Clickers. Part 17

The sound of his voice didn't break their pace. One of them-white male, middle-aged, and presumably the male figurehead-looked up briefly as what Roy a.s.sumed to be his wife and teenage son opened the doors and piled into the car. The man opened the driver's side door.

"Wait!" Roy yelled, running up to the car. "You have to take me back to town!" If he could get back to the station he could equip himself with more armament.

The man looked at Roy as if the sheriff was crazy. "Uh uh, no way, we're getting the h.e.l.l out of here." He fumbled in his pockets for his keys as Roy leaned against the driver's side window.

"I am the sheriff of Phillipsport County and I demand that you take me into town now."

The man got his keys out of his pocket and jammed them in the ignition. His hands were shaking. "f.u.c.k off."

The man started the car and was about to pull away when Roy stepped back and drew his gun. He pointed it at the man. "Get out of the car now, sir!"

The man looked up at Roy with an I-can't-believethis-is-happening look. He raised his hands off the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender. The woman next to him began screaming epithets equating police officers with pork products. The boy in the back seat looked like he was in shock.

Roy pointed the gun at the man's head. "Get out of the car."

"Okay, okay," the man said. He opened the door as his wife screamed.

"Carl no! Don't get out of the car!"

Carl was out of the car. The woman fumbled open her own door and tumbled out. She was in her late thirties with wavy black hair streaked with gray. Her face was bright red with white-hot anger. "What the f.u.c.k do you think you're doing, you G.o.dd.a.m.ned pig!"

Roy felt a tingling rise along his arms. His face felt flushed, his mind flashing with heavy images, his leg throbbing with pain. His heart was drumming rapidly. He had to get back to the station where the weapons were. He was down to only a few bullets. The volume of the woman's voice, combined with the family's initial yelling and screaming were sure to carry. If those things could hear the way humans could hear...

Roy motioned for Carl to step aside. Carl did. The boy was still in the backseat, making a feeble attempt to exit the vehicle. Roy motioned with his gun. "Come on, let's hurry it up."

Carl's wife was screaming right next to him. "I'm going to get you, you redneck backwoods piece of s.h.i.t-"

Roy turned around, pointed the barrel of the gun at the woman's face and fired. Her face exploded in a cloud of bone, tissue, and brain. Her body dropped instantly and began flopping convulsively. Carl stood in numbed shock, his jaws opening and closing, a whining gasp escaping from his mouth. Roy grimaced and moved over to the pa.s.senger side where the boy had stopped in mid exit at the sound of the shot going off. He grabbed the kid and shoved him away from the door to the pavement. "Move your a.s.s, you little twit."

He slammed the door and moved over to the driver's side. Carl was still staring at the body of his dead wife. The tingling along Roy's arms was now joined by a nervous twinge in his spine, as if he could sense that somebody was approaching him. The feeling spurred him on as he slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door. He put the car in gear, popped the headlights and pulled out. Carl looked up at the sound of the car pulling away and he made a feeble attempt at running after Roy as he pulled away. Roy gunned the engine and sped through the parking lot as Carl ran after him, waving his arms and shouting.

Roy sped toward the entrance to the shopping center and paused once to check Carl's progress in the rear view mirror.

Sometime during the initial moment it took Roy to arrive at the parking lot entrance, Carl and his son were besieged by half a dozen of the scaly green things. Roy's eyes were riveted to the rearview mirror as he watched Carl being gutted on the parking lot pavement by two of the things. Farther back, his son was buried beneath three more of the creatures. Roy would have stayed there mesmerized by the scene had it not been for that p.r.i.c.kly feeling rising in his system again, that sixth sense that told him that something was coming- Roy turned his head back and saw the creature rapidly approaching from his blind side. It was running toward him, reptilian arms outstretched, mouth bared in a menacing grin full of razor sharp teeth. Roy yelled and put his foot down on the accelerator. Tires squealed and the car bolted forward. Roy made a hard left and felt something smack against the rear right side of the car. The force of the blow caused the car to be slightly buffeted, as if whatever hit it lightly bounced the car. Roy didn't care to take a look, remaining fixed on the open road before him as he gunned the engine and sped down the main road, his breath coming faster as his adrenaline flowed through his veins. They almost got me, he thought.

