Invaders From Mars (15 page)

He was gone.

The sand leveled, smoothed, and became still. It looked as if it had never been disturbed.

David and Linda stared open-mouthed at the pit for a long, silent moment. Then Linda grabbed David’s shoulder firmly and began pulling him back the way they had come.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said tremulously.

“Where are we going?” David asked as they got into the car.

“To a phone,” Linda said breathlessly, starting the engine. With her hands gripping the wheel hard, she turned to David. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “David, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For . . . not believing you. Something horrible
is
happening. It may not be what you think, but something’s wrong.” She jerked the gearshift and drove over the bumpy ground toward the paved road.

“What are we going to—” David swallowed his words as Linda slammed on the brakes. The car lurched to a halt in a cloud of dust.

As if from nowhere, the W. C. Menzies Elementary School bus rumbled before them, speeding down the road with Mrs. McKeltch at the wheel, hunched forward, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set.

Time seemed to slow down for David as he watched the bus drive by in a kind of slow motion. Mrs. McKeltch did not see them; she kept her eyes on the road, her neck straight and stiff. The bus was full of students, their faces in profile in the windows, familiar and yet . . . David realized with a sickening feeling that they were not really his classmates, his friends, not anymore. Eyes forward, mouths closed, they sat rigidly in their seats; there was no activity, there were no smiles. Although he was in Linda’s car, David knew that, inside, the filled bus was silent as a tomb. And then he spotted Doug.

“Doug!” David screamed, throwing himself forward in the seat, clutching the dashboard desperately. “Doug, no!”

His best friend sat stiffly by the window, his mouth a firm, straight line; he was not talking, he was not laughing.

They had Doug.

“Oh, Jesus,” Linda groaned painfully as the bus disappeared.

David did not hear her. He was trying hard not to cry, trying to hold back the tears that came from knowing he was the only one left. Mrs. McKeltch had taken them all. That could only mean that she’d want him even more now.

“What are we going to do?” David whispered, his voice raspy.

“We’re going to get help.”

Linda waited a moment, giving the bus a chance to get well ahead of them, then she pulled onto the road, kicking up dirt behind her.

“Who’re you gonna call?” David asked.

“The state police. They’re probably the safest bet.”

“But what if . . .” David took a deep breath and swallowed hard.

“I know what you’re thinking, and that’s a definite possibility. We’ll just have to be careful and take our chances, won’t we?”

He nodded silently, wiping his eyes. David felt a pain unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t like twisting an ankle in kick ball. It wasn’t like falling off a bike and getting skinned up. It eclipsed the biting pain in his knee. This pain was deep; it came from the very center of him, churning around inside him like a volcano on the brink of eruption. Tears came, but as a reaction, not a release. This was a pain for which there was no balm, no pill, no cure.

“Doug,” he began, a sob hitching in his throat. “Doug was my best friend.”

Linda looked over at him and lifted her foot from the pedal slightly, making the speeding car slow a bit. She reached over and took his hand, holding it tightly in hers.

“I know, David,” she said, her voice soothing. “But . . . as cold as it sounds . . . we can’t think about that now. We have to do something so this won’t happen to anyone else—whatever it is.”

Needing desperately to be close to someone, David slid over in the seat and Linda put her arm around him. He pressed his face into her shoulder. She felt warm and soft and he let his tears flow freely, realizing suddenly that she might be all he had left in the world.

“I’m scared,” he spoke into her shoulder.

“I know, David. So am I.”

In town, Linda pulled into a Taco Bell parking lot, turned off the ignition, and grabbed her purse.

“You stay here,” she said. “I’ll be right over there at the pay phone. I won’t be long.” Opening the door, she started to get out, then stopped and turned back to him. “Duck down. Stay out of sight.” She slammed the door and headed for the pay phone, fishing through her purse for change.

David watched her as she hurried across the parking lot. His tears were gone, but the pain was not. It ate away at him insistently, like a vulture tearing the flesh from a corpse.

