October (26 page)

The dog fell to the ground, panting, paws limp.

Davey Putnam's eyes glazed. Blood roared from his neck. His hands dropped to his sides. He lay back against the side of the car, wheezing through his torn windpipe.

The dog was silent, eyes ruined.

Kevin went to it and bent down.

The dog looked blindly at Kevin, huffed wanly, tried to lift its head.

"Take it easy, boy," Kevin said. He put his hand on the dog's head, moved it to scratch him affectionately behind the ears.

"Y—" Davey Putnam said.

Kevin turned as Davey Putnam's hand fell hard on him, taking him in an unbreakable grip, pulling him down.

 
"Y—You," Davey Putnam's ruined mouth whispered.
 
“Y—“

"Let me go!"

Davey's grip hardened. He pulled Kevin down toward him, forced him over onto his back. Davey moved on top of Kevin's struggling body, held him down, pressed his hands into Kevin's neck. He moved them to the sides of Kevin's head and squeezed.

Kevin watched Davey's face, frozen, dead looking, eyes flat as stone, lower toward his own. A weak, mewling sound came from behind the tightly closed lips.

Suddenly, for the merest instant, Davey's eyes cleared, filled in with life. "Don't . . . let him!" Davey's real, ragged voice shouted.

The light left the eyes. Slowly, Davey's face moved up over him, turned to the side. Kevin watched the open, bleeding neck wound lower toward his mouth.

"No!" Kevin screamed.

Something small moved in the ruined, pulpy, bloody flesh of Davey's neck, pulled itself out of the wound.

Davey Putnam's thumbs forced Kevin's mouth open.

Davey Putnam's neck lowered to Kevin's mouth. Kevin felt the claw of something on his lip, over his tongue, moving back, a pinch up at the back of his throat

Kevin felt himself pushed inward, compacted away from his extremities, taken away from himself . . .

Yes!
He found new purchase; instantly, he saw that all would be well. A good body, young, more than acceptable. His ride out of New Polk. On to . . . Michigan?

Yes! He saw already what he would do. Kevin Michaels would leave New Polk unscathed. Lucky survivor! And . . . he had been on his way to leaving, anyway. Excellent! A new home in academia, Northwestern University, a teaching position, perhaps. Sidney Weiss would help him. A scholar! Devotee of Eileen
Connel
!

The same Kevin Michaels who spurned Eileen
Conners
daughter, Lydia!

How . . . apt!

He was becoming comfortable already. He would ride this one for a while. He had rather enjoyed his last travel, across the country on foot. Perhaps he would make Kevin Michaels walk also, see the United States before settling down in Michigan. There would be no boredom along the way—a traveling academic could get away with plenty without detection. Kevin Michaels was clean-cut, respectable, hardly a suspect.

But how to handle his role as only survivor of the New Polk conflagration? Ah. Perhaps an exhausted rest in the field next to the farm stand. The scenario: The neighboring towns, who would soon respond, would find the sole survivor weeping tears of loss, wailing over the horror he has witnessed, his town burned to ashes, the bones of his friends mixed with the earth, turned to fertilizer, gone. An excellent mind, this Kevin Michaels! He would enjoy this; perhaps he would return to a quieter existence, ride this body to ruin, draw pleasure from the slow extinction of Kevin Michaels.

Yes! And here a perfect place to rest. Off the highway, in the shadow of the lonely farm stand, a furrow of picked pumpkins.

Lay thee down, Kevin Michaels, to rest amidst the severed stems of your dreams—

Kevin felt something like a dentist's drill go through him, finding a hidden nerve in his sleep, waking him up. He was yanked instantly from foggy nothingness, looked out momentarily through his own eyes again. The smell of burning leaves, burning oak. New Polk, burning.

He felt pain. How did he get hurt? In his battle with Davey Putnam? Where was Davey Putnam?

He looked down, saw empty folds of clothing, a spill of white dust.

It's inside me.

The thing in his limbs, crowning his mind like a spider, said to him,
Yes.
 
I just want to look you over.

He cried out, but it didn't reach his lips. He felt himself being pushed back to numbness again, receding from his own hands and legs. From his own mind. The pain was receding, too.

"No!"

He held on to the pain, magnified it, bathed in it. He pushed the pain into every corner of his body until he heard himself scream.

He willed his hand to move, searched along the back of his own leg, found the source of the pain. The mouth of the dog was clamped to him.

He looked down at the dog. It was barely breathing, eyes glazed, holding desperately on.

"Good . . ." Kevin said.

He dug his finger past the dog's straining teeth, down into his own open wound.

He screamed aloud, felt himself flood back to the edges of his being.

Me.

He sat up, felt the thing in his mouth clawing desperately within, trying to keep hold. The dog lay dead beside him in the furrow, blinded eyes turned upward.

Good dog.

The thing in his mouth scrambled, held his tongue in its pincers, pulled itself back toward the back of his throat—

What is this!

The dog again. He saw it from the corner of Kevin Michaels's eye as Michaels wrenched control from him. The jolt of anguish through him, he had been foolish, had not gained control, had stopped to revel in victory, instead of boring all the way in. Fool! Now he lost contact, was thrown into the front of Kevin Michaels's mouth.

Quickly!
He turned himself, dug in, pulled himself back. But now he was being fought, and he screamed—

Kevin opened his mouth. The thing in his throat lost grip, hit the roof of his mouth, scraped along it to hit his teeth. Tiny pincers tapped them like metal.

Kevin pushed out with his tongue, felt the thing fighting to take hold. The thing dropped to his tongue, scrabbled back—

Kevin's mind clouded, cleared, clouded again. He felt himself torn between two worlds. He felt the thing snaring him, digging into his head, trying to compact him. He looked down, saw the hard furrows, his own shoes, the world pulling down away as if he had been shot up in a rocket—

His mind clouded.