He sped down the road, doing ninety the whole way. He was forced to slow down once he reached the older section of town, and he made his way through the center of town, tires screeching on the pavement as he made turns too fast. His senses were on alert now after that near-fatal attack, and he kept his eyes peeled for any signs of movement. There was none.

The town itself was deserted. And littered.

With bodies.

Roy drew in a breath as he slowed the car to a crawl. All up and down Main Street, sprinkling the sidewalk, streets, and lawns of houses and businesses, the bodies lay glistening amid the newly fallen rain. The headlights of the car picked out the littered streets of Phillipsport like a battlefield; torn, ripped b.l.o.o.d.y limbs, torsos and heads lying like discarded broken dolls. The glistening colors of internal organs lay strewn amid the blood and torn flesh, as if a gang of psychopathic children had come along and strewn the innards around like playthings. Roy drove through slowly, trying to fight his gorge down as he felt the car's tires thunk slowly over bodies. Blood and death was heavy in the air, along with the smell of rain.

Everywhere he looked there was no sign of life. Not a tree stirred. Not a bird chirped.

He reached the station and pulled the car in front of the curb. He glanced up and down the street, his foot on the brake, ready to peel out if anything moved. But there was nothing. The town was deserted.

He put the car in park and turned off the ignition, keeping the headlights on. He wouldn't be too long. It would take less than three minutes to gather more firearms and ammunition and head back out. The sound of the engine cooling was like a loud, annoying clang that sent his nerves running high. It sounded like anybody within a five-mile radius could hear it. Roy looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of any movement. But there was none.

He grabbed his gun, and opened the car door slowly.

The air outside was still. The sky was overcast and dark. Dark clouds loomed over the ocean, looking ominous in the distance. Another wave of heavy storms. From the way the breeze was blowing, the storm would be moving inland within a few hours. Round two in Mother Nature's onslaught against Phillipsport. Roy stepped away from the car, leaving the driver's side door open as he made his way slowly to the station. His gun was drawn, ears perked for any sound. He walked slowly to the door, his goal on reaching the station and bolting himself inside where the cache of weapons were and- He didn't even see them spring from behind the car they were hiding behind as he put his hand on the doork.n.o.b to open it. They came at him like crocodiles charging a herd of wildebeests along the Nile and he turned suddenly, the gun dropping down onto the pavement as the first one slammed into him. His back hit the wall and he smelled the fishy scent of the thing's breath. It leaned forward and clamped its jaws on his face, holding him down while the second one came and grasped his arm with sharp talons and began pulling him away from the building. Roy gave one violent kick before his body went limp as the creatures dragged him away. The last thing he thought was that in the end he never had the chance to make his amends. He never had the chance to turn things around and be the hero. They'd moved too fast on him and they- He wasn't conscious long enough to finish that last thought.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Most of the people they saw from Dr. Glen Jorgensen's third story adobe were now all dead.

Jack Ripley sat on a dining room chair that Glen had hauled upstairs a few hours back. He looked out the window, cradling the thirty-ought six. A crate of sh.e.l.ls lay at his feet. Glen sat opposite him, cradling his firearm. They'd been watching the activity and talking for the better part of three hours, and things had died down outside. The rain had stopped and all appeared still. The brief reprieve of rain allowed a few stars to poke between the clouds, giving a little light to the dark night. Glen leaned forward slightly and peered out the window, scanning the street below.

"Bad?" Jack asked.

Glen nodded and settled back in his sitting position. "If anybody's alive out there, they're not coming out."

