Phantoms

one of its fucking doomsday viruses, I'm going to have their heads!”

“Easy, Jack. Maybe it's not an accident. Maybe it's the work of terrorists who got their hands on a supply of some CBW agent. Or maybe it's the Russians running a little test of our CBW analysis and defense system. It was to handle those kinds of situations that the Army Medical Corps instructed its CBW Division to create General Copperfield's office.”

“Who's Copperfield?”

“General Galen Copperfield. He's the Commanding officer of the Civilian Defense Unit of the CBW Division. This is precisely the kind of situation they want to be notified about. Within hours, Copperfield can put a team of well-known scientists into Snowfield. First-rate biologists, virologists, bacteriologists, pathologists with training in the very latest forensic medicine, at least one immunologist and biochemist, a neurologist — and even a neuropsychologist. Copperfield's department has designed elaborate mobile field laboratories. They've got them garaged at depots all over the country, so there must be one relatively close to us. Hold off the State Health gang, Jack. They don't have people of the caliber that Copperfield can provide, and they don't have state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment as mobile as Copperfield's. I want to call the general; I am going to call him, in fact, but I'd prefer to have your agreement and your guarantee that state bureaucrats won't be tramping around here, interfering.”

After a brief hesitation, Jack Redock said, “Doody, what kind of world have we let it become when things like Copperfield's department are even necessary?”

“You'll hold off Health?”

“Yes. What else do you need?”

Bryce glanced down at the list in front of him. “You could approach the telephone company about pulling the Snowfield circuits off automatic switching. When the world finds out what's happened up here, every phone in town will be ringing off the hook, and we won't be able to maintain essential communications. If they could route all calls to and from Snowfield through a few special operators and weed out the crank stuff and”

“I'll handle it,” Jack said.

“Of course, we could lose the phones at any time. Dr. Paige had trouble getting a call out when she first tried, so I'll need a shortwave set. The one here at the substation seems to've been sabotaged.”

“I can get you a mobile shortwave unit, a van that has its own gasoline generator. The Office of Earthquake Preparedness has a couple. Anything else?”

“Speaking of generators, it'd be nice if we didn't have to depend on the public power supply. Evidently, our enemy here can tamper with it at will. Could you get two big generators for us?”

“Can do. Anything else?”

“If I think of anything, I won't hesitate to ask.”

“Let me tell you, Bryce, as a friend, I hate like hell to see you in the middle of this one. But as a governor, I'm damned glad it fell in your jurisdiction, whatever the hell it is. There are some prize assholes out there who'd already have screwed it up if it'd fallen in their laps. By now, if it was a disease, they'd have spread it to half the state. We sure can use you up there.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

They were both silent for a moment. Then Retlock said, “Doody?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“Watch out for yourself.”

“I will, Jack,” Bryce said, “Well, I've got to get on to Copperfield. I'll call you later.”

The governor said, “Please do that, Bryce. Call me later. Don't you vanish, old buddy.”

Bryce put down the phone and looked around the substation. Stu Wargle and Frank were removing the front access plate from the radio. Tal and Dr. Paige were loading guns. Gordy Brogan and young Lisa Paige, the biggest and the smallest of the group, were making coffee and putting food on one of the worktables.

Even in the midst of disaster, Bryce thought, even here in the Twilight Zone, we have to have our coffee and supper. Life goes on.

He picked up the receiver to call Copperfield's number out at Dugway, Utah.

There was no dial tone. He jiggled the disconnect button.

“Hello,” he said.

Nothing.

Bryce sensed someone or something listening. He could feel the presence, just as Dr. Paige had described it.

“Who is this?” he asked.

He didn't really expect an answer, but he got one. It wasn't a voice. It was a peculiar yet familiar sound: the cry of birds, perhaps gulls; yes, sea gulls shrieking high above a windswept shoreline.

It changed. It became a clattering sound. A rattle. Like beans in a hollow gourd. The wanting sound of a rattlesnake. Yes, no doubt about it. The very distinct sound of a rattlesnake.

And then it changed again. Electronic buzzing. No, not electronic. Bees. Bees buzzing, swarm.

And now the cry of gulls once more.

And the call of another bird, a trilling musical voice.

And panting. Like a tired dog.

And snarling. Not a dog. Something larger.

And the hissing and spitting of fighting cats.

Although there was nothing especially menacing about the sounds themselves — except, perhaps, for the rattlesnake and the snarling — Bryce was chilled by them.

The animal noises ceased.

Bryce waited, listened, said, “Who is this?”

No answer.

“What do you want?”

Another sound came over the wire, and it pierced Bryce as if it were a dagger of ice. Screams. Men and women and children. More than a few of them. Dozens, scores. Not stage screams; not make-believe terror. They were the stark, shocking cries of the damned: of agony, fear and soul-scaring despair.

Bryce felt sick.

His heart raced.

It seemed to him that he had an open line to the bowels of Hell. Were these the cries of Snowfield's dead, captured on a recording tape? By whom? Why? Is it live or is it Memorex?

One final scream. A child. A little girl. She cried out in terror, then in pain, then in unimaginable suffering, as if she were being torn apart. Her voice rose, spiraled up and up.

Silence.

The silence was even worse than the screaming because the unnameable presence was still on the line, and Bryce could feel it more strongly now. He was stricken by an awareness of pure, unrelenting evil.

It was there.

He quickly put down the phone.

He was shaking. He had not been in any danger — yet he was shaking.

He looked around the bull pen. The others were still busy with the tasks he had assigned to them. Apparently, no one had noticed that his most recent session on the phone had been far different from those that had gone before it.

Sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

Eventually, he would have to tell the others what had happened. But not right now. Because right now he couldn't trust his voice. They would surely hear the nervous flutter, and they would know that this strange experience had badly shaken him.

Until reinforcements arrived, until their foothold in Snowfield was more firmly established, until they all felt less afraid, it wasn't wise to let the others see him shaking with dread. They looked to him for leadership, after all; he didn't intend to disappoint them.

He took a deep, cleansing breath.

He picked up the receiver and immediately got a dial tone.

Immensely relieved, he called the CBW Civilian Defense Unit in Dugway, Utah.