"Are they sure that's what it is?" Shirley asked.
"Ninety per cent. It's what they have out that way. You see those trucks headed up to the water-treatment plant all the time. Pass it on, starting with George S. And what in the name of God's wrong with the dog?"
Mister Dillon was at the back door, nose down to the base of the screen, going back and forth. Almost bouncing back and forth, and whining way down in his throat. His ears were laid back. While I was watching, he bumped the screen with his muzzle hard enough to bell it out. Then gave a kind of yelp, as if to say man, that hurts.
"No idea," Shirley said in a voice that told me she had no time for Mister Dillon. Neither, strictly speaking, did I. Yet I looked at him a moment longer. I'd seen hunting dogs behave that way when they ran across the scent of something big in the woods nearby--a bear, or maybe a timberwolf. But there hadn't been any wolves in the Short Hills since before Vietnam, and precious few bears. There was nothing beyond that screen but the parking lot. And Shed B, of course. I looked up at the clock over the kitchen door. It was 2.12 P.M. I couldn't remember ever having been in the barracks when the barracks was so empty.
"Unit 14, Unit 14, this is base, copy?"
George came back to her, still coughing. "Unit 14."
"It's chlorine, 14, Norco West says it's pretty confident of that. Chlorine liquid." She looked at me and I gave her a thumb up. "Irritating but not--"
"Break, break." And cough, cough.
"Standing by, 14."
"Maybe it's chlorine, maybe it's not, base. It's on fire, whatever it is, and there are big white clouds of it rolling this way. My 20 is at the end of the access road, the one by the soccer field. Those kids're coughing worse'n me and I see several people down, including one adult female. There are two schoolbuses parked off to the side. I'm gonna try and take those folks out in one. Over."
I took the mike from Shirley. "George, this is Huddie. Norco says the fire's probably just fuel running out on top of the chlorine. You ought to be safe moving the kids on foot, over?"
What came next was a classic George S. response, solid and stolid. Eventually he got one of those above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty citations for his day's work--from the Governor, I think--and his picture was in the paper. His wife framed the citation and hung it on the wall of the rumpus room. I'm not sure George ever understood what the fuss was about. In his mind he was just doing what seemed prudent and reasonable. If there was ever such a thing as the right man at the right place, it was George Stankowski that day at Poteenville Grammar School.
"Bus'd be better," he said. "Faster. This is 14, I'm 7."
Shortly, Shirley and I would forget all about Poteenville for awhile; we had our own oats to roll. If you're curious, Trooper George Stankowski got into one of the buses he'd seen by busting a folding door with a rock. He started the forty-passenger Blue Bird with a spare key he found taped to the back of the driver's sunvisor, and eventually packed twenty-four coughing, weeping, red-eyed children and two teachers inside. Many of the children were still clutching the misshapen pots, blots, and ceramic ashtrays they'd made that afternoon. Three of the kids were unconscious, one from an allergic reaction to chlorine fumes. The other two were simple fainting victims, OD'd on terror and excitement. One of the crafts teachers, Rosellen Nevers, was in more serious straits. George saw her on the sidewalk, lying on her side, gasping and semiconscious, digging at her swelled throat with weakening fingers. Her eyes bulged from their sockets like the yolks of poached eggs.
"That's my mommy," one of the little girls said. Tears were welling steadily from her huge brown eyes, but she never lost hold of the clay vase she was holding, or tilted it so the black-eyed susan she'd put in it fell out. "She has the azmar."
George was kneeling beside the woman by then with her head back over his forearm to keep her airway as wide-open as possible. Her hair hung down on the concrete. "Does she take something for her asthma, honey, when it's bad like this?"
"In her pocket," the little girl with the vase said. "Is my mommy going to die?"
"Nah," George said. He got the Flovent inhaler out of Mrs. Nevers's pocket and shot a good blast down her throat. She gasped, shivered, and sat up.
George carried her on to the bus in his arms, walking behind the coughing, crying children. He plopped Rosellen in a seat next to her daughter, then slipped behind the steering wheel. He put the bus in gear and bumped it across the soccer field, past his cruiser and on to the access road. By the time he nosed the Blue Bird back on to County Road 46, the kids were singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". And that's how Trooper George Stankowski became an authentic hero while the few of us left behind were just trying to hold on to our sanity.
