Phantoms Read online

  preservative into their victims and put them aside for consumption later or to feed their unhatched young. The preservative distributed through Mr. Wechlas’s tissues is vaguely similar to those substances but far more potent and sophisticated.”

  Jenny thought of the impossibly large moth that had attacked and killed Stewart Wargle. But that wasn’t the creature that had depopulated Snowfield. Definitely not. Even if there were hundreds of those things lurking somewhere in town, they couldn’t have gotten at everyone. No moth that size could have found its way into locked cars, locked houses, and barricaded rooms. Something else was out there.

  “Are you saying it was an insect that killed these people?” Bryce asked Sara Yamaguchi.

  “Actually, the evidence doesn’t point that way. An insect would employ a stinger to kill and to inject the preservative. There would be a puncture wound, however minuscule. But Seth Goldstein went over the Wechlas corpse with a magnifying glass. Literally. Over every square inch of skin. Twice. He even used a depilatory cream to remove all the body hair in order to examine the skin more closely. Yet he couldn’t find a puncture or any other break in the skin through which an injection might have been administered. We were afraid we had atypical or inaccurate data. So a second postmortem was performed.”

  “On Karen Oxley,” Jenny said.

  “Yes.” Sara Yamaguchi leaned toward the windows and peered up the street, looking for General Copperfield and the others. When she turned back to the table, she said, “However, everything tested out the same. No animate bacteria in the corpse. Decomposition unnaturally arrested. Tissues saturated with preservative. It was bizarre data again. But we were satisfied that it wasn’t atypical or inaccurate data.”

  Bryce said, “If the preservative wasn’t injected, how was it administered?”

  “Our best guess is that it’s highly absorbable and enters the body by skin contact, then circulates through the tissues within seconds.”

  Jenny said, “Could it be a nerve gas, after all? Maybe the preservative aspect is only a side effect.”

  “No,” Sara Yamaguchi said. “There aren’t any traces on the victims’ clothes, as there would absolutely have to be if we’re dealing here with gas saturation. And although the substance has a toxic effect, chemical analysis shows it isn’t primarily a toxin, which a nerve gas would be; primarily, it’s a preservative.”

  “But was it the cause of death?” Bryce asked.

  “It contributed. But we can’t pinpoint the cause. It was partly the toxicity of the preservative, but other factors lead us to believe death also resulted from oxygen deprivation. The victims suffered either a prolonged constriction or a complete blockage of the trachea.”

  Bryce leaned forward. “Strangulation? Suffocation?”

  “Yes. But we don’t know precisely which.”

  “But how can it be either one?” Lisa asked. “You’re talking about things that took a minute or two to happen. But these people died fast. In just a second or two.”

  “Besides,” Jenny said, “as I remember the scene in the Oxleys’ den, there weren’t any signs of struggle. People being smothered to death will generally thrash like hell, knock things over—”

  “Yes,” the geneticist said, nodding. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why are all the bodies swollen?” Bryce asked.

  “We think it’s a toxic reaction to the preservative.”

  “The bruising, too?”

  “No. That’s ... different.”

  “How?”

  Sara didn’t answer right away. Frowning, she stared down at the coffee in her mug. Finally: “Skin and subcutaneous tissue from both corpses clearly indicate that the bruising was caused by compression from an external source; they were classic contusions. In other words, the bruising wasn’t due to the swelling, and it wasn’t a separate allergic reaction to the preservative. It seems as if something struck the victims. Hard. Repeatedly. Which is just crazy. Because to cause that much bruising, there would have to be at least a fracture, one fracture, somewhere. Another crazy thing: The degree of bruising is the same all over the body. The tissues are damaged to precisely the same degree on the thighs, on the hands, on the chest, everywhere. Which is impossible.”

  “Why?” Bryce asked.

  Jenny answered him. “If you were to beat someone with a heavy weapon, some areas of the body would be more severely bruised than others. You wouldn’t be able to deliver every blow with precisely the same force and at precisely the same angle as all the other blows, which is what you would’ve had to’ve done to create the kind of contusions on these bodies.”

  “Besides,” Sara Yamaguchi said, “they’re bruised even in places where a club wouldn’t land. In their armpits. Between the cheeks of the buttocks. And on the soles of their feet! Even though, in the case of Mrs. Oxley, she had her shoes on.”

  “Obviously,” Jenny said, “the tissue compression that resulted in bruising was caused by something other than blows to the body.”

  “Such as?” Bryce asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “And they died fast,” Lisa reminded everyone.

  Sara leaned back in her chair, tilting it onto its rear legs, and looked out the window again. Up the hill. Toward the labs.

  Bryce said, “Dr. Yamaguchi, what’s your opinion? Not your professional opinion. Personally, informally, what do you think’s going on here? Any theories?”

  She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, shimmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows. “No. No theories, I’m afraid. No coherent thought. Just that ...”

  “What?”

  “Well ... now I believe Isley and Arkham were wise to come along.”

