Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #11 Page 8

  "What—” Hank began, then Martin's words registered. He looked past his old friend's shoulder at the jagged opening where trees once stood. Some of them were still there, but only for the first dozen feet. The rest had disappeared.

  "What the hell happened to my property?"

  Still holding on to his amused grin, Martin stuck his free hand into his chinos pocket and turned slowly, glancing behind him. “Crash site, I think. Meteor, maybe. Big, too.” He pulled his hand free, held out a yellow pack of gum. “Juicy Fruit?"

  "Shit on a stick."

  * * * *

  They were alone. Either the crash hadn't made much noise or everyone else in the neighborhood and their uncles were busy sleeping off a drunk from some party Hank hadn't been invited to.

  He stumbled over a fallen tree trunk and thought, I'm too old for this. The yard was secluded, sitting in the middle of a five acre parcel abutting a two hundred acre state-owned wetland. Whatever landed would have remained unknown until Hank eventually wandered out back. If Martin Greenough hadn't seen the long black streak race over Hank's property while walking his dog, he'd have written off the rain-muffled impact as thunder.

  Nurse Charles, Martin's small, curly white Shih-Tzu whose name had never been explained by her owner (nor would Hank lower himself to ask), scrabbled ahead of the men, sniffing, running around the fallen trunks when climbing proved too daunting for her small legs.

  Gasping with the effort of climbing over one particularly tricky set of branches, Martin said, “Something came down, that's for sure. See?” He'd given up trying to keep the umbrella over his head and had it folded and tucked under one arm. Rain dripped off the front of his cap. He gestured ahead of them. “Tree trunks are getting lower, and something's steaming down there."

  He continued on, moving casually, stopping occasionally to inspect a burnt, broken trunk. Hank knew Martin was letting him catch up, and appreciated the gesture. Not that he would ever tell him. His neighbor was one of the few people who truly knew and understood Hank Cowles. Phyllis had, when she was alive. But that felt like such a long time ago. Most of that world was lost to him now. Only snatches of memory remained, but even those were questionable.

  Nurse Charles barked excitedly up ahead. Hank thought of a red, blinking light. Something he was supposed to do. Damn, fuck, piss on a cat. What was it?

  Didn't matter.

  "Tell me again why we're out here?” He considered climbing over the same tree Martin had just traversed but decided he needed the exercise and moved around it instead. Rain tapped against the hood of his parka, muffling the sound of their steps and Martin's voice. His friend wiped a wet hand across his face and looked ahead a moment to see what his cat was yapping about ( ... dog, Hank remembered, it's a dog, not a cat ... ), then turned back to Hank. “Meteorite crashed in the woods. We're exploring."

  Yes, that's right. This man had been standing on the porch. Something had woken him. Hank hesitated, watching the rain fall inches from his face, dripping off his hood. The man looked at him a moment, then added without a trace of irony, “I'm Martin. You're Hank."

  That's right, he thought again. Too early for this to start up. He did better in sunlight. He should have gone back to bed. “Fuck you, Martin, I know that. What's Charlie barking at?"

  "Her name's not Charlie—"

  Hank hissed, “Nurse ... Charles...” between clenched teeth. He hated that fucking name.

  Martin turned back toward the dog's small voice. “Let's find out."

  * * * *

  They stepped over a few more scattered trunks and branches before arriving at the end of the newly carved path. Here, the toppled trees had little or no trunk left.

  The vehicle—some bizarrely-shaped airplane, or maybe a satellite—lay bent and twisted against a large boulder that resembled a hand raised up from the earth, holding the wreckage in its palm, offering it to the men. Wherever rain hit the object's wrinkled and dented surface, it hissed away in a puff of steam. The Shih-Tzu spread her short legs as far as possible and yap-yap-yapped in defiance or excitement. You never know with cows, Hank thought.

