‘Nineteen!’ Rachel and Blakie shouted together.
‘They say—’
‘I got it, Seventeen. And which car did they come in?’
‘Daddy’s Expundition!’ Blakie cried, happy to be of help.
‘Ford Expedition,’ Jimmy said. ‘Plate number three-seven-seven-two IY. I’m going to approach that station wagon.’
‘Copy. Be careful there, Jimmy.’
‘Copy that. Oh, and will you reach out to nine-one-one dispatch and tell her the kids are all right?’
‘Is that you talking or Pete Townshend?’
Very funny. ‘Seventeen, I’m sixty-two.’
He started to replace the mike, then handed it to Rachel. ‘If anything happens – anything bad – you push that button on the side and yell ‘Thirty.’ That means ‘Officer needs help.’ Have you got it?’
‘Yes, but you shouldn’t go near that car, Trooper Jimmy. It bites and it eats and it’s sticky.’
Blakie, who, in his wonder at being in an actual police car, had temporarily forgotten what had befallen his parents, now remembered and began to cry again. ‘I want Mommy n Daddy!’
In spite of the weirdness and potential danger of the situation, Rachel Lussier’s eye-rolling you see what I have to deal with expression almost made Jimmy laugh. How many times had he seen that exact same expression on the face of five-year-old Ellen Golding?
‘Listen, Rachel,’ Jimmy said, ‘I know you’re scared, but you’re safe in here, and I have to do my job. If your parents are in that car, we don’t want them hurt, do we?’
‘GO GET MOMMY N DADDY, TROOPER JIMMY!’ Blakie trumpeted. ‘WE DON’T WANT THEM HURRRT!’
Jimmy saw hope spark in the girl’s eyes, but not as much as he might have expected. Like Agent Mulder on the old X-Files show, she wanted to believe … but, like Mulder’s partner, Agent Scully, she couldn’t quite do it. What had these kids seen?
‘Be careful, Trooper Jimmy.’ She raised one finger. It was a schoolteacherly gesture made even more endearing by a slight tremble. ‘Don’t touch it.’
As Jimmy approached the station wagon, he drew his Glock service automatic but left the safety on. For the time being. Standing slightly south of the hanging door, he once again invited anyone inside to exit the vehicle, open and empty hands foremost. No one came out. He reached for the door, then remembered the little girl’s parting admonition, and hesitated. He reached out with the barrel of his gun to swing the door open. Only the door didn’t open, and the barrel of the pistol stuck fast. The thing was a glue-pot.
He was jerked forward, as if a powerful hand had gripped the Glock’s barrel and yanked. There was a second when he could have let go, but such an idea never even surfaced in his mind. One of the first things they taught you at the Academy after weapons issue was that you never let go of your sidearm. Never.
So he held on, and the car that had already eaten his gun now ate his hand. And his arm. The sun came out again, casting his diminishing shadow on the pavement. Somewhere, children were screaming.
The station wagon AFFIXES itself to the trooper, he thought. Now I know what she meant by stick—
Then the pain bloomed large and all thought ceased. There was time for one scream. Only one.
6. THE KIDS (’10 Richforth)
From where he was standing, seventy yards away, Pete saw it all. He saw the state trooper reach out with the barrel of his gun to open the station wagon’s door the rest of the way; he saw the barrel disappear into the door as if the whole car were nothing but an optical illusion; he saw the trooper jerk forward, his big gray hat tumbling from his head. Then the trooper was yanked through the door and only his hat was left, lying next to somebody’s cell phone. There was a pause, and then the car pulled into itself, like fingers into a fist. Next came the tennis-racquet-on-ball sound – pouck! – and the muddy clenched fist became a car again.
The little boy began to wail; the little girl was for some reason screaming thirty over and over again, like she thought it was a magic word J. K. Rowling had somehow left out of her Harry Potter books.
The back door of the police car opened. The kids got out. Both of them were crying their asses off, and Pete didn’t blame them. If he hadn’t been so stunned by what he’d just seen, he’d probably be crying himself. A nutty thought came to him: another swig or two of that vodka might improve this situation. It would help him be less afraid, and if he was less afraid, he might be able to figure out what the fuck he should do.
Meanwhile, the kids were backing away again. Pete had an idea they might panic and take to their heels at any second. He couldn’t let them do that; they’d run right into the road and get splatted by turnpike traffic.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Hey, you kids!’
When they turned to look at him – big, buggy eyes in pale faces – he waved and started walking toward them. As he did, the sun came out again, this time with authority.
The little boy started forward. The girl jerked him back. At first Pete thought she was afraid of him, then realized it was the car she was afraid of.
He made a circling gesture with his hand. ‘Walk around it! Walk around and come over here!’
They slipped through the guardrails on the left side of the ramp, giving the station wagon the widest berth possible, then cut across the parking lot. When they got to Pete, the little girl let go of her brother, sat down, and put her face in her hands. She had braids her mom had probably fixed for her. Looking at them and knowing the kid’s mother would never fix them for her again made Pete feel horrible.
The little boy looked up solemnly. ‘It ate Mommy n Daddy. It ate the horse lady and Trooper Jimmy, too. It’s going to eat everyone, I guess. It’s going to eat the world.’
If Pete Simmons had been twenty, he might have asked a lot of bullshit questions that didn’t matter. Because he was only half that age, and able to accept what he had just seen, he asked something simpler and more pertinent. ‘Hey little girl. Are more police coming? Is that why you were yelling “Thirty”?’
She dropped her hands and looked up at him. Her eyes were raw and red. ‘Yes, but Blakie’s right. It will eat them, too. I told Trooper Jimmy, but he didn’t believe me.’
Pete believed her, because he had seen. But she was right. The police wouldn’t believe. They would eventually, they’d have to, but maybe not before the monster car ate a bunch more of them.
‘I think it’s from space,’ he said. ‘Like on Doctor Who.’
‘Mommy n Daddy won’t let us watch that,’ the little boy told him. ‘They say it’s too scary. But this is scarier.’
‘It’s alive.’ Pete spoke more to himself than to them.
‘Duh,’ Rachel said, and gave a long, miserable sniffle.
The sun ducked briefly behind one of the unraveling clouds. When it came out again, an idea came with it. Pete had been hoping to show Normie Therriault and the rest of the Rip-Ass Raiders something that would amaze them enough to let him be part of their gang. Then George had given him a big-brother reality check: They’ve all seen that baby trick a thousand times.
Maybe so, but maybe that thing down there hadn’t seen it a thousand times. Or even once. Maybe they didn’t have magnifying glasses where it came from. Or sun, for that matter. He remembered a Doctor Who episode about a planet where it was dark all the time.
He could hear a siren in the distance. A cop was coming. A cop who wouldn’t believe anything little kids said, because as far as grown-ups were concerned, little kids were all full of shit.