Empire Of Salt (19 page)

Patrick shifted to make himself more comfortable. His hangover had all but disappeared. He knew he shouldn't be seeing what he was seeing. If they were to catch him, there was no telling what would happen. The feeling both thrilled and terrified him.

The three men continued toward the opening. They held the net between them, as if preparing to capture a wild animal. The halogen lights on their helmets came on, revealing something large retreating into the darkness of the trailer.

The two riflemen took positions on either side of the men with the net. After a moment of hesitation, the net was thrown at the creature hiding in the trailer, but it missed. As the men were retrieving the net, a creature burst forward and knocked one of them down, before fleeing back into the shadows.

The fallen man stood slowly, clearly shaken. His fellows, ready once more, feinted once, then threw the net deep into the shadows, and the one in the middle hauled on a rope and jerked it tight.

Something was struggling in the trailer, furiously straining and rolling until the strangers closed in on the net.

The lights were turned off and they headed back the way they'd come, directly towards Patrick's hiding place. He tried to squeeze further underneath the tank.

They came towards him in single file. The rifles came first, stocks firmly against their shoulders as the weapons swept back and forth along the street. Next came the two dragging the net. The thing inside writhed and struggled furiously. A third man held a rope extending from the net, keeping it taut. Last came the leader.

As the net was dragged past him, Patrick risked a glance. What he saw was nothing like what he'd expected. It was a man, or what had been a man. His mottled green skin was peeling away, revealing putrid gray flesh beneath. He looked dead, except for his eyes, which glowed an unearthly yellow. The thing groaned once as it passed Patrick, but thankfully the men in black weren't paying attention.

Patrick closed his eyes, desperate not to be discovered, and the footsteps faded in the distance. Patrick relaxed. All but the last man slipped over the seawall, presumably going for a boat. Once they were gone, the leader removed a rubber hood. He looked vaguely familiar, but from this distance, Patrick couldn't be sure. He took off his jacket as well, revealing a T-shirt beneath.

He began walking back towards Patrick, striding purposefully and whistling a sea shanty.

As he approached, Patrick recognized Hopkins. The man turned his head and looked right at Patrick as he passed, but didn't seem to see him. Patrick remained stock still, and Hopkins turned his head and continued on. Soon he was far down the street, the shanty echoing softly in the night.

Patrick pushed himself away from the tank and struggled to his feet, his legs leaden and crampy. As he shifted to get the blood back into them, he clicked the bottle against the tank. The sound rang through the night like the tolling of a bell. Patrick froze. How he'd maintained his grip on the bottle, he didn't know. He dropped it like it was poison and, without waiting to see if the noise drew anyone, rounded the burned-out trailer and ran, not stopping until he was home. The door was locked; he knocked once, then instantly regretted it. He stood at the door praying that he hadn't woken anyone.

Tomorrow morning he'd talk to his kids and tell them what he'd seen. He'd spent more than enough time feeling sorry for himself. Now he needed to act like a man, like a father. He needed to stop feeding his depression. Bottom line, he needed to stop drinking.

He stood and stared at the trailer for a long time, working through it all. After a while, he stumbled over to the restaurant and poked around the back, eventually finding a window that had been left open. He slept in a booth with his legs curled beneath him, dreaming of Hopkins and the green man in the net...

A Chevy Suburban rumbles down the street and stops at the front of the restaurant. Two men exit the SUV and kick open the front door, wood splintering and flying into the room. The men shine flashlights into the darkness until they find what they are looking for. They rush to Patrick, hit him, grab him, throw him into the backseat of the SUV and roar away.

When they hit him the second time the dream dissolves. Only he's no longer in the restaurant curled up comfortably on the booth. He's in the SUV with two masked men. Hopkins is behind the wheel, his eyes laughing at Patrick in the rearview mirror.

There was
no way
Natasha was going to get any sleep. She'd heard her father banging on the door and wasn't about to let him in. She was pissed at how he'd fallen so hard off the wagon. They needed him to be a dad right now, not a drunk.

He hadn't set the most perfect example growing up. The idea that he could go missing for a few days and then return as the perfect dad had always confused her. But as she grew older, she understood that her father had a problem; something was missing in his life and he continually tried to fill the emptiness with alcohol.

After she watched her father leave, she decided that she needed some fresh air, and went up on the roof to lay on one of the lounge chairs and stare at the stars. She tried to find sleep once more, but the quiet night was ruined by the roar of an SUV passing by the house doing at least eighty miles an hour. It raced towards sump pump #2, then down the access road to the desalination plant.

She shook her head. The first sign of life in this dead little town and it was someone late to work.

Natasha pulled a chair to the telescope, deciding to take in the town, just to see what she could see. Not that she was intent on spying on her neighbors, but it would be nice to observe someone having a normal life for a change, even in this second cousin to a normal town.

But not everything was normal.

She could make out the inside of the Romanian's home, his front room lit like a stage. He was passed out on the couch, fully clothed, a blow-up doll in his arms.

She could distinguish Veronica sitting on her couch and watching a late night movie in black and white.

On the other side of town, Kim Johnson stood on her rooftop porch completely naked. Cloaked only in moonlight and the warm salty air, her arms were open to the sky as if she were praying. Even from this distance Natasha could make out the tattoos covering the other woman's body. What had they said about her? She was a priest, or a reverend, or whatever they called the leader of the local church. She didn't say much, but she always seemed to be in the thick of things.