And our lives.
Shirley
George's last communication to dispatch was 14, I am 7 --this is Unit 14,1 am out of service. I logged it, looking up at the clock to note the time. It was 2.23 P.M. I remember that well, just as I remember Huddie standing beside me, giving my shoulder a little squeeze--trying to tell me George and the kids would be all right without coming right out and saying it, I suppose. 2.23 P.M., that's when all hell broke loose. And I mean that as literally as anyone ever has.
Mister Dillon started barking. Not his deep-throated bark, the one he usually saved for deer who scouted our back field or the raccoons that dared come sniffing around the stoop, but a series of high, yarking yips I had never heard before. It was as if he'd run himself on to something sharp and couldn't get free.
"What the hell? Huddie said.
D took five or six stiff, backing steps away from the screen door, looking sort of like a rodeo horse in a calf-roping event. I think I knew what was going to happen next, and I think Huddie did, too, but neither of us could believe it. Even if we had believed it, we couldn't have stopped him. Sweet as he was, I think Mister Dillon would have bitten us if we'd tried. He was still letting out those yipping, hurt little barks, and foam had started to splatter from the corners of his mouth.
I remember reflected light dazzling into my eyes just then. I blinked and the light ran away from me down the length of the wall. That was Unit 6, Eddie and George coming in with their suspect, but I hardly registered that at all. I was looking at Mister Dillon.
He ran at the screen door, and once he was rolling he never hesitated. Never even slowed. Just dropped his head and broke on through to the other side, tearing the door out of its latch and pulling it after him even as he went through, still voicing barks that were almost like screams. At the same time I smelled something, very strong: seawater and decayed vegetable matter. There came a howl of brakes and rubber, the blast of a horn, and someone yelling, " Watch out! Watch out!" Huddie ran for the door and I followed him.
Eddie
We were wrecking his day by taking him to the barracks. We'd stopped him, at least temporarily, from beating up his girlfriend. He had to sit in the back seat with the springs digging into his ass and his fancy boots planted on our special puke-resistant plastic floormats. But Brian was making us pay. Me in particular, but of course George had to listen to him, too.
He'd chant his version of my name and then stomp down rhythmically with the big old stacked heels of his shitkickers just as hard as he could. The overall effect was something like a football cheer. And all the time he was staring through the mesh at me with his head down and his little stoned eyes gleaming--I could see him in the mirror clipped to the sunvisor.
"JACK-you-BOYS!" Clump-clumpclump! "JACK-you-BOYS!" Clump-clumpclump!
"Want to quit that, Brian?" George asked. We were nearing the barracks. The pretty nearly empty barracks; by then we knew what was going on out in Poteenville, Shirley had given us some of it, and the rest we'd picked up from the chatter of the converging units. "You're giving me an earache."
It was all the encouragement Brian needed.
"JACK-you-BOYS!" CLUMP-CLUMPCLUMP!
If he stomped much harder he was apt to put his feet right through the floorboards, but Geor
ge didn't bother asking him to stop again. When they're buttoned up in the back of your cruiser, getting under your skin is just about all they can try. I'd experienced it before, but hearing this dumbbell, who once knocked the books out of my arms in the high school caff and tore the loops off the backs of my shirts in study hall, chanting that old hateful version of my name . . . man, that was spooky. Like a trip in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine.
I didn't say anything, but I'm pretty sure George knew. And when he picked up the mike and called in--"20-base in a tick" was what he said--I knew he was talking to me more than Shirley. We'd chain Brian to the chair in the Bad Boy Corner, turn on the TV for him if he wanted it, and take a preliminary pass at the paperwork. Then we'd head for Poteenville, unless the situation out there changed suddenly for the better. Shirley could call Statler County Jail and tell them we had one of their favorite troublemakers coming their way. In the meantime, however--
"JACK-you-BOYS!" Clump-clumpclump! "JACK-you-BOYS!"
Now screaming so loud his cheeks were red and the cords stood out on the sides of his neck. He wasn't just playing me anymore; Brian had moved on to an authentic shit fit. What a pleasure getting rid of him was going to be.
