The Dinosaur Chronicles (24 page)

The lights steadied.

“Oh shit,” Sam said. “It’s on its way.”

“Push the sofa off the porch! Help me!”

Together they cleared the doorway, shoving the sofa across the porch and down the steps.

Immediately the far end of the sofa began to ice over. The swiftness of the thing’s response took them by such surprise that the scream of crawl ice hardly registered.

Fisher grabbed Sam’s hand and yanked her back inside the house. He was about to slam the front door when he turned and stared, transfixed by the living room’s ceiling light.

“Leave the door,” he told Sam. “We need to see what’s going on.”

He still couldn’t think straight.
Megohms
kept running through his mind, but he ran to the kitchen and scavenged an extension cord from the junk drawer debris on the floor. He grabbed a steak knife and cut off the female plug. He splayed the two conductor runs until they made a “Y” in his outstretched arms. Then he took the knife again and peeled off several inches of insulation from both lines.

By the time he got back to the living room, the sofa outside was covered in ice and getting a second layer.

Megohms
, he thought.
Why do this?
 

He put one wire in the cracked ice at the bottom right of the front doorway. He put the other on the left. He gave Sam the plug end.

“When I tell you, jam this thing into the socket. Not before.”

Sam blinked back tears. “You said this wouldn’t work.”

Pain shot through his head. “Please,” he said. “I can’t think. Just do it!”

“All right!”

He looked around the living room. The icy air frosted his vision, and he had to blink hard. The cast-iron bookend would do.

He picked up the bookend from where the last aftershock had cleared the bookcase, and he knelt at the front doorway. He began pounding the bookend on the floor and on the ice.

Come to papa ... you bastard!

He looked up. The crawl ice had stopped its squeal.

“It’s coming,” he said. “Get ready.”

“I’m ready,” Sam said.

It arrived with a growl and such velocity that the ice was across the bookend and over his hand before he knew it.

“Now, Sam, now!”

“I’ll get you too!”

“Do it anyway!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

His hand rang like a doorbell. Colored lights flashed across his vision.

The last thing he remembered was a silent explosion and millions of tiny shards of ice.

—

He breathed easy. Too easy. His mind tried to figure it out, failed. He ran down the alphabet. Still no clues. He ran it backwards. F E D C ...

C. CPR. Someone was breathing for him.

Sam!

He slipped her a bit of tongue.

She pulled back. Through one half-opened eye he could see she’d been crying.

Now she laughed. “You’re incorrigible!”

He looked over at the door. It was shut.

And the lights were still on.

“You did it!” she said. “It’s gone!” Sam hugged him until he felt the CPR had been for nought. She was going to asphyxiate him anyway.

She eased her grip and said, “Okay, so why did it work? You said the electric wouldn’t work. Ice is a bad conductor. So how’d it work?”

He stared at the ceiling. That’s right.
Megohms
.

Something was missing. Oh yes. His chimney-smoke headache.

He looked at Sam. Stubborn, irrational Sam. Sam whom he loved.

He fished out his hand and touched her cheek. “
You
did it, Love. You and your damned stubbornness!”

The look of consternation on her face would be one he’d always treasure. “Remember,” he said, “what you told me after you busted your knee on the ice?”

She shook her head.

“‘You could salt the walk and throw out some kitty litter!’”

“So?”

“That was totally illogical. It was way too cold for ice melt to do any good. But I did it anyway. Didn’t want to argue with you. You’re too good at it.” He winked. “And I put extra on the porch and on the steps where you’d be sure to see it.”

“So?”

“So the ice the creature used to grab me with must’ve come from the front porch and been loaded with calcium chloride ions. And suddenly the resistance drops from megohms to 10 or 20 kilohms. Enough to get some amperage flowing. And I bet the fact that the juice was AC didn’t do the creature a lot of good either. All natural electricity is DC.”

“Physics 101?”

“High school shop class.” He struggled to sit, and Sam helped him up. “I must’ve figured this out subconsciously when I set the trap. I thought it shouldn’t work, but I knew I had to try it. And if I’d really been thinking clearly, I’d have pounded the ice with the floor lamp instead of the bookend and kept my hand out of it. But I couldn’t think.”

Sam kissed him on the forehead. “You thought well enough.”