Glen had seen Jack Ripley snaking through the streets, making his way to the house and he knew in an instant that it had something to do with Rick, Janice and Bobby. He'd crept downstairs, clutching his pistol, and answered the door the minute Jack began pounding on it. He thought he'd almost given the man a heart attack when he opened the door; one look at the gun with its humungous barrel and Jack almost turned and bolted back the way he came.

He'd hustled Jack upstairs and learned what happened; Sheriff Conklin's arrival in town, Rick jailed, the status of the Clickers. Jack had been insistent in getting back to town for Glen to try to talk sense into the Sheriff, but Glen hesitated. If what he believed was true, if what he surmised from his research of the old Lost Village legend was indeed accurate, the next wave could happen any minute. And if they were caught while in the middle of town, then what? Try and hightail it back? Somehow Glen didn't think that would be an option.

But another part of his mind nagged at him, the ethical part that told him that there was still some time before all h.e.l.l broke loose. All he had to do was drive to the station, talk some sense into Roy in letting Rick out due to the emergency status the town was under. And if he could, try to treat Roy's injuries. From the way Jack described him, it sounded like the sheriff was injured and in shock. From the description of his behavior, he might even be experiencing post-traumatic stress. He was very strongly inclined to let that part of him win, to go with Jack back into town and fight the good fight, when a chorus of screams and cries erupted from where Jack Ripley had just come from.

"My G.o.d, what's happening?" Jack's face had gone pale.

Glen had gone to the window, gun raised. Jack stood next to him and gasped at the scene below.

Glen knew it would be bad, but he still didn't know what to expect. The scene below resembled something out of Spielberg's Jura.s.sic Park; a horde of man-like, reptilian creatures were running amok among town, lunging at the residents of Phillipsport as they were commencing clean-up of the Clickers. The new creatures had obviously taken the people by surprise, since by the time Glen laid eyes on the scene they'd pretty much already overrun the town. People ran, scrambling to get away from the monstrosities, yelling at the top of their lungs. The creatures chased people down like cheetahs nailing Impalas. When the creatures took them down they ripped into the flesh of their hapless victims with sharp claws, burying their jaws into shoulders, necks, and abdomens, tearing chunks of flesh. A few of the creatures appeared to be carrying some kind of weapons-spears, or what appeared to be tridents. That was something he hadn't expected; that meant they might possess some form of intelligence. Glen stood transfixed, horrified at what he was seeing. Yet a tiny part of him was ecstatic, pleased and actually quite surprised that his deduction was right. His only regret was that he hadn't come up with his theory a day-even a few hours-earlier, instead of within the last hour.

"What the f.u.c.k are these things?" Jack asked, horrified. His bony fists balled up, the knuckles growing white. His eyes were wild, and Glen thought the man would bolt and head down the stairs to try to get to the other three to perform an act of heroism. And that couldn't happen-s.h.i.tty as it was.

"No, Jack," Glen said, his hand resting gently but firmly on Jack's shoulder. "We can't go out there now."

Jack looked back at the physician. "But...we can't just stay here and-"

"If we go out there now we'll be slaughtered," Glen said. He motioned out the window. "There is an army of those things out there, marauding the way Norse invaders would an English village."

Jack looked out the window. The slaughter seemed to be moving as the creatures moved up Main Street and up the road that led to the shopping center-out of visual proximity to Dr. Jorgensen's third floor viewing spot. Scattered creatures moved up the side streets, snaring people in their paths as they tried to make a getaway. Some of them paused to scoop up the dead Clickers in their reptilian mouths. Gunshots peppered the area below as those with guns tried to make use of them. With the lush greenery of trees on every block, the steepled roofs of houses obscuring the view and the darkness of the night, it was hard to tell if the gunfire was having any effect. By the sounds of the screams of the people below, it appeared they had no effect.

"But..." Jack began. "Rick...Bobby..."