  Jenny was still skeptical about extraterrestrial connections, but Lisa continued to be intrigued. The girl said, “You really think it’s from a different world?”

  “There may be other possibilities,” Sara said, “but at the moment, it’s difficult to see what they are.” She glanced at her wristwatch and scowled and fidgeted and said, “What’s taking them so long?” She turned her attention to the window again.

  Outside, the trees were motionless.

  The awnings in front of the stores hung limp.

  The town was dead-still.

  “You said they were packing away the decon suits.”

  Sara said, “Yes, but that just wouldn’t take this long.”

  “If there’d been any trouble, we’d have heard gunfire.”

  “Or explosions,” Jenny said. “Those firebombs they made.”

  “They should’ve been here at least five ... maybe ten minutes ago,” the geneticist insisted. “And still no sign of them.”

  Jenny remembered the incredible stealth with which it had taken Jake Johnson.

  Bryce hesitated, then pushed his chair back. “I suppose it won’t hurt if I take a few men to have a look.”

  Sara Yamaguchi swung away from the window. The front legs of her chair came down hard against the floor, making a sharp, startling sound. She said, “Something’s wrong.”

  “No, no. Probably not,” Bryce said.

  “You feel it, too,” Sara said. “I can tell you do. Jesus.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bryce said calmly.

  However, his eyes were not as calm as his voice. During the past twenty-some hours, Jenny had learned to read those hooded eyes quite well. Now they were expressing tension and icy, needle-sharp dread.

  “It’s much too soon to be worried,” he said.

  But they all knew.

  They didn’t want to believe it, but they knew.

  The terror had begun again.

  Bryce chose Tal, Frank, and Gordy to accompany him to the lab.

  Jenny said, “I’m going, too.”

  Bryce didn’t want her to come. He was more afraid for he
r than he was for Lisa or for his own men or even for himself.

  An unexpected and rare connection had taken place between them. He felt right with her, and he believed she felt the same. He didn’t want to lose her.

  And so he said, “I’d rather you didn’t go.”

  “I’m a doctor,” Jenny said, as if that were not only a calling but an armor that would shield her from all harm.

  “It’s a regular fortress here,” he said. “It’s safer here.”

  “It’s not safe anywhere.”

  “I didn’t say safe. I said safer.”

  “They might need a doctor.”

  “If they’ve been attacked, they’re either dead or missing. We haven’t found anyone just wounded, have we?”

  “There’s always a first time.” Jenny turned to Lisa and said, “Get my medical bag, honey.”

  The girl ran toward the makeshift infirmary.

  “She stays here for sure,” Bryce said.

  “No,” Jenny said. “She stays with me.”

  Exasperated, Bryce said, “Listen, Jenny, this is virtually a martial law situation. I can order you to stay here.”

  “And enforce the order—how? At gunpoint?” she asked, but with no antagonism.

  Lisa returned with the black leather bag.

  Standing by the front doors of the inn, Sara Yamaguchi called to Bryce: “Hurry. Please hurry.”

  If it had struck at the field lab, there was probably no use hurrying.

  Looking at Jenny, Bryce thought: I can’t protect you, Doc. Don’t you see? Stay here where the windows are locked and the doors are guarded. Don’t rely on me to protect you because, sure as hell, I’ll fail. Like I failed Ellen ... and Timmy.

  “Let’s go,” Jenny said.

  Agonizingly aware of his limitations, Bryce led them out of the inn and up the street toward the corner—beyond which it might very well be waiting for them. Tal walked at the head of the procession, beside Bryce. Frank and Gordy brought up the rear. Lisa, Sara Yamaguchi, and Jenny were in the middle.

  The warm day was beginning to turn cool.

  In the valley below Snowfield, a mist had begun to form.

  Less than three-quarters of an hour remained before night-fall. The sun spilled a final flood of bloody light through the town. Shadows were extremely long, distorted. Windows blazed with reflected solar fire, reminding Bryce of eyeholes in Halloween jack-o’-lanterns.

  The street seemed even more ominously silent than it had been last night. Their footsteps echoed as if they were crossing the floor of a vast, abandoned cathedral.

  They rounded the corner cautiously.

  Three decontamination suits lay tangled and untenanted in the middle of the street. Another empty suit lay half in the gutter and half on the sidewalk. Two of the helmets were cracked.

  Submachine guns were scattered around, and unused Molotov cocktails were lined up along the curb.

  The back of the truck was open. More empty decontamination suits and submachine guns were piled in there. No people.

  Bryce shouted: “General? General Copperfield?”

  Graveyard silence.

  Surface-of-the-moon silence.

  “Seth!” Sara Yamaguchi cried. “Will? Will Bettenby? Galen? Somebody, please answer me.”

  Nothing. No one.

  Jenny said, “They didn’t even manage to fire one shot.”

  Tal said, “Or scream. The guards at the front door of the inn would’ve heard them even if they’d just screamed.”

  Gordy said, “Oh, shit.”

  The rear doors on both labs were ajar.

  Bryce had the feeling that something was waiting for them inside.

