Mile 81, Page 5

  Jimmy got out, being careful not to hit them with his door. He dropped on one knee to get on their level and they rushed into his arms, almost knocking him over. "Whoa, whoa, take it easy, you're all ri--"

  "The bad car ate Mommy and Daddy," the little boy said, and pointed. "The bad car right there. It ate them all up like the big bad woof ate Riddle Red Riding Hoop. You have to get them back!"

  It was impossible to tell which vehicle the chubby finger was pointing at. Jimmy saw four: a station wagon that looked like it had been rode hard along nine miles of woods road, a spandy-clean Prius, a Dodge Ram hauling a horse-trailer, and a Ford Expedition.

  "Little girl, what's your name? I'm Trooper Jimmy."

  "Rachel Lussier," she said. "This is Blakie. He's my little brother. We live at Nineteen Fresh Winds Way, Falmouth, Maine, 04105. Don't go near it, Trooper Jimmy. It looks like a car, but it's not. It eats people."

  "Which car are we talking about, Rachel?"

  "That one in front, next to my daddy's. The muddy one."

  "The muddy car ate Daddy and Mommy!" the little boy--Blakie--proclaimed. "You get them back, you're a policeman, you got a gun!"

  Still on one knee, Jimmy held the children in his arms and eyeballed the muddy station wagon. The sun went back in; their shadows disappeared. On the turnpike, traffic swished past, but slower now, mindful of those flashing blue lights.

  No one in the Expedition, the Prius, or the truck. He was guessing there was no one in the horse-trailer, either, unless they were hunkered down, and in that case the horse would probably seem a lot more nervous than it did. The only vehicle he couldn't see into was the one these kids claimed had eaten their parents. Jimmy didn't like the way the mud was smeared on all its windows. It looked like deliberate mud, somehow. He didn't like the cracked cell phone lying by the driver's door, either. Or the ring beside it. The ring was downright creepy.

  Like the rest of this isn't.

  The driver's door suddenly creaked partway open, upping the Creepy Quotient a bit more. Jimmy tensed and put his hand the butt of his Glock, but no one came out. The door just hung there, six inches ajar.

  "That's how it tries to get you to come in," the little girl said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. "It's a monster car."

  Jimmy Golding hadn't believed in monster cars since he saw that movie Christine as a kid, but he believed that sometimes monsters could lurk in cars. And someone was in this one. How else had the door opened? It could be one of the kids' parents, hurt and unable to cry out. It could also be a man lying down on the seat, so he wouldn't make a shape visible through the mud-smeared rear window. Maybe a man with a gun.

  "Who's in the station wagon?" Jimmy called. "I'm a state trooper, and I need you to announce yourself."

  No one announced himself.

  "Come out. Hands first, and I want to see them empty."

  The only thing that came out was the sun, printing the door's shadow on the pavement for a second or two before ducking back into the clouds. Then there was only the hanging door.

  "Come with me, kids," Jimmy said, and shepherded them to his cruiser. He opened the back door. They looked at the backseat with its litter of paperwork, Jimmy's fleece-lined jacket (which he didn't need today), and the shotgun clipped and locked to the back of the bench seat. Especially that.

  "Mommy-n-daddy say never get into a stranger's car," the boy named Blakie said. "They say it at school, too. Stranger-danger."

  "He's a policeman with a policeman's car," Rachel said. "It's okay. Get in. And if you touch that gun, I'll smack you."

  "Good advice on the gun, but it's secured and the trigger lock's on," Jimmy said.

  Blakie got in, and peered over the seat. "Hey, you got a iPad!"

  "Shut up," Rachel said. She started to get in, then looked at Jimmy Golding with tired, horrified eyes. "Don't touch it. It's sticky."

  Jimmy almost smiled. He had a daughter only a year or so younger than this little girl, and she might have said the same thing. He guessed little girls divided naturally into two groups, tomboys and dirt-haters. Like his Ellen, this one was a dirt-hater.

