Things Beyond Midnight (23 page)

A paper battleground met his eyes.

In filtered moonlight, a white blanket of broken-backed volumes spilled across the entire lower floor. Stillman shuddered; he could envision them, shrieking, scrabbling at the shelves, throwing books wildly across the room at one another. Screaming, ripping, destroying.

What of the other floors?
What of the medical section?

He crossed to the stairs, spilled pages crackling like a fall of dry autumn leaves under his step, and sprinted up to the second floor, stumbling, terribly afraid of what he might find. Reaching the top, heart thudding, he squinted into the dimness.

The books were undisturbed. Apparently they had tired of their game before reaching these.

He slipped the rifle from his shoulder and placed it near the stairs. Dust lay thick all around him, powdering up and swirling as he moved down the narrow aisles; a damp, leathery mustiness lived in the air, an odor of mould and neglect.

Lewis Stillman paused before a dim, hand-lettered sign:
MEDICAL SECTION
. It was just as he remembered it. Holstering the small automatic, he struck a match, shading the flame with a cupped hand as he moved it along the rows of faded titles. Carter... Davidson...

Enright...
Erickson.
He drew in his breath sharply. All three volumes, their gold stamping dust-dulled but legible, stood in tall and perfect order on the shelf.

In the darkness, Lewis Stillman carefully removed each volume, blowing it free of dust. At last, all three books were clean and solid in his hands.

Welly you’ve done it. You’ve reached the books and now they belong to you.

He smiled, thinking of the moment when he would be able to sit down at the table with his treasure and linger again over the wondrous pages.

He found an empty carton at the rear of the store and placed the books inside. Returning to the stairs, he shouldered the rifle and began his descent to the lower floor.

So far, he told himself, my luck is still holding.

But as Lewis Stillman’s foot touched the final stair, his luck ran out.

The entire lower floor was alive with them!

Rustling like a mass of great insects, gliding toward him, eyes gleaming in the half-light, they converged upon the stairs. They’d been waiting for him.

Now, suddenly the books no longer mattered. Now only his life mattered and nothing else. He moved back against the hard wood of the stair-rail, the carton of books sliding from his hands. They had stopped at the foot of the stairs; they were silent, looking up at him with hate in their eyes.

If you can reach the street, Stillman told himself, then you’ve still got a chance. That means you’ve got to get through them to the door. All right then,
move.

Lewis Stillman squeezed the trigger of the automatic. Two of them fell as Stillman charged into their midst.

He felt sharp nails claw at his shirt, heard the cloth ripping away in their grasp. He kept firing the small automatic into them, and three more dropped under his bullets, shrieking in pain and surprise. The others spilled back, screaming, from the door.

The pistol was empty. He tossed it away, swinging the heavy Savage free from his shoulder as he reached the street. The night air, crisp and cool in his lungs, gave him instant hope.

I can still make it, thought Stillman, as he leaped the curb and plunged across the pavement. If those shots weren’t heard, then I’ve still got the edge. My legs are strong; I can outdistance them.

Luck, however, had failed him completely on this night. Near the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland, a fresh pack of them swarmed toward him.

He dropped to one knee and fired into their ranks, the Savage jerking in his hands. They scattered to either side.

He began to run steadily down the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, using the butt of the heavy rifle like a battering ram as they came at him. As he neared Highland, three of them darted directly into his path. Stillman fired. One doubled over, lurching crazily into a jagged plate glass store front. Another clawed at him as he swept around the corner to Highland, but he managed to shake free.

The street ahead of him was clear. Now his superior leg power would count heavily in his favor. Two miles. Could he make it before others cut him off?

Running, reloading, firing. Sweat soaking his shirt, rivering down his face, stinging his eyes. A mile covered. Halfway to the drains. They had fallen back behind his swift stride.

But more of them were coming, drawn by the rifle shots, pouring in from side streets, from stores and houses, His heart jarred in his body, his breath was ragged. How many of them around him? A hundred? Two hundred? More coming. God!

He bit down on his lower lip until the salt taste of blood was on his tongue. You can’t make it, a voice inside him shouted. They’ll have you in another block and you know it!

He fitted the rifle to his shoulder, adjusted his aim, and fired. The long rolling crack of the big weapon filled the night. Again and again he fired, the butt jerking into the flesh of his shoulder, the bitter smell of burnt powder in his nostrils.

It was no use. Too many of them. He could not clear a path.

Lewis Stillman knew that he was going to die.

The rifle was empty at last; the final bullet had been fired. He had no place to run because they were all around him, in a slowly closing circle.

He looked at the ring of small cruel faces and thought, the aliens did their job perfectly; they stopped Earth before she could reach the age of the rocket, before she could threaten planets beyond her own moon. What an immensely clever plan it had been! To destroy every human being on Earth above the age of six—and then to leave as quickly as they had come, allowing our civilization to continue on a primitive level, knowing that Earth’s back had been broken, that her survivors would revert to savagery as they grew into adulthood.