When daybreak arrived, they set off for Pineway. Fisher stopped briefly at the car, trying to see whether digging it out of the ice was at all practical. He got one good angled look through a front wheel well and decided the term “frozen block” would from now on conjure up a wholly different image.

They walked. After the terror-filled night, the deserted town seemed strangely serene, even pretty.

As they passed the statue of the town founder, Fisher stopped and shook his head.

“What’s the matter?” Sam asked.

Fisher sighed. “No
flagrante delicto
today.”

Sam laughed, and they walked on.

Seven hours later they came across a diner with a working neon sign. They entered, took adjacent stools at the counter and pulled off their ski masks.

A short-haired man with a dubious shave walked up to take their order. He smiled at Sam but gave Fisher a long look.

“Wind burn,” Fisher said. He dangled his ski mask between his fingers. “I’ve learned my lesson.” After the ice needles had exploded in his face, he looked as though he’d gone through a chemical peel. Instinct or reflex had shut his eyes in time to prevent cornea damage.

“Ought to see a doc for that,” the man said.

“Two coffees for starters,” Sam interrupted, and the man turned to get cups and the pot.

Mounted over an archway, a television sat tuned to the local news. Sam gripped Fisher’s arm and pointed.

“Hey buddy,” Fisher snapped, “can you turn it up for us?”

The short-haired man pulled a remote from his apron pocket and thumbed the volume control.

“And in a strange story from Bexley,” the announcer read over the video, “a man was found dead today standing in his front yard, covered in ice. There hasn’t been snow recently, and certainly no ice storm, so weather experts and sheriff’s officials are unable to explain this tragedy.”

“We could explain it,” Sam said softly.

Fisher shook his head. “No one would believe us. But we could post anonymous warnings over the net. And details on how to fight it. Anyone in trouble and looking for answers would find practical advice.”

Sam looked into his eyes. “From impractical us?”

Fisher put his hand over Sam’s. “From impractical us.”

Afterword

At 9000 words, “Crawl Ice” was way too long for the markets of its day, and it’s probably too long for the markets of this day as well. From short stories that I’ve read in both genre and “literary” magazines, I’ve often felt that characterization and the “fleshing out” of a story were lacking, so my tendency was to write longer tales. This is the small press’s loss and, I hope, your gain.

Children we were—Giles Jackson and myself—when we entered the Calimar County fair a dozen years ago. I was a “rat” in the county high school—an eighth-grader. Jackson was two years ahead of me. It didn’t occur to me then, but it occurs to me now: Jackson put up with the juvenile me because I put up with him. He was rich and arrogant and repelled people and was lonely. I wanted to go to the fair and he had dollar bills crawling out of every pocket.

So help me, I can no longer remember the date, though I could find it if I searched the newspapers for the article. But it was on a Friday evening in the early autumn, with the sun beginning to slide over the horizon, when we passed through the turnstiles.

We raced for the rickety Ferris wheel, bumping into complaining adults as we passed. We stayed three whole turns before the attendant kicked us off. We rode the merry-go-round with its pathetic screaming horses and flaking paint. We even talked ourselves onto the Zoop-de-Loop, where we laughed at the grownups who, when the attendant stopped the ride at the very top, thought they’d be hung upside-down forever.

For a time, then, Giles Jackson seemed almost human. For a time he forgot to act snotty, forgot he was a smartass and forgot to rub his father’s money into everybody’s face.

After the Zoop-de-Loop we stoked up on ice-cream and deep-fried sugar cakes. We saw the Ape Lady and the Human Pretzel and the Marquis de Sade, though I was certain he wasn’t the original. And we made our way through the midway and spent Jackson’s money on all the impossible games and never won more than a tiny 50-cent stuffed snake.

It was then, near the far side of the midway, that Jackson remembered who he was. The clown with the juggling act reminded him.

I wouldn’t have even noticed the booth, with the crowd noise and the barkers and the calliope music blaring, but Jackson grabbed my arm and pulled me to the concession. There, a professionally jolly man with a bulb on his nose and paint on his face rattled into a throat microphone: “And you can amaze your friends with your juggling ability, ladies and gentlemen, with the Great Aribo’s Juggling Kit, which comes complete with all you see here: a full one-hour instructional video and three hand-carved high-gloss professional juggling balls, all for the low, low price of $19.95 ...”

