Extinct (31 page)

R
OBBY
AND
T
ED
CONVENED
a meeting of all the people who lived within radio distance of Portland.

“I want to hear what the new people have to say,” said the smelly guy sitting next to Brad.

Brad couldn’t remember the smelly guy’s name, so he focused his attention on Ted, who stood over near the row of stools.

“I do too," Ted said. “I’m sure we all do. But I believe it’s important for you all to hear what Rob has to say. He told me what he’s been thinking about, and I think we should all hear his ideas.”

“Facts first, then conclusions,” said the smelly guy.

“I agree," Judy said. “Let’s hear from the new people.”
 

That startled Brad—he thought that Judy would automatically be on Robby’s side. Brad looked around the room. Most of the two-dozen people seemed to agree with Judy and Smelly.

“Fair enough," Ted said. “Brad? You want to start us out?”

Brad scanned the room before he realized that Ted was talking about him.

“Oh, sure,” Brad said. He glanced at Robby and asked—“From the beginning?”

Ted said, “Yes,” and Robby nodded.
 

Brad started his story from the walk where he’d first seen the vines. A tickle started in the back of his throat when he told the people how he’d found the hole under his garage. The tickle turned into a cough as Brad told of the casually-dressed government guys and how he’d boarded up his house from the inside. His voice was overworked—virtually no use for months followed by days of non-stop talking took their toll. Brad stripped several details of his story near the end so he could finish and sit down.

“Thanks, Brad," Ted said, rising to his feet again. “Who else? Frank, could you introduce us to the new person at your table?”

Brad followed Ted’s eyes to the guys sitting just beyond Smelly. Brad hadn’t met any of these people yet. When everyone arrived, Brad was busy with Robby and Judy in the kitchen, preparing pancakes for dinner. Now, the guy behind Smelly pushed back his chair and pushed himself up, not quite all the way to his feet. He wore a blue tank-top, camouflage pants, and serious black boots.
 

“This is Luke," Frank said. He motioned to the man on his left. Frank started to sink back down in his chair and then rose up again. “He’s been traveling down south awhiles, and then he appeared up’ta my ranch last week.”

Luke cleared his throat. He looked like the template from which Frank had been cast. Like Frank, his head and face possessed no hair except a couple days of stubble. But Frank’s shave looked new—the skin of his scalp in the lantern-light glowed pink. Luke’s head glowed with a deep tan.

Luke didn’t stand. He pushed back his chair and relaxed down into the seat a bit before beginning his speech.

“Things are diff’rent down south," Luke said. “Not like up here a’ tall. I mean further south than the eye poppers.” Luke hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Down there you got things that hunt.”

“From the beginning,” a woman said from the next table. A couple of people mumbled their agreement.

“Settle out, Tib, I’m gettin’ there," Luke said. He took a deep breath through his nose, flaring his nostrils. “I didn’t actually see the begin, not like most folk. I had some time off work, so I headed out in the hills, tryin’ to get a deer. I live down-state Mare’land. Western edge.”

He folded his hands on top of his belly. Luke looked up at the ceiling. He seemed to be aware that everyone was looking at him, but he avoided locking eyes with them.
 

“I set out ’round three or four. Good and dark out there. No big towns around or nuthin’. No light pollution a’ tall. All I had was my gun, a six-pack, and the brightest goddamn spotlight you’ve ever seen, but I wasn’t using any of them at the time," Luke said.

“I was just hiking in the dark. I got about half-aways up Brandette hill when I heard some rustlin’. Sounded like a buck thrashin’ his rack, marking out a spot, so I got down low. But the noise, it just kept getting louder and louder, like there wasn’t just one buck, but two or three or four, and they were having it out with each other. Pretty soon, thrashin’ turned into a pounding, like a stampede. That’s when I used my light," Luke said.

“As soon as my eyeballs dialed in, I could see more than a dozen of ‘em, and they were barreling down the hill right at me. Usually when a big light hits them and they stop dead and just stare at me," Luke said.

“Jacklighter,” Brad heard someone mumble, but Luke didn’t seem to notice.