  He crept closer. Martin was waiting for him beside a surviving maple. Was it a plane? Maybe a spaceship, he thought without any of the excitement he might have felt had he been seventy-five years younger. Its shape—its original shape, at least—was hard to figure out. The end closest to them was narrow but tall. A thin oval opening, buckled in places, led into an interior that was too dark for details. A slow drift of steam, like breath in winter, fingered its way from this crevice. The engine, he assumed, an exhaust port. He searched for some other kind of entrance or door. The most prominent feature was a bubble, or pimple, halfway down the side of the craft. Some kind of pipe emerged from a crack in the pimple, ran along the outside of the hull, and disappeared again into another, longer crack wide enough to fit a man if he were stupid enough to try and squeeze through.

  No one spoke. Even Nurse Charles stopped barking. She whimpered once, licked her chops, then looked back at the men for guidance.

  Hank hovered beside Martin and the tree. The maple might provide cover, if needed. It wouldn't protect from radiation, but it was too late for that now, wasn't it?

  If it was a spaceship, could aliens breathe this air? Maybe they'd died from germs like in that old H.G. Wells story. Martin opened his umbrella again, held it overhead and stepped forward once, twice, feet pressing lightly on wet leaves, old brown acorns, and damp, fallen sticks. He made no sound.

  The strange pipe wriggled along the side of the ship. Part of it lifted away. Ten feet ahead of Hank, Martin froze. The pipe continued to writhe and move, a smaller section bending, reaching back into itself, repairing itself? Hank could make out no details in the thing. Grainy brown, like packed beach sand. Darker than sand though, changing and twisting. One long section plugged itself back into the center of the mass, then broke off again. At its tip was something quite different, something with detail—mostly round, short triangular protrusions, and one longer, cylindrical section.

  As Hank's straining mind tried to categorize what he was looking at, the extrusion of brown sand waved the object unsteadily toward them. Holding it. Holding ... That's an arm.

  His heart hammered, his brain screamed, arm arm! An arm! His eyes scanned the rest of the mass hanging horizontally from the pimple. It wasn't an exhaust—

  A bright, flashing streak burned the air beside his head. Hank dove to his right, away from the tree, mostly out of reflex and fear. He hit the ground, rolled over sticks and leaves wet with decay. The hood of his slicker twisted around, blocking his view. The world became a bright blur of yellow that faded in intensity toward the inside of the hood. He held out his arms. His hands were wet, the leaves under his fingers cold. He reached up, shoved aside the hood just as a heavy, earth-shaking boom rocked the woods around him. The maple's trunk, the one he'd hoped would provide protection, collapsed in on itself as if it had been lifted into the air and dropped, ripping open a lightening jag up its trunk. For a moment Hank thought it might remain there, taking root. It wavered unsteadily on its burnt ends before tipping and falling away from him, crashing and crunching into the woods beyond his line of vision. The ground shook again with the impact, then stilled.

  He blinked away more rain from his eyes and slowly sat up. His pants were soaked through. Where he'd been standing a few seconds before remained only the burnt base of the tree no higher than his waist, smoking like the stack of a deeply buried factory.

  He took in a breath, let it out.

  Where the hell was Martin?

  Nurse Charles ran past as Hank tried to stand. She stopped and gathered her courage, turned back toward the ship and barked once.

  "Shut the hell up, Charlie..."

  The top of the umbrella lay upturned a few feet from Martin's legs, which were bent and curled beside twisted blue and red ropes piled where he had been standing.

  No, that wasn't Martin. Hank stood straighter, forgetting t
he rain and his wet pants and the renewed fire in his ankle and wrist, trying to decipher what he was seeing. The legs were still in tan chinos. He could tell they were legs because of the exposed ankles. The top part of ... something poked above the belt. It was shredded and splashed with red. Where his friend's torso should have been, ropey glop spilled out, staining the pants.

  Nurse Charles stopped barking. She cried. Her small paws stepped on leaves behind Hank, letting him lead.

  That can't be Martin.

  But the tree...

  Hank closed his eyes. This wasn't real. He was hallucinating. Having another of those spells Dianne got so worked up over.

  Red blinking light.

  He remembered now. Dianne—his daughter. She must have called last night and left a message, probably wondering...

  Hank opened his eyes, saw the wreckage of the ship. He was dreaming. Had to be. The brown, twisted sand shape was no longer stuck to the hull. Instead it bent and snaked across the forest floor toward him, the weapon flailing in the grip of an arm used primarily to maneuver itself along the uneven ground.