"We can only hope and pray that they're somewhere safe." Glen didn't want to think about what was probably happening to them. He'd known Janice since she graduated high school, and had been her and Bobby's physician since the boy was an infant. He'd liked Rick the instant he'd met him, yet despite that he had to keep a clear head. This was an emergency, possibly one of regional proportions. In working in an emergency triage, it was critical that emotions were kept to a minimum. The primary concern was in helping those with the least critical injuries; those with life-threatening injuries were delegated at the end of the triage in order to save those who had a better chance of surviving. To the layman's way of thinking that might sound cruel, but it wasn't a wasteful effort. To fight these things off and survive they had to adopt the emergency triage tactic and a.s.sume that anybody who was outside, or in near proximity to these creatures, were as good as dead. To a.s.sume otherwise and attempt a rescue would be wasting one of the only good resources the town had: a Medical Doctor.

Glen explained all this to Jack slowly and methodically. He looked directly in Jack's eyes as he spoke, boring home the message that they needed to keep calm and not flip out. For the sake of those that might need their help, for the sake of the town, for the sake of the communities outlying Phillipsport, they had to keep calm and act reasonably if they expected to survive.

Jack appeared to get the message. He sat in the chair by the window and stared down at the floor. He refused to look outside. Glen checked his pulse, felt his brow with the back of his hand to check for shock. Jack appeared fine; if anything he was just trying to deal with what was happening emotionally. Glen asked him if he wanted some water and Jack nodded. He handed him a bottle of Evian and Jack opened it and drank it nearly empty. That seemed to put the kick back into him.

So Glen and Jack sat at the window and talked. And Glen watched the progress of the things as the creatures snaked their way through town just in case they strayed down the street below them. A pair of them did, shuffling along, their dark forms vaguely hulking in the shadows as they skittered down the middle of the street and past the house. Glen exhaled as the Dark Ones reached the end of the block and turned left, heading farther inland. He was not aware that he had been holding his breath until he let it out.

"What are they?" Jack asked. Jack had gotten over his initial nervousness and Glen had given him a weapon, a Winchester rifle. He sat on his end of the window, his features still bearing some shock of what they had just witnessed yet composed of a yearning to know more of what was happening.

Glen moved from his spot at the window and crossed over to the table in the middle of the room. He picked up a book and opened it to a spot he knew by memory. "I'm an amateur paleontologist, and my main interest is in prehistoric life forms. I've been reading and studying about it since I was a kid. Anyway, when Janice and Rick brought Bobby in earlier today and I had the chance to examine the claw Rick brought in yesterday, I had a hunch. A wild one, but a hunch nonetheless."

"A hunch that the dinosaurs have come back to take over the world?" Jack asked. He grinned and Glen smiled back. It was nice to see that Jack's sense of humor had returned. It meant he was holding up, coping.

"No, not quite, " Glen said. "For one, it would be physiologically impossible for dinosaurs to come back to life. Our present eco-system wouldn't be able to provide for them. Second, because there is still no scientific method of regenerating dead tissues or cells, or even perfectly good cells or DNA preserved in tree sap."

"Like what they did in Jura.s.sic Park?"

"Right. The whole idea of being able to clone DNA that closely matches that of dinosaurs with something like, say, a frog, is pretty far-fetched-not impossible, because in science anything can be possible if we make the right discoveries-but far-fetched nonetheless. What made that novel work was Michael Crichton's background as a scientist. With the knowledge of the science of cloning DNA and regenerating cells from their dormant stage, all it takes is the wide speculation and far-out ideas which he utilized in his novel. This is fine for fiction, but what makes this story so great is that until recently this was theoretically impossible. The reason is that until now, perfectly preserved dinosaur DNA has never been found one-hundred-percent perfectly preserved as described in Jura.s.sic Park."

"Until now?" Jack was curious.

Glen smiled slightly. "Yes, until now. About a year ago, dinosaur DNA was found preserved in tree sap that was one-hundred-percent perfectly preserved."

Jack's eyes grew wide. "No s.h.i.t."

"Yep. Of course, that whole deal about cloning DNA with a present day living organism to match the DNA of tissue millions of years old still can't be done. But in ten years? Five?" He shrugged. "Who knows?"

