Growth (19 page)

Another couple of fingers crept over the edge of the hole. This time, it was four fingers and a couple of stubby toes, no thumb. They tipped and swayed as they tried to crawl along.

Cochran found his feet and edged closer. He still held on to his gun. The fingers seemed to sense him and followed his movement. He nudged the thumb and two fingers back toward the hole with his toe. The other four-finger organism, aware of the proximity of his boot, rushed at him. He brushed that one back into the darkness as well.

He stood at the edge and peered down in to the hole.

Too damn dark to see anything.

He looked around, found an old dresser with a swivel mirror on top. Dragging it closer, he angled the mirror at the windows, now blazing with the morning sun. He tilted it over the hole, and blasted sunlight down into the void.

At first, he wasn't sure what he was looking at. It was like trying to piece together a painting of a human by Picasso; most of the parts were all there, but they didn't make sense. Until the eyes opened and stared up at him. Then he saw how the head was sunk into an irregular circle of flesh, wreathed in arms, legs, exposed ribs, something that may have been a hipbone, all of it submerged in raw sewage. He tilted the mirror even farther, and saw that the walls of the hole were covered with the finger and toe creatures, along with more of the long, centipede things that scurried along with twenty or thirty different insect legs on each side.

They were all crawling up the rough cement, up to him.

For a long moment, Cochran didn't move. His mind simply couldn't accept the horrors that dripped with human excrement crawling up out of the rural septic tank. But as soon as a pair of tiny cricket legs crested the edge of the access hatch and the rest of the wriggling creature followed, heading straight for his boot, he jumped backward and aimed the Nighthawk.

He squeezed off three rounds before he realized it wouldn't help.

More of the fungus organisms followed, climbing their way out of the septic tank.

Cochran started for the cellar doors, but stopped. What if there were more of the bigger things outside, the ones that were using possum and skunk legs? They seemed tougher than the insect creatures. They moved faster too. His eyes went to the old lumber that covered the basement and served as the floorboards for the house above. He could now see faint light between some of the seams, and how several of the two-by-twelves had long cracks running along their length.

He hefted the handgun. He wasn't entirely sure how many rounds he'd torched off, but there had to be at least five or six left. Not nearly enough to protect himself against the monsters crawling out of the septic tank. He thought of another use.

Thick, sloshing sounds were coming out of the access hatch.

He didn't want to know if that awful flower thing with the horrible open eyes was trying to get out. His eyes went to the ceiling again, following the cracks. He found a spot where several of the cracks intersected each other and dragged the dresser over and set it right under the section that seemed to be the most vulnerable to damage.

Then he took the Nighthawk, squinted, and aimed up at the floorboards. He squeezed off round after round, moving his hand in a tight circle. Turned out there were six cartridges left. When the gun was empty, he had an oval punched through the floor above, like some kind of child's perforated artwork.

He climbed up on the dresser and used the empty handgun to hammer at the wood in the center of the circle. It took a while, but eventually it started to crack. Within fifteen minutes and bashing the shit out of the two-by-twelve, he smashed a hole into the first floor of the farmhouse.

He tossed the gun through the hole, grabbed two sides, and hefted himself up. He crawled out of the ragged hole and found himself in the kitchen. He lurched over to the fridge and seized the top corners. Rocking it back and forth, he toppled it over with a crash. The entire floor groaned and made some teeth-clenching cracking noises, but the structure held, and the hole he had climbed through was now covered with a heavy refrigerator.

He made a quick sweep of the first floor. No firearms. No shells. The driveway was empty, but he knew that his bosses had given his location to the “extraction” team. They had to be close. If he tried to escape on foot, he wouldn't get far enough.

He needed backup.

There was a phone on the wall in the kitchen.

He dialed 911.

Sandy parked her cruiser in Dr. Castle's lot and walked around to the back of the building. A black awning covered the narrow driveway, protecting a pair of double doors. This was where the two funeral homes in Parker's Mill picked up the bodies.

