pro football linebacker for nine years.

She thought fondly of her husband of twenty-one years. He was now forty-two, she was forty. They had married while in college; she had gotten her degree while he went off to fight a war. Then came the glory days of pro ball. He was thirty-five when he walked off the field for good. And he did not look back.

Bob had wanted a return to the simple life, and, as was his way, he got it. He bought land in Louisiana and raised wheat, soybeans, rice, and three kids. Bob, Jr. was at LSU—a music major; Roy was in the Marine Corps; Sarah was the last chick in the nest. Bob did not play the game of Keeping Up With The Jones. Had not changed his hair style in twenty years; did not, for the most part, associate with the “in” crowd; and did not give a damn whether people liked him or not. Although most people did like him.

Bob was six feet, four inches, and weighed just five pounds over his playing weight of years past: two hundred and thirty pounds. When angered, Bob had a tendency to walk through closed doors. His hair was very blond, now peppered with gray, close-cropped, his skin fair. His eyes were black, giving him a very menacing appearance. Intimidating, sports writers used to say. But, in reality, Bob was a gentle man. He had never engaged in a fight on the field. He had never stepped out on his wife, and had no intention of ever doing so.

Tanya was a petite woman, having to stretch to reach five-four. She could eat anything without gaining an ounce. She wore the same size clothes she had worn in college. Like her husband, she was fair and blonde, but with pale blue eyes and a traffic-stopping figure. She was as devoted to her husband as he was to her.

They belonged to the Presbyterian Church, were both workers in that church, but could not be called prudes. They both enjoyed drinks before dinner, wine with certain meals, and small cocktail parties with close friends. Their love-making was often passionate and inventive.

Among their closest friends were Brett Travers and Kiri Forrest, both employed at Bonne Terre High School as a history teacher and counselor. They were coming over for dinner that evening. Along with a few uninvited and certainly unwelcome guests.

“Go put some Sinatra on our stereo,” Bob suggested. “Turn it up loud. Maybe she'll get the message.”

She walked into their huge upstairs bathroom. “Bob! You're cruel.”

He bent his head and kissed her, getting a spot of shaving lather on her cheek. “Only joking,” he said, patting her on the fanny as she left the room.

Suddenly, the house was silent, Sarah's radio producing only a faint crackle of static.

“I wonder what happened?” Tanya asked from her dressing table.

“The equipment probably fell over and died from sheer exhaustion,” Bob remarked.

“The station went off the air!” the teenager wailed. Panics-ville. How does one get dressed without rock and roll music? “Daddy! Do something!” It was bad enough her parents making her get out of bed at the crack of dawn, but no music?

Bob stuck his head out of the bathroom and yelled, “How about some conversation?” he suggested. “Man struggled for thousands of years to manage more than a grunt in order to communicate. Shall we give it a try in this house?”

“Oh, Daddy! Get real, will you?” was the reply from down the hall.

Bob looked at his wife. “Get real?”

She laughed. “It means, old timer, get serious.”

The station remained mute.

“Will wonders never cease?” Bob said, wiping the last of lather from his face. “Silence. Someone up there is really looking after us.” He glanced upward.
Thank you so very much, sir.”

“Oh, Bob,” Tanya laughed at his mock seriousness. “Really! We listened to rock and roll in the fifties. And don't tell me you don't remember.”

“Sure, we did.” He smiled at her. “But we also had Sinatra, James, Starr, Laine, Lanza, Dorsey, Damone, Page, the Four Aces, Brubeck, the Hilltoppers—”

“All right, dear,” she cut him off, before he could run down the entire list of bands and singers of the fifties. “All right, already.”

“We had the best of all music worlds,” he continued, ignoring her interruption and acquiescence, “and the sense to know and appreciate all forms of music. What's wrong with the kids of today?” He came out of the bathroom, patting Old Spice on his face.

He's a good man, Tanya thought, smiling at her husband. Set in his ways—set in concrete—but a good man. A loving father and husband. And really, she retreated into her memories, he's right. We
did
have the best of all music worlds. She began humming a Sam Cooke tune.
You Send Me.

'57-'58,” Bob said.

“What?”

“That tune you're humming. 1957-58?”

“I think so. I was in high school, dating Wally Mumford, I believe.”

“Who the hell is Wally Mumford? Or what in the hell is a Wally Mumford?”

She laughed out loud.

The radio in Sarah's room once more began to snort and burp and roar.

“He
stopped looking after us,” Bob muttered.