“Glory!” Howard shouted.
“Oh, God, I’m glad you’re alive,” came Glory’s voice. “I thought… Oh, my God!”
“Glory, turn the headlamps on,” Howard instructed in a steady voice.
As the specks of light rapidly closed on them, they heard a click and the headlights switched on, lancing through the darkness like a flash of lightning. In the twin beams, which shone blindingly bright to Howard and Lovecraft, they saw what lay behind the multitude of tiny lights: animals-large and small, predator and prey-all moving like automatons slowly toward the car. They were unnaturally silent; not a squeak or a hiss or a growl issued from them; the only sound, like the dry scratching of leaves, was the noise they made stalking, scrabbling, slithering across the dry earth. It seemed to echo in the distance, growing subtly louder each second.
The two men moved slowly, lest they trigger something in the animals, and they eased toward the car. “Roll the windows up,” Howard said to Glory. “Make sure the doors are shut. Do you know how to drive?”
“Yes,” came the reply.
“Crawl into the front and—” Suddenly the distant sounds were upon them-not at all the echoes of the terrestrial beasts, but the fleshy fluttering of wings. The thunderous chaos descended upon them first, and then, before they could respond, the air was full of black shadows darting madly, changing direction in mid-flight; and now they could hear the occasional cricket like shriek of the bats as they sounded out their targets and swooped to attack. Howard, in his hat, swatted more in annoyance than fear at the bats, but Lovecraft shrieked in almost the same pitch as he flailed his arms, not knowing whether to protect his face or the top of his head. As they clawed at the doors, the Chevy’s engine fired up, and in the momentary reprieve as the vibrations frightened the bats, Lovecraft and Howard leaped in.
“Drive!” said Howard, contorted in the front seat, feeling the top of his head to confirm it was his hat and not an animal there.
Glory threw the gearshift into first and turned the car toward the road, the headlights swinging in a wide arc that illuminated an unbelievable array of desert animals in their circumference. Just as they began to gain speed there was a sudden lurch, then a strong jolt as the rear of the car tilted at an odd angle and the headlights shone up, askew, into the dusty night. Howard began to curse their luck, but his voice was drowned out almost immediately by all manner of bumps and scratches against the car as the first wave of animals reached them en massé. They could hardly see through the front windshield, now obscured by the fleshy, membranous wings of bats that pressed themselves there, drooling, their thick saliva dripping down the glass.
The larger animals began hurling themselves against the windows. Coyotes leaped against the glass so hard they could see it bend almost imperceptibly against their weight. At the rear right window, in the corner where Lovecraft cowered with his hands over his ears, some small rodent had managed to gnaw through the rubber seal and now tried to claw its way in. When Lovecraft saw it he took the only weapon he had readily at hand-his pencil-and poked at the animal until he felt it stop moving. He drew the pencil stub back in and nearly retched when he saw it dripping red, but then he screwed up his courage and used it to jab again and again until it broke. He fumbled through his satchel, trying to find the stone dagger he knew was in it, but in his haste he resorted next to his pen.
Howard had once been inside a tin shack during a hailstorm, in a rattling, thunderous chaos of echoing collisions; he felt the same way now with the animals hurling themselves at the car. In the hailstorm he had merely waited until the stones had stopped falling and the echoes had quieted in his ears before walking out into the fresh smelling desert. He wondered how long this attack could last. It was a mere annoyance, after all. What could these small desert animals do to them in the safety of the car? Whatever force was causing their strange behavior had also dulled their natural instincts, and they seemed to have lost their animal quickness. In the worst case, Howard expected he would be trapped until the heat of day made the beasts retreat into the shade or back under the rocks from which they had crawled, and then he would have to save the car. “HP,” he said, “don’t use your flashlight unless you really got to. Don’t want to run out of juice. I think we should shut the engine off to save our gas, too.”
Lovecraft shined the beam against the windshield again at the thickening ooze of bat saliva dripping there. The sounds had diminished now, probably because the entire car was covered in animals, which muffled the assault of others. Lovecraft shut the beam off. “What shall we do?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Please,” said Glory, “you can’t shut the headlights off. I’ll go mad in the dark. How will we know if anything gets in?”
“A rat or lizard ain’t gonna kill us,” said Howard. “Just gotta be careful of snakes, though I don’t know how they’d get in.”
Glory closed her eyes and began to pray silently. She tried to control her breath to avoid breathing the rank air in the car. It would only get fouler as the night drew on. “Please,” she said again, “you have to get us out of here.”
“What is it, HP? You think all they want’s the doohickey of yours?”
“Undoubtedly. But even if we surrendered it, they would surely devour us. Cthulhu has no regard for men.”
“That’s what I woulda guessed. Get ready for a long and sweaty night, folks. It’s gonna get mighty hot and sticky in here with all them varmints outside.” He reached past Glory and shut the ignition off, and then the headlights, suddenly leaving them in a thick gloom.
“Oh, God,” Glory said out loud. “I feel like I’m in a cheese box with rats gnawing their way through.”
“Look, Glory, if it gets desperate, I’ll step out and get us out of the hole. It just ain’t a very pleasant thought at the moment.” Howard leaned back against the passenger-side door, unfazed by the vermin pressed against the glass. He could hear the muffled wheezing and rustling sounds, the occasional tap of a claw against glass, the annoying vibration of rodent teeth gnawing at metal.
Lovecraft shivered in revulsion as he occasionally poked his pen at the space in the window, each time meeting fleshy resistance, sometimes hearing a tiny squeal of pain. He did not know if he could last the night without losing his mind.
There was a loud thump on the hood-something so heavy they felt it throughout the car. They heard scrabbling noises, as if the smaller animals were getting out of the way, and then a bloodcurdling scream. The thing that had jumped on the hood was so heavy that it tilted the vehicle back to its horizontal position.
“What was that?” said Glory. Lovecraft was silent.
“I got a bad feelin’ about this one,” Howard mumbled, flicking on his flashlight. He pointed the beam at the windshield, and through the distortion of the bat saliva, he saw an earth-colored feline form. A cougar, he thought. The only desert animal that might have the strength to smash the glass of the car. “I gotta shoot this one,” Howard announced. “I’m openin’ the window here a crack, so you two get ready to block anything that tries to come in. Ready?”
There was another loud shriek, and they saw the cougar batting smaller animals aside as it stalked up to the windshield, attracted by the light. Its eyes flashed like red embers in its skull, and its fangs, even in the dim light, looked like stalactites in its cavernous mouth.