Lewis Stillman dropped the empty rifle at his feet and threw out his hands. “Listen,” he pleaded, “I’m really one of you. You’ll
all
be like me soon. Please,
listen
to me.”

But the circle tightened relentlessly around him.

Lewis Stillman was screaming when the children closed in.

00:13
SOMETHING NASTY

“Have you had your shower yet, Janey?”

Her mother’s voice from below stairs, drifting smokily up to her, barely audible where she lay in her bed.

Louder now; insistent. “Janey! Will you
answer
me!”

She got up, cat-stretched, walked into the hall, to the landing, where her mother could hear her. “I’ve been reading.”

“But I
told
you that Uncle Gus was coming over this afternoon.”

“I hate him,” said Janey softly.

“You’re muttering. I can’t understand you.” Frustration. Anger and frustration. “Come down here at once.”

When Janey reached the bottom of the stairs her mother’s image was rippled. The little girl blinked rapidly, trying to clear her watering eyes.

Janey’s mother stood tall and ample-fleshed and fresh-smelling above her in a satiny summer dress.

Mommy always looks nice when Uncle Gus is coming.

“Why are you crying?” Anger had given way to concern.

“Because,” said Janey.

“Because why?”

“Because I don’t want to talk to Uncle Gus.”

“But he
adores
you! He comes over especially to see you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” said Janey, scrubbing at her cheek with a small fist. “He doesn’t adore me and he doesn’t come specially to see me. He comes to get money from Daddy.”

Her mother was shocked. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

“But it’s true.
Isn’t
it true?”

“Your Uncle Gus was hurt in the war. He can’t hold down an ordinary job. We just do what we can to help him.”

“He never liked me,” said Janey. “He says I make too much noise. And he never lets me play with Whiskers when he’s here.”

“That’s because cats bother him. He’s not used to them. He doesn’t like furry things.” Her mother touched at Janey’s hair. Soft gold. “Remember that mouse you got last Christmas, how nervous it made him... Remember?”

“Pete was smart,” said Janey. “He didn’t like Uncle Gus, same as me.”

“Mice neither like nor dislike people,” Janey’s mother told her. “They’re not intelligent enough for that.”

Janey shook her head stubbornly. “Pete was
very
intelligent. He could find cheese anywhere in my room, no matter where I hid it.”

“That has to do with a basic sense of smell, not intelligence,” her mother said. “But we’re wasting time here, Janey. You run upstairs, take your shower and then put on your pretty new dress. The one with red polka dots.”

“They’re strawberries. It has little red strawberries on it.”

“Fine. Now just do as I say. Gus will be here soon and I want my brother to be
proud
of his niece.”

Blonde head down, her small heels dragging at the top of each step, Janey went back upstairs.

“I’m not going to report this to your father.” Janey’s mother was saying, her voice dimming as the little girl continued upward. “I’ll just tell him you overslept.”

“I don’t care what you tell Daddy,” murmured Janey. The words were smothered in hallway distance as she moved toward her room.

Daddy would believe anything Mommy told him. He always did. Sometimes it was true, about oversleeping. It was hard to wake up from her afternoon nap.
Because I put off going to sleep. Because I hate it.
Along with eating broccoli, and taking colored vitamin pills in little animal shapes and seeing the dentist and going on roller coasters.

Uncle Gus had taken her on a high, scary roller coaster ride last summer at the park, and it had made her vomit. He liked to upset her, frighten her. Mommy didn’t know about all the times Uncle Gus said scary things to her, or played mean tricks on her, or took her places she didn’t want to go.

Mommy would leave her with him while she went shopping, and Janey absolutely
hated
being there in his dark old house. He knew the dark frightened her. He’d sit there in front of her with all the lights out, telling spooky stories, with sick, awful things in them, his voice oily and horrible. She’d get so scared, listening to him, that sometimes she’d cry.

And that made him smile.

“Gus. Always so
good
to see you!”

“Hi, Sis.”

“C’mon inside. Jim’s puttering around out back somewhere. I’ve fixed us a nice lunch. Sliced turkey. And I made some cornbread.”

“So where’s my favorite niece?”

“Janey’s due down here any second. She’ll be wearing her new dress—just for you.”

“Well, now, isn’t that nice.”

She was watching from the top of the stairs, lying flat on her stomach so she wouldn’t be seen. It made her sick, watching Mommy hug Uncle Gus that way, each time he came over, as if it had been
years
between visits. Why couldn’t Mommy see how mean Uncle Gus was? All of her friends in class saw he was a bad person the first day he took her to school. Kids can tell right away about a person. Like that mean ole Mr. Kruger in geography, who made Janey stay after class when she forgot to do her homework. All the kids knew that Mr. Kruger was
awful.
Why does it take grownups so long to know things?