The Walls Have Eyes (8 page)

“I told you, Dad,” Martin said. “You looked just like the little people in David's ImCity game when they stepped on slime demons.”

“Martin Revere Glass,” said his mother, “this is not a joke!”

“Hey, I'm not the one who called it silly,” Martin countered. “Maybe now Dad believes me about these houses.”

“He's right, Walt. We were better off by the little river. First thing tomorrow, we're getting out of here.”

Dad managed to get to his feet, and they limped away from the deadly structure. But he was too shaken to travel far, and they wound up bedding down in the middle of the stony road. It was by far the most uncomfortable choice they could have made, and the broken house seemed dangerously near. As night fell, it looked more and more like a scene from Martin's monster games. He twisted to and fro on his bedroll, scanning for enemies.

The moon shone its pale beams through the whispering canopy overhead. Small pools of moonlight lapped the weedy ground and picked out and ennobled odd bits of junk in the yard. Dad dozed off, then thrashed as if he were falling through the floor again. His sudden movement startled Martin, and something else, too: a black shape nearby went crashing off into a thicket of young trees.

The oppressive feeling of danger hung over Martin's restless sleep. He could sense the presence of the hideous house brooding over them as they lay side by side on the weedy road. He could feel silent shapes watching them from the bushes. He jerked himself awake and sat up.

Chip was on his feet, barking. Several pairs of eyes caught the light of the moon. Dark forms circled Martin's little camp— three or four at least. Martin couldn't make out what they were, but they were big, bigger than Chip, prowling on four legs and snuffling close to the ground.

Chip's barks had turned into a savage roar. But the glowing eyes refused to retreat. They shifted and winked and drew closer.

Then Chip sprang over Martin, and the eyes rushed to meet him.

Martin couldn't see what happened, but he heard it. He heard crunching and tearing. He heard slobbering, choking breath. And over it all, he heard the sound of Mom sobbing, high and quick, like birdsong.

One of the assailants got away. Its strident yelps of pain diminished in the distance. The other attackers didn't escape. Martin thought he heard weak scrabbling coming from nearby,
but the sighing wind drowned it out even as it brought to him the nauseating odor of blood.

Chip came back. Worried growls bubbled out of him, low and muttering, like an old man's mumbled complaints.

“Tris?” That was Dad, very quiet, as if other things might overhear him. But those other things weren't listening anymore. Martin thought he could make out a lump on the dark ground before the evil old house, an addition to the eternal garage sale.

“Walt!” That was Mom, a little breathless, and then the two shadows that were his parents locked together.

“Chip, how are you doing, boy?” he whispered. His hands found Chip's ears in the dark, nervous and pricked, swiveling this way and that. Martin rubbed the soft fur around them.

“Martin, are you all right?” Dad's voice was stronger now.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. My leg's asleep.”

“Is the bot all right?”

“He's just a little upset right now.”

“Martin . . . are you sure that thing is safe?”

Chip tucked his big head into Martin's chest, and his growls changed to whimpers.

“If you mean, did he save our lives just now, then yeah, I guess he's safe.”

Mom's hand reached out of the darkness to pat Chip's ruff. “Good dog,” she murmured.

They got no more sleep that night. At Dad's suggestion, they sat back-to-back in order to keep watch in all directions. Chip sat up between Mom and Martin, snuffling the breeze to scent for enemies.

Daylight brought a grisly scene and a loud buzzing of flies. Three huge dogs lay sprawled among the weeds and junk in front of the evil house. They had very short, smooth black-andtan coats that revealed their bulky muscles and lean flanks. All three were bigger than Chip.

Strange injuries marked them. One had a long rip in its hide from breastbone to tail, as if someone had pulled on its zipper. Inside the tear was dark, greasy flesh. Another lay with its head turned around to face its tail, its round white eyes bulging out of its sockets in the manner of a tasteless joke.

“Would you look at that!” Dad marveled.

Chip wouldn't. He didn't come near the dead dogs. He skulked on the opposite side of the road, head and tail drooping. “Come here,” Martin coaxed. “You were a good dog. You should be proud.”

