I was still trying to catch my breath and trying to get a reading on the situation. "What the hell s going on?" I shouted.
Jake gave me a shushing motion, finger to the lips, and stared at the front of Palmer's store.
At that point I started to inch myself up on the curb next to the steaming Z. The engine was still running, but the sudden encounter with the cement curb had ruptured a gas line. A pool of pungent pinkish fuel was starting to trickle toward me.
"Stay where you are," Jake thundered.
I peeked up over the curb and felt the gasoline seep into the sleeve of my jacket. Except for the sound of the sputtering Z, the street was silent. Nothing was moving, Gradually the chaos began to fragment into isolated bits of discernible detail. The front window of the market was shattered. Huge shards of splintered glass cluttered the sidewalk. Across the street, behind Madden, a man darted from one building to the next. He had a rifle. Then I saw another, but he disappeared in the fog.
"See anything?" Jake bellowed.
"What the hell am I supposed to be looking for?"
"That damn thing we shot in the woods — it's alive!"
The words sent a cold chill rocketing up my spine and into my neck like a runaway freight train. What was he talking about? That thing we shot in the woods was dead. I'd seen it — cold and stiff and very, very full of big gaping holes. I'd even touched it.
A response was probably forthcoming, I'm still not quite sure, because it never got past the formulation stage. It all happened too suddenly. There was a sound like an explosion followed by a sudden rain of bricks and debris. I could hear them plummeting down on the Z and everywhere around me. One of them caught me a glancing blow on the side of my head.
Jake started firing again, this time in my direction but up above me. I heard one of the slugs rip into the sheet metal of the Z, and I started praying that it didn't ignite the escaping gasoline.
There were other sounds, more frightening than that of bullets spraying all around me. There was a gaping hole in the brick wall, and suddenly the thing emerged, half-stumbling, half-crawling, but very much alive. It's ungainly bulk was looking for some sort of sanctuary.
Elliot Grant Wages was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The thing leaped clumsily down on the Z, glowered at me and took a swipe at my head with its massive paw. Instincts took over. I made one frantic attempt to slide under the Z. It was too late. The creature's viselike grip clamped around my leg and dragged me away from the only thing that possibly promised safety.
I remember a terrible cramp in my foot, pain in my right leg, my head thumping merrily along the rough pavement, the sound of more gunshots, the guttural sounds belching from the foul-smelling thing, and last, but not least, sheer, unmitigated terror.
Just as suddenly, and, as far as I can determine, for no apparent reason, the thing let go of me. It must have figured I wasn't worth the effort.
The chaos continued. I could hear shattering glass, frenzied shouts, footsteps and more gunshots.
Suddenly another shadow blocked out what little light my swollen eyes weren't filtering. It was gray and confusing and accompanied by lots of heavy breathing.
"I'll be damned surprised if he ain't dead," Jake grunted.
"Naw," someone else assessed, "I can see him breathin'."
My brain was doing its best, but the short-circuiting continued. Shouts, Foot-steps. A world gone mad, out of control. Strange discordant music played in the background of my befuddled mind. I was looking down at me. I was a mess. Better tidy up. The same note kept playing over and over. I could see somebody getting out a blanket and covering my head. Wait a minute. You're wrong. But the protest was stuffed into a murky gray envelope along with everything else. Now silence. Now nothing. A world of gray on gray.
"His eyes moved," someone observed.
"He may make it," another said.
"I think he's startin' to come around," still another opined.
"How long has he been out?"
"Forty-five minutes at least."
Voices — just a lot of voices.
Through my squint, heads were taking shape, heads outlined by blurry lights that gave off a spooky, pale, fuzzy-colored yellow glow.
"Elliott," a softer voice intoned, "can you hear us?"
I could hear, all right, but I wasn't about to make any commitments. There were a whole bunch of other components that still had to be tested. At this point I figured surviving from one minute to the next was all I could hope for.
"He'll be all right," another voice evaluated. "He took a pretty good pounding, but I can't find much more than some contusions and a nasty whack on the head, maybe a minor concussion. He'll be pretty sore for a while, but he'll live."
By my standards, someone was being rather glib with my prognosis, and I wanted them to stop. If I was going to defend myself I had to crawl kicking and screaming back into the world. I forced one eye partially open and then the other. The circle of faces was grim.
"Where the hell am I?"
Madden was towering over me, glowering. He talked too slow and too loud, like he considered it a distinct possibility that the thing had fractured my ears. "You're… still… in… Chambers Bay… at… Palmer's… market."
It was now or never. In another ten minutes I would be too stiff to even attempt it. I pushed myself up on one elbow, heard someone tell me to take it easy and started recording facts. I had been in the halfway world long enough. They were all there — Madden, Caleb, B.C., Kendall and Ferris — plus a bunch of others that I suspected were there purely out of morbid curiosity.
"Is it true? Is that thing really alive or did I just dream it?"
"That can all wait until you're on your feet," B.C. cooed.
I swung my legs over the edge of the checkout counter and pushed myself into a sitting position. "Will sitting up do?" The sick little grin I forced didn't fool anyone.
Madden was the one who understood. When a man needs data, he needs data. "You're gonna find this tough to swallow, Researcher, but you were mauled by that thing we shot last night."
When you've had somebody pounding on your cage with a big stick, sometimes the things people tell you don't hang together. This was one of those times. "Will you repeat that?" I muttered.
Kendall moved in beside Madden. His uniform was in disarray, and there was a fold of swollen, discolored tissue under each eye. His voice was still a little shaky. "I came back on duty at four o'clock and relieved Constable Higgins. We talked for a few minutes, and he brought me up to date on tomorrow's schedule. He made some comment about the fog getting worse and decided to bunk down and get some sleep back in the store room. About an hour later old man Palmer came by and did some more grousing about us keeping the store closed another day while the forensic team from headquarters gets this thing squared away. He poked around for a little while, then said he wanted to go back and check the temperature in the cooler. I didn't see any harm in it so I went back with him. After all, it's his store.
"We hadn't been back there more than a few minutes when he walked over to the carcass and started poking around on it. I was just about to tell him to quit when all of a sudden one of those big black arms flies up and wraps around Palmer's neck. Before I can even shout a warning, the thing flings the old man across the room like he's some kind of rag doll. All I hear is the sickening sound of that old man splattering up against the wall of the cooler.