Invasion of the Body Snatchers (6 page)

He shook his head at the memory, bit his lower lip a couple times, then took a deep swallow of his drink. "I came to, and she was hysterical. Didn't say anything. Just stared at me for a second, wild and sort of frantic, then she whirled away, darting across the room to the phone, grabbed it, dialled you, stood waiting for a second, then couldn't stand still, slammed the phone down, and began crying out at me - very softly, as though someone might hear - to get her out of there."

Again Jack shook his head, his cheek quirking in annoyance at himself. "Not thinking, I took her wrist and started leading her down the basement stairs to the garage and the car, and she began to fight me, yanking her arm to get loose, shoving at my shoulder, her face just wild. Miles, I think she'd have raked down my face with her nails if I hadn't let go. We went out the front door then, and down the outside steps. Even at that, she wouldn't come near the garage or basement; she stood well out on the road, away from the house, while I got the car out."

Jack took a swig of his drink and stared at a living-room window, shiny black against the night. "I'm not sure what she saw, Miles," - he glanced over at me - "though I can guess, and so can you. But I couldn't take time to go see for myself; I knew I had to get her out of there. And she didn't tell me anything on the way down here. She just sat there, all huddled up and shivering, pressed tight against me - I kept an arm around her - saying, 'Jack, oh, Jack, Jack, Jack.' " For several moments he stared at me sombrely. "We proved something, all right, Miles," he said then with quiet bitterness. "The experiment worked, I guess. Now what?"

I didn't know, or try to pretend I did. I just shook my head. "I like to get a look at that thing," I murmured.

"Yeah, me, too. But I won't leave Theodora alone just now. If she woke up and called, and I didn't answer - the house empty - she'd go out of her mind."

I didn't answer. It's possible - it happens to everyone, in fact - to think through a fairly long series of thoughts in a moment, and that's what I did now. I thought about driving up to Jack's place alone, at once. I imagined myself stopping my car beside that empty house, getting out of the car, in the darkness, then standing there listening to the crickets, and the silence. Then I pictured myself walking ahead into the open garage, shuffling slowly across that dark basement, fumbling along the wall for an unfamiliar light switch. I saw myself actually walking into that pitch-black billiard room, feeling my way across it to the table, knowing what was lying there, and getting closer and closer to it, my palms raised to find it, hoping they'd touch the table and not blunder onto that cool, unalive skin in the dark. I thought of bumping into the table then, finding the light overhead finally; then turning it on, and lowering my eyes to look at whatever had sent Theodora into shocked hysteria. And I was ashamed. I didn't want to do what I'd let Theodora do; I didn't want to go up there to that house in the night, not alone.

I was suddenly angry, at myself. In that same second or so of thought, I was finding excuses, telling myself that there wasn't
time
to go up there now; that we had to act, had to do something. And I took my anger and shame out on Jack. "Listen" - I was on my feet, staring furiously across the room at him - "whatever we're going to do about this, we've got to start
doing
it! So what do you say? You got any ideas? What'll we
do,
for God sakes!" I was actually a little hysterical, and knew it.

"I don't know," Jack said slowly. "But we've got to move carefully, make sure we're doing the right thing-"

"You said that! You already said that early this evening, and I agree, I agree! But
what
? We can't sit around forever till the one correct move is finally revealed to us!" I was glaring at Jack, then I forced myself to behave. I thought of something, turned to cross the room rapidly, winking at Jack to let him know I was okay now. Then I picked up the downstairs phone and dialled a number.

The ringing began, and I had to grin; I was getting a little malicious pleasure out of this. When a general practitioner hangs out his ethical little shingle, he knows he's going to be telephoned out of bed for the rest of his life perhaps. In a way he gets used to it, and in a way never does. Because most often the phone late at night is something serious; frightened people to deal with, and everything you do twice as hard; maybe pharmacists to roust out of bed, hospitals to stir into action. And underneath it all, to hide from the patient and his family, are your own night-time fears and doubts about yourself to beat down, because everything depends on you now and nobody else - you're the doctor. The phone at night is no fun, and sometimes it's impossible not to resent those branches of medicine that never, or rarely, have emergency calls.

