Vanish (17 page)

A thin voice whispered, “
They’re coming
.”

CONNER OPENED HIS EYES. The bright morning sunlight of his dream dissolved into gray shadows. Someone was standing over him. Conner swore and tumbled out of the swing onto the porch floor, flailing his arms in front of him. He felt his fist connect with something solid. He heard a voice swear. Then meaty hands gripped his wrists and pinned them to the floor.

“Dude!” Mitch’s face appeared as Conner’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. “It’s me.”

Conner stopped struggling. “What happened?”

Mitch released Conner’s wrists and stood up, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I must’ve fallen asleep or something. One minute I’m talking to Ray, and the next thing I know I’m laying on the floor and it’s dark.”

Conner struggled to his feet, his heart still racing. “We need to get going!” He saw Ray standing at the front steps, staring down the street. “Ray, we have to leave.”

Ray turned around with a dazed look on his face. “They’re coming.”

A white carpet of mist was rolling up from the lake. It curled around houses and cars as it crept up the dead-end street. Its leading edge billowed and churned, reaching out slow, slender tendrils as if pulling itself along.

And inside the mist, tall, gaunt silhouettes were moving. Some strode upright; others crouched low, nearly crawling on all fours. The mist curled around their limbs and torsos like a cloak roiling in the wind.

Conner’s chest pounded. His mouth went dry. “Get inside!”

Ray just shook his head slowly. “There’s so many of them tonight.”

They went inside. Mitch set about locking the doors and windows and drawing all the curtains. Conner found Helen and Devon still asleep and woke them.

Helen looked dazed at first but grew wide-eyed when she saw it was already dark. “I said we should leave! I told you we shouldn’t stay!”

Devon peered through the curtains out the front window. “I do
not
want to go through another night like last night.”

Conner found Ray in the corner. “We need to turn on all the lights.”

“Lights?” Ray sputtered. “I haven’t had electricity in three weeks. All I got are a few candles.”

Devon threw up his hands. “Oh, that’s great! Man, that’s just great!”

Helen grabbed Conner’s arm and whispered, “We have to leave.”

Suddenly, a light snapped on in the kitchen. Mitch had his bag in one hand and the boat’s flashlight in the other. “I say we make a run for the Cherokee.”

Ray was shaking his head again. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. They do this every few nights. I told you, I’ve been here for six or seven weeks. All they do is walk around and—”

There was a loud thump on the front porch followed by soft clicking like claws on wood. A moment later, more scraping sounds came from the back entrance.

“Are all the doors locked?” Conner said.

“Locked?” Devon said. “Man, I’m tellin’ you it don’t matter. They’ll come right through the walls if they want to.”

Helen crouched down in the hallway, shaking her head. “We’re not safe here. We have to leave!”

Conner held out his hands. “Look, everybody just
calm down
.”

A heavy bump rattled the side wall. More claws skittered, this time across the roof.

Ray backed away from the door into the middle of the living room, where Mitch was standing with the flashlight. “They, uh… they’ve never done this before.”

Something scraped against the front window. Like steel against glass. It moved down to the windowsill where it started picking at the wood.

The same sounds came from one of the windows in the kitchen. And more scraping at the front door.

Helen covered her ears. “No! Make it stop!”

Mitch swung the flashlight from window to door as each new sound started. Another thump shook the outside wall, then a slow, steady pounding. More claws skittered across the shingles.

Each new sound built upon the last as the din grew steadily louder. Devon erupted in a string of curses and pulled out his gun. He started blasting at the windows and the front door.

Conner dove to the floor. “Stop!”

But Devon was screaming at the top of his lungs. Mitch swung the flashlight beam from window to window. Conner thought he may have been firing his gun too. The noise was deafening.

“Stop! Stop!” Conner shouted. Bits of wood and glass flew across the floor. He tried to crawl for cover. Smoke from gunfire filled the room. The sharp sulfur odor stung in Conner’s nostrils. Helen screamed. Devon shouted. The steady thunder of gunshots shook the house.