But Chip was anything but proud.

“They would have killed us,” Mom said in a low voice. “Isn't that right? We'd be looking like this right now.”

Dad cleared his throat. “Maybe,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she'd asked for his opinion about a fishing tournament. “But my sense is that dogs wouldn't kill in quite this fashion. More bite marks. More tearing, I think. Something that looked . . . more like steak.”

Martin's stomach churned. The dead bodies, with their glazed eyes staring into infinity, seemed invested with a horrible power and knowledge.

“Okay, let's get out of here,” he said. “I say we head back the way we came. There was this great lake back there, I saw it on my first night out, we must have gone right by it and not
known it. It had birds all over it. Big ones. I bet that means big fish, too.”

“No,” Mom said, and her voice was unusually stern. “No, Martin, your father's right. We aren't safe out here with these wild animals roaming around. We need a front door of our own.”

Martin's jaw dropped. “Mom!”

“I'll tell you what we do, Tris,” Dad said. “We'll investigate every single one of these old houses until we find a place that's fit for us to live. We're putting walls between us and them, and that's a promise.”

Trailing behind his parents as they hiked down the old road, Martin tried to talk them out of their decision. Instead of nagging or whining, he tried honesty: he attempted to convey some idea of the dangerous enemies these houses held. But honesty failed in spectacular fashion. He wasn't surprised. It usually did.

Decayed houses crowded the underbrush at the edge of the road like grotesque monsters shambling into the light. Their busted doors seemed to leer at Martin; the sunlight glittering on their broken windows winked with obscene meaning. The roof of the house closest to him had fallen in, so that it looked like it was wearing a hat pulled down over one eye. “I swear, I've seen zombies hiding in better-looking houses than these,” he told them. “We're gonna be sorry once it gets to be night.”

Dad ignored him. He sized up the line of sinister wooden buildings as briskly as if they were new scooters. “We won't go look at that one,” he said, pointing. “Too worn. It's gone all soft.”

“Walt, this one coming up doesn't look so bad.”

“Great, Mom,” Martin groaned. “That one looks just like our house back home . . . in a few million years, maybe.”

Their shabby road wound around the base of a steep, forested hill. Other roads branched off it. Dozens of ruined houses came into view. “Wonderful,” Martin whispered. “A whole zombie suburb.”

They came around a long curve, and the road changed. It split into two roads running parallel to each other, with a strip of tall weeds and bushes between them. The concrete slabs of the two roads heaved and tilted at awkward angles.

Enormous trees lined each side of the new double road. A number of them were hollow black shells with only a spray or two of green leaves to show that they still lived. Others were dead, rattling skeletons with brittle branches. Several had fallen across the roadway.

Off to the left was open ground, a break from the dilapidated houses. Iron swing set frames and the remains of a stand of bleachers stood among bushes and wildflowers.

“That was a park,” Mom said.

A couple of hundred yards beyond the old bleachers, the ground lapped up to the edge of a steep incline covered with massive pine trees. Directly above that slope rose gray granite cliffs.

“Wow!” Martin said. “The mountain starts right over there.” The nearness and hugeness of it made his pulse race with excitement. It was accessible. It was personal. Heck, it was part of a park! What fun he and David would have had if they'd had a mountain in their park.

“A park is good news,” Dad opined. “The best houses are by the park.”

A shallow, pebbly stream flowed down from beneath the dark pine trees at the mountain's foot and cut across the park parallel to their street. It sang loudly with its own importance.

“Come on, Chip,” Martin called, and they hurried over to investigate.

The stream wasn't deeper than two or three feet. Its streambed was full of light gray rocks, and it foamed over these minor obstacles with great excitement, as if it were a fearsome cataract. Martin liked it right away.

Chip liked it too. He waded into it up to his hocks, and it tried to sweep his tail downstream. He bit at the water while Martin plunked stones into it. Then the two of them ran back to make their report.

“I saw fish, Dad. They were brown, maybe this big, with little spots all over them. Even though the water's moving really fast, they didn't move.”

“That's some good news at last.”

“Look at that,” Mom said. “Over there.”

