CREEPERS (4 page)

Chapter 13

They stood in front of a workbench looking at a small planter filled with potting soil. Fletcher picked up a graduated beaker, placed his thumb over the end of the glass pipe that was sitting inside, removed it, and held it over the planter. He lifted his thumb. Three drops fell from the tip of the siphon, moistening the soil below.

The results were breathtaking.

As the first drop made contact with the soil, there was an astounding transformation. The barren planter instantly turned bright green with a fuzzy layer of new growth. A few seconds after that, shoots emerged. And moments later, the entire planter was filled with
six-inch blades of grass!

Sam just stared, awestruck, not saying anything.

And then, just as quickly as the new growth appeared, it began to wither and die.

“Isn’t that fantastic? Isn’t that the most fantastic thing you’ve ever seen?” Fletcher’s eyes twinkled with delight as he held up the beaker of clear fluid. “Guess what this is?”

“Rogaine?”

“
Ordinary tap water!
Just three drops—and
pow!
Isn’t it fantastic?”

“Yeah, really great, Doc.” Sam patted him on the back. “But I don’t think there’s going to be a huge demand for lawns that grow a foot a day and then immediately die.”

“No, no, no—you’re missing the point, my boy.” Fletcher returned the beaker to the bench. “This was just a stepping stone. See, I rewired the biology of this ordinary fescue—sort of hotwired its genetic code.”

Fletcher walked over to where he’d left the scotch, grabbed the bottle, poured two fingers into a glass, and held it out to Sam.

“You want a drink?”

“No thanks, Doc. I don’t want any of this to start making sense.”

Fletcher shrugged, took a gulp of scotch, then pointed toward the now completely brown planter. “Anyway, as it turned out, fescue was the wrong choice. Couldn’t tolerate the hyper-growth. I began experimenting with all types of grains and grasses, and came up with nothing.”

Fletcher took another belt of scotch, emptying the glass.

“Then I had a breakthrough. I found a particularly resilient subtropical vine that proved the perfect choice. Nature had left its genetic backdoor wide open. Reengineering its genetic code proved a snap.”

He grabbed the scotch, poured another slug, then held the bottle out, offering it to Sam. “18-year-old stuff. Sure you don’t want some?”

Sam held up a hand. “No thanks, Doc, I’m good.”

Fletcher plunked the bottle down and moved to a sink. Then he retrieved a creeper vine clipping and held it out to Sam. “Here…”

Sam took the clipping, eyeing it with skepticism.

“A Fletcher Creeper. Plant it out at your place. It’ll be a test.”

“A test?”

“Oh, just one thing—and this is important—don’t plant it near a steady source of water. It grows like a weed. Could be a real dickens to get rid of. The biology of this thing is still in its infancy. It seems to be mutating, evolving on its own.”

“You sure about this? You sure we should be messing around with it?” Sam asked, turning the vine over in his hand. “Planting it around…
fooling Mother Nature?
”

“Yes. Positive. Not a problem. Don’t worry. If you think about it, we’re living in the middle of a giant sterile lab.” He swept a hand through the air. “Basically, this place is just one big hotel lobby ashtray. Besides, I was down at Nguyen’s Place. Gave clippings to everyone. The whole town is in on the fun.”

Sam held the clipping up to his eyes, examining the stalk and scaly-looking leaves. “It’s covered with little thorns.”

“Yes, I’m painfully aware of that,” Fletcher said, glancing down at his sore fingertips. “It’s something I plan to breed out of the vine. Fletcher Creeper 2.0 won’t have them.”

Sam gave him a direct look, then said, “Hmm… just like my dates, huh?”

Fletcher suddenly remembered. “
Your dates!
Any luck with the last batch of grafts?”

“Full of seeds,” Sam said with a frown.

“Well... no one’s perfect.”

“
What?
”

“Just kidding,” Fletcher laughed. “Just kidding, my boy.”

“Well, I hope so…” Sam said, caught off guard by Fletcher’s breezy tone.
Doc had promised he could do it.

“Don’t worry, son…” He reached over, giving Sam a fatherly pat on the back. “Next week I’ll have a new set of grafts ready to go. Trust me, we’ll solve this.”

Darwin swooped over and landed on Fletcher’s shoulder, nibbling and nudging his ear. Fletcher reached up and scratched Darwin’s neck, then moved to the bench, grabbed the scotch, raised the bottle and said, “Now, how about that drink?”