Then everything stopped. Conner could hear the click-click-click of the triggers; both guns were empty. A moment later, Devon stopped shouting. Then the only sounds were panting and gasping for breath. Conner peeked out from under the kitchen table, his ears still ringing.

Mitch and Devon stood in the middle of the living room with their guns still drawn. Smoke coiled and swirled in the beam of the flashlight. Ray crouched behind the recliner. Helen remained huddled somewhere in the dark hallway, her arms covering her head.

Silence.

Conner crawled out from under the table. Chunks of glass and wood and plaster covered the floor and bit into the palms of his hands. The curtains were shredded and riddled with bullet holes. The front door was chipped and pocked. But there was no more pounding outside. No claws skittering across the porch or on the roof.

Nothing.

Conner stood up. His knees shook. His hands trembled. They all stood, silent in the smoky glow of the flashlight. Listening.

Mitch closed his eyes, his chest heaving.

Ray crawled out from behind the chair. He stood up slowly and made his way to the front window. Lifting the tattered curtain aside, he peeked out into the night. “It’s okay.” He craned his neck. Then he breathed a sigh and shook his head. “I think they’re g—”

Two long, gray appendages crashed through the wall behind him, sending shards of wood and chunks of plaster flying across the room. Devon and Mitch tumbled backward onto the floor and couch.

Gnarled, skeletal hands unfolded from dark forearms. Multijointed fingers spread open and clutched Ray’s chest. The flashlight shone on his pale face. He let out a high-pitched shriek as his skin grew discolored. A creeping purple rash spread up from his neck over his face. He struggled to pry himself loose, but the elongated fingers interlocked and wrenched him back through the plaster, lattice, and clapboards and out into the darkness.

Conner froze.

Ray’s screams echoed in the mist, growing more and more faint.

Then the silence returned.

MITCH BLINKED AND scrambled for his bag. He still had a box of bullets inside. His fingers trembled as he hurried to reload the gun in the glow of the flashlight. The creatures could be back any moment. They couldn’t waste any time.

“We need to go!” His voice was shaky.

Conner’s voice came from the darkened kitchen. “They just…
took
him!”

Mitch dropped a bullet and swore. “We need to
go
!”

“They just… broke right through the wall and…”

“Man, I
told
you that!” Devon got to his feet. “You can’t hide from those things. That’s just what they did to Terrell.”

“But why only him? Why didn’t they attack all of us?”

Mitch finished loading his gun and stuck it in his belt. “Everybody shut up and help me find the keys!”

He swept the flashlight around the floor and counters. He finally spotted the key ring next to the stove and snatched it up.

“Everybody take a gun.” Mitch unzipped the bag with the handguns he had taken from the store in Lake Forest. At the time he thought three would be enough. Now he wished he had cleaned the place out. He slung one of the shotguns over his shoulder and handed the other to Devon along with one of the handguns.

“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.” Devon nodded.

Mitch held out the second handgun to Conner, who started to protest.

“Just take it,” Mitch grunted, shoving it in his chest.

He swung the light back around and found Helen standing in the darkened hallway. She was still trembling. He handed her the third gun. She took it but shook her head. “These aren’t going to do us any good.”

“If we can’t kill them, maybe we can slow them down,” Mitch said. “Maybe that’s why they stopped attacking the house.”

“They stopped because they took Ray,” Helen said. “Not because of the guns.”

Mitch zipped up the bag of ammo. “You don’t know that.”

Devon pointed to the hole in the wall. “Did you see his face? That same purple rash was all over him when they grabbed him!”

Conner’s voice came from the dark. “It was like they just wanted
him
.”

“We don’t know that!” Mitch was getting fed up. “We’re wasting time.”

He opened the side door slowly and listened. Nothing. A moment later he slipped outside, followed by Devon. Mitch assumed Conner and Helen were following too but frankly couldn’t have cared less at that point. Either way,
he
was going to get out of here.

Silence engulfed them. The mist still lingered, hugging the ground. Nothing moved. No shadows, no sign of any life.

They moved quickly down the gravel driveway to the Cherokee. Mitch slipped inside and started it up. It chugged to life as the others piled in, and a moment later, he tore out of the yard, onto the street, out of town.