  It was with this soon-to-be fatal misconception of what Rachel Lussier meant by sticky that he closed them in the backseat of Unit 17. He leaned in the front window of the cruiser and snared his mike. He never took his eyes from the hanging front door of the station wagon, and so did not see the little boy standing next to the rest area restaurant, holding an imitation-leather saddlebag against his chest like a small blue baby. A moment later the sun peeked out again, and Pete Simmons was swallowed up by the restaurant's shadow.

  Jimmy called in to the Gray barracks.

  "Seventeen, come back."

  "I'm at the old Mile 81 rest area. I have four abandoned vehicles, one abandoned horse, and two abandoned children. One of the vehicles is a station wagon. The kids say . . . " He paused, then thought what the hell. "The kids say it ate their parents."

  "Come back?"

  "I think they mean someone inside grabbed them. I want you to send all available units over here, copy?"

  "Copy all available units, but it'll be ten minutes before the first one gets there. That's Unit Twelve. He's Code Seventy-three in Waterville."

  Al Andrews, no doubt chowing down at Bob's Burgers and talking politics. "Copy that."

  "Give me MML on the wagon, Seventeen, and I'll run it."

  "Negative on all three. No plate. As far as make and model, the thing's so covered with mud I can't tell. It's American, though." I think. "Probably a Ford or a Chevy. The kids are in my cruiser. Names are Rachel and Blakie Lussier. Fresh Winds Way, Falmouth. I forget the street number."

  "Nineteen!" Rachel and Blakie shouted together.

  "They say--"

  "I got it, Seventeen. And which car did they come in?"

  "Daddy's Expundition!" Blakie cried, happy to be of help.

  "Ford Expedition," Jimmy said. "Plate number three-seven-seven-two-I-Y. I'm going to approach that station wagon."

  "Copy. Be careful there, Jimmy."

  "Copy that. Oh, and will you reach out to nine-one-one dispatch and tell her the kids are all right?"

  "Is that you talking or Peter Townshend?"

  Very funny. "Seventeen, I'm sixty-two."

  He started to replace the mike, then handed it to Rachel. "If anything happens--anything bad--you push that button on the side and yell 'Thirty.' That means officer needs help. Have you got it?"

  "Yes, but you shouldn't go near that car, Trooper Jimmy. It bites and it eats and it's sticky."

  Blakie, who, in his wonder at being in an actual police car, had temporarily forgotten what had befallen his parents, now remembered and began to cry again. "I want mommy-n-daddy!"

  In spite of the weirdness and potential danger of the situation, Rachel Lussier's eye-rolling you see what I have to deal with expression almost made Jimmy laugh. How many times had he seen that exact same expression on the face of five-year-old Ellen Golding?

  "Listen, Rachel," Jimmy said, "I know you're scared, but you're safe in here, and I have to do my job. If your parents are in that car, we don't want them hurt, do we?"

  "GO GET MOMMY-N-DADDY, TROOPER JIMMY!" Blakie trumpeted. "WE DON'T WANT THEM HURRRT!"

  Jimmy saw hope spark in the girl's eyes, but not as much as he might have expected. Like Agent Mulder on the old X-Files show, she wanted to believe . . . but like Mulder's partner, Agent Scully, she didn't. What had these kids seen?

  "Be careful, Trooper Jimmy." She raised one finger. It was a schoolteacherly gesture made even more endearing by a slight tremble. "Don't touch it."

  As Jimmy approached the station wagon, he drew his Glock service automatic but left the safety on. For the time being. Standing slightly south of the hanging door, he once again invited anyone inside to exit the vehicle, open and empty hands foremost. No one came out. He reached for the door, then remembered the little girl's parting admonition, and hesitated. He reached out with the barrel of h
is gun to swing the door open. Only, the door didn't open, and the barrel of the pistol stuck fast. The thing was a glue-pot.

  He was jerked forward, as if a powerful hand had gripped the Glock's barrel and yanked. There was a second when he could have let go, but such an idea never even surfaced in his mind. One of the first things they taught you at the Academy after weapons issue was that you never let go of your sidearm. Never.

  So he held on, and the car that had already eaten his gun now ate his hand. And his arm. The sun came out again, casting his diminishing shadow on the pavement. Somewhere, children were screaming.

  The station wagon AFFIXES itself to the Trooper, he thought. Now I know what she meant by stick--

  Then the pain bloomed large and all thought ceased. There was time for one scream. Only one.