Chapter 14

Even with both windows down, Laura felt like she was about to melt from the heat. She watched through the windshield as heat waves bent and distorted the blacktop like a funhouse mirror.

She had left the gas station over an hour ago, and still no sign of anything that looked like the Furnace Valley turnoff. She glanced over at the map, lifted it, dropped it back on the seat.
Useless.

Where was that sign?

Where was that truck?!

And then she saw the eighteen-wheeler out the right side of her windshield, the midday sun flashing off its massive stainless steel tank. Two minutes later, she pulled to a stop alongside it.

It was just like the mechanic said—stuck in the sand.
Really stuck
. About twenty yards off the road and mired up to its axles in loose sand. It was a perfectly straight section of highway. The driver must’ve been telling the truth when he said he fell asleep.

It was going to take a crane to get it back on the road
.

There was a brightly painted logo on the side of the tank—green and yellow—and the company name looked like it started with the letter R, but from Laura’s angle, she couldn’t quite read it.

Up ahead on her left, just past where the truck went off the road, was a pocked and sandblasted sign. She strained forward and could just make out the words:

Furnace Valley 20 Miles, Summer Population 16, Winter Population 150, No Outlet.

At the bottom of the sign an arrow pointed to a lonely-looking dirt road that wound up and disappeared over a small rise, then appeared again as it wound up the face of Furnace Mountain.

Laura pulled the Civic forward until she was even with the sign and then stopped. She stared at the turnoff, letting her eyes trace along the uneven dirt road.
More of a Jeep trail than a road,
she thought.

Did she really want to do this?

* * *

A loud
crunching
filled the Honda’s cabin as she swung onto the dirt road. Everything inside the car instantly began to rattle and shake.

She maneuvered the Civic up the small rise—and just as she crested the hill, she had to slam on her brakes and swerve, narrowly missing a fallen stand of cactus. The Honda skidded, but she managed to keep all four tires on the road. When the dust settled, another sign came into view, nailed to a slanting fencepost:

CAUTION—SUBSTANDARD ROAD

Laura shook her head as she read the sign and said to herself,
Ya think?

Chapter 15

With Darwin on his shoulder and the bottle of scotch clutched in his hand, Fletcher stepped off the porch. As he walked to the pond, he broke into a favorite childhood rhyme:

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile,

He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

He finished the rhyme and laughed at himself for remembering it. Darwin called out with an approving
squawk
.

“You like that one, Darwin? Maybe I’ll have to add a new line about a little crooked bird with a little crooked squawk.” Fletcher looked up at Darwin. “What do you think about that?”

Darwin answered with another squawk.

Fletcher stepped up to the reservoir, placed the bottle at the edge, and called to Darwin, “How about a little birdbath?”

Darwin knew the drill. With a series of squawks, he leapt into the air and landed on top of the nearby nursery, keeping a safe distance from the water—and Fletcher’s bath hour.

Fletcher placed a foot on top of a valve handle. Then, using it as a step, he boosted himself up. Just as he was about to drop into the pond, his foot skidded across the spoke wheel, cracking the valve open.

A moment later, at the base of the pond, water began to trickle out of a drainpipe.

Fletcher regained his footing, threw a leg up and over the side and splashed into the water, not bothering to remove his T-shirt, shorts, or even his tennis shoes.

Chapter 16

The Cadillac Escalade smashed through the wooden gate, reducing it to kindling, and sent the no trespassing sign wobbling through the air like a misshapen Frisbee.

The front of Frankie Desouza’s SUV had been outfitted with one of those cowcatchers—a matrix of heavy metal tubes bolted to the front bumper.
Made smashing through things a breeze.

Frankie had even coughed up the extra dough to have the thing chromed, telling the dealer, “
Of course I want it chromed. It’s a Cadillac, for Christ’s sake
.”

The only reason Frankie even thought to get a cowcatcher was the deer he slammed into seven months ago while making a speed run to Los Angeles. It happened last year on a hot summer night, no traffic, when Frankie was really pushing it to get to the coast.

He was going over ninety when he hit the deer.
Big fucking mule deer
was how Frankie told it.
Caught the thing right in the chest. Dumb fucking animal, just standing there, not moving.

