Creature (4 page)

“When I saw something like this in San Marcos last year, I thought it was so cute it would make me nauseated,” she said. Then she shrugged helplessly and her smile spread. “But here … well, don’t ask me what it is, but it seems just perfect.”

With Kelly running ahead, they went up the front steps and across the porch. Inside there was a small foyer, opening onto a den on one side and a living room on the other. Through the living room, enclosed by the round turret, was a sunny breakfast room, with a large kitchen that opened into a dining and family room behind it.

Upstairs, the turret contained a small sitting room for the master suite, plus three other bedrooms and two bathrooms. There were two fireplaces downstairs and another in the master bedroom. And although the house had seemed somewhat fussy and cluttered from the outside, inside, the rooms were bright and airy, and larger than Sharon would have thought possible. By the time they had finished inspecting the house and returned to the front porch, all her misgivings about the move had faded. She put her arms around Blake and squeezed him hard. “I love it,” she said. “The town’s beautiful, and the house is perfect. How long will we be here?”

Blake shrugged. “At least a couple of years,” he said. “Maybe five or six.” Then his eyes flicked away from Sharon and a slight frown creased his brow. She turned to see Mark pulling the cage of rabbits out of the back of the station wagon.

As if feeling his parents’ eyes on him, he turned and grinned happily. “Would you believe there’s already a hutch next to the garage?” he yelled. “Thanks, Dad!”

Sharon gazed up at her husband, her eyes reflecting her puzzlement. “I thought you didn’t want him to bring the rabbits.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Let’s go take a look.”

They followed Mark down the driveway and found him carefully transferring the rabbits from the cage into a perfectly constructed rabbit hutch that, quite obviously, had been finished only a day or two before their arrival. Chivas, his right forepaw quivering two inches above the ground, his tail held straight out, was gazing at the rabbits steadily, almost as if he were hoping one of them would escape so he could have the fun of capturing it and returning it to the hutch.

“I’ll be damned,” Blake breathed. “I never even mentioned the rabbits to anyone. How’d they know?” His expression cleared as the answer came to him. “Jerry,” he said. “Of course! Jerry remembered. He never forgets anything.” He reached out a hand and tousled his son’s curly mop of dark brown hair. “Or did you write to Robb and remind him?” he asked.

Mark glanced up from the hutch, the last of the rabbits still held gently in his hands. “Not me,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure you’d let me bring them till the last minute.” Then his own brows creased in a frown that was almost a perfect replication of his father’s. “Where
are
the Harrises?” he asked. “Weren’t they going to be here to meet us?”

“For that matter,” Sharon added, “where is
everybody?”

Blake looked curiously at his wife and for a moment wondered what she was talking about. Then he knew.

As they’d come into Silverdale and driven through the streets to their house, they hadn’t seen another car, or another person.

It was, he realized, as if they’d come into a ghost town.

   Elaine Harris sat in the grandstand of the Silverdale High School stadium, her husband on one side, her fifteen-year-old daughter Linda on the other. Below the stands, sitting on the bench while the offensive team took the field, was her son Robb. With only two more minutes left to play, and the Silverdale Wolverines winning the game by a score of 42-0, it didn’t appear that Robb would be playing anymore that afternoon. “Don’t you think we can go?” she asked Jerry, her eyes flicking nervously to her watch. “I promised Sharon we’d be there.”

Jerry shook his head, his eyes never leaving the field. “They might not even get here till after dinner,” he said. “Besides, how would it look? It’s the first game of the season, Robb’s playing, and I’m the head of the division.”

“Well, even in Silverdale that doesn’t quite make you the mayor,” Elaine observed dryly, though she kept her voice low enough so no one but Jerry would hear. She was aware that his job might just as well have made him the mayor, since practically everyone in town was dependent on TarrenTech in one way or another. If they didn’t work directly for the company, most of them provided services for those who did. And besides, even if he weren’t head of the R&D Division, he still might as well be thought of as Silverdale’s mayor since there wasn’t a soul in town who didn’t like her husband.

