But he had opened the gate to the south fields, Duane noticed, as the huge machine roared across the barnyard and into the corn. He caught the briefest glimpse of his father as a silhouette in the open cab-the Old Man hated glassed-in booths and used one of the older, open combines-and then the machine was out in the corn.
Duane groaned. The Old Man had come home drunk and racked up the truck before, but he'd never wrecked a piece of farm machinery. A new combine or picker unit for the tractor would cost a bloody fortune.
Duane ran out through the barn lot in his slippers, trying to shout over the roar of the machine. It was useless. The combine cut into the first row of corn in the field and began eating its way south. The corn was only about twenty inches high and there were no ears yet, but the harvesting mechanism on the cornhead didn't know that; Duane groaned again as he saw the tender young stalks bend and snap off, the eight gatherer points guiding them to chains that fed them to the long metal snapper rolls. The lugged chains there dragged the stalks between the rolls and would have pinched off ears had there been any.
The air filled with dust and a spray of cornstalks as the combine swerved right, then left, and then lumbered straight ahead into the field, carving a thirty-foot-wide path through the crop. Duane ran through the open gate and followed, shouting and waving his arms. The Old Man never looked back.
The huge machine was almost two hundred yards out into the field when it suddenly clanked to a stop. The engine died away. Duane paused, gasping to catch his breath, imagining the Old Man bent over the steering wheel and weeping with whatever frustration had driven him to this.
Duane took a breath and jogged toward the now-silent combine.
The driving lights mounted high on the cab were off, the door was open, but the interior light was broken and the cab was empty. Duane approached slowly, feeling the sharp stalks under his slippers; he pulled himself up onto the small platform on the left side of the cab.
Nothing.
Duane looked out at the field. The corn was little more than knee-high, but it spread away to the dark borders more than half a mile away in each direction except back to the barn. The row of devastation behind the combine was visible enough even in the meager starlight. The pole light in the barnyard seemed as distant as the stars overhead.
Duane's heart had been pounding during the run and now it accelerated again. He leaned over the metal railing of the platform and looked down, half-expecting to see a man-shaped indentation in the crop where the Old Man had tumbled off. Nothing.
The corn grew very close together, the rows no longer visible as the leaves from the stalks overlapped. Another few weeks, Duane knew, and the field would be shoulder-high, a monolith of corn.
But he should be able to see the Old Man now. He stepped onto the front of the platform, peering out over the cornhead and around the right side of the combine as far as he could manage.
"Dad?" His voice seemed very small. Duane called again.
No answer. Not even a rustle of stalks to tell him which way the Old Man had walked.
There was a noise from the barnyard and Duane stepped to the rear of the platform to watch as the pickup truck became visible in the barnyard. It backed out of sight behind the house, reappeared in front of the house, and backed down the driveway. Its lights were still off, door still open. It looked like a movie being run in reverse. Duane started to shout but realized how useless that was; he watched in silence as the truck reached the end of the long drive, then disappeared down County Six with its lights still off.
It wasn't the Old Man. The thought struck him like cold water being poured down his back.
Duane stepped into the cab, sat on the high seat. He'd drive the goddamn thing back to the house.
There was no key. Duane closed his eyes, tried to remember all the modifications the Old Man had made to the ignition system of this thing. He tried the starter anyway. Nothing. The combine wouldn't start without the key the Old Man kept on a nail in the barn.
Duane flicked a toggle to turn on the bright running lights; he'd drain the battery quickly, but those lights would light up two hundred feet of the field as if it were daylight.
Nothing. Duane remembered; the key had to be on.
He stepped out onto the platform, feeling the sweat on his face, taking slow, deep breaths to calm down. The corn that had looked so short a few hours ago now seemed tall enough to hide anything. Only the thirty-foot-wide path of beaten stubble winding behind the combine offered a clear path back to the barn.
Duane was not ready to walk that way yet.
