Invaders From Mars (16 page)

In seconds, she was flanked by the policeman and the boy.

“Lost him again,” Mrs. McKeltch said. “Because of that . . . that
bitch.”
She pressed her lips together so tightly that she almost seemed to have no mouth. Her eyes were cold, silent accusations as she looked first at the officer, then at Doug. She pivoted and stalked down the alley. “Let’s finish with the others first,” she said as they followed her. “We’ll get the boy and the nurse eventually.”

The final light of day faded as Linda slipped her key into the lock of the school’s front entrance. Trembling, she twitched her head back and forth like a bird, looking for shadows, listening for sounds.

“Hurry!” David whispered, shuffling his feet nervously over the cement.

Linda had purposely taken the long way to the school, winding around the less traveled routes to avoid being seen. As she drove, David had remained silent, looking out at the lengthening shadows.

Trying to recover,
she’d thought, looking at him.
I’m afraid that’s gonna take a while.

Once inside, Linda closed the door carefully, not wanting to make any noise. But as they crept down the empty, cavernous corridors, she found that would be difficult. Their careful footsteps echoed like falling rocks in the stillness.

When they got to her office, she unlocked the door.

“No!” David croaked, grabbing her wrist as she reached for the light switch. “No lights.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re right.” The boy was sharp, even under pressure. She felt her way to the desk and the phone, then brushed her fingers over the buttons, feeling out 411.

“We’re sorry. All circuits are busy now. Please—”

“God damn it!” she barked, louder than she’d intended, hanging up the phone. “Even directory assistance is busy.”

David gasped softly in the darkness; it was the sound of a terrifying realization.

“Heather’s dad,” he breathed. “He must be messing with the lines.”

“Who?”

Before David could explain, the room was awash with white light. Headlights were sweeping the parking lot, shining through the window. Tires crunched to a stop outside.

Linda ducked and pulled David down with her, peering over the windowsill. “My God,” she groaned, “the police!”

C H A P T E R
Ten

T
he headlights blacked out; doors opened, then slammed.

Muffled footsteps.

Voices.

David watched Chief Ward and Officer Kenney approach the building with their flashlights shining before them. He prayed that they didn’t see Linda’s car.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” David said.

“How?”

“The back entrance. By the gym. C’mon.” He stood and took her hand.

In the hall they both walked on tiptoe, but their footsteps still echoed hollowly. Favoring his left leg, David still managed to stay a step or two ahead of Linda, who kept looking over her shoulder.

Behind them, they could hear the faint rattle of keys outside the front entrance . . . the turning of the lock . . . the opening of the door . . .

Linda squeezed his hand, as if to say,
They’re inside!

The policemen’s heels clacked on the hard floor as they came in and started down the hall. Any moment, they would round the corner and spot David and Linda hurrying away.

Ahead and to the right, David spotted a sign which he’d passed many times. In the darkness, it was only a haze of red and white, but he knew what it said:
BASEMENT
—
NO ADMITTANCE.

“This way!” he breathed, pulling Linda toward the door. He opened it and ushered her in, then cast a glance down the hall. Circles of light swept back and forth over the floor. He went through the door and pulled it shut.

They hurried down the concrete stairway until they came to a large metal sliding door. Grabbing the handle, David heaved it open with effort and let Linda through. Sliding it closed behind him, he turned and looked into the shadowy basement.

Total darkness was held back by a flickering ruddy glow that seeped between the doors of the two furnaces below. Dust hovered in the stuffy air. A metal staircase led to the basement floor with two small landings between the top and bottom. To the right, a catwalk stretched along three of the walls, ending in a descending ramp.

The boilers rumbled hungrily; something small and quick skittered over the cement floor.

They went down a few steps and stood on the first landing, pausing to listen for the policemen. Nothing yet. When they took another step, something clattered loudly.

Linda’s foot had kicked a length of copper pipe left on the landing. It rolled a few inches, then teetered on the edge of the step. Linda took in a sharp breath as she watched the pipe roll. For a moment, they were both paralyzed. David lifted his foot to step on the pipe, to prevent the racket that he knew it would make on the metal stairs.