With a sigh she admitted to herself that he was right—the least they could do was stay till the end of the game. Resisting her impulse to glance at her watch once again, she shifted her slightly overweight body into a more comfortable position on the hard bench and turned her attention to the field, where the Wolverines, in possession of the ball, were poised on their own thirty-yard line. And knowing the team as well as she did, she decided it might just be worth watching. Phil Collins always liked his boys to keep up their drive till the final seconds ran out. It wouldn’t surprise her at all if the team scored yet again before it was all over.

And no one else in the stands—which held practically everyone in town—was showing any sign of leaving early. Jerry was right, as he usually was: There was no point in leaving now.

   On the field Jeff LaConner quickly outlined the play he had in mind, then clapped his hands to signal the end of the huddle. He trotted into his quarterback position as the rest of the team fell into their places along and behind the scrimmage line. He glanced at the Fairfield team and smiled to himself as they prepared themselves for what they were certain was going to be a passing play.

They were in for a surprise.

A moment later the center snapped the ball and Jeff faded
back, glancing around as if searching for a receiver. Then, tucking the ball under his arm, he ducked his head and charged the line.

Ahead of him the center and both guards had opened up a slot, and Jeff hurled himself toward it. To his left he sensed a flash of movement, but instead of dodging away from it, he threw himself toward it. He saw one of the Fairfield tackles tumble aside. Directly ahead two more Fairfield players were lunging at him, and he knew he was going down. But as one of the guards hurled himself at Jeff’s legs, Jeff twisted sharply then let himself collapse, dropping his full 220 pounds onto the much smaller frame of his opponent. Another of the Fairfield players dropped on top of him, and at the same time three of his own teammates joined in the melee. The whistle blew, and Jeff lay still, certain that he had gained at least seven yards on the play. A moment later the players began sorting themselves out and Jeff scrambled to his feet, leaving the ball where it lay.

The player from Fairfield, on whom Jeff had dropped at the moment he was tackled, lay still, and a gasp rose from the crowd. Jeff looked down for a moment, his brow creased into a frown, then dropped to his knees.

“Hey, you okay?”

There was no answer from the other boy, but Jeff could clearly see his open eyes through the bars of his helmet.

He stood up and waved to the Silverdale coach, but Phil Collins was already shouting for a stretcher team. From the other side of the field Bob Jenkins, the Fairfield coach, was racing toward him from the sidelines.

“I saw that!” Jenkins yelled as he dropped to his knees next to his injured player. “For Christ’s sake—he had you! You didn’t have to drop on him like that!”

Jeff stared at the Fairfield coach. “I didn’t do anything,” he protested. “All I did was try to get away from him.”

Jenkins only glared at him, then turned his attention to the boy, who still lay unmoving on the ground. “You okay, Ramirez?”

The boy said nothing, and then the stretcher team was there. Two boys from Silverdale started to reach out for the fallen guard, but Jenkins stopped them. “Don’t touch him,” he said. “I want a doctor. I want to know what’s wrong with him before he’s moved.”

“We’ve got a doctor right here, and there’s an ambulance on its way,” Phil Collins said, dropping down onto the grass next to Jenkins. “Can you tell if anything’s broken?”

“How the hell do I know?” Jenkins demanded, his angry eyes fixing on the Silverdale coach. “I’m gonna file a complaint this time, Collins. And I want that player on the bench for the rest of the season.”

“Now, cool off, Bob,” Collins replied. His fingers began running gently over the injured boy’s legs, searching for a break, but he found none. “Your boy’s going to be okay. Things like this happen all the time—.”

Jenkins seemed about to say something else, but before he could speak, a soft moan drifted from the lips of the boy on the ground, and for the moment the argument was forgotten.

   “Is he all right?” Charlotte LaConner asked. She was standing up in the grandstands, shading her eyes against the late afternoon sun as she struggled to see what was happening on the field. In the row in front of her Elaine Harris turned and smiled encouragingly.

“He’ll be fine,” Elaine replied. “He just wound up on the bottom of the heap, and Jeff knocked the breath out of him.”

Charlotte opened her mouth to say something else, then changed her mind. The truth of the matter, she knew, was that she just didn’t like football. But in Silverdale that was the next thing to treason, and she’d long since learned to go to the games and cheer the home team on. Not that they needed much cheering, since the Silverdale team was one of the best in the state. Last year, in fact, the team had wound
up in the state finals and lost by only a single point to a team from Denver.