He stepped onto a metal ledge behind the cab, pulled himself up onto the empty grain tank. The metal cover groaned a bit under his weight. Duane leaned, found a handhold, and pulled himself onto the roof of the cab. From twelve feet above everything, the field was a black mass stretching out to the edge of the world. The west pasture was half a mile to his right, the black line of Mr. Johnson's stretch of timber straight ahead several hundred yards. To his left, the corn stretched a quarter of a mile to the road where he'd heard the pickup disappear. Duane could see the pole lights of Uncle Henry's farm a mile or so to the southeast.
A slight wind came up and Duane shivered, buttoning the top few buttons of his shirt. I'll stay here. They'll expect me to walk back, but I'll stay here. He wondered who the 'they' were even as he thought it.
Suddenly there was the slightest whisper of motion in the corn and Duane leaned forward to watch as something moved… glided… through the low stalks. There was no other word for what he saw: something long and large slid through the corn with little more than a silky rustling. It was about fifteen yards out and only the slight motion of the stalks marked its wake.
If he had been at sea, Duane thought, he would have thought a dolphin was swimming alongside the ship, occasionally breaking the water with a smooth glistening of its back.
Starlight did glisten as something slid above the level of the cornstalks and then below, but the wet sheen Duane saw seemed to be a glint of starlight on scales rather than flesh.
Any thought that it was the Old Man out there, stumbling around in the low corn, disappeared as he watched the wake of the thing, sliding counterclockwise in a huge circle, moving faster than a man could walk. Duane had the sense of a giant serpent moving through the field, a thing with a body as thick through as Duane's own. Something that was many yards long.
Duane made a noise like a swallowed laugh. This was nuts.
The thing in the corn had circled a fourth of the circumference of its way around the combine when it reached the bare area where the machine had harvested its swath.
The wake veered as smoothly as a fish reaching the end of play on a line, turned back, began swinging around to the south along the same invisible line. Duane heard a noise and shifted to the opposite edge of the roof. Something equally large and silent was sliding through the corn on the west side of the machine. As he watched, Duane realized that the circling motion moved in a foot or so each time the things reached the end of their circuit.
Ah, shit, breathed Duane in the precise tone of a prayer. He was definitely staying with the combine. If he had started walking back when it made sense to, those things would have been sliding alongside him by now.
This is insane. He curbed that line of thinking. It was insane… impossible… but it was happening. Duane felt the cool metal of the combine roof under his palms and forearms, smelled the cool air and scent of moist earth, and knew that however impossible it was, it was real. He had to deal with what was happening and not slide into denial.
Starlight gleamed on something long and slippery as the serpent-slug things wound back and forth in their tireless circling. Duane thought of a lamprey he'd caught once in Spoon River when he was fishing with Uncle Art. The thing had been all mouth, circles of teeth descending into a reddened gut, just waiting until it could latch on to something and drain its vital fluids. Duane had had nightmares for a month. He watched as the things passed e
ach other in their sentinel-slide, only the slightest rustle and hint of motion revealing their location.
I'll stay here until morning. Then what? Duane knew that it wasn't midnight yet. What would he do if he lasted the five hours until morning? Perhaps the things would go away in the daylight. If not, he could stand on the roof, use his shirt as a flag, and wave toward traffic on County Six. Someone would see him.
Duane stepped from the cab to the grain tank, peering down behind the combine. Nothing was close. If the swirl of motion came closer to the machine, he'd be back up onto the roof in a second.
There was a noise from the driveway so far away, the sound of a truck driving, still no headlights.
It was the Old Man! He's coming back.
Duane realized that the engine sound was wrong at the same instant he caught a glimpse of the truck under the barnyard pole light.
Red. High sides. Scabrous cab.
The Rendering Truck crossed the barnyard and drove carefully through the gate into the field.
Duane jumped to the cab roof and had to sit to let the sudden nausea pass. Ah, goddammit.