  He wanted to turn and walk away. Couldn’t. He was the leader here. If he panicked, they would all panic. Panic was an invitation to death.

  Sara started toward the rear of the first lab.

  Bryce stopped her.

  “They’re my friends, damn it,” she said.

  “I know. But let me look first,” he said.

  For a moment, however, he couldn’t move.

  He was immobilized by fear.

  Couldn’t move an inch.

  But then at last, of course, he did.

  31

  Computer Games

  Bryce’s service revolver was drawn and cocked. He seized the door with his other hand and threw it wide open. At the same time, he jumped back, pointing his gun into the lab.

  It was deserted. Two crumpled decon suits lay on the floor, and another was draped over a swivel chair in front of a computer terminal.

  He went to the rear of the second lab.

  Tal said, “Let me do this one.”

  Bryce shook his head. “You stay back there. Protect the women; they don’t have guns. If anything comes out of here when I open the door, run like hell.”

  Heart pounding, Bryce hesitated behind the second field lab. Put his hand on the door. Hesitated again. Then pulled it open even more carefully than he had opened the first.

  It was deserted, too. Two decontamination suits. Nothing else.

  As Bryce peered into the lab, all the ceiling lights winked out, and he jerked in surprise at the sudden darkness. In a second, however, light sprang up once more, although not from the ceiling bulbs; this was an unusual light, a green flash that startled him. Then he saw it was only the three video display terminals, which had all come on at once. Now they went off. And came on. Off, on, off, on, off... At first they flashed simultaneously, then in sequence, around and around. Finally they all came on and stayed on, filling the otherwise unlighted work area with an eerie glow.

  “I’m going in,” Bryce said.

  The others protested, but he was already up the step and through the door. He went to the first terminal screen, where six words burned in pale green letters across a dark green background.

  JESUS LOVES ME - THIS I KNOW.

  Bryce glanced at the other two screens. They bore the same words.

  Blink. Now there were new words:

  FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO.

  Bryce frowned.

  What sort of program was this? These were the words to one of the songs that had come out of the kitchen drain at the inn.

  THE BIBLE IS FULL OF SHIT, the computer told him. Blink.

  JESUS IS DEAD.

  The latest three words remained on the screen for several seconds. It seemed to Bryce as if the green light from the display terminals was cold. As fireplace light carries a dry heat with it, so this radiance carried a chill that pierced him.

  This was no ordinary program being run on these displays. This was nothing General Copperfield’s people had put into the computer, no form of code, no exercise of logic, no systems test of any kind.

  Blink.

  JESUS IS DEAD. GOD IS DEAD.

  Blink.

  I AM ALIVE.

  Blink.

  DO YOU WANT TO PLAY 20 QUESTIONS?

  Gazing at the screen, Bryce felt a primitive, superstitious terror rising within him; terror and awe, twisting his gut and clutching his throat. But he didn’t know why. On a deep, almost subconscious level, he sensed that he was in the presence of something evil, ancient, and ... familiar. But how could it be familiar? He didn’t even know what it was. And yet ... And yet perhaps he did know. Deep down. Instinctively. If only he could reach inside himself, down past his civilized veneer which embodied so much skepticism, if he could reach into his racial memory, he might find the truth about the thing that had seized and slaughtered the people of Snowfield.

  Blink.

  SHERIFF HAMMOND?

  Blink.

  DO YOU WANT TO PLAY 20 QUESTIONS WITH ME?

  The use of his name jolted him. And then a far bigger and more disturbing surprise followed.

  ELLEN

  The name burned on the screen, the name of his dead wife, and every muscle in his body grew tense, and he waited for something more to flash up, but for long seconds, there was only the precious name, and he could not take
his eyes away from it, and then—

  ELLEN ROTS.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  How could it know about Ellen?

  Blink.

  ELLEN FEEDS THE WORMS.

  What kind of shit was this? What was the point of this?

  TIMMY WILL DIE.

  The prophecy glowed, green on green.

  He gasped. “No,” he said softly. For the past year, he had thought it would be better if Timmy succumbed. Better than a slow wasting away. Only yesterday, he would have said that his son’s swift death would be a blessing. But not any longer. Snowfield had taught him that nothing was worse than death. In the arms of death, there was no hope. But as long as Timmy lived, there was a possibility of recovery. After all, the doctors said the boy hadn’t suffered massive brain damage. Therefore, if Timmy ever woke from his unnatural sleep, he had a good chance of retaining his normal faculties and functions. Chance, promise, hope. So Bryce said, “No,” to the computer. “No.”

  Blink.

  TIMMY WILL ROT. ELLEN ROTS. ELLEN ROTS IN HELL.

  “Who are you?” Bryce demanded.

  The moment he spoke, he felt foolish. He couldn’t just talk to a computer as if it were another human being. If he wanted to ask a question, he would have to type it out.

  SHALL WE HAVE A LITTLE CHAT?

  Bryce turned away from the terminal. He went to the door and leaned outside.