But why did the game have to be so rough? That’s what she didn’t understand. It all seemed so pointless to her. All she’d ever been able to make of it was two tides of humanity moving up and down the field in a series of plays that she failed to comprehend, much less enjoy. Still, Jeff loved the game, and since he’d become the quarterback last year, her husband had become almost a fanatic. Even she had to admit there wasn’t much else to do in Silverdale, so it was easy to understand why the whole town always turned out for the games, particularly since the team was very nearly certain to win. Indeed, she sometimes wondered if the town was so fanatic because the Wolverines were so good or if the team was so good because the town was so crazy about the game. But, it was a violent, dangerous game, and the clash of bodies on the field sometimes made her shudder. Now, as an ambulance came onto the field, her attention shifted back to the boy who still lay inert on the grass.

It wasn’t just that he got the wind knocked out of him—they wouldn’t have called an ambulance for that. When Jeff fell on him, he must have gotten seriously hurt. Without thinking, she squeezed hard on her husband’s hand, and Chuck LaConner, knowing what was in her mind, returned the gesture.

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he assured her. “It’s just the breaks of the game, and you’ve got to get used to it.”

But Charlotte shook her head. “I’ll never get used to it,” she replied. “Can’t we leave now?”

Chuck stared at her as if she’d spoken in a foreign language. “Leave? Honey, it’s the first game of the year, and your son’s the star. How can you want to leave?”

“But it’s over, isn’t it?”

“Still a minute and a half to go,” he told her with an affectionate grin. “They stopped the clock at the end of the play. Look.”

Charlotte gazed out at the field, and sure enough, the
injured boy had been put into the ambulance. As the ambulance left, the crowd shouted out a cheer for the fallen player. Then, almost as if nothing had happened, the two teams took up their positions for the final plays of the game.

On the last play Jeff LaConner hurled a forty-yard pass for a final touchdown, and was carried off the field on his teammates’ shoulders as Silverdale’s supporters, their cheers a roar, rushed down from the bleachers to congratulate their heroes.

In the stands Jeff’s mother remained frozen in place. What, she wondered, counted for more? The fact that Silverdale had won? Or the fact that one of the Fairfield boys was now in the hospital?

It was Elaine Harris who finally provided her with the answer. “What are you doing still up here?” she asked, smiling broadly at Charlotte. “It’s Jeff’s big moment. Go down and congratulate him!”

With Chuck shouting happily and half pulling her through the crowd, Charlotte went down to tell her son how proud she was of him.

Except that she wasn’t really sure she was all that proud.

   “How do you do it?” Elaine Harris asked Sharon Tanner an hour later. The two women were alone in the Tanners’ kitchen, searching through a box of towels clearly marked
EVERYDAY CHINA,
in the vain hope of finding coffee cups. Their husbands were in the living room, already discussing business, and Mark had taken Linda Harris outside to show her the rabbit hutch, with Kelly tagging along. Robb had not yet shown up, having gone out with the rest of the team for a celebratory hamburger in violation of their training diets. “You don’t look a day older than you did three years ago,” she went on, eyeing Sharon’s svelte figure with undisguised envy. “And I suppose your hair’s still its natural color, too, isn’t it?”

Sharon chuckled. “As natural as it ever was. Nobody has natural auburn hair, and you know it. And you haven’t changed either.”

Elaine shrugged amiably and patted her hips. “If you call twenty extra pounds ‘not changing,’ I thank you. But I decided that if Jerry doesn’t care, I don’t either, so I eat what I want, and the hell with it.” Then her expression turned serious. “Mark hasn’t changed either, has he,” she said, almost tentatively.

Sharon hesitated only a second, then shook her head, but her gaze shifted toward the window. By the garage, Mark was standing next to Linda Harris. Even Linda, who was not a big girl, was an inch taller. “But we’re still hoping he’ll do some growing,” she said with forced cheerfulness, “and you can believe he’s hoping so, too. What about Robb?”

Elaine grinned. “You won’t recognize him. Six-foot-one, with shoulders a yard wide.”