He was too late.

The clatter echoed through the darkness, seeming to go on forever.

“Damn!” Linda rasped as they hurried to the floor.

“Over here!” David pulled her into a corner to their right. They huddled on a dirty old army cot in the corner, listening anxiously for footsteps overhead.

From their hiding place, David looked around the hazy basement. It was cluttered with the stuff of school life. A cardboard castle that had been used in a school play leaned against the brick wall. A rusty basketball hoop with no net lay atop a stack of old warped textbooks. Draped over a half-dozen plastic dairy crates was a bright red banner left over from a science show.

There were buckets and mops and brooms and rags, sponges that had become brittle and brushes that had lost their bristles. Taped to the side of a rusty old metal locker was a dog-eared picture of a half-naked woman. Two huge, wide furnaces dominated the basement, positioned side by side like two mumbling Buddhas. In the farthest corner, coal was piled beneath a chute.

What seemed to stand out—what caught David’s attention most—was the copper. There were a half-dozen barrels of copper tubing, pipes, rods. Copper . . . It plucked a string in David’s memory, but not hard enough. It wasn’t clear yet, but the copper was somehow significant . . .

Everywhere there was dust. It stung and tickled in David’s nostrils with each inhalation. He coughed a few times and pressed his palm over his mouth.

An eternity of waiting and wondering passed. Had the two men gone? Had they seen Linda’s car? Were more arriving?

“Jesus Christ,” Linda whispered. “This is what I get for moving to California.”

Her voice was childlike and tremulous. Guilt twisted in David’s belly; he felt responsible for getting her into this.

“It’s okay, Linda,” he assured her softly, wishing he could say more or do something to make her stop trembling beside him.

“It’s not okay! It’s . . . it’s ridiculous!”

She sounded angry, accusing. Was she doubting him? How could she after all that had happened? David said, “But you saw—”

“I don’t know
what
I saw anymore.” Her whispered voice was harsh and bitter, but no sooner were the words out than her arm was on David’s shoulders. “Oh, I’m sorry, David. I’m just . . . I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Linda.” He patted her hand, knowing well how she felt. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid. I’m
petrified!”

“Me, too.”

They pressed close together, taking refuge in one another’s warmth. Despite the stifling dust, David could smell Linda’s cinnamony perfume. It was comforting and . . . somehow . . . strange, though it seemed, considering their situation, the spicy scent was somehow exciting and, for a moment, he found that it had captured his full attention.

Then the door at the top of the stairs opened. Powerful beams of light shined down into the basement.

A voice: “It came from down here.”

It was Chief Ward.

Their feet clanked on the metal catwalk, slowly and cautiously.

David and Linda shrank back against the brick wall; David suddenly felt chilled to the bone despite the warmth of the furnaces.

The footsteps silenced.

“You hear that?” Kenney asked.

“What?”

David listened, but heard nothing at first. Then he felt it. It was very faint, a sort of soft buzz, but it began to get stronger, a bit louder, until it was a low growl that David could feel vibrating through the cot. It was something big, something moving fast and getting closer.

“The boiler?” the chief asked.

Hurrying to the stairs, Kenney said, “I don’t think so.” He and Chief Ward came down to the basement floor with their guns drawn.

It got louder and stronger, the vibrations humming through David’s skin and into his bones, through his skull. Linda clutched his arm, terrified. From the dark corner where they were hidden, David had a clear view of Chief Ward and Officer Kenney, their guns ready, flashlights slicing the dark.

“It’s the police,” the chief called.

The vibrations became a tremor . . .

“You can come out,” he said. “We’re here to help.”

In a pig’s eye,
David thought.

The brick walls began to quiver as Chief Ward shined the light on them suddenly, blinding David for a moment. The round man smiled and said, “Miss Magnuson. David Gardiner. We’ve been looking for you.”

David realized the vibration wasn’t coming from above or from outside, but from below—from deep beneath the basement floor.