“But they just kept coming—bucks in front, does in back. You never see them all herded up that time of year. I slid over so I was mostly blocked by a big oak tree and just watched ‘em run. I shut my light off after they passed by. Didn’t even take a shot. I figured I wanted to hike up the hill, figger out what was drivin’ ’em. I guess they wasn’t the only ones, too, ’cause on the other side of those deer I didn’t hear nuthin’ in those woods. No birds, raccoons, squirrels, possums, nuthin’. Honestly? I didn’t even know what I expected, but I didn’t expect such a … such a
void
.

“So I kept climbing. I kinda gave up on looking for some monster, chasing all the sounds away, but I wanted to get to the top. All them hills are covered with trees, but on the south side of Brandette, there’s a little cliff where you can see a ways. I had to move real slow because I was coming from the other side and it was dark—just starlight—and I didn’t want to fall over t’other side of the cliff. Took me almost ’til dawn to get all the way up there.

“I don’t know how all the deer knew it was coming," Luke said, “but when I got up there, I saw what scared them away.”

Luke folded his hands behind his head as he talked. He still looked up at the ceiling while the eyes of everyone else were locked on him and his story. Brad glanced over at Robby; the young man leaned forward, perched on the very edge of his chair.

“Up above me, the sky was full of stars, but in the distance… It looked off in the distance like the sky was disappearing altogether. Looking into it almost hurt my eyes," Luke said. He shut his eyes, like they still hurt now.

“Was it black?” asked his compatriot, Frank.

Brad rolled his eyes—when Frank prompted for an answer he must already know, this seemed more like a sermon than a story.

Luke might have sensed he was losing his audience. He lashed out at the interruption—“No, Frank, you asshole, I already tole you it weren’t
black
.”

Luke sat up straighter, put his hands on the table, and glanced around to a few people in the room, locking eyes with them for a brief second to recapture their trust and then he looked down at his hands.

“It weren’t black,” he repeated. “The sky just weren’t
there
. It’s like a TV in the ol’ days. When you didn’t get signal, you’d get fuzzy snow, ya know? Not black, just no signal. What was worse—it weren’t just the sky. The ‘no signal’ was starting to creep down over the hills across the valley. Down the slopes it spread out in these little fingers. Least I think it did, coulda just been the terrain that made it look that ways. It was almost like watching the sunrise, but in reverse, and slower. We’ve got a tall ridge out to the east, so the sun always lights up the peaks first and then rolls down the hills. Well that morning it looked like the hills were being eaten from the top down. I just stood there watchin’ with my jaw hangin’ open.

“When a couple of big black shapes passed overhead, I got movin’. At first, I crashed down the hill like the deer, but then I remembered what I was standin’ on,” Luke paused while everyone wondered about his statement. He once again controlled their full attention. “Those hills are made of nuthin’ but pure limestone—all shot fulla holes. I turned west, and ran up hill for a little bit until I found the entrance to a cave they call ‘Fat Man.’

“They call it that because you have to be right skinny to fit in the entrance. It’s like about this high,” Luke said, spacing his hands about a foot apart, “for the first five feet and then it turns straight up. It ain’t too hard to find ‘cause it’s right at the base of a big maple what’s split at the base—looks like a female with her legs up in the air.

“I went in rifle first and shimmied all the way in. I didn’t stop until I got to the first room, where you can stand up. When we were kids we called it the ‘Altar Room.’ We’d go in there to drink beer and have herbal picnics. I turned on my light and found it pretty much how we’d left it back when I was in high school. There’s some candles on the ledges on the wall, and in the middle there’s a great big flat rock—the altar—with a bunch of bat bones on it," Luke said.

At the mention of the bones, the woman he’d called “Tib” let out a tiny sigh of disapproval.
 

“Yeah, kids catch ‘em and then burn ‘em up on the altar," Luke said. “You don’t know better. I didn’t keep my light on long though. I had just sat down when I heard a noise comin’ through from the entrance. It kinda sounded like wind, but it was too steady. It was like a high-pitch train whistle or something. Gave me a chill. I didn’t even notice when the noise stopped, but then I was hearin’ different sounds and the first one was gone. The new ones sounded like ‘swish,’ only real fast. There was something menacing ’bout these new sound. Made me flinch back. Like the sound of a circular saw would if you all of a sudden didn’t quite know where your fingers were.”