So when the ringing at the other end of the wire was finally broken, I was grinning, delighted with my mental picture of Dr. Manfred Kaufman, black hair mussed, eyes barely open, wondering who could possibly be phoning.

"Hello; Mannie?" I said, when he answered.

"Yeah."

"Listen" - I made my voice exaggeratedly solicitous - "did I wake you up?"

That brought him to life, cursing like a wild man.

"Why, Doctor," I said, "where in the world did you learn such language? From your patients' foul and slimy subconscious, I suppose. How I wish I were a chief sawbones, charging twenty-five bucks a throw just to sit and listen and improve my vocabulary. No tiresome night-time calls! No dreary operations! No annoying prescrip-"

"Miles, what the hell do you want? I'm warning you. I'll hang up, and leave the damn phone off the-"

"Okay, okay, Mannie; listen." I was still smiling, but the tone of my voice promised no more bad jokes. "Something has happened, Mannie, and I've got to see you. Just as fast as possible, and it has to be here, at my place. Get over here, Mannie, as fast as you can; it's important."

Mannie's quick-minded; he gets things fast, and you don't have to repeat or explain. For just an instant he was silent, at the other end of the wire, then he said, "Okay," and hung up.

I was enormously relieved, crossing the room toward my chair and my drink again. In an emergency calling for brains, or almost anything else, Mannie's the first man I'd want on my side, and now he was on his way, and I felt we were getting somewhere. I picked up my drink, ready to sit down, and I actually had my mouth open to speak to Jack, when something happened that you read about often but seldom experience. In a single instant I broke out into a cold sweat, and I stood there stock still for several seconds, paralyzed, and shrivelling inside with fear.

What had happened was simple enough; I'd suddenly thought of something. Something had occurred to me, a danger so obvious and terrible that I knew I should have thought of it long since, but I hadn't. And now, terror filling my mind, I knew I hadn't a single second to lose, and I couldn't act fast enough. I was wearing elastic-sided slippers, and I ran to the hall and grabbed up my light topcoat from a chair, shoving my arms into my coat sleeves as I swung toward the front door. I had only one terrible thought, and it was impossible to do anything but act, move,
run
. I'd forgotten all about Jack, forgotten Mannie, as I yanked the front door open and ran out, and down the steps into the night, across the lawn and the sidewalk. At the curb, I had my hand on the door of my car when I remembered that the ignition key was upstairs, and it simply wasn't possible to turn around and go back. I began to run - as hard as I could - and somehow, for no reason I can explain, the sidewalk seemed hampering, seemed to slow me down, and I darted across the grass strip toward the curb; then I was running frantically down the dark and deserted streets of Santa Mira.

For two blocks I saw nothing else moving. The houses lining the street were silent and blank, and the only sounds in the world were the rapid slap-slap of my slippers on the asphalt pavement and the raw gasps of my breathing, which seemed to fill the street. Just ahead now, at the Washington Boulevard intersection, the pavement lightened, then suddenly brightened, showing every tiny pebble and flaw on its surface in the headlights of an approaching car. I couldn't seem to think, couldn't do anything but run on, straight into that glare of bouncing light, and brakes squealed and rubber shrieked on the pavement and the chrome end of a bumper slapped through the tail of my coat. "You son of a bitch," a male voice savage with fright and anger was shrieking at me. "You crazy bastard!" The words merged into a frustrated babble as my pumping legs carried me on into the darkness.

six

I could hardly see when I got to Becky's. My throbbing heart seemed to pile blood behind my eyeballs, filming my vision, and the whistling moan of my breath bounced and echoed between the frame walls of Becky's home and the house next door. I began testing each basement window, pushing each one inward with all my strength, using both hands, then shuffling over the grass at a jog, to the next. They were all locked. I'd circled the house, and now I bunched the hem of my coat around my fist, held it against the glass of the window, and pushed, increasing the pressure till suddenly it cracked. One piece fell inward, dropped into the basement, and broke with a tinkling sound on the floor. From the hole in the glass, the cracks flared out, the other broken pieces bulging inward, but still hanging in place. I was thinking now, and in the faint starlight I carefully picked out the broken fragments one by one, dropping them in the grass, widening the hole. Then I reached in, unlatched the window, opened it, then crawled in feet first, sliding down over the ledge on my belly till my feet found the floor. Pressing against my chest as I slid down, I felt the fountain-pen flashlight I carry in my coat; then, standing in the basement, I turned it on.