  6. THE KIDS ('10 Richforth)

  From where he was standing, seventy yards away, Pete saw it all. He saw the state trooper reach out with the barrel of his gun to open the station wagon's door the rest of the way; he saw the barrel disappear into the door as if the whole car were nothing but an optical illusion; he saw the trooper jerk forward, his big gray hat tumbling from his head. Then the trooper was yanked through the door and only his hat was left, lying next to somebody's cell phone. There was a pause, and then the car pulled into itself, like fingers into a fist. Next came the tennis-racquet-on-ball sound--pouck!--and the muddy clenched fist became a car again.

  The little boy began to wail; the little girl was for some reason screaming "thirty" over and over again, like she thought it was a magic word J. K. Rowling had somehow left out of her Harry Potter books.

  The back door of the police car opened. The kids got out. Both of them were crying their asses off, and Pete didn't blame them. If he hadn't been so stunned by what he'd just seen, he'd probably be crying himself. A nutty thought came to him: another swig or two of that vodka might improve this situation. It would help him be less afraid, and if he was less afraid, he might be able to figure out what the fuck he should do.

  Meanwhile the kids were backing away again. Pete had an idea they might panic and take to their heels at any second. He couldn't let them do that; they'd run right into the road and get splatted by turnpike traffic.

  "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey, you kids!"

  When they turned to look at him--big, buggy eyes in pale faces--he waved and started walking toward them. As he did, the sun came out again, this time with authority.

  The little boy started forward. The girl jerked him back. At first Pete thought she was afraid of him, then realized it was the car she was afraid of.

  He made a circling gesture with his hand. "Walk around it! Walk around and come over here!"

  They slipped through the guardrails on the left side of the ramp, giving the station wagon the widest berth possible, then cut across the parking lot. When they got to Pete, the little girl let go of her brother, sat down, and put her face in her hands. She had braids her mom had probably fixed for her. Looking at them and knowing the kid's mother would never fix them for her again made Pete feel horrible.

  The little boy looked up solemnly. "It ate mommy-n- daddy. It ate the horse-lady and Trooper Jimmy, too. It's going to eat everyone, I guess. It's going to eat the world."

  If Pete Simmons had been twenty, he might have asked a lot of bullshit questions that didn't matter. Because he was only half that age, and able to accept what he had just seen, he asked something simpler and more pertinent. "Hey, little girl. Are more police coming? Is that why you were yelling 'Thirty'?"

  She dropped her hands and looked up at him. Her eyes were raw and red. "Yes, but Blakie's right. It will eat them, too. I told Trooper Jimmy, but he didn't believe me."

  Pete believed her, because he had seen. But she was right. The police wouldn't believe. They would eventually, they'd have to, but maybe not before the monster car ate a bunch more of them.

  "I think it's from space," he said. "Like on Doctor Who."

  "Mommy-n-daddy won't let us watch that," the little boy told him. "They say it's too scary. But this is scarier."

  "It's alive." Pete spoke more to himself than to them.

  "Duh," Rachel said, and gave a long, miserable sniffle.

  The sun ducked briefly behind one of the unraveling clouds. When it came out again, an idea came with it. Pete had been hoping to show Normie Therriault and the rest of the Rip-Ass Raiders something that would amaze them enough to let him be part of their gang. Then George had given him a big-brother reality check: They've all seen that baby trick a thousand times.

  Maybe so, but maybe that thing down there hadn't seen it a thousand times. Or even once. Maybe they didn't have magnifying glasses where it came from. Or sun, for that matter. He remembered a Doctor Who episode about a planet where it was dark all the time.

  He could hear a siren in the distance. A cop was coming. A cop who wouldn't believe anything little kids said, because as far as grownups were concerned, little kids were all full of shit.

  "You guys stay here. I'm going to try something."

  "No!" The little girl grasped his wrist with fingers that felt like claws. "It'll eat you, too!"

  "I don't think it can move around," Pete told her, disengaging his hand. She had left a couple of bleeding scratches, but he wasn't mad and he didn't blame her. He probably would have done the same, if it had been his parents. "I think it's stuck in one place."