"You think these things could be-"

"Not cloned." Glen shook his head. "No way. These babies have been with us for a long time. Take a look at this."

He motioned to the book. Jack looked at the picture Glen was pointing to. The picture was a sketch of a Clicker, pretty much as he'd seen it along with the dozen or more that attacked Bobby at the beach. It was a crustacean with the upper body of a crab, with large, powerful pincers, black marble-like eyes that stood on stalks, and long protruding antenna. The back of the creature resembled a lobster, ending in a segmented tail that tapered into a stinger, very much like a scorpion. It had eight legs. It was very ugly.

The italicized name below it was Homarus Tyrannous.

Jack looked amazed. "That's it. That's our culprit."

Glen pulled the book back. "This particular species began life about four hundred and thirty-eight million years ago in the Paleozoic era. There's evidence they survived till about the middle of the Mesozoic era. They predate man by about..." He stopped and chuckled. "Well, by about four hundred and thirty six million years."

Jack appeared to catch the humor in that, as well as the implications of what they were dealing with. "Holy moly."

"Basically they were an ancestor to our modern day crabs and lobsters, although the bit about the stinger is strange. Probably tells us a lot about where scorpions came from-scorpions originally did come from the ocean, you know."

Jack shrugged. It was obvious he didn't know much about paleontology, but he appeared interested nonetheless.

"Anyway," Glen continued, tapping the book with his index finger. "Not much is known about this particular species, since fossils are scarce. It's believed that they survived the Jura.s.sic period and quite possibly the early Cenozoic period. The latest fossilized remains were dated some fifty million years B.C."

"If that's the case then what the h.e.l.l are they doing here?" Jack asked. He hefted the rifle in his arms, taking a cautious peek out the window.

Glen raised a finger. "That is where it gets interesting." He walked over to a large wall-sized map of the world that he had tacked over a desk. He pointed at the area bridging the coast of Maine, up through the Canadian coast to Greenland. "Fossil remains have been found in this region, but they've also been found on the sh.o.r.es of Iceland, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the South of France. Which lends believability to the theory that the land ma.s.ses that we now have were once joined together."

Jack nodded. "Okay. That makes sense."

Glen continued. "n.o.body really knows how or why the dinosaurs died off. Many theories abound and one of the more plausible ones is that a meteor struck the earth's surface. The resulting shifts in the earth's ozone layer, as a result, tipped the ecological scale. If the dinosaurs were used to living in a lush, humid area, a sudden shift from that to an atmosphere that was cloudy, dark, and cold could have wiped them out. And remember that this change most likely occurred within a short period of time for the dinosaurs to have died off so suddenly. Like maybe...a few months time, probably more like a few days."

"Yeah I read a book about that once," Jack said, grinning slightly. "It was a novel in which World War III happens and we're wiped out. Kaput. And it described the ecological changes as happening within the s.p.a.ce of days. One minute everything was normal, the next bombs were destroying everything, whipping up firestorms, hurricanes, the works. And it just sent everything in a huge tailspin. The sun was blotted out by thick clouds of nuclear s.h.i.t, and things were all f.u.c.ked up for like, years. And it got real cold, freezing temperatures. That book scared the c.r.a.p out of me."

"I can imagine. And we can a.s.sume something similar happened in this case with the dinosaurs. The resulting changes wiped out the dinosaurs; that much we know. Along with Allosauraus and Brontosauraus and T-Rex and thousands of other species, paleontologists have lumped Homarus Tyrannous as extinct. Why? Because none have been seen, and the only remains of them are the few fossils we've found. But they've survived, and they're still here."

"How is that possible?"