He handed the map to Conner, sitting next to him. “See if you can figure out where we are.”

Conner unfolded the map, peering at it with the flashlight. “Okay… Thorton… Thorton… Here it is.”

Mitch came across a two-lane highway and swung left. “We’re on Highway 12, headed east. I think.”

“Twelve, twelve…” Conner studied the map for a minute, muttering to himself. Then he flipped it over.

The fog was growing thicker. The headlights cut into it, casting a sickly glow. Mitch could see only a few yards ahead. He swore and slowed down. “I can’t see,” he mumbled. It reminded him of being out on the lake the night before. Though at least on the lake he didn’t have to worry about driving off the road or crashing into a tree.

“Uh… here it is,” Conner said. “Yeah, stay on this until you hit 35, and that gets you to the interstate.”

“East,” Mitch said. “We still want to head east, right? To Washington?”

Conner sat back and rubbed his neck. “I guess so. I guess that makes sense.”

“How much gas do we have?” Helen leaned forward.

Mitch glanced down. “A quarter tank. We should find someplace to fill up before too long.”

“There’s no electricity back there,” Helen said. “We’ll need to find someplace with power, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Mitch said. “We could siphon it out of another vehicle if we need to. It depends how much of the area is blacked out.”

Conner frowned. “Ray said he’d been without electricity for a few weeks already.”

“We still had power in Chicago,” Helen said. “Just yesterday.”

“The power stations for a bigger city can probably run longer without anyone operating them,” Mitch said. “But what about the nuclear plants. If no one’s there to run them…”

“Great,” Devon mumbled. “Now we gotta worry about a nuclear meltdown, too.”

Conner shook his head. “Somehow I think that’s the least of our worries.” He looked at the others. “What if we’ve been thinking about this the wrong way?”

Mitch narrowed his eyes. “What d’you mean?”

“We’ve been under the assumption this whole time that everyone has disappeared.”

Mitch snorted. “Yeah, I guess it was, y’know, all the empty streets and buildings.”

“I mean, what if
we’re
the ones who’ve been abducted?”

Mitch frowned. “You mean for those six or seven missing weeks?”

“No, I mean now. What if we’re not really in Indiana at all?”

Mitch cast a glance back at Helen and Devon. They both looked as confused as he felt. “Dude, did you hit your head or something?”

“No, remember?” Conner leaned forward. “We talked about how we felt like rats in a maze? Like everything they’re doing to us is just to see how we react? What if this is all some kind of laboratory experiment. Like a virtual reality. Maybe they have us somewhere, hooked up to some computer to make us
think
we’re really on earth.”

Helen just shook her head.

“Think about it,” Conner went on. “What makes more sense? That some aliens could make an entire population vanish without a trace? Or that they just abducted a few of us and made us
think
everyone else has disappeared?”

Mitch raised an eyebrow. “So I’m not really driving anywhere?”

Conner shrugged. “What
is
reality? It’s just our perception of the world. Just electrical impulses interpreted by our brains. All the things we see or hear or touch are ultimately just electrical signals.”

“So if I let go of the wheel…”

“It’s just a theory,” Conner said. “But think about our hallucinations. They
seemed
so real. Not just visually but the sounds and odors too.”

Helen nodded. “I touched Kyle. I could feel him.”

“So what?” Mitch shrugged. “What do we do with that? How can you prove it?”

Conner sat back and shook his head. “I’m not sure just yet.”

They came to Highway 35 and turned right. It was a four-lane highway, heading south. Mitch felt a little more comfortable driving on the wider road in the fog and picked up his speed.

“Keep an eye out for a gas station or something,” he said. “I don’t want to get stranded out here in the middle of the night.”

Before long, Helen and Devon had drifted off. Conner was staring out the window, apparently lost in thought.

Mitch was no longer in the mood for conversation. He peered into the oncoming fog, trying to focus on the road ahead. But his thoughts turned to Linda. He had tried so hard not to think about her over the last two days. He couldn’t afford to. Not with all that was going on. He refused to lose his head, or give up hope that he’d see her again. But now he wondered if she was even still alive.