The man went on at length, repeating his lines without ever really repeating his lines, subtly keeping the interest of his marks without letting them realize he was feeding them the same stuff over and over again. And a few of the people did buy his kit, and he thanked them most sincerely, and then I looked at Jackson’s face and saw plain, unvarnished hatred.

I struggled then to understand—and failed. Today I wonder if, as a toddler, a clown—or maybe some overboozed Santa—had once frightened Jackson, and that’s why he acted as he did. I never found out.

The clown stopped marketing his kit and became the Great Aribo for his general act. He stepped back and unrolled a worn Persian carpet he said had been handed down to him from his great-great-grandfather, the first Great Aribo, Entertainer and Juggler to the Kings of the Orient. He said the carpet conveyed mystical powers and made the Great Aribo the greatest juggler of all time.

The clown stepped onto the carpet and began to juggle.

He juggled three wooden balls, and then three bowling pins, and then three long, wicked-looking knives that probably couldn’t cut soft butter. He juggled objects overhand, underhand, sequentially, crosshandedly and—once—behind his back. The audience applauded.

He returned to the balls and added a fourth. Again, he juggled the spheres underhand, sequentially and crosshandedly. He added a fifth, and the crowd’s attention rose. The Great Aribo, well within his talents, never even broke a sweat. At length, he tossed the five balls into a tall arc and caught them to complete the act. He bowed and spoke:

“And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, here, within the bounds of the great magic carpet, you shall see the greatest juggling of all time: the Great Aribo shall match his skills against those who would wager against him, to wit: Place six dollars upon the carpet here, where the Glyphs of the Ancients grace the tip of the carpet, and the Great Aribo shall juggle six balls through six sequences; place seven dollars there and the Great Aribo shall juggle seven balls through seven sequences. Lastly, place eight dollars upon the mark and the Great Aribo shall juggle eight balls through eight sequences. Should the Great Aribo fail, you shall earn triple your money.”

The brazen money pitch made some in the audience groan, and several of the watchers started to walk off. But Jackson lit up like a bulb. He stepped forward and dropped six one-dollar bills to the carpet.

The Great Aribo picked up six wooden juggling balls, five white and one red. With one hand, he launched the red and two whites. That done, he fed the other three whites from his other hand. Once that hand was empty, the red ball was ready to be caught and fed to the tossing hand.

As he tossed the red ball the second time, the Great Aribo said, “One!” And as he tossed the red ball again, he said, “Two!” The cycle repeated, and the Great Aribo said “Three!” and “Four!” and “Five!” With “Six!” he caught the balls in his arms and bowed once more, picking up the dollar bills in a smooth, swift motion that mediated the starker pecuniary aspects of his performance.

Not that I held it against him, then or now. The Great Aribo had to eat. Business was business.

I turned to go, but Jackson grabbed me by the arm once more.

Before the Great Aribo could even go into his spiel again, Jackson dropped a fiver and two ones to the carpet.

The clown beckoned to him. “Oho! The fine young gentleman wishes to further test the skills of the Great Aribo! Behold!”

The clown removed another white ball from a bucket that stood near the carpet. He started with the red and three white in his throwing hand and another three white in his feeding hand. This time the arc of the orbs was higher, but the clown had no problems with the task as he called out the cycles: “One! ... Two! … Three! ... Four! ... Five! ... Six! ... Seven!”

The applause was noticeably louder, and the Great Aribo bowed low, scooping up the bills with a near-magical fluidity.

He hadn’t even come out of his bow before Jackson had placed a five and three ones on the carpet. The clown, once a fount of carny confidence, gave Jackson a look in which I saw just a hint of worry. Jackson only sent back his trademark all-knowing smirk.

More slowly, the Great Aribo pulled another white ball from the bucket. He gave Jackson a puzzled look before he started, but when he did, it was all show: the eight balls danced in the air, and the Great Aribo’s hands seemed to be in eight places at once, and the crowd sucked in their breaths. When the Great Aribo at last shouted “Eight!” and collected his missiles, the crowd’s applause turned to loud cheers and whistles. They thought the show was over.