We went up Bookin's Hill, George driving a little faster than was strictly necessary, and there was Troop D at the top. George signaled and turned in, perhaps still moving a little faster than he strictly should have been. Lippy, understanding that his time to annoy us had grown short, began shaking the mesh between us and him as well as thumping down with those John Wayne boots of his.
"JACK-you-BOYS!" Clump-clumpclump! Shake-shakeshake!
Up the driveway we went, toward the parking lot at the back. George turned tight to the left around the corner of the building, meaning to park with the rear half of Unit 6 by the back steps of the barracks, so we could take good old Bri right up and right in with no fuss, muss, or bother.
And as George came around the corner, there was Mister Dillon, right in front of us.
"Watch out, watch out!" George shouted, whether to me or to the dog or possibly to himself I have no way of knowing. And remembering all this, it strikes me how much it was like the day he hit the woman in Lassburg. So close it was almost a dress rehearsal, but with one very large difference. I wonder if in the last few weeks before he sucked the barrel of his gun he didn't find himself thinking I missed the dog and hit the woman over and over again. Maybe not, but I know I would've, if it had been me. Missed the dog and hit the woman. How can you believe in a God when it's that way around instead of the other?
George slammed on the brakes with both feet and drove the heel of his left hand down on the horn. I was thrown forward. My shoulder-harness locked. There were lap belts in the back but our prisoner hadn't troubled to put one on--he'd been too busy doing the Jacubois Cheer for that--and his face shot forward into the mesh, which he'd been gripping. I heard something snap, like when you crack your knuckles. I heard something else crunch. The snap was probably one of his fingers. The crunch was undoubtedly his nose. I have heard them go before, and it always sounds the same, like breaking chicken bones. He gave a muffled, surprised scream. A big squirt of blood, hot as the skin of a hot-water bottle, landed on the shoulder of my uniform.
Mister Dillon probably came within half a foot of dying right there, maybe only two inches, but he ran on without a single look at us, ears laid back tight against his skull, yelping and barking, headed straight for Shed B. His shadow ran beside him on the hottop, black and sharp.
"Ah Grise, I'be hurd!" Brian screamed through his plugged nose. "I'be bleedin all fuggin over!" And then he began yelling about police brutality.
George opened the driver's-side door. I just sat where I was for a moment, watching D, expecting him to stop when he got to the shed. He never did. He ran full-tilt into the roll-up door, braining himself. He fell over on his side and let out a scream. Until that day I didn't know dogs could scream, but they can. To me it didn't sound like pain but frustration. My arms broke out in gooseflesh. D got up and turned in a circle, as if chasing his tail. He did that twice, shook his head as if to clear it, and ran straight at the roll-up door again.
"D, no!" Huddie shouted from the back stoop. Shirley was standing right beside him, her hand up to shade her eyes. "Stop it, D, you mind me, now!"
Mister D paid zero attention to them. I don't think he would have paid any attention to Orville Garrett, had Orville been there that day, and Orv was the closest thing to an alpha male that D had. He threw himself into the roll-up door again arid again, barking crazily, uttering another of those awful frustrated screams each time he struck the solid surface. The third time he did it, he left a bloody noseprint on the white-painted wood.
During all of this, my old pal Brian was yelling his foolish head off. "Help me, Jacubois, I'be bleedin like a stuck fuggin pig, where'd your dumbdick friend learn to drive, Sears and fuckin Roebuck? Ged me outta here, my fuggin dose!"
I ignored him and got out of the cruiser, meaning to ask George if he thought D might be rabid, but before I could open my mouth the stink hit me: that smell of seawater and old cabbage and something else, something a whole lot worse.
Mister D suddenly turned and raced to his right, toward the corner of the shed.
"No, D, no!" Shirley screamed. She saw what I saw a second after her--the door on the side, the one you opened with a regular knob instead of rolling up on tracks, was standing a few inches open. I have no idea if someone--Arky, maybe--left it that way
Arky
It wasn't me, I always close dat door. If I forgot, old Sarge woulda torn me a new asshole. Maybe Curt, too. Dey wanted dat place closed up tight.
Dey was strong on dat.
Eddie
or maybe something from inside opened it. Some force originating in the Buick, I suppose that's what I'm talking about. I don't know if that's the case or not; I only know that the door was open. That was where the worst of the stench was coming from, and that was where Mister Dillon was going.
