“Y’all are Marines? Yav come t’clear the town?” he beamed.
“Yes we are and yes we have,” Paskow answered.
“Thank th’ Lawd! Ah just need t’get dressed!” Without closing the door the man turned and ran back into his bedroom leaving the four slightly puzzled Marines on his doorstep.
“Maybe we won’t need to burn ’em out after all,” Hennessey said hopefully.
In less than four minutes the old man had himself, his wife, and his two sons dressed and out the door. Then it was on to the next house. This time when Paskow pounded on the door, the only answer he got was a curt “Go ahway!”
“We are authorized to use whatever force is necessary to evacuate the inhabitants of this town, sir!” Paskow bellowed back through the door. “If you don’t open up right now, we’re kicking the door in!”
“Dammit t’Hell, Jawsef!” the old man cried from the street behind the Marines. “They’ah from th’government! They’ah here t’help!”
Paskow was just about to tell the old man to keep quiet when the front door unbolted. “Ah can’t believe it,” said the weathered face that peered out. “Afta all this time. Yav come t’put it right then?”
Paskow gripped his trench gun a little tighter in frustration. “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that. My orders are to move everyone to the train station for evacuation.”
“Ever’one? Even th’ others?” the man asked tentatively.
“I don’t know anything about any others, but if you don’t open the door this second, my men will smash it in.”
The man looked resigned and cast his eyes to the floor. “What’ll Ah need t’bring?”
“Warm clothes is all,” Paskow urged. “And make it fast.” Once the weathered face disappeared back into the house, Paskow turned to Hennessey. “It’ll be a damn shame if we don’t get to use the flamethrowers.” Hennessey was fairly sure this wasn’t meant in jest.
As the weathered man bundled his wife and daughter down to the sidewalk, he turned to Hennessey and hissed, “Be careful of th’ Sahgents. Ah ain’t seen his waaf for better-on four months. Ah think she’s beginnin’ t’turn.” Hennessey hadn’t the slightest clue what the fella was talking about, but he could still see the genuine fear in the man’s watery gray eyes.
“Thanks, sir. We’ll watch out for that.”
By 2:30 A.M., Third Company had cleared all the blocks north of Pierce Street and west of Phillips and was ready to move south towards the river and east towards the bay. Now the situation was beginning to rapidly change. Lights were on in many of the windows on Hancock Street. It made it a lot easier for the Marines to pick out which doors to knock on, only now the inhabitants were beginning to resist. Up and down Hancock Street Marines were kicking in doors and smashing open windows with their buttstocks. Despite the quality and state of repair of the houses on this street, the attitude of the locals was one of defiance and loathing. At one house, Hennessey saw a woman standing at her front door brandishing a frying pan and screaming, “Ah won’t stand far it!”
“Get off mah yaad,” was the reply from the first house they came to.
“Open this door or we’ll smash it in!” Paskow said loudly, but without a hint of anger.
“Yav got no right t’be turnin’ us outta our homes in th’dead o’night!”
“I’ve all the rights I need right here.” Paskow worked the action on his trench gun with a resounding “cha-chak!” The door opened without much more to-do about “rights.” The man who greeted them was stooped and bowlegged. His age was hard to determine, being somewhere between thirty and fifty. He had big bulging eyes and a wide, thick-lipped mouth that probably turned down at the corners even when he wasn’t being rounded up in the middle of the night. His fat eyes were filled to the brim with fear and loathing for the men outside. Hennessey could not help but think that the hate wasn’t because he and his fellow Marines represented the unbridled power of the government. Instead this parody of a man hated them for being straight-backed and clear-skinned. He hated them for being normal. His wife and children showed many of the same signs as their father: over-large eyes, rough, scaly skin, too-wide mouths. Even his fat wife was showing signs of encroaching baldness. As she called the children together, the woman’s voice sounded badly scarred. Maybe it had something to do with the thick wrinkles on her neck? The family had to be prodded and pushed down to the street where a crowd of equally repugnant locals was being gathered together.
The name on the mailbox of the next house read “Sergeant.” A rickety-looking motor coach, dirty gray in color, was parked at the curb. The half-illegible sign in the windshield read “Arkham-Innsmouth-Newb’port.” Whoever was inside the house was awake with a light on. He croaked at the four Marines before they even got to the first step. “Ah can’t leave th’house! Mah wife’s very sick. She can’t be moved.”
“We’ll have a doctor look her over,” Paskow called back.
“She can’t walk. She’s an invalid.”
“We’ll get a couple of medics to carry her on a stretcher.”
“No, she’s too sick. Go away, d’ya hear? Ah’ve got a shotgun and ah’ll use it!”
Paskow stepped to the right side of the door and motioned Hennessey and Lyman to take the left and Boyle to join him on the right. “You shoot at us and we’ll damn well toss a grenade in there with you. You want to be blown to Kingdom Come?” Paskow took the silence to mean that Mr. Sergeant was thinking about it. “Now open the door and toss the shotgun out!” The four held their breaths as they listened to the bolts turn in the door. The hand that held the shotgun barrel and placed it on the doormat was as dry and scaly-looking as any from the last house full of inbreds, only this one was webbed up to the second knuckle.
As Sergeant released the shotgun, Hennessey, with a nod from Paskow, threw himself against the door. At age twenty, Hennessey was a horse of a man: six-foot-two and two hundred and twenty pounds of combat-honed muscle. Under that kind of force, the door swung open like a spring-loaded trap and struck Sergeant in the chin. He stumbled backwards and landed hard on his rump. Hennessey put a boot in his chest and shoved him back down on the floor. “Stay down! Don’t get up!”
True to what his hand had suggested, Sergeant presented another fine example of Innsmouth’s poor breeding habits. He was thin, with stooped shoulders. Like his neighbors, he had the same flaky, peeling skin, almost like he’d been sunburnt. His eyes, mouth, and lips were disproportionately large, and his sloping forehead and chin seemed to simply fall into his strangely creased neck. “Where’s your wife?”
The question filled Sergeant’s bulging blue eyes with terror. “Ya can’t take her. She’s too sick ah tell ya.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Paskow said as he coolly surveyed the interior of the house. The furnishings seemed oddly antiquated, as if Sergeant lived in a house full of his grandfather’s furnishings. The room was lit by a single oil lamp. “Boyle, check the rooms on this floor. Lyman, check upstairs.” Boyle quickly set off, but Lyman hesitated a moment. Paskow’s bark of “Get a move on!” sent him scurrying up the stairs.
“Don’t go up thar!” Sergeant croaked from the floor. As he began to pull himself off the floor, Hennessey put him back down again with the boot.
“Stay there!”
“Ya don’t understand!” Sergeant looked absolutely panicked now. “Ma wife, she needs me!”
“If he tries to get up again, shoot him,” Paskow said with finality. On that note Hennessey pulled back the action lever on the Thompson’s bolt and aimed the muzzle right at Sergeant’s face. His complexion, already quite gray, grew considerably less healthy.
From upstairs Lyman called down, “I think I found it, Corporal. There’s a padlocked door.”
Paskow looked down at Sergeant. “Where’s the key?” Sergeant just looked away at the floor. “Fine. We’ll break it open. Boyle! Get back here and watch the prisoner.” As Boyle came back in through the dining room from the kitchen Paskow turned and trudged up the stairs.