“Chief,” Kenney said.

“Yeah?” He had to speak up because the rumbling was getting louder.

Gotta be ready to run,
David thought, squeezing Linda’s hand.
Something’s comin’!
He could almost feel the blood pounding through his veins.

Officer Kenney shined his light on the floor. A hairline crack was spreading over the concrete, getting longer and wider by the second.

The chief said, “Let’s get—”

A huge, domed head, gleaming and copper colored, tore through the concrete, spinning with deadly speed and force. Three amber eyes burned in the darkness, surrounded by bulging veins and curved blades that tapered to knifelike points protruded from its neck as it whirred loudly, madly swirling the dust in the air. Sharp ridges spiraled down its body like a giant screw.

The policemen screamed as they were thrown brutally upward, their arms and legs flailing. The blades silenced their cries. Skin tore silently; bones splintered with thick, heavy sounds; blood and flesh slapped onto the brick walls.

As the beast continued to rise, the two furnaces groaned metallically, torn from their foundations, belching fire. Great cracks crawled snakelike over the concrete, then blossomed like flowers, separating with solid crunching sounds. The metal supports beneath the stairs and catwalk quaked, then clanged as they began to collapse.

David watched the stairs tremble, knowing they were the only way out. He got to his feet, pulling Linda with him. Her face was white as a sheet, her jaw slack as she gawked at the creature. They stood against the wall, their hair blown by the force of the spinning blades.

David winced at the odor that suddenly filled the basement. It was the damp, pungent smell from the spaceship. He remembered the spiraled tunnel and realized how the creatures had dug through the earth: this thing had done it for them.

It craned its head as it rose and stared down at them with its three amber eyes, going higher and higher, its thick veins pulsing.

“Get ready!” David shouted.

“What?”

When it was high enough, David pulled hard on Linda’s arm. “Now!” he screamed. “Run,
run,
RUN!” Hopping over crumbling chunks of concrete, dodging the lifeless and gored body of Chief Ward, David shot toward the stairs, praying that Linda would keep up. He flew up the stairs; they swayed precariously under his weight. He heard Linda’s feet clattering behind him. David clutched the rail desperately as the staircase lurched a few inches away from the wall, its supports groaning as they pulled away from the bricks.

Six steps from the door . . .

The creature’s mushroomlike head rose above the catwalk; the blades tore away the railing, flinging it across the basement and against the wall. The giant knives whirred between David and the door.

“David!”
Linda shrieked.

They froze on the stairs, watching the bulbous eyes.

For the first time in his life, David prepared to die, readied himself to be chopped in two . . .

The whirring slowed. The creature’s long body eased its spiraling to a stop.

There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch on forever as the three eyes glared at them, as the creature became still and silent. Then it began to turn again, but in the opposite direction, slowly, like a fan that has just been plugged in, the hum of its motion beginning to churn the air around them.

“Come on!” David shouted, taking advantage of the moment and scaling the remaining steps two at a time.

The creature began to sink down as it spun . . .

David grabbed the door handle and flung the heavy door aside with more strength than he knew he had. He and Linda flew up the concrete steps to the hall door, their footsteps thundered down the empty hall toward the front entrance.

His lungs were burning by the time he got to the car. With each heartbeat, his body seemed to swell with simultaneous fear and relief.

“Get in, get
in!”
Linda croaked, her voice dry and hoarse.

David flopped into the car seat and slammed the door as Linda started the ignition and revved the car through the empty parking lot. They passed the Willowbrook Police car and roared onto the road.

“Thuh-thuh-they must be tun-tunneling under the whole
town!”
David gasped.

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Stop ’em! We’ve gotta stop ’em!”

“How?”
Linda shouted. “They’re everywhere! Let’s just keep driving and get the hell out of this crazy town!”

“We can’t just leave.” David’s voice softened. “We’ve gotta find my mom and dad . . .”

Linda’s panic began to fade slowly; she spoke with confidence and reason. “We’re
not
going back there alone. We need help.”