Across from the park, grand houses were set far back from the street, all but invisible beneath tough gray-green vines. Handsome details peeked through the leaves: stately pillars on either side of the driveway, a bay window here, a carved lintel there. They were like nothing Martin had seen before.

“Maybe families were bigger then,” Dad said. “I think you could fit twenty people in that one.”

Chip sniffed at a statue of a little boy tilted at an angle next to the street. Its stone skin was green with mold, and ivy smothered it; only the head and one chubby arm escaped. Under a massive tree were the concrete ends of what had been a graceful bench. Its boards were gone, leaving only the suggestion of leisure: the ghost of a seat.

“It's cool,” Martin said, “but spooky. I like the park better.”

They investigated the larger houses as the day wore on. Several of the buildings were promising, but others, being
bigger, had just fallen into more dramatic decay. Entire walls of glass had shattered and exposed their rooms to the elements, and massive beams were wedged precariously against shifting supports.

Evening came early in the lee of the towering mountain. A hush had already fallen under the cool shadows of the trees. Birds sang quiet, senseless songs in the lush, overgrown bushes. Even the loud stream in the park sounded subdued now. It had wandered away, and a portion of its water had been diverted into a large, quiet pond.

Martin began to look over his shoulder.

“House-to-House has green skeletons that shoot spells,” he said. “During the day, they're these thin, stripy shadows, and at night they glow. But when it's in between, like now, they blend right in with the backgrounds.”

Dad was walking a few feet ahead of them. He let out a shout.

“Look at that roof! And almost all the windows are in. A crack here and there, but they'll still do their job.”

“The back could be gone,” Mom warned before Dad could get too excited, but she had to agree that the house he had found seemed remarkable. Its rows of dark gray shingles were so regular and even, they might have been brand-new. The walls showed no sign of damage either, and no wonder, Martin thought. They were made out of mortared stones.

The house was not as large as the grand wrecks they had already visited, but it wore an air of stately dignity. Two stories tall and wide across the front, it had crisp, clean lines that reassured the eye. The front door was in the exact middle, tucked
away behind an arched portico that rested on thin columns. At least, it appeared to rest on them. Martin realized as they walked past it that the left-hand column no longer touched the ground.

“It's a very simple shape,” Mom said. “A rectangle. But that's what gives it its beauty.”

“It looks like a shoebox,” Martin said.

Dad climbed up onto a garden wall that abutted the corner of the house. “This roof is made out of stone. Stone!” he marveled. “That's got to weigh a ton!”

They walked all the way around it. Only a couple of windows were broken. “I can't see in,” Mom said, pushing her way between rangy shrubs. “There's a covering on the windows. Some sort of privacy film.”

The veneer had peeled off the front door in ugly flakes, but it still stood firm in its hinges. Dad stepped gingerly across a sloping vegetable heap that had built up against the door. Then he rattled the handle.

“It's locked or stuck,” he said. “No surprise there. Martin, can your bot give it a try?”

Inside, there was no color. Everything was the gray hue of dust. It furred the banister of the stairwell that faced them and lay like a carpet on its treads. It obliterated the pattern of the hall floor, so that it was impossible to guess what kind of floor it was. And in every beam of dusky light that peeked through the grimy windows, dust motes danced in a hypnotic swirl.

“That's your privacy film,” Dad said as they stepped inside, pointing to the dust on the windows.

His voice sent a storm of specks rising, like a flock of pale,
infinitesimally tiny birds. In an instant, the air was thick with dust, too thick to breathe. The three of them choked and hacked, and they pulled their sheets up over their noses and spoke in desperate signals to one another. They made their way past the stairs and practically fell into the room beyond, wheezing and gasping.

This room was a little less dusty, but much dirtier. Puffs of air filtering through a couple of cracked panes had kept the dust from forming faery drifts, but brown pellets and droppings ran in trails around the edges of the room, and spiderwebs muffled every object in untidy mummy wrappings. Living spiders still pursued their occupation in the gritty nets alongside the remains of their ancestors. Hollowed-out bodies of insects lay in the caked dirt on the windowsills like carcasses after Armageddon.