The Rendering Truck pulled a hundred yards into the field, following the corridor of trampled corn, and then stopped, first pulling across the cleared strip diagonally as if to block his way. It was still almost a hundred yards away, but Duane could smell the dead things in the back of the truck as a breeze came to him from the northeast.
Stay there, stay there, he mentally commanded the truck.
It stayed where it was, but against the distant glow of the pole light, Duane could see movement in the back. Pale forms climbed down from the high sides, jumped down from the rear of the truck. They began shambling toward the combine.
Fuck. Duane pounded the roof with his fists. When the forms came between him and the distant light, he could see they were human-shaped. But they moved strangely… almost lurching. There were one, two… he counted six.
Duane swung down into the cab, pawed behind the seat for the toolbox the Old Man kept there. He stuck a nine-inch screwdriver in his belt, pulled out the largest and heaviest tool there-a fourteen-inch wrench. Hefting it, he stepped back out onto the platform.
The sliding things were circling closer, less than ten yards from the combine. The six figures were moving their way up the harvested path. Duane could only see four of them now, but it was very dark without the light behind them. They were less than twenty yards away.
"Help!" screamed Duane. "Help me!" He screamed in the general direction of Uncle Henry's house more than a mile away. "Please, help!"
He stopped. His heart was pounding so fiercely that he was sure it would rip its way out of his chest if he didn't calm down.
Hide in the grain tank. No. It took too long to pull up the access panel and it was no hiding place.
Hot-wire this thing. His heart lurched with hope. He went down on one knee and fumbled under the small switch panel.
There was a tangle of wiring running into the steering column, all of it modified and recircuited by the Old Man. Without a light, there was no way that Duane could see the color of die insulation to guess which wires ran to the ignition circuits and which just supplied fans or lights or somesuch. He pulled four free at random, chewed off the insulation on the ends, and began splicing quickly. The first combination did nothing. Nor did the second. He looked up from the third and leaned outside at the sound of footsteps.
The human shapes were less than twenty feet from the back of the combine.
The closest two seemed to be men… the tallest might have been Van Syke. The third shape looked like a woman in rags or a shroud; tatters trailed behind her. Duane blinked as he realized that the starlight on her cheekbone seemed to be glinting on exposed bone.
Three other figures had moved into the knee-high corn. The closest one was shorter and wore a campaign hat that threw his features into shadow.
Duane sighed and stepped out onto the platform, hefting the wrench. Six of them. At least.
He stepped over the railing and jumped to the long com-head, teetering on the narrow support bar. Eight of the picker units gleamed coldly, the long snapping rolls and gathering chains dipping to the ground, their snouts embedded in the stalks where the machine had quit feeding.
Metal stairs echoed behind him as someone stepped up onto the platform. A shadow came around the right side of the combine, still a few yards out. The stench from the Rendering Truck was stronger than ever.
Duane had been waiting until the sliding things in the corn had passed each other and were at the farthest point in their circuits. Now.
He jumped out over the cornpicker heads, snapped off stalks as he hit soft soil and rolled, and then was up, running, feeling the screwdriver where it had gouged his belly, making sure the wrench was still in his hand.
Cornstalks crackled to his right and left as the lamprey-things reversed course and plowed toward him. Behind him, there were footsteps on metal, more crunching as corn bent.
Duane ran as hard as he could, faster than he could have imagined he was capable of. The line of trees of Mr. Johnson's woods was straight ahead; he could see the fireflies winking there like eyes glowing.
Something passed him to his right, a wake of bending corn curling in front of him. Duane staggered, tried to stop, almost fell on it.
Once he and the Old Man had helped Uncle Art carry a roll of carpet into a friend's new house. The tube of carpet must have been thirty-five feet long, three feet tall when it was rolled. It weighed a ton. The thing in the corn ahead of Duane was longer than that.
