“If I could come to a logical conclusion about why someone would take those things to the Patch, I would most certainly tell you.”
“I’ll take a stab at it, then,” Titouan said. “If someone brought those things to the Patch, that probably means they have some control over them. If they have control over them, then they probably had something to do with why they are the way they are. There is a military base here in Barrow. Maybe it was an experiment gone wrong. Maybe the military was rounding them up?”
Avery wasn’t convinced. “We are talking about genetic alteration on a grand scale.”
“It’s an Air Force, forward radar base, guys. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be doing experiments like that there,” I said.
“Yeah, and Roswell Airforce Base was only used to teach people how to fly,” Titouan said.
Even in the dim light, I could see Avery’s eyes grow large with surprise and maybe even approval. “One issue with what you said, Titouan. It is Walker Airforce Base. There was no—”
“I thank I done woke up to another nightmare. Like I woke up in a damn cold-ass, stinky fuckin room, filled with three-damned George Norrys. You all might as well go ta sleep. I’ll take the watch,” Sam said, still lying on his side on the tarp. “’Cause ’is ol’ boy ain’t goin back ta sleep.”
Of all people, Titouan asked, “What about the Patch?”
“We just got to hope you nerds are wrong and stick with our plan of goin to Miley’s,” Sam said.
“Miley’s is the plan. It always has been. If he’s not there, we round up whatever vehicles we can find, and we bust ass back to the Patch and get them,” I said.
“And take them where?” Titouan asked.
“All we can take is one step at a time,” I said. “We’re going to be winging a fair amount of this crap, I’m afraid.”
I had just finished my sentence when another round of gunfire erupted. A whole shit load of it, and it was much closer than the previous shots.
“That’s damn close, boys,” Sam said.
There was a brief pause in the gunfire, followed by shouts, in a language none of us understood, from what sounded like a very agitated woman maybe a block away.
Sam and I shared mortified glances before he uttered, “The fuck?”
Thoughts swirled around my mind. Before that, we hadn’t seen or heard a fully functional person since arriving in Barrow. For the briefest of moments, I was hopeful. As unlikely as it seemed, maybe this woman was with Barrow Police or more unlikely the military.
Tish, suddenly aroused from her stupor, got up to look out the window. Someone screaming stopped her in her tracks. I waved her back to her seat. She offered no resistance.
Another round of gunfire erupted again, near Miley’s, followed directly with sounds I couldn’t readily identify. The flood of auditory offerings had bottlenecked my ability to fully process what I was hearing. The abject terror I felt didn’t exactly foster clarity of thinking, either.
Avery muttered one word. “Grays.”
The sound of hundreds of footfalls navigated my bustling auditory system, telling me Avery was right. The materializing silhouettes coming quickly into view completely dashed any remanence of hope I might’ve had. “Shit,” I whispered.
The ghastly procession headed on a crash course that ran parallel with our slapdash shelter. The first couple Grays I saw were good runners. They sped past, without any hesitation. They were on a mission. What came next was a hodgepodge of Grays. Some of them walked relatively normal, while most of them jerked and palsied their way towards the same location the fast runners headed. A couple of the Grays wondered a little too close for comfort but nothing other than a few hard sniffs in our direction came of it.
Relieved but completely exhausted and deflated, I fell hard on my ass. The others whispered fearful utterances. I didn’t need to explain what I saw. They knew. Jesus, I thought. This is bad.
Things quickly got worse. Way worse. Something scraped at the side of the building. The corrugated aluminum siding vibrated against my back, as the object scraped and scratched at it. In concert with the scraping was the sound of feet compacting deep, untrodden snow mixed with the occasional snort.
I struggled to get my breathing right. I closed my eyes and counted, but that did little to assuage my difficulty. Fuck it, I thought. Go out with a fight. I stood and pressed my face hard against the side of the frosted-over window, trying to get a glimpse of what was making the noise. It was like a punch to my gut when I saw it. A Gray, no more than a few feet from the window, scraped the side of the building with a large butcher knife.
For an instant I lost control of my ability to stand. I fell at the speed of gravity, my ass again smacking hard concrete, as the earth came rushing up to meet it. I made way too much noise when my back smacked the wall, followed by my head. I managed to stay conscious, but my breathing was in overdrive. The night went quiet.
The moonlight shining in the window cast a shadow, of the menace, directly in front of me. I turned to face the others, their eyes large with fear, their bodies ridged with panic: both that I would die right there of a heart attack, and also because there was a Gray who was smart enough not to be drawn away by the gunfire like the others had. What he wanted was inside the shed.
I heard what I thought was the sound of plastic wrap being crinkled. Then I realized it was the sound of flexing pane of glass above me. The window pane began spider webbing as he applied more and more pressure. There was a brief silence before the window exploded inwards, shards of glass shooting across the inside of the building, and a fair amount falling on me.
He stuck his head in, sniffed, and grunted. Avery whimpered loudly. Sam grabbed his face and pulled it close to his. “Be quiet boy,” he hissed. The Gray snorted hard in Sam and Avery’s direction, slamming something into the side of the building, as he removed his head from inside.
Sam released Avery’s head and slowly moved towards the rifled that leaned against the wall.
I grew dizzy from the rapidity of my shallow pants. I needed to control my breathing.
Once the Gray figured out he couldn’t get in through the window, he began to move away. Momentarily, I thought he had left. He was eerily quiet. The respite of silence ended when the scraping started anew. This time in the eastern side of the building. He was walking around the damn building, I thought.
Titouan panicked. “What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?” He repeated.
“Shut up, damn you,” Sam said, in what couldn’t ever be misconstrued as a whisper.
The scraping sound neared the still locked entrance. With a thud, the Gray threw his weight into it: once, then twice, and finally three times before quitting. Avery began to repeat something under his breath. A prayer, I thought. At least he was whispering during his mental breakdown.
I had managed not to pass out. I was in semi-control of my breathing.
The scraping began again and terminated too damn close to the unlocked door. There was a pause. An incredibly long pause. Then, without warning, the Gray smashed through the door, his momentum making him fall hard against the concrete floor. Damn he was fast. He was on his feet in less than a few seconds and ready to attack.
“Shoot him, dammit,” I said.
Click.
“Oh shit, son,” was all Sam could get out before the Gray was on him.
Sam held the Gray at bay with the gun between them. The Gray snapped his teeth and flailed the knife wildly and, lucky for Sam, inaccurately. Sam grunted as he pitched the Gray to his left. He was free of the attacker, but Avery gained one, thanks to his proximity to Sam during the attack.