"I'm just curious about the stink."
"Oh. Well, the downdraft became an updraft shortly after sunset. We started noticing the odor about an hour later. It's almost unbearable at the edge."
"I thought I saw something fly out of there a few moments ago."
Margaret nodded. "There's been a few. We're toying with the idea of trying to net one, but we've got other concerns at the moment. We think they might be birds that flew in during the day. Maybe the smell is driving them out. But don't worry. The smell's not toxic."
"That's hard to believe."
"Believe it. We've checked it out eight ways from—"
Screams and shouts rose from behind them. They both turned. Jack saw a flock of bird-like things swarming in the air over the hole. No…not just swarming—swooping and diving at the people working along the perimeter.
"Oh, my God!" Margaret said and started running back toward the hole.
Jack kept pace. He wanted to get a closer look—but not too close. Those birds appeared to be going crazy, like something out of the Hitchcock movie.
Only they weren't birds. Jack realized that when they got to within fifty yards of the hole.
"Whoa!" he said, grabbing Margaret's arm. "I don't like the looks of this."
She pulled away.
"My reports! All my test data! They'll be ruined!"
Jack slowed his pace and hung back as she ran off toward one of the control tents. He stood in the shadows and tried to identify those things filling the air…more like insects than birds. They must have come out of the hole. He sure as hell hadn't seen anything like them around New York. Two kinds darting around on dragonfly wings, some with big, pendulous translucent sacks like water balloons filled with clear jello, looking too heavy and ungainly for flight, others that were mostly mouth, little more than giant, fanged jaws attached to lobster-sized, wasp-waisted bodies. Both had strips of neon-like dots along their flanks. They looked like those weird deep-sea fish that show up every so often in National Geographic, the ones from miles down where the sun never shines. Only these were right here in Central Park. And they were flying.
Screams of pain and terror drew his attention from the air to ground level. Suddenly everything was red in the false daylight of the lamps. Jack dropped to a frozen crouch when he saw what was happening along the periphery of the hole. The things weren't just buzzing the people stationed there, they were on the attack. People were scattering in all directions, swatting at the air like picnickers who'd disturbed a hornets' nest. But hornets would have been a blessing. The jawed things were like air-borne piranhas, swooping in, sinking their teeth into an arm, a leg, a neck, an abdomen, ripping a mouthful of flesh free, and then darting away. Blood spurted in all directions from a hundred wounds.
Amid the melee Jack saw a bald headed man go down kicking and screaming under a dozen jaw-things; a second dozen joined the first, and then more until they covered him like ants on a piece of candy. Instinctively, Jack stepped forward to help him, then stepped back. There was nothing he could do. He watched helplessly as the man's screaming and kicking stopped, but the feeding went on.
Jack turned, ready to head for the street, when he noticed a bloated, distorted, vaguely human shape stumbling through the shadows in his direction. It gave off hoarse, high-pitched, muffled noises as it approached, its arms outstretched, reaching for him. At first Jack thought it was another sort of monstrosity from the hole, but as it drew nearer he realized there was something familiar about the swatches of tan fabric visible on its legs.
The horror slammed into Jack like a truck. Margaret—from the Health Department. But what—?
The other things from the hole, the ones with the jello sacks—she was covered with them. Wings humming, sacks pulsating, a good thirty or forty of the creatures clung to every part of her body. Jack leapt to her side and began tearing at the things, grabbing them by their wings and ripping them off, starting with the pair that clung to her face. Her scream of agony tore through the night and Jack stared in horror at the bloody ruin of her face. There wasn't much left of it. It looked melted, or corroded by acid. Her cheeks were eaten away, so deeply on the right that Jack spotted the exposed white of a tooth poking through.
He stepped back and looked at the two creatures squirming and writhing in his grasp, raking at his hands with their tiny claws. Their sacks were no longer clear. They were red—with Margaret's blood. He hurled them to the ground and stomped on them, rupturing their sacks. Crimson mucous exploded, smoking where it splattered his pants and sneakers, eating through the fabric and bubbling the rubber. Jack danced away from the mess and turned back to Margaret.
She was gone. He looked around. She couldn't have got far. Then he saw her, a still form face-down on the grass. He crouched beside her. As he reached toward her, one of the sack things lifted off her back, leaving a bloody patch of exposed ribs, denuded of flesh and muscle, and fluttered toward Jack. He tried to bat it away but it latched onto his forearm like a lump of epoxy glue. And the pain! Scalding—like boiling acid poured on his skin. It took Jack by surprise and he shouted with the sudden agony. He ripped it off his arm and as it came free he felt a layer of his skin peel away.
The pain nearly drove him to his knees, but he straightened up when he saw one of the jawed creatures winging toward him. He swung the sack thing at it, right into its jagged-toothed maw. The pair left a trail of steaming red as they went down in a tangle and rolled along the grass.
Jack glanced back at the perimeter of the hole. Nothing moving there but flocks of jaws and sacks swarming in the air. Many of the sacks were blood red. As he watched, a new drove rose from the hole and circled for a moment, then massed into a rough V-formation and took off toward the east side like a flying arrowhead.
East! Gia and Vicky were on the East Side.
As the remaining creatures spread out, some heading Jack's way, he took one last look at Margaret. The sack things were still massed on her. She looked deflated, like a scarecrow with the stuffing pulled out.
Jack headed for the trees, removing his shirt and wrapping it around the raw patch on his left forearm. He spotted the lights of the Tavern-on-the-Green and veered in that direction. When he reached the driveway, he saw a cab pulling away from the entrance. He flagged it down and hopped in the back.
"Sutton Square—quick! And roll up your windows!"
The driver turned in his seat and stared at Jack's arm. He was a thin black with dreads and a thick island accent.
"What hoppen to you arm, mon? If you in trouble—"
Jack rolled up the window on his right and began to work furiously on the one to his left.
"Roll up your goddam windows!"
"Look, mon. You don't come into my cab and tell me—Hey!"
Jack had leaned over the front seat and was rolling up the window on the passenger side.
"Are you crazy, mon?"
Just then one of the jaw-things caromed off the taxi's hood and slammed against the windshield. It's crystalline teeth worked furiously against the glass, scoring it in a dozen places at a time. A windshield wiper got caught in its maw and was ripped off its base.
It took the driver only a second or two to roll up his window.
"In the name of God, what is that!
"I don't know," Jack said, slumping against the back seat and allowing himself to relax for a few seconds. "They came out of the hole—they're still coming out of the hole. The Park's loaded with them."
The jaw-thing continued its ferocious, mindless chewing at the windshield, trying to get through it. The driver stared at it in mute shock.
Jack slapped the back of the front seat.