"
Rrrrrrrraaaaa
, " he heard his mouth say from a distance. "
Rrrrraaaaaaaa
."

He could not even speak his own screams.

Me!

He whirled, willed his legs to work. Far off, the back of his leg ached. He willed his hand down to the spot, dug his fingers like claws into the wound.

He screamed, became himself again. He saw he was at the back of Packer's Farm stand.

Now, he thought.

"
Rrrrraaaa
,
rrrraaaa
."

He opened his mouth wide, forced his shaking fingers up, moved them in and back. He began to gag. His fingers brushed something hard, moving. For a moment he went blind, then suddenly his mind cleared completely. He was flooded with pain and sensibility, making him scream his own screams of joy—

This is what she meant!

Me!

No more!

An alarm went off, telling him to give up. This had happened before. There was not enough contact in Kevin Michaels's head. There was too much chance of danger. His sense of self-preservation set in.

He dropped from the back of Kevin Michaels's throat, slid out over the tongue and through the screaming mouth, fell to the ground, began to dig.

Another day . . .

A shame it could not ride Kevin Michaels, watch him suffer.

Another day . . .

He would return. Kevin Michaels would know his revenge, as Eileen
Connel
had. It was time to move on, now. But, someday, he would ride back . . .

Through a haze of joy, Kevin Michaels saw the thing tumble to the ground, begin to bore voraciously into the earth.

ME!

Kevin fell to his knees, overwhelmed. He felt himself burst like fire to the very limits of himself. His fingertips, his eyes, his tongue, the dermal layers of his skin, burned with life.

Me!

He gasped. He felt more alive than he ever imagined he could, as if he had been thrown at this instant, fully sensate, into the world. He trembled with aliveness; a tingle spread out through him, electric, life itself.

ME!

His eye caught movement in the dirt below him. The thing, the evil thing, was boring down into the earth.

Kevin dug his fingers (My fingers! Feel them! Feel their wonderful life!) into the hole after it.

It squirmed down, away from him.

Get it.

He stood, unsteady on his legs, still gasping, and looked around himself. At the back of the
farmstand
was a rack of tools, a shovel. He stumbled to it, knocking into a cartful of apples, artfully arranged.

Apples (smell them! Their beautiful odor! The world, the whole world, alive!) spilled to the ground.

Dig!
Kevin Michaels told himself.

Bearing the shovel, feeling the smooth wood through his fingers (my fingers! Feel them!), he staggered back to the thing's hole, angled the shovel into it, pushed in the blade—

 

Hurry!
Now he must dig deep into the earth, the mother, where he would rest. A fearful rage went through him. How dare Kevin Michaels! A hate, purer than any he had ever felt, coursed through him. He would make Kevin Michaels pay, would make all these humans pay. Suddenly he had decided: All of them must die. The humans were too much a plague. He would brush them clean from the earth. He could risk them no more. Everything they had ascribed to him, godhood, satanic majesty, awe, fear—all of it was gone. That could not happen! And when he did away with them all, he would make sure the human race knew Kevin Michaels was the cause. A phone call from the president, the button pushed, twisting the man's insides, making him weep, say, "It was you, Kevin, it was
you
. . ."

The earth would abide. He would abide. He could even see himself playing with any survivors, torturing the mutations he had created, a whole new race of his own making.

Yes!

He dug, hungrily.

Dig.

The only thing that mattered was digging. Kevin's arms ached beautifully—deep throbs down in the muscles below his chilled flesh. He felt each sensation, each movement, each pump of blood. The back of his leg was painfully afire. He relished it.

Dig.

The hole deepened. He spaded another rush of black loam onto his shovel and lifted it high above his head, dropping it out of the hole. The smell of pungent earth mixed with burning leaves and oak wood snaked into his nostrils, a beautiful, full sensation

Me!

Dig.

He angled the shovel, pushed it downward—

He stopped. In the loose dirt, something twisted, dug down away from him.

Quickly, ignoring the tightening pain in his forearms, he pierced soil with shovel blade, pressed down.

Outside, around him, the cold night brightened with orange light. His eyes, oversensitive, drank it in. The smell of burning leaves impregnated the taut, cold air, wafted away.

Something moved against the blade of the shovel, tapped, and squirmed away. He forced the blade down and felt it trapped, fighting for release.

Yes!

The sky in front of Kevin was on fire. He felt insistent movement against the shovel. He looked down to see the thing's head pulling away from the shovel blade, curling down into the loam, leaving a wake of churned, moist soil behind.

He brought the shovel up to his eyes, stared at the smooth U cut out of the steel blade at the tip.

Dig!

The smell of burning leaves reached achingly across his nostrils again. This was life, all of it was life, flooding into him. This was what Eileen knew, what Brahms sensed—even in death, life. A flood of life.

He jammed the shovel back into the dirt. His aching muscles were joy. Cold sweat beaded his face.

The shovel split earth, lifted dirt, drove down, split earth again.

He shivered in pain and cold and joy. The shovel blade drove, lifted, drove—caught.

Again, he felt movement against the blade.

The thing's head bored up from the dark loam. One of its tiny, jointed legs pushed up, waved like an antenna before moving against the shovel blade, scraping methodically at it up and down.

The thing stared up at his face.

It was slug colored, reptilian. Its long, thin tail ended in a tiny, split fork. Behind its head were the merest bumps, the hint of horns. Its small, round mouth opened and closed like a gasping, prehistoric fish. Its eyes were round, slightly raised, dark, blank, like gray wens.