The impact was so violent that it severed the fully grown buck’s head, driving its eight-point rack right through the Escalade’s hood. Frankie was shaken up but unhurt.
The airbag saving the scumbag from smashing his face into the steering wheel.

When Frankie staggered out of his car, he knew he’d hit a deer but hadn’t got a good look at exactly how big it was. When he saw the buck’s head sticking out from his car’s hood, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Some fucking hood ornament
.

Frankie began to laugh.
Wait till Sonny and Tony and Big Jackie D get a load of this.
It was a great big belly laugh that echoed through the desert night.
What stupid fucking luck.
“Fucking matchsticks,” Frankie said, glancing in the side mirror at the smashed gate.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Frankie’s driver laughed.

“The guy’s loaded. Millions in the bank—and he puts up a balsawood gate.”

“Yeah,” the driver said. “What a cheapskate.”

“With that kind of money, you think the guy would’ve done something nice in wrought iron. Something ornamental.”

“The guy’s a bum. No class. Just look at the dump he lives in.”

Frankie thought about that, then grunted, “Go figure.”

The driver looked over. “Hey, boss… you think I should stop, see if we got any wood stuck in the grill?”

“
No
. I don’t think we should stop and see if there’s any wood stuck in the grill. Just keep driving.
And watch the fucking road!
”

“Sure. Okay, boss,” the driver said, gripping the steering wheel at the defensive
ten and two
position.

Frankie stared out at the desert. “When we get back to town, have the car detailed.”

Chapter 17

“Ah, this is the life, eh Darwin?” Fletcher pushed off the side of the pond and floated over to the bottle of scotch. He took a drink and slipped it back onto the cement rim.

Darwin raised his head, then waggled his beak approvingly.

“Here we are in our own private swimming hole, enjoying cocktail hour, doing the laundry and bathing all in one fell poop. Correction, Darwin. Make that—
one fell swoop
.”

Darwin tilted his head and gave Doc a confused look.

Fletcher splashed water at the macaw and said, “Come on Darwin, sing along…” And then he broke into a favorite ditty.

“We have a little garden, a garden of our own,

And every day we water there the seeds that we have sown,

We love our little garden, and tend it with such care,

You will not find a faded leaf or blighted blossom there.”

* * *

At the base of the pond, a rivulet of water flowed away from the open valve, snaking across the sand and disappearing beneath a greenhouse wall. Inside, the atmosphere was thick and breathless. All was quiet except for the
tick tick tick
of dripping water.

The rivulet coursed through the lath house, winding across the floor, past a palm, around a stand of bamboo and disappeared directly beneath the Fletcher’s creeper vine, feeding its roots.

Something was different now…

The creeper vine.

It had doubled in size!
It was a now a giant throbbing green mass.

Closer in, surrounding the creeper, a more delicate sound could be heard—like a hatchling breaching its shell, or a chrysalis splitting in two.

It was the sound of growth.

Unbridled.

Insatiable.

Alien.

It was as if some freaky form of time-lapse photography had been projected onto the creeper vine, making it look like a Hollywood special effect.

Leaves opened and spread apart, drinking in the sunlight. Streamers rose, snaking out in all directions. Medusa-like tendrils danced in the air like jellyfish tentacles caught in an ocean current.

With each drop of water, the creeper grew and grew and grew.

It spread through the nursery—a thirsty predator choking and killing other plants—unable to slake its bottomless thirst.

At the back of the lath house, a jackrabbit flushed. It shot across the floor, zigzagging for the exit.

High above, close to the nursery’s ceiling, there was a sudden movement. A flash of green. A whistling sound. And then something swirled through the air.

A creeper stalk.

It dove downward, whipsawing from above like a striking snake—and fell on the rabbit, coiling around its body like a steel spring.

The rabbit screamed and kicked, unable to free itself from the creeper’s grip. The stalk constricted again, adding coil after deadly coil.

The rabbit pumped its legs. Then its eyes bulged. And then its body convulsed and fell quiet as the creeper patiently smothered its prey.

A short while later, the tip of the tendril loosened, freeing itself from the rabbit’s body. It rose straight into the air, bobbing and weaving like a charmed cobra. Then without warning, it struck down—and like a straw being driven into a soda cup’s lid, it plunged into the rabbit’s neck.

If you’d been there, with your ear pressed close to the rabbit, you would’ve heard a tiny sucking sound as the fluids were drained from its body.