She knocked and stepped back. As she waited, she noticed a sign taped to the inside of the window. “We're sorry, but we're closed for the holiday. If this is an emergency, please call 911.”

She tried the door.

It was open, and swung wide on well-oiled hinges.

Sandy stuck her head inside and called out, “Hello?” No immediate answer. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “Hello? Anybody around? This is Chief Chisel. Anybody hear me?”

She went out to the waiting room. It was empty, along with the office behind the counter. She checked the two examination rooms. Nobody. It looked like everybody had gone to the parade.

She went past the freight elevator to the stairs that led to the basement and called down, “Hello? Dr. Castle?”

Ugly fluorescent light spilled out of a square little window in the door at the bottom of the stairs. She descended the narrow stairwell and tried the door handle. Part of her expected it to be locked and another part was hoping it would be, so she could leave.

The handle twisted easily and clicked obediently open. She stepped into the morgue. The place smelled of formaldehyde and bleach. It was a clinical smell, not rotten at all. Sometimes, Dr. Castle had to handle a traffic accident where the body had been laying in the sun for too long, or the occasional suicide that had ripened before being discovered, so he always made sure the morgue was well ventilated and spotless.

The refrigerated drawers waited off to the left. A stainless steel table with several drains set into it and a large utility sink were set off to the right. Sandy wanted to call out for Dr. Castle again, but it was clear that the room was empty.

Except for the body bag on the table in the center of the room.

She'd been in here before, plenty of times, mostly to acknowledge Dr. Castle's findings and sign on the dotted line. Yes, this person had died instantly when their minivan had struck the Christmas tree truck in a head-on collision. Yes, this person had drowned after getting drunk and falling out of his rowboat into the Mississippi River. Yes, this infant had been beaten to death by her father.

Sandy didn't like being down here.

She pulled out her phone and dialed Dr. Castle's home number. Nobody picked up. She hung up without leaving a message and took two steps toward the table.

The black plastic of the body bag crinkled, shifted. Sandy stopped. Her right hand had dropped to the handle of her Glock, but she had no idea of how her sidearm would help. Still, she didn't let go.

Something moved again inside the plastic.

Despite her training, she got closer. Reached out, pinched a fold of the bag between her thumb and forefinger. She gave it a quick yank, then stood back and brought the Glock out, aimed it at the table.

A lump in the bag rose up, then fell back. Something that sounded like fingernails scraped the inside of the bag.

Sandy stepped back, still holding the Glock up and ready. She supposed it was possible that Jerm had been brought here still alive, and he was simply asking for help, inside a cadaver bag. Possible, but not likely. It was also possible that it wasn't Jerm at all in that bag. Could be that it was someone else entirely.

Sandy didn't think so.

She had no choice. She reached out with her free hand and started to unzip the bag. Something scurried over inside the bag and grabbed at her hand. It felt almost like someone's hand on the other side of the fabric trying to clutch at her. She shifted to the side and unzipped the bag about eighteen inches in one, long, smooth motion.

Fingers unfurled from inside the bag and pulled at the plastic.

Sandy's immediate thought was that she was watching two hands come crawling out, all on their own, like that pet hand from
The Addams Family
. Then she realized they weren't hands exactly. They had fingers and even toes, but no palms; the digits rose up into a mass of gray webbing, like a short, stubby tipi. They scuttled awkwardly out of the bag like spiders that had waded through grain alcohol.

Other parts of the bag were moving now. Bigger parts. Sandy had seen enough to know that whatever Dr. Castle had seen last night, he had been right.

She reholstered the Glock, found a large pair of tongs, and picked up one of the finger spiders. It struggled weakly, and as she turned it over, she could see a mass of what looked like white cotton candy underneath, growing out of the upper pads of the fingers and toes. She dropped it in the bag and quickly grabbed the other one. She used the tongs to grab the zipper and zip the bag shut.

