“Oh,” said Tully, zipping his coat back up, “it kills ’em, all right.” He leaned over the counter and peered out one of the windows. Outside, the sky looked to be the color of old dishwater. “The skin-suits need rest. They sleep during the day, but they sleep light. But those tornado monsters or snowstorm things or whatever they are—they’re still out there and they’re still plenty pissed off.”
“Skin-suits?” Todd said.
Tully raised his elbows and dangled his hands like limp rags, miming a marionette. “People puppets. Whatever you call ’em.”
“I don’t call them anything,” Todd said. “This is all new to me.”
“You think it’s old hat to me, partner?” Tully stared at him hard, his eyes rheumy. He reached up and began opening cupboards, peering inside. “Like I said—a week ago I had a nice little place over on Acre. Worked days at the plant in Bicklerville and played pool down at the Blue Shue every other night.” He bent down and went through the cupboards beneath the sink. “You think I been doing this my whole life? Running around Woodson with a flamethrower strapped to my hips?”
“No, sir,” Kate said. She sounded like someone being reprimanded by a schoolteacher.
“Damn straight,” said Tully. He stood and went over to the refrigerator. Standing on his toes, he managed to peek into the cabinets over the fridge, but they were empty. “Those things came and ate the town. They blew all the power out and then our cars wouldn’t start. Phones went dead. They’ve got us quarantined.”
“How many are left?”
Tully spat a second ball of phlegm into the sink, then tromped in his heavy boots over to a new wall of cabinets. The first one he opened elicited a wry smile from his otherwise hardened features: the liquor cabinet. “How many what?” he said.
“How many people,” Todd clarified. “How many of you are still alive?”
“There’s six of us down at the station.” He was collecting the liquor bottles and loading them into a child’s Superman backpack he’d found beside the refrigerator. “I suppose you two make eight.”
“So we’re going with you,” Kate said. It was not a question. She was watching Tully like someone who’d paid a good price to step into a freak show.
“Keep running around out here, you’re both liable to get yourselves killed. That’s a fact. See how easy I followed you both up from the amb’lance and right into this house? Them things out there are ten times sneakier and a hundred times more dangerous. It’s a fool’s game, wandering around out there in the snow.”
“What about getting out of town?” Todd said. “Is there any way?”
Tully stacked the last of the bottles in the Superman backpack, then turned to the refrigerator. He pulled the door open and reached into one of the compartments, worked his fingers around. “Told you,” he said. “Cars don’t start. Can’t call anybody to come and get us. Molly has one of them little handheld doohickeys—BlackBerry, she calls it. Tried to send out an email but the screen went all funny. Kept spitting out random math equations or some shit.” As an afterthought, he added, “Molly’s from town. One of the survivors back at the station. You’ll meet her.”
“That sounds just like what happened with the cell phones,” Kate said, picking the flip phone up off the counter. “No numbers, no letters. Just nonsense.”
“My guess is they’re jamming us,” said Tully. He paused to glance at Kate appraisingly from over his shoulder. “That angry-looking cloud out by the church this morning—well, where the church used to be, I guess—see, I think it’s sending bad signals down to all our electrical appliances. Anything that runs on batteries that they couldn’t knock out with the power—anything from cars to cell phones—they wind up jamming with astro-nonsense.”
“What’s that?” Kate asked.
“Garbage from space.”
“So that’s where you think these things are from?” Todd asked.
“Mister,” Tully said, “I ain’t got a fucking clue where these things are from.”
“They’re that smart?” Kate sounded dejected. “To scramble signals like that?” She tossed the cell phone back down on the counter and folded her arms over her chest.
“Smart,” said Tully, “or just driven by some otherworldly instinct. Who the hell knows?”
“Scrambling signals and cutting off power doesn’t explain why the cars won’t start,” Todd said.
“Cars got about a billion little microchips and whatnot in ’em,” Tully explained.
“So there’s no way out of here,” Todd said again.
“Figured we’d sit tight until the power company came out here to see what happened to their line,” said Tully.
“It’s been a week,” Todd said. “I would have thought they’d come out here by now.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Tully seemed disinterested. His hand returned from within the refrigerator with a handful of black olives. He popped them into his mouth like medication, then pushed the refrigerator door closed with the sole of his boot. “We should get out of here.”
They followed Tully back out into the yard. Instead of crossing back to the front and down to the street, Tully led them between properties enclosed by trees.
“Wait,” Todd said, surveying the area. “You said we’re going to the sheriff’s station? Isn’t it on the other side of town?”
“That’s right,” said Tully.
“We’re going in the opposite direction. We should cut through the town square and head up the road.”
“You don’t want to go cutting through the square, friend.” Tully was working something out of his teeth with his tongue while he spoke. “That’s their nest. They’ve claimed it. For whatever reason, they all congregate there during the day. You head that way now, you won’t make it out alive.”
Without waiting for their response, Tully turned and continued pushing through the heavy snow. A beat later, Todd and Kate followed.
They cut between narrow fencing and through overgrown holly bushes, Tully leading the charge like a general about to overtake a hill. Aside from his camouflage coat and wool hat, he wore mud-streaked BDUs (every pocket bulged) and a bandolier of large rounds across his flannel shirt. Although he moved lithely through the snow, he jangled like a slot machine: aside from the fuel canisters at his waist and the clanking bottles in the backpack over his shoulders, his belt was overburdened with countless sets of keys. He looked comically like a janitor gone commando.
“Shhhhh,” Tully said at one point, sinking down low to the ground. Todd and Kate followed suit. Peering through dense evergreen shrubs, Tully jerked his chin at something down in the street. “There’s one now.”
Todd maneuvered so he could see through the bushes. Down between two houses, the street sloped close to a muddy ravine, beside which rose the leafless branches of ancient gray trees. At first Todd couldn’t see what Tully was talking about…but then he happened to catch sight of a slight wrongness up in one of the trees. He squinted and leaned closer on the balls of his feet. Midway up in one tree, the air looked slightly discolored, almost brownish, and the tree branches in that particular spot seemed less defined than those around them. It was up there in the tree, perhaps fifteen feet wide, unfurled and just barely visible. The closest thing Todd’s mind could compare it to was a stingray, with those triangular fins and an ill-defined underside.
“Where?” Kate whispered, crawling closer to him. “I don’t see anything.”
“There.” He pointed and spread the bushes just a bit farther apart. “See?”
“I don’t—oh…” Her hand closed around his arm. “I see it. My God, what is it?”