Shirley ran down the steps, Huddie right behind her, both of them yelling for Mister D to come back. They passed us. George ran after them, and I ran after George.
There had been a lightshow from the Buick two or three days before. I hadn't been there, but someone had told me about it, and the temperature had been down in Shed B for almost a week. Not a lot, only four or five degrees. There were a few signs, in other words, but nothing really spectacular. Nothing you'd get up in the middle of the night and write home to mother about. Nothing that would have led us to suspect what we found when we got inside.
Shirley was first, screaming D's name . . . and then just screaming. A second later arid Huddie was screaming, too. Mister Dillon was barking in a lower register by then, only it was barking and growling all mixed together. It's the sound a dog makes when he's got something treed or at bay. George Morgan yelled out, "Oh my Lord! Oh my dear Jesus Christ! What is it?"
I went into the shed, but not very far. Shirley and Huddie were standing shoulder to shoulder and George was right behind them. They had the way pretty well blocked up. The smell was rank--it made your eyes water and your throat close--but I hardly noticed it.
The Buick's trunk was open again. Beyond the car, in the far corner of the shed, stood a thin and wrinkled yellow nightmare with a head that wasn't really a head at all but a loose tangle of pink cords, all of them twitching and squirming. Under them you could see more of the yellow, wrinkled flesh. It was very tall, seven feet at least. Some of those pink cords lashed at one of the overhead beams as it stood there. The sound they made was fluttery, like moths striking window-glass at night, trying to get at the light they see or sense behind it. I can still hear that sound. Sometimes I hear it in my dreams.
Within the thicket made by those wavering, convulsing pink things, something kept opening and closing in the yellow flesh. Something black and round. It might have been a mouth. It might have been trying to scream. I can't describe what it was standing on. I
t's like my brain couldn't make any sense of what my eyes were seeing. Not legs, I'm sure of that much, and I think there might have been three instead of two. They ended in black, curved talons. The talons had bunches of wiry hair growing out of them--I think it was hair, and I think there were bugs hopping in the tufts, little bugs like nits or fleas. From the thing's chest there hung a twitching gray hose of flesh covered with shiny black circles of flesh. Maybe they were blisters. Or maybe, God help me, those things were its eyes.
Standing in front of it, barking and snarling and spraying curds of foam from his muzzle, was our dog. He made as if to lunge forward and the thing shrieked at him from the black hole. The gray hose twitched like a boneless arm or a frog's leg when you shoot electricity into it. Drops of something flew from the end and hit the shed's floor. Smoke began to rise from those spots at once, and I could see them eating into the concrete.
Mister D drew back a little when it shrieked at him but kept on barking and snarling, ears laid back against his skull, eyes bulging out of their sockets. It shrieked again. Shirley screamed and put her hands over her ears. I could understand the urge to do that, but I didn't think it would help much. The shrieks didn't seem to go into your head through your ears but rather just the other way around: they seemed to start in your head and then go out through your ears, escaping like steam. I felt like telling Shirley not to do that, not to block her ears, she'd give herself an embolism or something if she held that awful shrieking inside, and then she dropped her hands on her own.
Huddie put his arm around Shirley and she
Shirley
I felt Huddie put his arm around me and I took his hand. I had to. I had to have something human to hold on to. The way Eddie tells it, the Buick's first livebirth sounds too close to human: it had a mouth inside all those writhing pink things, it had a chest, it had something that served it for eyes. I'm not saying any of that's wrong, but I can't say it's right, either. I'm not sure we ever saw it at all, certainly not the way police officers are trained to look and see. That thing was too strange, too far outside not just our experience but our combined frame of reference. Was it humanoid? A little--at least we perceived it that way. Was it human"? Not in the least, don't you believe it. Was it intelligent, aware? There's no way to tell for sure, but yes, I think it probably was. Not that it mattered. We were more than horrified by its strangeness. Beyond the horror (or perhaps inside it is what I mean, like a nut inside a shell) there was hate. Part of me wanted to bark and snarl at it just as Mister Dillon was. It woke an anger in me, an enmity, as well as fright and revulsion. The other things had been dead on arrival. This one wasn't, but we wanted it dead. Oh boy, did we want it dead!