The parts inside continued to move.

Her radio crackled. It was Liz. “Chief, you there? Come back. Chief?”

Sandy wanted to start shooting at the bag, to burn it, something. She hit the button on the radio. “Chisel here. Over.”

“Chief, we're getting a ton of calls about people not coming home last night. I'm forwarding them on to the county boys for now, but I just got one hell of a weird nine-one-one call, thought you should hear about this one first.” Liz either hadn't heard about Sandy's suspension, or more likely was simply choosing to ignore the command. “Male, says he's under attack from some kind of monsters. I think he's just some tweaker, wandered off the interstate and got lost. He's freaking out, says he needs help.”

“Monsters, huh?” Sandy said, watching the body bag.

“His words, not mine. And you'll never guess where he was calling from. The Einhorns'.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. When it rains it pours, huh?”

The Einhorns. Mrs. Kobritz. And now Dr. Castle. All those missing people.

“You want, I can let Sheriff Hoyt know, and he can send one of his boys out.”

Sandy knew that she would have to bring Sheriff Hoyt into this mess, sooner than later, but if she could figure out at least a few pieces of the puzzle, it might go easier for her and Kevin later. Never mind that she was unable to act in any official capacity as the town's chief. “No, that's okay. I've got it. Let Sheriff Hoyt handle the parade for now. I'll head out there, see what's what.”

“You gonna join us at the parade? I'm outta here in less than . . . twenty minutes. You want me to save you a spot?”

“No, that's okay, thanks. I'll be there soon. I'll find my boy and we'll watch it together.”

“See you then. Over and out.”

 

 

Bob was proud of himself.

It had been years since he'd personally driven the harvester up and down the rows, but the old skills had never left. Even as bad as he felt. Of course the technology had changed, made it easier for one man to do everything. Used to be, he had someone else to drive alongside the combine with a trailer to collect the grain. Now, the combine itself had a trailer, and so Bob could easily harvest acres and acres on his own.

He remembered endless summer days of sitting on his father's lap in the combine, bouncing through one field after another, back and forth, back and forth, as his father taught him what was important in life. God. Farming. Family. Back in those days, there wasn't much to do in the cab of the combine. Now, he still couldn't believe how it had more technology than his office at home. Air-conditioning, for one thing. They'd never had central air put in the house, and so Bob always felt a little guilty using it in the combine. A radio. He'd seen some models that even had little televisions, but he drew the line at that. No sir. You couldn't work and watch TV at the same time.

He didn't bother closing the gate behind him. The field was done. Time to let it sit until next spring. It had been too early to harvest the corn, and it wouldn't be as sweet as it should be, but that wasn't the point. No, he'd harvested his son's corn to show everyone that his son had been a farmer when he died. No one could take that away. No one. Not even Allagro.

And now Bob had the evidence. Two acres of corn that half-filled the trailer behind the combine. That amount was nothing, of course, not when he was used to dealing with hundreds of acres, day after day. It was enough, though, to make sure everybody knew that the Mortons had farming in their blood.

If Bob had turned around, he might have seen the lazy black cloud that jolted and swirled with every bump in the road as it hung like a fog over the trailer of corn.

He passed Cochran's rental car. It was empty. Bob hoped the son of a bitch had gotten lost out here looking for Bob Jr.'s two acres. He was in no hurry as he eased the massive combine and trailer up to the intersection of Road G and Highway 17. It only had a top speed of fifteen miles an hour anyway. He turned left, toward town.

It didn't matter anymore. Cochran was too late to do anything. Let him call his bosses. Let him make all the threats he wanted. Let him go give those condescending looks to somebody else. Bob had taken care of his farm.

If nothing else, that's what was truly important to Bob. No matter how he looked, or how he felt, he could still take care of his business, his home, his life. And by God, he was going to prove it to everybody. He couldn't think of a better way to show everyone just what a genuine American farmer was made of.

It was time to take the corn to the parade.