It was warm inside the car and as he slinked down in the seat, he cranked the window down, letting in the gentle, cooling breeze. He considered turning on the radio, but thought better of it; he didn’t want to attract any attention. He closed his eyes and leaned back his head, trying to relax, trying to calm his jagged nerves. It felt good, the warm sun on his face, his arms limp at his sides, his eyes closed, locking his mind in a soothing blackness speckled with spots of dark color . . .

As if from a great distance, David heard something pull into the parking lot . . . a truck maybe.

It stopped, its engine idled.

Footsteps . . .

Silence for a while, with just the breeze, the sunlight, and the darkness in his head.

The warmth suddenly disappeared as someone stepped up to the door. Thinking Linda had come back, David opened his eyes as a hand shot through the open window and gripped his collar, jerking him against the door.

“You missed the field trip, David Gardiner!” Mrs. McKeltch hissed, her prunish lips wriggling around her yellow teeth, her eyes narrow pits, the sunlight shining through stray wisps of her hair.

Panic shot through David like a jolt of electricity and he pulled away from her grasp, momentarily surprised when he succeeded. He threw himself behind the wheel and fumbled with the door handle as Mrs. McKeltch’s feet clumped heavily on the pavement. David got the door open as she stormed around the front of the car, her hands reaching out for him. He didn’t bother to close the door, he just tried to run.

She grabbed his shoulders and lifted him off the ground; his legs kicked out before him as he struggled within her powerful arms.

“You get an F for the day,” she grunted through clenched teeth, dragging him toward the bus.

David spotted Doug standing in the open door of the bus, one hand on the rail, the other at his side; he wore that same sickly expression David had seen on his own dad’s face. For a moment, David became limp in Mrs. McKeltch’s hold.

“C’mon, David,” Doug said quietly, “stop fighting.”

“No!”
David snapped, kicking back with both feet, feeling his heels dig into Mrs. McKeltch’s shins. She did not let go, but she loosened her grip just enough for David to wrench himself from her arms. He landed on his feet and started running.

“Stop!” Mrs. McKeltch commanded.

He ignored her, running frantically into an alley between the Taco Bell and a self-service laundry. Pain burned like fire through his leg and his injured knee seemed to turn into putty. He tumbled over the pavement, slamming into a dumpster and landing on his back just in time to open his eyes and see Mrs. McKeltch bearing down on him like a truck with a sinister, steely grin . . .

Linda punched the number of the state police for the third time and once again heard the warped, piercing tone followed by a mechanical female voice: “We’re sorry. All circuits are busy now. Please hang up and try your—”

Linda slammed the receiver down so hard, the pay phone made a faint ring.

“Shit!” she spat, closing her eyes and rubbing them hard with her thumb and forefinger. A headache was beginning to pound in her head, gently now, like a distant drumbeat, but she knew it would get worse.

When she lowered her eyelids, they became movie screens, replaying the image of that school bus roaring by, filled with children sitting oddly still, their faces rigid and almost lifeless, Mrs. McKeltch at the helm with fire in her eyes.

What had she done to the children? What was happening in Willowbrook? Linda assumed it had something to do with the military, having seen those two NASA men disappear into the sand—another frightening image that played over and over in her head. If that was the case, the possibilities were terrifying. But she prayed there was some kind of perfectly benign explanation to everything.

She couldn’t think about it anymore. She grabbed the receiver and angrily hit the buttons with her thumb.

The tone again, then the voice: “We’re sorry. All circuits are—”

“Damn!”
She jerked the door open and stepped out of the narrow, confined booth and took a deep breath of fresh air.

Looking up at the Taco Bell sign, Linda considered getting a bite to eat. Maybe David was hungry. The poor kid’s stomach was probably a disaster.

Heading for the car, she saw that David was keeping himself well hidden. The seats looked empty. Then she saw the school bus and stopped in her tracks. Its door was open. Children sat silently in their seats, eyes forward.

Mrs. McKeltch was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, Christ,
David!”
she called, breaking into a run, dreading what she might see. When she found the car empty, she could barely contain her scream.

David began to crawl sideways away from Mrs. McKeltch, face up, moving like a crab over the pavement. The skin of his palms and elbows burned with cuts and scrapes.

