Oh my God, oh my God.
Kathleen dug around, searching for something, anything, her voice not crying out now, but breaking in her throat and coming out as a disjointed and pathetic whimpering.
Wait.
She felt something.
She gripped it.
Pat’s arm?
It felt about as big around as his lower forearm, though oddly soft and almost squishy. She yanked it up out of the muck and it was not Pat. It looked… covered in the black, dripping material… almost like an eel. It twisted and writhed in her hand.
She dropped it with a cry.
Then something bumped into her hip.
Kathleen pulled herself to her feet with the aid of the truck, leaving muddy handprints down its length as she escaped around the other side. She felt something brush against her boot. She stumbled to the porch, slipping and falling in the muck more than once.
She pulled herself up the steps.
She heard a slopping sound behind her.
Don’t look back there. Whatever you do, do not look behind you because you’ll see it—
Oblivious to her own good advice, she turned and saw the arched length of something about the size of a python rise from the mud sea and then submerge again. Like a shark showing its dorsal, she knew that whatever it was, it was coming for her now. Just as it had come for Pat.
9
Eva Jung lay in bed and waited for the end of the world the way she used to wait for Leonard to make love to her. It was a strange thing to think of and particularly now with Leonard having been gone all these years. But, maybe, as her final hour approached, it wasn’t that unusual for a woman’s heart to return to romance and things sweet and hot and long gone as the summers of her youth.
The years are leaves and they blow away one by one until there’s not a single one left in the yard.
Eva knew that the National Guard and police would never get to Pine Street. There were 5,000 people in Camberly and by the time they got organized and started rolling, it would be much too late for most everyone. She knew this because the sun was beginning to set and then it would be dark. And dark was when the monsters came out. She knew that very well. Maybe as an adult she had tried to pretend otherwise as all adults did… it was easier to sleep at night that way… but she’d always known it was true. Tonight, the monsters would get into every house and kill every man, woman, and child.
It would not be a dark night like the nights always were in the stories her mother told her as a child. No, the moon would be up, it would be luminous and fat and brilliant. The stars would be out, winking long-dead light like diamond chips.
The better to see you by, my dears. The better to eat you by.
Eva thought of her neighbors. She had heard many screams already and she would hear many more by the end of the night. But she would not listen. People would die horribly as she would die horribly and it would be none of her affair. Her neighbors avoided her and that was fine. She held no grudge over it. She was a woman, not quite old at fifty-three but certainly not young, who lived alone in a big wind-trembling house that creaked and rattled at night.
What would they say to her even if they were to talk to her?
How does it feel, Eva, to be all alone in that big house with nothing but yellow memories for company, your husband long dead, nothing to listen to but the screech of a hoot owl on the rooftop late at night? She was glad they didn’t talk to her so she wouldn’t have to answer that. Because if she did, she would have told them it was awful, simply awful to wake up at three in the morning and reach out for the strong shoulders of your husband and find only emptiness. It was awful to be lonely and listen to your own rising anguish as tears spilled hotly down your cheeks.
But tonight, she was not alone in her suffering.
The neighborhood suffered with her.
They would die together and perhaps, just maybe, be reborn into a better place that was free of suffering.
She listened to the muck flooding into her house and the slitherings of the monsters in the pipes. They would make themselves known soon and she would be waiting for them as she had once waited for Leonard. She would accept the death they brought with open arms because death was painful like love and true love was resurrection.
10
Two doors down from Eva Jung, Bertie Kalishek pulled off a Lark 100 and said, “Ah, that’s because you haven’t lived through the crap I have. You’re just a kid and you, my dear, do not know crap. Hell, you don’t even know what color it is or what it smells like.”
Donna Peppek sighed.
She was beginning to debate the logic of waiting this out with Bertie. Bertie was good for the most part. If you could get past the chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, and near constant reminiscing about older, better times. Some days Donna enjoyed her, some days she did not.
This was turning into one of those days.
Donna had gone over there because the idea of waiting this out alone was unthinkable. They kept saying on the radio that the National Guard were evacuating the town street by street, that everyone needed to sit quiet and wait. If there was a medical emergency, they were to call 911… but only if it was an emergency. Other than that, they advised staying out of the muck.
Don’t have to tell me twice, Donna thought.
Between the constant Emergency Broadcast System bulletins on the radio, Bertie’s grating voice, and the clouds of pungent smoke, Donna was getting a first-class headache.
You know you didn’t want to come over here. You wanted to go see Geno.
Which was exactly why she came to Bertie’s. The idea of being in the house with him and Ivy was simply too much. Donna had been avoiding Ivy in every way possible… something that wasn’t too hard given Ivy was practically a shut-in. But being in her house and having to talk with her and interact with her… no, that was just too much.
Maybe fucking her husband wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Donna sighed. The guilt, the guilt, the guilt. It haunted her constantly. Yet, for all of that, she could never say no when Geno stopped by. Now wasn’t that just something?
“…so you better believe me when I say I haven’t felt anything like this since,” Bertie said.
“Since when?” Donna said, realizing she had completely tuned her out.
“Since the Cuban missile crisis. I don’t think any of us that lived through it will ever forget it. We were god-awful close to doomsday. Awful close. Those were two long weeks for the world, I tell you.” Bertie butted her cigarette. “I remember it well. That’s when I stopped smoking L & M and switched to Lark. Been with ‘em ever since.”
To prove it, she fired up another.
“I hope they get here quick,” Donna said.
“Who?”
“The National Guard. I want to get out of here.”
Bertie laughed. “Don’t be naïve, honey. We won’t be first. Not over here. The Guard will start over on the north side, that’s where all the rich yahoos live. They’ll get to us, but I bet it won’t be for hours.”
Donna peered out the window at the rising muck. “We don’t have hours.”
“Sit down and have a beer.” Bertie popped a fresh one and toasted her with it. “Way I see it, if this is doomsday and we’re all going to die, piss on it, might as well face it drunk as sober.”
11
Playing possum.
That evil little motherfucker was playing possum.