Lu Shu worked by a small lamp in his garage, repairing his nets. Natasha appraised the old man and wondered if he might be the right type for her Auntie Lin. She wasn't beyond matchmaking, especially for the old woman who'd been everything but a real mother to her. How interesting would it be to have an Auntie Lin and an Uncle Lu?

Natasha thought about this for a time as she looked in on every trailer within her vision. Here and there she saw signs of life but, for the most part, the town was asleep.

So she turned the telescope on the sea. First she scanned the shoreline to see if there was anything out of the ordinary. Try as she might, it was too far for her to really make out anything. The lights on the far shore were dim in the hot night haze. She knew that more people lived on the other bank than on this one. There'd actually been planned communities, laid out in parcels, bought and paid for, then left empty when the sea had begun to rot. How many hopes and dreams had been shattered because no one back in the 1950s had been able to foresee what would happen to a lake with no outlet?

She was about to pull away when the sea flashed a brilliant green for a split second. It happened so fast she wasn't even sure it had been real. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The sea flashed once more. This time she kept her eye against the eyepiece and saw a third and final flash. She remained fixed to the telescope for about a minute before she sat back and regarded the placid sea.

What had that been?

She leaned back in her chair. Everything had been so
odd
since she'd arrived.

Natasha slept for a time, but was woken by the sound of buses passing in the night. She peered through the telescope, her eyes bleary.

The moon illuminated two buses chugging slowly along the edge of town, down Isle of Palms Avenue and towards the access road to the plant, exactly like the ones she'd seen before. They crossed the quay and entered the plant through a gate. She recognized Hopkins standing there with a clipboard. He seemed impatient, speaking into a radio as he stared back down the access road.

Natasha followed his gaze. The seawall must be blocking his view of the highway, but she was able to see it just fine. Sure enough, there was one last bus, but it seemed to be having problems. Smoke billowed from the engine as it jerked and jolted forward; it stopped and started, with a great grinding of gears.

Like the others, the bus was an unmarked, uniform dark grey with tinted windows. That three busloads of people had come, in addition to the other two buses the night before, suggested that there was more going on at the desalination plant than anyone knew about.

She corrected that thought: more than anyone except the Mad Scientist knew about. Natasha was convinced that he knew what was going on. She would talk to him tomorrow morning, and bring Veronica and Derrick with her. That would be safest. What could one man do against all three of them?

The bus continued to limp forward in jerks and starts, passing sump pump #2 to the access road, where it coughed, choked, and finally died. Smoke poured from the engine.

The door opened and a man in camouflage fatigues jumped out and sprinted the two hundred yards to the waiting Hopkins. Shortly after the first man came another ten, twenty, then thirty men out of the bus; all dressed in uniforms and fleeing the bus. Each carried a dark green bag half his size, so their progress was much slower than the first one, who Natasha presumed was the driver. He was waving them on, urging them to follow him.

Why were they in such a hurry?

As if in answer to Natasha's question, man-shaped creatures surged from the water on the left side of the quay, scrambling up the embankment to the road to intercept the men. The driver looked like he was going to escape, but Hopkins closed the gate when he saw the creatures, locking it with an immense padlock and chain and flipping a switch on a nearby light pole.

Screams drew her attention back to the men from the bus. She squinted into the telescope to get a better look. The creatures moved fast, and all she could see was an arm here, a leg there, and brilliant yellow, glowing eyes.

She pulled back from the telescope, not believing what she was seeing.
Ohmygod
ohmygod
ohmygod
. Her heart beating in her throat, she again put her eye to the telescope.

She watched the hand-to-hand fighting. The soldiers seemed capable of defending themselves, kicking and punching accurately, but they had little or no effect. Each of them was overpowered and slammed to the ground, and the creatures followed them down, biting and gnawing...

Eating
.

Her stomach turned. Bile leaped into her throat.

A sizzling snap drew her attention to the fence around the desalination plant. The driver had tried to climb it and was now sparking and jerking as electricity ran through him. He finally fell to the ground, his body smoking.

When Natasha looked back at the creatures, they were drawing their victims back into the water. The soldiers were still struggling.

Within moments, it was all over.

The only thing left on the access road were the soldiers' bags and pools of blood.

Natasha realized she'd been holding her breath and released it, then gasped again.

One creature still remained. It stood in the bus's headlights, head cocked as if listening for something.

Then she noticed the soldier huddled behind the bus. He looked terrified, his hands covering his face. Even from where she stood, she could tell he was shaking. Her heart went out to him. She desperately wanted him to escape.

The creature approached the bus. Its wrinkled skin was mottled green, and black hair lay lank against a balding skull. The nails of its hand were long and malformed. It was bare-chested, but tattered and ruined pants covered its crotch down to its knees and it wore black boots.

The soldier scooted to the left side of the bus and seemed about to peer around to see if anything was coming.

The creature came around the same side and Natasha knew that if the soldier were to look, the creature would most certainly see him. She began to repeat to herself over and over: "Don't look. Don't Look. Don't look."

As if he had heard her, the soldier backed away, glanced upward and saw a pair of handholds on the engine access panel. He pulled himself onto the roof of the bus, where he lay perfectly flat and still.

The creature suddenly sprinted the length of the bus and rounded the corner to the back, but it stopped when it found nothing there. It cocked its head.

The sound of an air horn tore through the night, and the creature turned and sprinted for the water. It dove awkwardly, without using its arms, and was soon lost beneath the tide.

The soldier let himself down, grabbed his bag and headed towards the entrance to the quay. Sump pump #2 chose that moment to belch; both Natasha and the soldier jumped at the sound.