Skeletons (23 page)

"That's Mr. Perkins," Mrs. Garr said. "He was on the board of directors of Withers."

Mr. Perkins held his hands up for silence. "I think you all know what to do. As far as I can tell, there aren't many left here in town. There's still Bob Rainer's boy, but we're going to let Bob and Marie handle that themselves. Bob? Marie?"

Two skeletons left the crowd, pulling a young boy with them. The boy was human, dressed in jeans and torn shirt. He was shouting, "No! No!" as his parents dragged him up onto the gazebo.

"Come on, Jimmy!" the boy's father said, annoyed. "It'll only hurt for a minute!"

The boy struggled, shouted.

While his father held him his mother put her hands around his neck.

"No," Mrs. Garr gasped, out loud.

The dog turned and looked right at us. It barked, began to run. Some of the skeletons at the edge of the crowd turned and shouted.

"Claire, run!"

Mrs. Garr took my hand and we rushed back to the car. We got in. The dog rounded the far corner, a half block behind.

Mrs. Garr turned on the engine, threw the car into gear, and shot forward.

The dog leaped at the car. Mrs. Garr hit it full on. Its mouth opened wide. In
midhowl
it burst into dust.

Two skeletons entered the street in front of us, one of them carrying a length of wood. He swung it at the car, hitting the front as we roared by.

Mrs. Garr turned the corner hard, tires squealing, and headed up over the curb into the park, straight at the startled skeletons.

"Look out!" one of them shouted.

We hit into the crowd, scattering bones, which broke into dust.

Mrs. Garr hit the gazebo. It rocked on its wooden frame. The boy's skeleton parents were thrown to the ground, leaving the boy's inert body sprawled on the floor.

Mrs. Garr started to open her car door. "I'm getting him."

The boy's body suddenly flaked away, turning him to skeleton. He stood.

"Kill them!" he screamed, pointing at us.

Mrs. Garr yanked the car door shut, put the car into reverse, and backed away. Scattered skeletons converged on the car. One grabbed at the door handle on my side, barely missing it.

Mrs. Garr sped up, and we pulled back away from them.

We bounced over the curb, back into the street. Mrs. Garr turned the car and sped away.

"Oh, Michael, please be there," she said, taking us as fast as she could out of the town of Cold Spring Harbor.

The highway was nearly deserted. There were trucks, but they moved fast. I looked up into the cab of one as it passed, and saw a skeleton at the wheel, his arm resting on the frame of the open window.

"Claire, move away from the window and keep down," Mrs. Garr said.

She stayed in the right lane. Three exits after she got on we left the highway. We passed a deserted gas station. There was a blackened hole where the pumps used to be. The front windows were smashed in. Next to it was a supermarket. One large front window was missing, but it was open, the rows of lights on inside, skeleton customers rolling carts. In the parking lot a skeleton loaded bags into the back of a station wagon.

Mrs. Garr reached over, pushed my head down lower in the seat until I could barely peek out the window. "We'll be there soon."

We went down a short stretch of road, past a closed video store and an open diner. Mrs. Garr made a right turn. Immediately she slowed the car.

"I can't believe what happened here."

I sat up in the seat. It looked as though a battle had taken place. A car and a minivan were completely overturned on one side of the street. The fronts of two facing houses were
charred
with fire damage. On the lawn of a third house a tree had been felled, completely blocking the view.

Mrs. Garr drove slowly down the street. Street lamps made quiet pools of light. There was a strange silence. A skeleton cat ran out from between two garbage cans, stopped to stare into our headlights, hissed, then ran back behind the garbage cans.

'That's where I live."

Mrs. Garr pointed to the last house on the left. Its front was dark. In the driveway was a car, its hood up. "Michael," Mrs. Garr whispered.

She parked the car at the curb, took the gun from the seat, and quietly opened the car door.

"Stay close by me, Claire," she said.

We approached the house. Down the block there was a sound. The cat ran out from between the garbage cans and crossed the street, darting into a stand of bushes.

Mrs. Garr pulled me down behind the car in the driveway with its hood up.

There was the sound of footsteps. Into a pool of lamplight in the middle of the block stepped a skeletal figure. It stopped, listening.

It stepped forward, out of the light, and stared at Mrs. Garr's car.

Mrs. Garr held her gun out as the figure stepped forward.

A voice called down the street, "Robert, get in here now!"

The figure hesitated, turned around to look at an open doorway where another bony figure stood outlined.

 
"I heard—" the figure near the street lamp said.

"You heard nothing. Get in!"

"Oh, all right," the figure said, retracing its steps through the lamplight and then down the street. It entered the house and the door closed.

"The Griersons," Mrs. Garr said. "That was Norm and Joanna Grierson."

We stayed a moment behind the car, then rose and approached Mrs. Garr's house.

She had her key out, ready to use it. But the front door was already partway open.

Mrs. Garr pushed the door all the way open and we entered the darkened house.

"Claire, stay by the door," Mrs. Garr whispered, pressing me to the wall just inside the house. She closed the front door. "If anything happens, run."

She moved through the darkness. There was a flash of light as she turned on a lamp.

The house was a shambles.

The couch had been overturned. A coffee table lay crippled, one leg gone. A television in one corner had been toppled from its stand, the picture tube broken.

Mrs. Garr held one hand to her mouth, moving through the broken furniture. In her other hand she still held the gun. She moved on, into the kitchen. I heard her gasp.

I went to the kitchen and looked in. The refrigerator had been overturned, its door opened on its hinges like a trapdoor. I smelled sour odors.

Mrs. Garr left the kitchen, walked through the dining room. A china cabinet had been smashed in. She reached through the shards, took out a small porcelain figure, a boy on a sled, now chipped.

