Vanish (21 page)

Helen’s gaze fell. “No. I can’t say that I have.”

“Well, let’s just say if I had a choice of going to be with her or staying here… I think I could get used to this place.”

“Did you ever try to get her any help?”

Devon looked at her with what almost looked like amusement in his eyes. “Help? She gotta
want
help. And my mom never wanted nothing from me.”

“So Terrell is the only family you really had?”

“You do what you gotta do to survive, right? We always watched each other’s back, ever since grade school. We were always there for each other.” He shook his head slowly. “And now he’s gone.”

Helen fell silent for a little while. “Look, we probably never would have met if it wasn’t for this whole mess. So now you have us. Me and Conner and Mitch. And even old Howard. We’ll watch your back now. Right?”

Devon snorted. “Bunch of crazy white folks.”

Helen chuckled and went down to the kitchen, where Conner, Mitch, and Howard were talking.

“Morning,” Howard said. “We’re getting ready to go for some gas and supplies. You and Devon feel okay about holdin’ down the fort for a few hours?”

Helen raised her eyebrows. “Uh… well…”

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “They never come out during the day.”

“Ray Cahill had the same confidence in them. Then we showed up, and they abducted him.”

Howard nodded. “But that was at night, too, wasn’t it?”

“Well… yeah.”

“So, we’ll be back in a few hours. We’re just headed up the road twenty-three miles. We’ll be back before you know it.”

Helen explained her concerns about Devon as well, about the spread of his rash and his increasing despondency. She didn’t think he’d be of much help if anything happened to them.

Howard showed her how to start up the generators and switch on the outer lights just in case. He also showed her how to run the tornado siren he had rigged up. Helen wrote everything down.

Twenty minutes later, Howard, Mitch, and Conner were headed down the long, gravel drive in Howard’s old milk truck.

Helen sat on the back porch and watched them pull away. Then she soaked up the immense solitude of the farm. Everything was so quiet. There wasn’t even a breeze to rustle the trees any longer. Beyond the barn, a wide field stretched back several hundred feet to the threshold of a forest. Gnarled, bare branches reached upward in row after row… too dense to see anything through.

Helen peered at the forest and shuddered. Howard had said the creatures had made a base back in there. Or perhaps had a ship. Maybe the answers to all of their questions lay there as well, but after her experience in the Jeep, Helen was none too eager to investigate.

After the three men had gone, Devon came downstairs and joined Helen on the back porch. “Where’d everybody go?”

“Howard took Conner and Mitch with him to get some more gas for the generators.”

“How long are they gonna be gone?”

Helen shrugged. “Not long—just a couple hours.”

Devon strode to the edge of the porch and stared out at the field and forest. “He says they have a ship in there?”

Helen nodded.

Devon gazed at the forest a long while. Then he turned around. “I think they have Terrell back in there.”

The statement was so frank and matter-of-fact that it took Helen by surprise. “What? Why do you say that?”

Devon turned back to the trees and nodded to himself. “I saw him.”

Helen blinked and shook her head. “You
saw
him? When was that?”

“This morning.”

“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

He shrugged. “I figured you’d think I was crazy. I had a dream about him last night. Then I woke up just when it was getting light out and I looked out the bathroom window. And I saw him. He was standing at the back of the barn, waving to me. Then he walked toward the forest.”

“No,” Helen said. “They’re doing that to you. They’re just making you
think
you see him. That’s just what’s been happening to us. They’re messing with our heads.”

“How do you know that? Maybe it’s Terrell who’s trying to communicate.”

“Because they… they’re just…” Helen tried to think of a logical answer but was unable to. “They can manipulate us too easily.”

Devon shook his head. “Well, I think it was Terrell. I think he’s trying to show me the way back.”

Helen stood up. “Don’t you even
think
about going out there!”

“What are you, my mama now? I’ll go if I feel like it.”

“Look, Devon—” Helen tried to calm her voice. She was getting shrill—“let’s just wait until the others get back. Then maybe we can all go. There’s strength in numbers, right?”