  It must have spotted Hank. The creature—the alien pilot of the doomed spaceship, strange, strange dream, nothing else—straightened, then tipped sideways as if unable to maintain its balance. It aimed the gun in his direction—a ray gun, Hank thought and almost laughed at the absurdity of it. The sand creature tipped again, falling over completely.

  The weapon slipped from its impossible, wormy grip.

  He stared at the ball-shaped object, knowing if this was not a dream he would be dead soon—like Martin, like my friend—if the creature regained its balance and got a hold of the weapon, aimed it, burned him up—like Martin—like the tree. There was no specific face or head, mostly one brown limb growing out of another, writhing atop last year's leaf cover. An octopus with too few legs one moment, too many the next. The arm that had held the gun flailed about, looking for...

  Hank stopped thinking. He stepped forward and picked up the ray gun, careful to keep the extruding cylinder aimed away from him. The creature wriggled and slapped itself across the ground, never rising back up to its full height but moving steadily toward him in a drunken zigzag crawl. With shaking hands, Hank aimed the cylinder at it, felt around for some way of holding it better, some trigger. There were a number of holes in the side, hand-holds too awkward to grip. His thumb ran along one of the triangle shapes on top and pressed down.

  Bright, bright flash. A million sparks danced around the beam as the falling rain exploded. Hank squinted. The creature twisted and flipped in the light, then was gone. No kick, no fire, just a burnt oval of smoldering earth, glistening like mica. The flash's residue hovered in the center of his vision.

  Hank held the gun away from his body, toward the new hole in the ground. Otherwise he did not move, save for the shaking of his hands.

  It was gone. Burned away. He wanted to laugh and cry because he didn't know if any of this was real. Hank eventually lowered his arms and stepped back a few paces, into the pile of Martin's bowels. His foot shot out in front of him. He fell back, caught a brief glimpse of the treetops and a frozen scene of more rain falling from the dead, gray sky before something slammed into the back of his head. The flash's lingering after-image exploded again, erasing everything around him.

  * * * *

  Hank Cowles’ eyes opened with a start. Bird song chittered around him. He stared at the sky, blinked when rain fell across his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut. Not right. Should have been a ceiling. How did he get outside?

  That was one fuck of a dream.

  He didn't move, searched around his throbbing brain for an explanation. I need some Tylenol, he thought. Headache. He spat water from his mouth, moved his foot. It slid away on the wet leaves. He was cold.

  He turned his head to the side and opened the eye sheltered from the rain by his nose. Someone's legs beside him. A small dog whimpering near them, muzzle atop its paws. Someone else out here with him...

  His cry was like an animal's howl, lost in the storm. His scream as he raised his head and saw the remains of his only friend was strangled, choked under the constant falling rain.

  * * * *

  It took him hours, it seemed, to work his way along the broken path to the yard behind his house. In his right hand, Hank carried the round thing like he would hold a bowling ball, thumb in one hole, first two fingers in another. It had been lying on the ground beside him when he returned to the useable fragment of his senses. The object was small and weighed next to nothing. However, the finger holds were spaced too far apart, and he'd dropped it twice. Each time he would cringe away, waiting for the flash of death. None came. He'd been lucky.

  He'd been dreaming.

  All of this was nothing but a disease-induced hallucination. They came sometimes, usually on the cusp of the evening when his confusion with reality hit high gear. Sundown Syndrome, Dianne called it. This morning, the storm, lack of sunlight...

  Everything felt real, as real any anything ever could these days. Best thing was to get back to bed, fall asleep in his dream so he could wake up to reality. Maybe. One more day at least, just to prove Martin was still around. After that, he didn't really give a shit.

  The Shih-Tzu strayed no more than a few feet from his ankle during the journey. No longer bubbling with excitement, her small ears were pressed back against her head. She offered a continuous stream of whining. Crying for her lost master.

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...