Frank smiled and nodded. Brad watched his head dip up and down.

Luke continued. "With the lights off in a cave, you get real sensitive to noises, and these ones really bothered me. I fished out my lighter so I could make sure I was still alone. I mean it seemed like the sounds were coming from outside the cave, but with those sounds it was damn hard to tell. I grabbed one of the candles stuck on a ledge in the wall, lit it up, and then started shimmying even deeper into the cave. The cave goes back a ways before it gets serious. I waited around one of the turns to see if the noises would stop.”

“What do you mean ‘serious’?” asked Ted.

“You can just
walk
through the beginnin’ of it," Luke said. “Then you get to a point where you have to chimney between two walls to get to the next room.”

Ted and several other people still seemed perplexed by the answer, so Luke continued his explanation. "You put your back against one wall and then put your feet against the other—they’re only about three feet apart. Down below, the crack goes down forever. Can’t see the bottom. You just shuffle sideways and it’s called chimneying. That’s what I mean by serious—serious climbing and risk to life and limb are involved.”

Luke took a second to reorient himself in the story.

“So I waited and waited. I blew out the candle for awhiles, then lit it up again. It’s hard waiting in the dark. You don’t know how long anything takes in a cave, and I didn’t have a clock except on my phone, and it had gone blank," Luke said.

“When? When the deer stampeded? When you ran to the cave?” asked Ted.

“The clock? I don’t know for sure. I didn’t think to check it until I was in the cave. First time I checked it, it was blank," Luke said.
 

As Luke continued, Brad watched Ted. The older man handed something to Robby; more accurately, he pushed it into Robby’s hand as Robby focused on the storyteller. Robby took it and flipped it open without looking down. It was a small notepad.

“So, like I said," Luke said, “I don’t have an idea of how long I crouched, but it felt longer than hell. The gap between the swish noises got bigger an’ bigger, until it seemed like they were about to stop. I crawled back to the altar room without the light and then waited even more. I wanted to get out. Now that I look back, I almost wanted those noises to still be goin’ when I got outta there. I wanted to see what they were, you know? Curiosity. Nuthin’ more. Had I known, I woulda just sat right there.” Luke shook his head slowly.

“I crawled out," Luke said. “One of them whoosh sounds went by as I crawled out from under the rock. The sun was up by then, but the sky looked funny. I ran through the woods as quiet as I could and tried to head for where I’d parked my truck. I got a hot stitch in my right side, and I could barely breathe, I was runnin’ so fast, but I didn’t slow down until I saw a little patch of my red truck through the woods. Then WHOOSH! One of those things came down right on top of me. I heard it comin’, and I got tangled up in a branch so I was falling when it grabbed my back. The thing lifted me about a foot or two by my back and then somethin’ off to the north exploded.”

Luke picked up his glass and took a sip of water. He ran his tongue over his lips while everyone watched.

“I guess it was just dumb luck that the thing got distracted. I suspect the loud noise drew it away. I never did find out what blew up, but it sounded pretty damn big. After the boom, I could hear stuff falling—crashing back to the ground—for several seconds. I figured out later that the way the thing picked me up was weird. It didn’t touch my jacket or my shirt, but it just grabbed ahold of me—just the flesh. I found three big scrapes and a chunk of meat missing from my shoulder, but my clothes weren’t ripped one bit.”

“Did you get a look at it?” asked Ted.

“I did," Luke said. “I did. I don’t know what to tell you, though. When it let go of me, I was fallin’ back to the ground, but I flipped over enough to see. It was like a hole in the world. Wherever the thing was, nuthin’ else was. I can’t tell you more than that.”

Brad was watching Robby this time and saw him pass the notepad over to Ted. The older man barely glanced down and then asked a question. "What was the size of the hole?”

“It’s a good question," Luke said, “but I can’t answer it. I’d hafta assume how far away it were, you know? If it were ten feet up, then I ‘spose it was only ‘bout five, six feet across. But if it were fifty feet up, then maybe thirty feet across. Because it wasn’t a thing, it was like a absence of anything.”

“But it had claws," Ted said.

“I never said claws," Luke said, wagging his finger. He turned his finger over to Robby and asked, "Boy, why don’t you just ask me your questions directly?”