“No.” Devon’s expression turned dark. “I’ve been following you people for two days ’cause I was too scared to be alone. I don’t care anymore. I think y’all are just afraid to do anything. What are you gonna do, stay here the rest of your lives like Howard?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean we should go off and get ourselves captured.”

“I need some answers!”

Helen tried to calm him down. “Look, I’ll go with you a little ways, okay? Can you compromise a little? I just don’t want you going all alone.”

Devon thought for a moment. Then he nodded.

Five minutes later, Helen found herself following Devon across the field. She shook her head. What was she doing? Had she gone completely nuts? This was by far the most idiotic thing she had ever done.

She stopped halfway across the field. “Okay, that’s close enough.”

Devon turned and scowled at her. “We can’t even see anything from here. Let’s just get to the edge of the trees.”

“No!”

Devon took her hand. “Please? I just want to see if I can see anything through the trees.” He pulled her gently.

Helen clenched her jaw and took a few more steps. They were within fifteen yards of the forest now. She stared at the black trees. “Something’s wrong. The branches are all bare. Yesterday, back in Thorton, the trees still had their leaves on. They’re all off now.” She pulled her hand away.

Devon took a few more steps, peering at the trees. “So, it’s easier to see through them now. Let’s just get a little closer.”

Helen ran to stop him. She caught his arm. “No! That’s far enough.”

Devon turned to face her. “What are you, my mama now?”

With each word, his voice seemed to grow more unnatural. His head turned. His eyes had gone white. His lips pulled back to reveal a row of teeth. Inhuman teeth. Teeth she had seen before. Eyes she had seen before.

Helen screamed and stumbled backward, falling into the dirt.

Devon reached out for her. Clutched her arm. His fingers seemed to burn through her shirt, searing her flesh. His voice was deep and inhuman. “Just a little farther…”

Helen pulled out of his grasp and scrambled back to her feet. She ran. Tripping and stumbling across the field, she ran back to the house, screaming.

CONNER PEERED OUT THE window at the drab, gray countryside shuffling past. Nothing but acre upon acre of empty fields, marked only by patches of barren trees and an occasional farmhouse or a cluster of lackluster rural dwellings. Then more empty fields.

What a miserable place.

Howard was talking up a storm. Making up for years of solitude, Conner guessed. He had apparently given himself to maintaining his daily rituals. Showering, shaving, keeping a garden. He had to do it, he said, to keep his sanity. To hold on to some semblance of normalcy in his world otherwise turned upside down. He was vague on the details of exactly how long he had been alone, but Conner got the feeling it was several years.

Years.

Conner’s mind reeled at that thought. How long had this been going on before that? How long had this alien civilization coexisted with them? He had always considered man the dominant species on the planet. That was no longer the case, and his hubris was painfully obvious now. But how deep did this illusion run? How much of his life had been shrouded by the delusion created by these creatures? And how many other people were in the same situation? What about Marta and Rachel? Had they even existed, or were they merely part of the fantasy these creatures were creating? If they were real, where were they now? Were they alone somewhere too, being subjected to their own kind of hell? Had his whole life simply been an unending series of illusions?

Conner rubbed his eyes. This was more than he could handle right now. His mind would take this scenario to endless levels of speculation if he let it. Right now he had to focus on what to do next. And that at least consisted of finding out what this infection was.

They pulled into a small town. Conner didn’t catch the name on the road sign. It didn’t really matter anyway.

“We got a whole new town of gas to siphon,” Howard said. He almost looked like a kid on Christmas morning.

There were a couple of gas stations in the community, but Howard was unable to pump the gasoline from the underground tanks. So for now, they had to be content with siphoning gas from cars, one at a time, and pouring them into the milk tank on the truck.

They started at one end of town and canvassed three blocks. Howard had a small hand pump he had rigged up to make the job a little easier. He’d pull the truck up to the driveway while Conner and Mitch siphoned gas from any vehicle parked there. They worked with a set of three five-gallon gas cans. Mitch would fill one; then Conner switched it out with another and handed it up to Howard, who poured it into the truck. This kept a pretty steady stream of gas flowing into the milk truck. But it was slow going. After two hours, they had checked some fifteen houses by Conner’s count and had siphoned nearly two hundred gallons of gas.