  With this single word repeating in his mind, Hank faced the wide expanse of his backyard. The house loomed dark under the heavy blanket of the storm, except for one light glowing from the kitchen. He hadn't brought his watch, but it should have been brighter outside even with the rain. Time wasn't real in dreams. His knuckles ached. He looked down at the ball and dropped it gently into the palm of his open left hand, keeping the firing cylinder turned away. He raised it, aimed the barrel toward the edge of the woods on his right.

  He couldn't bring himself to press the trigger again. To do so would be to accept what had happened, to participate in the delusion. Bed, he thought, perchance to dream. He walked toward his house, his friend's duck following obediently beside him. Up the steps, heavy footfalls and light, ticking paws. He opened the kitchen door, held it to allow the ... dog, it was a dog ... to enter before stepping inside. With his toes, he peeled off the wet loafers he'd switched into when ... when he'd sleepwalked outside into the rain. The dripping parka was next, laid over the back of a kitchen chair.

  Why was Nurse Charles here?

  "Go home to your master, mutt,” he mumbled, half stepping, half stumbling down the hall to his room. “He's waiting for you, alive and happy and full of life like he always is.” He made no motion to let the dog out. For her part, Nurse Charles only followed him to the bedroom, sat patiently as he climbed, fully clothed, under the sheets. Leaves and one stray twig fell unnoticed to the floor. The ball he'd been carrying made a loud thunk as it landed. He ignored that, too.

  Hank closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately. He shifted his legs, mumbled in his sleep, stilled, and hardly twitched when the soft weight of Nurse Charles landed at the foot of the bed.

  * * * *

  An hour later the dog was awakened by the closing of a car door. She raised her head, stub of tail wagging tentatively against the bed cover. The Shih-Tzu sniffed, waited, growled when the front door opened. The emergent scent was reminiscent of her new master. Female. Nurse Charles like females. No Bad Scent on her. She waited expectantly as the visitor called out, slowing making her way toward the bedroom.

  * * * *

  Hank Cowles’ eyes opened with a start. Silence all around him. No, not complete silence. A low whimpering breath. Dianne had asthma. He heard the girl's labored breathing. Every time he thought of his daughter's battle, her frightened struggle to take in air during the bad nights, he was filled with such sadness he wanted to wrap her in his arms and cry like a baby himself.
He would hold her, keeping his tears at bay until she was asleep and he was back in his own bed. When his arms were again wrapped around Phyllis, his wife let him cry out his helplessness without complaint. Nothing he could do now but make sure Dianne took her meds, had the inhaler nearby, and pray to God for his little girl's health. He'd heard that they sometimes grew out of it. Hank stared at the ceiling. Dark all around. What time was it?

  He turned his head. So tired, must be the middle of the night. The clock on the bedside table read ten thirty-six. Felt like he'd been asleep for hours, not...

  That wheezing breath again. Not a breath. A dog, crying.

  They didn't have a dog. Not since Blackie was put to sleep years ago when they'd learned about Dianne's asthma. A long dormant pang of guilt jabbed his gut. Another memory, teasing his mind.

  Phyllis was gone, too. To make certain he reached out, felt the cold sheets on her side of the bed. A pale glow beyond the drawn shade, gray. Had he left the back porch light on?

  Hank sat up and was immediately greeted by pain in his right leg and the back of his head. The two sensations merged, waking him completely.

  He was old. He was old and Martin was dead.

  No, it was a dream. One shit of a dream, but a dream.

  He reached out in the darkness, pretended not to notice he was fully clothed, legs still damp. He found the lamp, turned the switch and felt the old reliable pain in his wrist.

  The light poured over a scene Hank could not accept. He closed his eyes, saw the room imprinted there anyway. Not what he saw. An illusion. Then why don't you just open your damn old eyes and see?

  See what was sprawled on the floor beside his bed.

  The dog whimpered again. Was that Nurse Charles in his bedroom? Hank opened one eye and stared, letting the world outside turn slowly without his brain for a few more minutes, waiting for it to resolve into normalcy, looking—still with only one eye—at the woman's body on the floor. Blood everywhere, everywhere, running along the hardwood, shiny in places, thick and non-reflective in others. He heard a distant trickling. Blood leaking through the floorboards. No, no.