Her hands were trembling as she gripped the steering wheel of the Durango, pulled slowly away, and swung the vehicle around toward the gravel road leading away from the house.
Simon had said he was taking another shorter route to get to the Jeffersons’. Emily scanned the trees ahead of her for any hint of a turnoff as she slowly advanced along the same road they had left along earlier; the darkness was repulsed by the SUV’s high beams. She had been too focused on keeping the big vehicle on the road when they had first traveled this road, speeding away from the creature. Now she saw the turnoff, a gravel path leading into the woods to her left. She turned on to it and accelerated gently up to twenty, still nervous and unsure of her driving ability but more concerned with the way the hand tremors had turned into a case of the full-on shakes.
The children sat quietly in the backseat; Rhiannon stared directly ahead and Ben cuddled up to Thor. The dog’s head rested in the boy’s lap.
Shock. Disbelief. Horror. Each time Emily glanced in the mirror above her head, she would see a new emotion on one of the children’s faces. If things had been normal and something of this emotional magnitude had occurred, there would be people to turn to, experts to help. Someone would know how to deal with the turmoil these kids were about to experience. Emily had no idea how to handle their feelings. God! She was only now beginning to get a grip on her own. What was she expected to do? She couldn’t stop, couldn’t hole up with them and try and explain what had happened. A storm was coming. A storm unlike any other ever experienced on this world. What was she supposed to do?
The trees disappeared, and Emily found herself bumping over a graveled road that followed the contour of the ridgeline; in the distance she could see the glow of the lights she had left on in the house to help guide them back.
She focused on those lights as they grew closer and brighter; this must have been how sailors felt. Lost on the sea, with only the stars to guide them until they found the light of some distant port to lead them back to safety.
She had to prioritize. There had been more orbs hanging from that tree, unopened; each one would contain one more of the creature she had just killed. They could be out there now, waiting, watching. Commander Mulligan had said they had twenty-four hours maximum before the storm caught up with them if they stayed here. The choice was obvious, she supposed, she had to get the kids out now and run. Right now. Run to anywhere that was not here.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emily drove all night and into the next day, stopping only when the children complained they needed a bathroom break, then ushering them back into the vehicle and speeding away again. That evening, exhausted and barely able to focus on the road ahead, Emily had finally pulled the SUV over to the side of the road.
They spent the night in the vehicle, camped in the breakdown lane of Route 90. Emily had tried to sleep, but the occasional whimper from one of the children and a pounding headache had all but ensured she got little rest.
Emily woke in the morning to the storm Commander Mulligan had warned them about—it had arrived with a vengeance. The sky ahead was masked by normal clouds. But the sky behind them was choked with red and pregnant with foreboding. The storm had already consumed most of the eastern horizon. Thick tendrils stretched across the sky ahead of a main bank of billowing red that filled an entire third of the visible eastern hemisphere from horizon to horizon. An occasional flash of lightning lit up the interior, illuminating the clouds with thick bands of white light.
With the children still sleeping, Emily pulled the Durango away from the shoulder and headed northwest. They had been silent for most of the headlong flight out of Stuyvesant, the mock disdain and sniping between the siblings forgotten as Rhiannon had silently consoled her brother, cradling him in her arms.
Clots of alien trees lay in almost every direction Emily looked as she cruised up the freeway. These weren’t the half-finished variety, either; they were fully constructed and already giving off a red fog of dust that hung above the skyline like smog, scintillating in the early morning light. It was almost as if the construction had sped up in anticipation of the approaching storm. Here and there, along the tree-lined grass embankments on either side of the road, Emily would spot stretches of red where the indigenous foliage had been converted to something not of this world.
They had plenty of supplies—despite her fear, Emily had circled back to Simon’s house before they’d left. She’d thrown boxes and boxes of food into the back of the Durango, along with the children’s bags. But there were other worries. The SUV was down to under half a tank of gas. Emily had no idea how much they had started out with, and she wasn’t sure how far what was left would get them. She was keeping her speed down to fifty, but even so, the needle on the fuel gauge quickly slipped sufficiently close to the quarter-tank mark that she decided now would be as good a time as any to start looking for gas. If she could fill the tank up, that should give them enough to get them close to Flint, Michigan, their next major goal.
A few minutes later, she spotted a Hilton Garden Inn ahead. Perfect. She hung a right at the next junction and pulled around back of the roadside inn. There were a couple of cars parked in the back lot, but otherwise the building looked empty. She was sure the kids would appreciate using the facilities despite the fact there was no water; kids appreciated their privacy. She followed the driveway around to the front of the building and pulled up outside the entranceway. There were a couple more vehicles parked in random spaces out front, and she could see the occasional evidence that the inn had not been empty when the red rain struck; she counted seven windows that had near-perfect circles cut through their glass.
She surveyed the terrain through the window of the SUV—it looked clear—then turned off the engine.
Emily undid her seat belt and turned to face the children, feeling the bones in her stiff back pop as she twisted. Rhiannon was already awake, but Ben was still asleep.
“Are we staying here tonight?” the girl asked, looking out at the hotel.
Emily had intended to try to get a couple more hours of driving in before calling it quits, but the storm was now just a distant collar of red around the eastern horizon, and this seemed like the perfect place to spend the night. Besides, Ben did not look right to her. His face looked puffy around the eyes, and he looked paler than when they had first set off that morning.
“Sure,” she replied. “Looks nice, doesn’t it? How’s your brother doing back there?”
Rhiannon gave her brother’s shoulder a gentle shake. His eyes fluttered open—they were a little bloodshot, Emily noted—and swept around the interior of the SUV as if unsure of where he was before finally settling on Emily. She gave him a broad smile. “How you doing there, kiddo?”
“I wanna go home,” he croaked, his lips dry and cracked.
“I know you do. I know. But we’re going to spend the night at this motel, and then, in the morning, we’ll talk some more, okay?”
Ben nodded from behind a pout.
They found a room on the second floor. With the power out, the electronic locks had all automatically failed to the locked position, but they lucked out. The room they would spend the night in had been occupied. Whoever had been staying there had died and transformed into one of the spider-aliens, but instead of chewing through the window, it had exited through the front door. The hole it left was large enough for Emily to reach through and use the internal handle to open the locked door.