She carefully put it back in the china cabinet and moved on, toward a flight of stairs.

She went upstairs. I followed. There were two rooms under a sloped ceiling. In one room was a large bed, drawers from a dresser broken on top of it, clothes scattered. Next to it was another room.

"Michael," Mrs. Garr said.

She snapped on the light.

A desk and swivel chair were scattered with papers. A computer lay on the floor, its screen smashed through next to a printer. There were books all over the floor, pulled from their shelves lining the walls.

Mrs. Garr stepped gingerly into the room, went to the desk. She brushed papers from the swivel chair and sat down. She placed the gun on the desk. For a moment she put her head in her hands. Then she took a deep breath, reached under the desk, and pulled something out, a black box with wires and buttons that looked like a tape recorder. I saw a foot pedal near the swivel chair, under the desk.

Mrs. Garr pushed a button. I heard a whirr, followed by a click.

Mrs. Garr pushed another button.

A voice came from the tape machine.

"Hello, my little transcriber! As always, Beth, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you getting these dictations of mine into the computer for me. You know me and those keyboard machines just don't get along. I know how tired you are after a day at Withers, and I want you to know I wouldn't be getting anywhere without you. What do I owe you this time? Dinner at the Wild Duck again? Champagne? How about both—"

Mrs. Garr cut off the tape, pushed another button, making a fast whirring sound. She stopped it, pushed the start button again.

"Please make a note there, Beth, for me to refer to Compton again at this point. Now more text: I feel it important to emphasize that at this point Beirut was hardly a political entity at all—"

Again Mrs. Garr fast-forwarded the tape, stopped it.

"Jeez, again?" the voice said. "Hold on, Beth, while I go to the window. That's the third big flash in the last half hour. Maybe you heard the boom with this one. Maybe I'd better cut this off and go watch the news ... Gee, this is real weird, I just looked out the window and saw some kid or something with a Halloween costume on, dressed like a skeleton. Maybe this is October, Indian summer? I—"

Mrs. Garr fast-forwarded, stopped.

". . . is what I want you to do, Beth." The voice was very serious now "I want you to go to my brother's place in Pennsylvania. I've already talked with him. You know what he's like. He'll know what to do. Don't even think about doing anything else. I'm going to try to get to you at Withers; if I can't, I'll meet you there myself. Hold on. . ." There was a blank space, then the voice came back, more urgent. "There's someone in the driveway, Beth, they're opening the hood of my car. What the hell, there's banging on the door, Jesus, let me—"

The tape cut off, went blank.

Again, Mrs. Garr put her head in her hands. Then she stood, picked up the gun. Her face looked set. "Come with me, Claire," she said.

We went down the stairs as a noise sounded below.

The doorway was just closing. Priscilla Ralston, Margaret Gray's toady from Withers, stood inside the house, staring at us. She was dirty, her clothes torn, her eyes bright.

"Priscilla . . . ?" Mrs. Garr said.

"Hello, Mrs. Garr. Margaret sent me to get Claire." Mrs. Garr held me where I was. "Margaret Gray is alive?"

"A few of us got out, hid in the woods in the shed near the water pump. We were there a long time." She stared at me. "We dreamed about Claire."

Mrs. Garr's voice was soft. "Priscilla, you look very tired. I think you should sit down."

"That's not what I was told to do."

"Did you follow us?"

Priscilla nodded. "We saw your car leave Withers. Margaret brought me in Mrs. Porter's car, because I know how to drive. Another girl was with us, but the ones in the park opened the door and dragged her out. Margaret is waiting in the car up the block."

Mrs. Garr stepped forward.

"Don't," Priscilla snapped. She produced a long knife and held it out menacingly. "Don't come near me, Mrs. Garr. Just let Claire come with me."

"I won't do that," Mrs. Garr said.

"She has to. Margaret wants her."

"Priscilla," Mrs. Garr said gently. She took a small step forward.

"Margaret told me to kill you—"

Priscilla jumped at Mrs. Garr, her eyes bright and hard. Mrs. Garr held the gun up. As Priscilla slashed down with the knife Mrs. Garr brought the side of the gun up, hitting Priscilla on the side of the head.

Priscilla grunted and fell.

Mrs. Garr knelt to examine Priscilla's prone body. "I must have knocked her out." As she turned Priscilla over she gasped at the sight of the knife thrust through the young woman's stomach in a spreading pool of blood.

Priscilla went stiff in Mrs. Garr's arms and then her body flaked away.

Mrs. Garr stood, held her gun out, hand trembling. She fired.

Priscilla Ralston's body collapsed to dust.

Mrs. Garr took me gently by the arm, led me to a side door, then surreptitiously to the car.

As we drove away I looked through the back window and saw the tall, thin figure of Margaret Gray leave a car far down the block and run like a wraith toward Mrs. Garr's house.

We drove into the night. I slouched down in the back seat, kept my head up high enough to see.

At first we drove back roads, but after encountering two bands of skeletons, one on foot and one roving the neighborhoods in cars, Mrs. Garr found the Long Island Expressway. The expressway lights were bright. But mostly there were trucks on the road and they drove very fast, ignoring us. Mrs. Garr kept the windows up and the air conditioner on. She turned the car radio on. There was mostly static, but a few channels were broadcasting. One news network run by skeletons described the battle between two forces in Mexico. Another played slow classical music, interrupted by bulletins from around the world. It, too, was controlled by skeletons. At the far end of the dial Mrs. Garr found a station we could barely hear, broadcast by humans, who sounded scared and rushed. They said they were in a van somewhere in northern New Jersey, transmitting to a satellite. They reported the wide-spread destruction in that state and said they were going to try to link up to a global network. Abruptly, they went off, leaving only static.