Mrs. McKeltch was getting closer, blanketing him with a long, broad shadow. Her lips pulled back over her stained teeth, reminding David, for a moment, of a snarling attack dog. Her thick legs got bigger as she neared, looking like trees rooted in her black shoes, her wrinkled brown stockings clinging to the trunks like bark.

At the last possible instant, David rolled over on his hands and knees and began running even before he was standing. He rounded the corner of a building, hearing her pounding feet behind him, gaining . . . gaining . . .

Pedestrians looked at him with alarm and annoyance as he dodged them, racing toward the corner.

Where’s Linda?
his mind screamed.
Why isn’t she helping me?

David stole a glance over his shoulder to see how close Mrs. McKeltch was.

She was gone.

Suspicious, he slowed to a jog, then a fast walk, looking again to make sure he hadn’t just missed her.

She’s afraid to be seen chasing a kid,
he thought with relief.

He pressed on, trying not to look suspicious, trying not to pant too loudly. His face began to feel hot; pain sliced through his knee as well as his hands and elbows. He tried to ignore the pain, though. He trained his eye on the corner up ahead—it was getting closer and closer—tried to concentrate on it hard and use it to bury the feeling of pebbles under his kneecap. He hoped to find Linda around that corner, pulling out of the Taco Bell parking lot.

Instead he found Doug.

David froze at the corner. Doug was walking toward him, but didn’t see him yet. He was looking, though, searching the sidewalk, looking this way and that, his eyes squinting in the sun. David was suddenly struck with an unwanted memory, a memory that hurt worse than the pain in his knee. He thought of a game he and Doug played a lot last summer, before school started. Pretending they were secret agents, they would walk through town, through shopping centers, searching for foreign spies. They would scan the pedestrians and shoppers and make up stories about them, creating elaborate backgrounds for the ones who stood out, who looked unusual. This one was from Russia where he’d spent years preparing himself for life in America, learning how to speak perfectly, dress perfectly, learning how to blend in without suspicion, without detection. But the front had not been perfect enough because David and Doug had spotted him; they could see through the façade, and they knew he was the enemy. That one was from Germany and he was secretly working toward the rebirth of the Nazi party; he followed the commands of Hitler’s brain, which had been kept alive since the war. But the boys knew what he was up to.

The game had been fun then, but now it had been corrupted, perverted. The game was real and Doug was the enemy. He spotted David. His fists clenched and he began taking broader and faster steps toward him.

Limping back around the corner, David returned the way he’d come, hoping to go back through the alley and find Linda still in the lot. When he ducked into the narrow passage between the buildings, he came face to face with Mrs. McKeltch.

She smiled her dirty smile and hurried toward him.

David backed out of the alley, turned to his right—Doug was still coming, advancing quickly, his jaw set, eyes shrouded by a frown—then to his left. A policeman was marching toward him, his neck rigid, sunlight glinting off his badge.

Fear pounded in David’s head in sync with his pain. The only thing left was to run into the street.

David whirled around as Linda’s white Mustang convertible lurched to a halt at the curb. She leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door, shouting, “Get in, David,
get in!”

David leaped at the car and threw himself inside. Linda began pulling onto the road before David was able to turn around and close the door; he nearly fell out of the car as he reached for it.

He sprawled in the seat for several moments, gasping to catch his breath, a fine shimmer of perspiration covering his face and making his shirt cling to his neck.

“Did ya call the—the state police?” he asked, gulping air.

“The lines were all busy,” Linda said, sounding angry, frustrated, and worried. She glanced rapidly at David several times. “Are you all right?”

He nodded jerkily, licking his lips.

“Okay,” Linda said, as if she were forming a plan. “I think there’s a place we can hide while we call the FBI. A place they won’t think to check.”

“The FBI? What about the—”

“Yes, the FBI. Whatever’s happening is too big for the police.
Much
too big.”

Mrs. McKeltch watched the car speed recklessly down the main street of town. The drivers of other cars honked their horns and made obscene hand gestures. She paid them no attention, however; her eyes were locked on the white Mustang, and they narrowed as the car drove farther away and screeched around a corner, sped down a side street, out of sight.