Duane teetered as the thing turned toward him. It had stayed beneath the level of the cornstalks only because most of it was in the moist soil, burrowing like some gigantic grub. The front of it surfaced now and starlight glinted on teeth.
Just like the lamprey.
The thing lunged toward Duane like a guard dog on the attack. He pirouetted like a matador, brought the wrench down hard enough to smash a skull.
The thing did not have a skull. The wrench bounced off thick, moist hide. It's like clubbing an underground cable, was Duane's splinter of a thought as the maw of the thing burrowed under the soil again, the back arched like a sea serpent's, and starlight glinted on it. Duane thought of a catfish's slimy skin.
There were rapid footsteps and the sound of breaking stalks a dozen paces behind.
The Soldier. Pale hands coming up and forward.
Duane swiveled gracefully and threw the heavy wrench. The man in the uniform made no attempt to duck. The campaign hat flew off and there was a dull, sickening sound as the wrench struck bone.
The form did not pause or stagger. The arms were extended, fingers wriggling like grubs. Someone else-a tall, dark figure, was moving to Duane's right. A third figure ran farther out to cut Duane off. There was more motion in the shadows.
Duane pulled the screwdriver from his belt and crouched, shifted left, trying to stay low in the corn. He swiveled as there was a movement below and behind him, jumped to his right.
Not fast enough. The slug thing had emerged, brushed against Duane's left leg, then dived into the soil again.
Duane rolled through corn, struggling to get to his feet eyen as he felt a tingling in his left leg as if someone had applied an electric current to it. Staggering, screwdriver still held like a knife, he balanced on his right leg and looked down.
Something had taken a hand-sized bite out of the calf of his left leg. There was a ragged hole in his corduroy pants, a more ragged hole in his calf. Duane swallowed as he realized he could see exposed muscle tissue there. The blood looked black in the starlight.
Hopping on one leg, Duane pulled his bandanna from his pocket and wrapped it tightly around his leg, below the knee. He'd think about it later.
He began hobbling toward the dark line of woods so far away. A sudden turmoil in the cornstalks ahead made him turn left, toward the county road.
Three figures were waiting. Duane saw the dim light gleaming on teet
h. The shortest figure-the Soldier-moved forward as if he were standing on a wheeled platform that was being pulled by a cable; stiffly upright, legs hardly moving, the thing glided in a rush straight at Duane.
Duane didn't try to run. As the white fingers reached for his throat, Duane made a noise part grunt and part snarl, lowered his head, and drove the screwdriver into the man's khaki-shirted belly. The tool went in as easily as a blade would penetrate a rotten muskmelon, ramming home to the hilt and skewering something soft and yielding inside.
Duane gasped and staggered back. The dark figure was still standing. Both of its hands were locked on Duane's left arm. Duane tried to pull free, could not. He slashed at the hand with the screwdriver blade.
Something heavy hit the back of Duane's neck and he went down, kicking, blood from his left leg saturating his trousers now and splattering his shirt. His glasses went flying into the night. He'd lost both his slippers and his feet were caked with mud as he kicked wildly at the forms closing around him. Something long and moist glided past his face, submerged itself in the soil. He tried to stab at it but realized that the screwdriver had been forced out of his hand. There were many fingers grasping and pulling at his arms now.
There were at least four holding him down. A bony hand was spread across his face, forcing his cheek into the mud. Duane bit at the hand, chewed flesh that tasted like chicken that had been lying in the sun for a week, spit it out, and felt his teeth gnawing bone. The hand did not relent. He caught a glimpse of an old woman's face eaten with leprosy and rot.
This is a nightmare, he prayed, even as he knew it was not. Something-not the serpent thing-was chewing at his good leg, growling like a maddened dog.
Witt, he thought, feeling hopelessness finally rising him like flood water, help me.
Somebody crouched near his head and put a heavy boot on his face, driving him deeper into the loam. A shattered cornstalk gouged his scalp. There was a noise like a great cat coughing up a furball.