The feeble little yard-long beam was wide and diffused, and showed nothing at all beyond a step or two ahead. Slowly I shuffled around that dark, unfamiliar basement, passing bundles of stacked-up old newspapers, a rusting screen door leaning against a cement-block wall, a paint-smeared, saw-marked sawhorse, an old trunk, an old sink and a pile of discarded lead piping, the wooden six-by-six supporting pillars of the basement, a framed dusty group photograph of Becky's high-school graduating class - and I began to get panicky. Time was passing. I wasn't finding what I was certain was here somewhere, and what I had to find if it wasn't already too late.

I tried the old trunk; it was unlocked, and I thrust my arm down into it to the shoulder, stirring around in the old clothes the trunk was filled with, till I knew it contained nothing else. There was nothing among the stacks of old newspapers, or behind the screen door, nothing in an old bookcase I found, its shelves lined with empty, earth-crusted flowerpots. I saw a wooden workbench littered with tools and wood shavings, odds and ends of unused lengths of lumber stacked underneath it. As quietly as possible, I pulled most of that lumber aside, but still I made a good deal of noise; there was nothing under that bench but lumber. I shot the little beam up to the rafters; they were open and exposed, covered with dust and fluff, and there was nothing else on them. Time continued to pass, and I'd searched that whole basement. I didn't know where else to look, and I kept glancing at the windows, afraid I might see the first hint of dawn.

Then I discovered a set of tall cupboards. They were built against an end wall, extending the full width of the basement, and covering it from floor to ceiling. In the weak beam of my flashlight, I'd thought at first that they were the wall itself, and hadn't noticed them. I opened the first set of double doors; the shelves were loaded with canned goods. I opened the next set of doors beside them, and the shelves were dusty and empty, all but the bottom one, no more than an inch from the floor.

There it lay, on that unpainted pine shelf, flat on its back, eyes wide open, arms motionless at its sides; and I got down on my knees beside it. I think it must actually be possible to lose your mind in an instant, and that perhaps I came very close to it. And now I knew why Theodora Belicec lay on a bed in my house in a state of drugged shock, and I closed my eyes tight, fighting to hold onto control of myself. Then I opened them again and looked, holding my mind, by sheer force, in a state of cold and artificial calm.

I once watched a man develop a photograph, a portrait he'd taken of a mutual friend. He dipped the sheet of blank sensitized paper into the solution, slowly swishing it back and forth, in the dim red light of the developing room. Then, underneath that colourless fluid, the image began to reveal itself - dimly and vaguely - yet unmistakably recognizable just the same. This thing, too, lying on its back on that dusty shelf in the feeble orange glow of my flashlight, was an unfinished, underdeveloped, vague and indefinite Becky Driscoll.

The hair, like Becky's, was brown and wavy, and it sprang up from the forehead, wiry and strong, and already there was the beginning of a dip at the centre of the hairline, suggesting the widow's peak of Becky Driscoll's head of hair. Under the skin, the bone structure was pushing up; cheekbone and chin, and the modeling around the eyes, were beginning to show prominently, as did Becky's. The nose was narrow, flaring into a sudden wideness at the bridge, and I saw that if it widened only a fraction of an inch more, this nose would be a duplicate, precise as a wax cast, of Becky's. The lips formed very nearly the same full, ripe, and - this was horrible - good-looking mouth. At each side of that mouth were appearing the two tiny, nearly invisible grooves of worry that had appeared on Becky Driscoll's face in the past few years.

It is impossible, even in a child, for bone and flesh to grow perceptibly in anything less than weeks. Yet kneeling here now, the cold concrete pressing hard against my knees, I knew that the flesh I was staring at, and the bone underneath, had been reforming themselves in only the hours and minutes that had so far passed of this night. It was simply not possible, but still I knew that these cheekbones had pushed up under this skin, the mouth had widened, the lips swelled and taken on character; that the chin had lengthened the fraction of an inch, the jaw angle altered, and I knew that the hair had changed in colour to this precise shade, thickened and strengthened, twisting into waves, and begun to dip down onto the forehead.