  "It can reach," she said. "It can reach with its tires. They melt."

  "I'll watch out," Pete said, "but I have to try this. Because you're right. Those cops will come, and it will eat them, too. Stay put."

  He walked toward the station wagon. When he was close (but not too close), he unzipped the saddlebag. I have to try this, he had told the kids, but the truth was a little balder: he wanted to try this. It would be like a science experiment. That would probably sound bizarre if he told someone, but he didn't have to tell. He just had to do it. Very . . . very . . . carefully.

  He was sweating. With the sun out, the day had turned warm, but that wasn't the only reason, and he knew it. He looked up, squinting at the brightness. Don't you go back behind a cloud. Don't you dare. I need you.

  He took his Richforth magnifying glass out of the saddlebag, and bent to put the saddlebag on the pavement. The joints of his knees cracked, and the station wagon's door swung open a few inches.

  It knows I'm here. I don't know if it can see me, but it heard me just now. And maybe it smells me.

  He took another step. Now he was close enough to touch the side of the station wagon. If he was fool enough to do so, that was.

  "Watch out!" the little girl called. She and her brother were both standing now, their arms around each other. "Watch out for it!"

  Carefully--like a kid reaching into a cage with a lion inside--Pete extended the magnifying glass. A circle of light appeared on the side of the station wagon, but it was too big. Too soft. He moved the glass closer.

  "The tire!" the little boy screamed. "Watch out for the TII-YIII-IRE!"

  Pete looked down and saw one of the tires melting. A tentacle was oozing across the pavement toward his sneaker. He couldn't back away without giving up his experiment, so he raised his foot and stood stork. The tentacle immediately changed direction and headed for his other foot.

  Not much time.

  He moved the magnifying glass closer. The circle of light shrank to a brilliant white dot. For a moment nothing happened. Then tendrils of smoke began to drift up. The muddy white surface beneath the dot turned black.

  From inside the station wagon there came an inhuman growling sound. Pete had to fight every instinct in his brain and body to keep from running. His lips parted, revealing teeth locked together in a desperate snarl. He held the Richforth steady, counting off seconds in his head. He'd reached seven when the growl rose to a glassy shriek that threatened to split his head. Behind him, Rachel and Blake had let go of each other so they could cover their ears.

  At the foot of the rest
area entrance ramp, Al Andrews brought Unit 12 to a sliding stop. He got out, wincing at that terrible shrieking sound. It was like an air-raid siren broadcast through a heavy metal band's amplifiers, he would say later. He saw a kid holding something out so it almost touched the surface of a muddy old Ford or Chevy station wagon. The boy was wincing in pain, determination, or both.

  The smoking black spot on the flank of the station wagon began to spread. The white smoke curling up from it began to thicken. It turned gray, then black. What happened next happened fast. Pete saw tiny blue flames pop into being around the black spot. They spread, seeming to dance above the surface of the car-thing. It was the way charcoal briquettes looked in their backyard barbecue after their father doused them with lighter fluid and then tossed in a match.

  The gooey tentacle, which had almost reached the sneakered foot still standing on the pavement, snapped back. The car yanked in upon itself again, but this time the spreading blue flames stood out all around it in a corona. It pulled in tighter and still tighter, becoming a fiery ball. Then, as Pete and the Lussier kids and Trooper Andrews watched, it shot up into the blue spring sky. For a moment longer it was there, glowing like a cinder, and then it was gone. Pete found himself thinking of the cold darkness above the envelope of the earth's atmosphere--those endless leagues where anything might live and lurk.

  I didn't kill it, I just drove it away. It had to go so it could put itself out, like a burning stick in a bucket of water.

  Trooper Andrews was staring up into the sky, dumbfounded. One of his brain's few working circuits was wondering how he was supposed to write up a report on what he had just seen.

  There were more approaching sirens in the distance.

  Pete walked back to the two little kids with his saddlebag in one hand and his Richforth magnifying glass in the other. He sort of wished George and Normie were here, but so what if they weren't? He'd had quite an afternoon for himself without those guys, and he didn't care if he got grounded or not. This made jumping bikes off the edge of a stupid sandpit look tame.

  You know what? I fuckin rock.