Howard kept track of which houses they had visited, in a small notebook tucked into his sun visor. He was all smiles. “This would’ve taken me a whole day! What say we see if we can get the rest of this street?”

Conner looked at his watch. “We told Helen we’d be back in two or three hours. I don’t want her getting worried. Besides, I was hoping to find that library.”

Howard nodded up the street. “I think it’s up that way a few blocks. Why don’t you go have a look-see. Me and Hoss here’ll finish up the gas on this block.”

Mitch shrugged. Conner could tell he wasn’t too amused by the nickname Howard had given him. But he waved Conner on. “We’ll pick you up in a half hour or so.”

Conner nodded and took a flashlight from the truck. He recalled seeing a bike parked next to a garage a few doors down. He took it and set off.

After a few blocks, Conner came upon the small community library. The doors were unlocked, so he made his way inside. A musty odor filled the building—the scent of paper and mold. The place felt like it had been abandoned for years. Gray daylight poured in through the row of windows along the back. But the interior of the building was quite dark.

Conner flipped on the flashlight. The card catalog was computerized and so was useless. He would have to search the aisles one at a time, scanning the book titles.

He quickly found the nonfiction section and skipped past history, modern architecture, and how-tos. The third aisle contained health and wellness—type books. Conner slowed down and scanned more closely. After several minutes of searching, he settled on a half dozen books on human physiology and modern medicine and stacked them on one of the carts.

He rolled the cart to a table next to the row of windows and started to peruse one of the medical books. He still had some time before Howard and Mitch showed up.

He searched the indexes for rashes and diseases but couldn’t find a description of anything that matched his condition. Eventually he gave up and flipped through a lexicon of diseases he had found. There were pictures of several conditions that looked similar, however nothing that matched completely. He examined his arm again. The discoloration had nearly doubled in size, spreading up his forearm and onto the back of his hand.

It was cold to the touch, almost as if he was losing circulation. He pressed the skin for a moment and released. His flesh turned white where he had pressed it. A few moments later, the purple color returned. It looked so much like a bruise yet seemed to be spreading like a rash.

He had flipped through a few more pages when he winced at a sudden flash of pain. His arm stung, just as it had—

Conner sat up, his muscles tense.
Just as it had the night before
. He jumped up from the table and swept the flashlight into the shadows of the library.

Nothing moved among the rows of shelves. Still, Conner could feel a presence with him in the library. Something in the shadows. Unseen. Watching him. Outside, a gust of wind moaned past the windows. His arm stung again with a sharp chill.

He gathered up the books and slipped back along the darkened center aisle toward the front doors. Halfway down, his arm jolted again. It was so severe this time that he dropped the flashlight and books and doubled over. The wind moaned again. The whole building seemed to shudder. Conner straightened up, clutching his arm, and froze.

A tall, gray figure blocked the aisle before him. It stood upright, shoulders back, head forward with its thin arms bent slightly—a posture that gave Conner the impression of readiness. Alertness. Yet its face was blank gray flesh except for its two small nostrils.

Conner’s heart raced and he struggled to control his breathing. He backed up a step and the creature moved toward him, mirroring his movements.

Conner stammered, “What do you want?”

The creature stopped. Its head tilted. Its nostrils undulated.

Conner raised his arm. “What is this? What are you doing to me?”

The creature’s head swiveled slightly, as if following the sound of Conner’s movement. It raised its arm and spread out its spiderlike hand.

Conner slowly moved to one side. The creature mimicked him, blocking his path.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

In a swift, smooth motion, the creature lunged forward. Its gray head leaned in just inches from Conner’s face. Conner tensed, unable to run. A septic stench stung in his nostrils. The creature’s head angled slightly, drawing in air through its nostrils, as if smelling Conner, identifying him by his odor. Then a mouth slit formed in its gray flesh and peeled open. Gaping jaws parted. Black saliva dripped. A cold breath wafted across Conner’s skin.