"Two things." He tapped the map again, indicating the area of the North Atlantic. "This area millions of years ago was rich and fertile and lush and humid. The temperature was most likely very warm. I think paleontologists have only unearthed maybe two remains of our little friends here, and those were partial sh.e.l.ls. The rest were fragments imbedded in rock, but they were enough for us to piece together. That's considerably fewer than we've found of, say...Mamenchisaurus, of which we've only found one complete skeleton, and that's scarce indeed. Paleontologists have only found one complete T-Rex skeleton since that particular species' discovery in the 1920s. Anyway, the theory for this is probably because Homarus Tyrannous lived along the ocean floor, and this area"-he tapped along the North Atlantic-"is fairly deep and largely unexplored. It is also my theory that they probably only migrated inland for mating purposes."

"If that's the case, wouldn't they have left fossilized remains on sh.o.r.e?"

"They have, in the areas I've indicated," Glen said. "But there hasn't been much. That can be explained by...what we're seeing today."

Jack's features grew grim. "The Dark Ones."

Glen was taken aback by the description of the creatures, but it fit. He nodded, stroking his chin. "Yes, the Dark Ones. Fitting, isn't it. And very Lovecraftian, too."

"Do you think they're some...I don't know...prehistoric relic from our past?"

Glen shook his head. "I've never come across anything fitting their description anywhere. Not even in folklore-" He stopped himself and held up his hand as if stopping himself. "Except for today." He darted over to the table where he plucked the chapbook he'd poured through earlier and flipped through it. "There's an old legend in this area about the Lost Village-"

"Right!" Jack exclaimed. "I've heard that one. Didn't that happen near Fort O'Brien?"

Glen nodded. "Exactly. It was a little town where Fort O'Brien is now; in fact Fort O'Brien's main tourist attraction comes from the Lost Village."

Jack appeared to be putting the pieces together. "The Clickers came up to breed, as they probably always did, and were followed by the Dark Ones for food."

"Just as they always did," Glen picked up. "They followed the Clickers inland much in the way Nile Monitor lizards follow female crocodiles in the hopes of eating their young. Which probably explains why we haven't found that many fossilized remains."

"If the Dark Ones destroyed all of them, how were they able to breed?"

"Nature probably allowed a certain number to survive, just as she does with other animal species. Look at the example of crocodiles again; females lay as many as ninety eggs, but in the end only ten ultimately survive through their first few years. The rest are eaten in utero, or within a few weeks or months of hatching by other predators."

Jack was nodding. He seemed to be taking this all in stride. "So a select lucky few survive, do their thing, and scuttle back to sea. What the h.e.l.l is their breeding period then? Every ten million years?"

Glen had an answer for that, even though it was still unsubstantiated. "They could breed yearly or bi-yearly. They could also breed less frequently than that. Every ten years, or fifteen. Every fifty. Every hundred. Cicadas go through a seventeen year gestation period. We can't really tell what the breeding period for these things is without study, but my guess is more like every hundred years. This could explain why we've never heard of them till now. They probably come ash.o.r.e on some remote area..." He pointed to portions of Canada and Greenland. "Somewhere where they aren't seen by man."

"If that's the case, what the h.e.l.l are they doing here now?"

Glen grinned. "That's a matter of geology and astronomy. And I'm not an expert at either, but the position of the stars and constellations does have an effect on not only our lunar system, but our geological one as well. My guess is that every four hundred years there is a change in the earth's ocean currents, particularly those in the Atlantic. And they shift in directions that they normally don't flow..."

"Thus bringing whatever might normally drift along their currents down to us," Jack said. He shook his head, leaning the rifle against the wall under the window sill. "What I don't get, though, is why we hadn't picked up on this before."

"Oh, we have," Glen said, holding up the chapbook. "Only four hundred or so years ago, the only human population in this area were American Indians who witnessed this excursion over the last few thousand years. They traded the tale orally from generation to generation, and I'm sure that in 1605 when the Lost Village incident happened, those Indians that were here knew the tale only as something of an urban legend. An urban legend that was very true."

"And the Lost Village was comprised of settlers, right?"

"Exactly. European settlers wouldn't have known about the legend since they'd just settled on these sh.o.r.es. They were, as they now say, in the wrong place at the wrong time."