Drawn by the gunfire, more tendrils appeared, crawling up over the edge. Sandy emptied her Glock at them and only attracted more. She didn’t bother trying to put the handgun back in its holster and dropped it, feeling around her belt.
She found the Taser, fired at a tentacle at her feet. The limbs twitched for a second, then shrugged it off and crawled closer. She realized she couldn’t reload a new cartridge with one hand and dropped the Taser. That left the Mace.
She pulled it out and spun, finger frozen just above the trigger. The dugout was now completely surrounded. Beyond the grasping, clawing tendrils wriggling onto the roof, she could see hundreds more, all swarming closer. Her hand shook. She didn’t want to turn around and look at the tree where Kevin waited. She hoped he couldn’t see what was about to happen.
She abruptly reversed the can of Mace and sprayed her legs, moved up to her stomach and back. It started to sputter and hiss air so she tried to get the remnants into her hair. She was grateful that she wore the gas mask.
The tendrils shrank back at first, but then hunger overcame the stench of the Mace and they crawled even closer. They came up from everywhere.
Sandy tried not to scream.
A pair of headlights burst upon her as a tow truck roared through the parking lot, towing an old tanker trailer. Holes the size of golf balls had been blown in its sides, and some kind of liquid was spilling out, spraying the outside of the truck and at least six feet into the air on each side. It smelled like bleach and dried kale. The truck whipped around and jerked to a stop near the dugout, splashing the chemical everywhere.
The tendrils shrank away.
“Run!” Charlie shouted from the driver’s seat of Axel’s garage tow truck. Sandy jumped off the dugout and went to her knees in the liquid. It seeped into her cuts and burned. She threw herself into the front seat and Charlie hit the gas, slipping and sliding through the mud. Once in the outfield, he did his best to run over the tendrils, crunching the arms and legs under the wheels.
The whole time, liquid continued to spray from the tanker trailer. If any part of the tendrils touched the liquid, they would immediately shed that part and pull away.
Charlie drove over the outfield fence and pulled around the trees in a tight loop. He kept going, circling around and around, creating a kind of soggy DMZ, free of the tendrils.
Eventually, Axel climbed down out of the tree with his shotgun and blasted the closest tendril into three pieces. Purcell followed and got close enough to the smaller chunks and put one or two well-placed rounds into the center, leaving the limbs to mindlessly twitch in the grass.
Sandy yelled out of her window at Kevin. “Don’t you dare come down until I come get you.”
Charlie pulled close to the base of the tree and everybody piled into the back of the tow truck. Kevin helped Puffing Bill down onto the roof first, saying, “Once I helped him up the first couple of branches, he climbed like he was part squirrel.”
Sandy pulled off her own mask and put it on her son. She knew it was probably too late to make a difference, but didn’t think it would hurt. Then she pulled him tight. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks. Puffing Bill sat quietly and leaned into her.
They heard the distant sound of helicopters. After a moment, though, the noise faded and was gone. She said, “We should go.”
Purcell knocked on the roof. “You waiting for them to come back? Move it.” Everyone in the back arranged themselves around the large boom and got comfortable.
Charlie pulled away, and they dragged the old, leaking tanker back through the town, following his original path through town. It was easy to see; he’d left a swath of broken limbs and ash-like decaying tendrils.
“That’s your pesticide,” Sandy said to Purcell. “From your barn.”
Purcell nodded. “But I wasn’t using it in the fields. No, no. I emptied all my fertilizer and pesticide into that tank so I could show ’em the empty containers for the certification. Thing is, you know how expensive it is to dispose of all that shit? Figured I’d find someplace safe for all of it.”
Sandy gave him a look.
Purcell drew back, pretending to be insulted. “What do you take me for? You think I’m gonna pour that crap in the nearest ditch? No, I woulda found a good spot for it. Like in Beverly Hills. Someplace in Hollywood at least. Get folks’ attention.”
She fiddled with her radio, spinning through the different channels. Occasionally, she caught glimmers of the conversation between the helicopter pilots and three or four agencies vying for control of the situation. It sounded like the helicopter pilots were reluctant to go back through the town.
Once she heard, “…not prepared for that kind of armed response…”
“Roger that.” The creeping fuzz of static obscured the rest. Then, “…subjects will be neutralized as soon as quarantine measures are finalized.”
They listened, but couldn’t hear anything else.
“They’re coming back,” Sandy said.
Purcell was quiet for a while. “Might be. Might not. Thinking they woulda been through here by now, if they were coming back. Something else is going on.”
They stopped by the Korner Kafe, out where the streets were clear and empty. No tendrils were visible. They left the tow truck and the tanker trailer in the middle of the highway and everybody piled into the Suburban. Charlie got in behind the wheel and they rolled out of town in the gray light of predawn.
THURSDAY, JULY 5th
CHAPTER 26
Charlie could see lights flashing ahead and yelled through the back window. “It’s a roadblock.”
“Slow down. But don’t stop. Keep going. We stop, we may not get going again,” Purcell said.
“It’s a roadblock, I’m telling you. We have to stop.”
“Keep going.” Purcell made it clear that he wasn’t arguing.
Interstate 72 waited ahead, with four on- and off-ramps curving between the expressway and Highway 67. The highway on both sides of the expressway had been blocked off with blinking sawhorses and concrete barriers. New lanes of traffic had been marked with traffic cones. A number of military vehicles waited under the overpass.
Despite Purcell’s order, Charlie pulled up and stopped.
They couldn’t see anything moving. The vehicles were empty. Everyone had disappeared.
A radio squawked from one of the Humvees. “Station thirteen, come in. Come in station thirteen.”
Sandy turned her gaze to the cornfields that surrounded them. The green stalks almost glowed in the morning light. The effect made her think of the field as a vast emerald ocean, and predators lurked in the depths.
Purcell felt her unease. “We should keep moving.”
Charlie pulled through the checkpoint. He eased the Suburban to the right, following the on-ramp as it curled around to head east on I-72. The expressway was empty. Billows of black smoke roiled across the road.
Nobody said anything.
Sandy looked to the north, back to Parker’s Mill. Smaller wisps of black smoke still smoldered in the town itself.
Then, something else. A gray cloud, erupting like ash from a volcano, rose into the pale blue sky. It twisted and swirled, almost as if it was alive. Sandy took Kevin’s hand and leaned forward. She tapped Charlie’s shoulder and pointed at the ominous gray cloud. “Drive faster.”
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