He got out of the car and hurried across the vacant fueling area to the front of the store. He needed change for the pay phone and God help the clerk on duty if he was given any shit about his current apparel.
But there was no clerk on duty.
An open magazine lay on the counter beside the cash register, but he saw no employees in sight. It was dark, too, and Greg noticed that the overhead lights were off.
“Hello?” he called.
There was no reply, but he took a step backward as if his inquiry had been answered by the ferocious hiss of some unseen adversary.
There was something here, all right, something he knew he didn’t want to face, and he fled from the doorway without a second thought.
When he turned around, he saw at least three-dozen bags coming across the street. They tumbled end-over-end, blown by a nonexistent wind. Some were clear, some opaque, some brown or black. Most were the size of hand bags found at grocery stores, but one looked big enough to contain a kitchen stove or a dishwasher.
“Jesus Chri—”
He was still standing outside the gas station’s doorway when a white plastic bag dropped over his head and sucked to his face. The bag’s lip went tight around his neck, pulled backwards like a garrote wire, and Greg stumbled blindly in reverse, back toward the store. He felt the air being drawn out of his lungs, felt the flesh of his lips and nose and cheeks deaden as the blood beneath the skin was forcibly sucked to the surface.
Thrashing like a drowning victim, trying to remain upright as he was hauled backward, trying to breathe, he realized that he had but seconds to act or he’d be dead. Thinking fast, he opened his mouth as wide as he could and thrust two fingers into his open jaws, piercing the membranous plastic, making an air hole.
The strategy worked. The vacuum broke, and the constricting bag relented, allowing Greg the opportunity to grasp the ruptured portion of its body and widen the tear, freeing his face.
But he was still being dragged backward, the ripped bag still tight across his throat.
He saw that he was inside the store again, facing the door as it drifted closed on its pneumatic hinges. Then, in a nightmare moment of perfect awareness, he caught a glimpse of himself and the monster behind him in the reflection of the glass.
What he saw made him scream.
It was a man-shaped accumulation of bags; or rather, the corpse of the store clerk mummified in plastic. Greg saw tiny bits of the man’s uniform shirt and purple skin under the semi-transparent wrappings, a patch of dark hair, the vague definition of a face.
It was strong, too. Try as he might, he couldn’t break free.
Instead, he turned the attacker’s momentum against it, throwing himself into the creature’s chest, driving it backward as hard as he could. They tumbled in reverse, half-falling, half-running, until they crashed into the array of refrigerated soft drink containers along the back wall of the room, shattering one of the glass doors.
The two of them collapsed to the ground, and Greg was released. He rolled away and sprung to his feet, simultaneously flinging aside the remains of the bag draped around his neck. The creature struggled to get up, too, but it had become snagged on the soft drink racks like a fish on a hook. It lurched back and forth, arms outstretched, straining to reach him.
Greg turned and ran for the door—
But stopped short when he found the front windows of the building covered by bags.
He slapped both hands to his head at the sight, clenching his eyes shut and shaking his head in denial.
This can’t be happening! It just CAN’T!
But when he heard movement behind him and pivoted to see the clerk-wrapped thing on the floor beginning to stand up, he fled for his life. He shot through an open door to the right of the register and found himself in a small storeroom area. Along the back wall of the room he spotted another door marked EXIT.
Greg dashed outside, squinting as his eyes readjusted from the gloom of the store to the mid-morning sunlight. He found himself at the back of the building, near a dumpster, and even though he spotted a number of overstuffed garbage bags heaped in the container, none of them seemed to possess a malevolent life-force.
He didn’t question it.
Rounding the dumpster, he crept to the front of the building and peered around the corner. The bags were still plastered to the windows, crinkling softly as they caressed the glass. He expected to find the entire parking lot—the entire town—overrun by more plastic-enveloped cadavers, but the fueling area and the streets and shops beyond appeared mercifully vacant.
On the count of three, Greg sprinted to his car.
He reached it unmolested. Got in. Started the engine.
As he sped away from the station, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the bags no longer clung to the station windows.
They were trying to follow.
8.
He drove south on Central, ignoring the speed limit and running red lights. Mia’s place was only fifteen minutes away, and Greg decided to check on her first and sort out the rest of this nightmare later.
He passed several payphones along the way, but shuddered at the thought of getting out of the car again. There were other vehicles on the road, too. Not many, but some. Greg considered flagging down one of the passing motorists, but unless the other driver had also been attacked by a plastic-wrapped dead man, he guessed they’d have a pretty hard time believing his story.
Six blocks from the highway he slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. Ahead, roughly five miles away, the skyline of the city loomed into view. Multiple columns of black smoke rose from different locations among the skyscrapers, billowing darkly into the air against a perfect blue sky. There were shapes moving within the haze, about mid-level with the buildings, and after another moment, Greg saw that they were helicopters.
“Oh, God,” he whispered.
He knew he wasn’t crazy now. This was too big, too broad.
He was watching the smoke, tracking the endlessly circling aircraft, when he had an idea. “One of those must be a media chopper,” he thought aloud.
With a shaking hand, he flipped on the radio and dialed through the entire bandwidth, searching for a news broadcast, a bulletin—anything. Nothing but static.
“Dammit!” he cursed.
How could this be happening? What could’ve caused it? How would it end?
Then another, more terrifying question entered his mind: had his mother known this was coming?
The idea chilled his blood. It would explain why she’d been so obsessed with seeing the lethal potential in everyday items. And if it were true, it would mean that she hadn’t been crazy. Maybe she possessed some sort of precognitive sixth sense that had forewarned her of this day without specifically identifying the threat. After this morning, such an idea didn’t seem so far fetched.
But vampire bags? Jesus!
He was still frozen on that topic when three large lawn bags slapped against the side of the car and windshield, startling him from his thoughts.
They slid around the seam of the glass and side panel, probing the door seal, searching for a way in.
He let off the brake and slammed on the gas, bringing the car up to speed. He planned on using the aerodynamic design of the vehicle to work in his favor and let the outside airflow blow the bags away. But they held on! He didn’t know how, but they clung tight to the door and windows, inching across the glass.
He went faster, entering another business district doing double the posted speed limit. The bag on the windshield, a black Hefty, was fanning itself out, trying to block his view of the road.