Phantoms

Bryce said, “We'd better get back to the inn.”

Within the next quarter of an hour, night would take possession of the town. Shadows were growing with cancerous speed, oozing out of hiding places, where they had slept the day away. They spread toward one another, forming pools of darkness.

The sky was painted in carnival colors — orange, red, yellow, purple — but it cast only meager light upon Snowfield.

They turned away from the field lab, where they'd recently had a conversation with it, by way of computer, and they headed toward the corner as the streetlamps came on.

At the same moment, Bryce heard something. A whimper. A mewling. And then a bark.

The whole group turned as one and looked back.

Behind them, a dog was limping along the sidewalk, past the field lab, trying hard to catch up with them. It was an Airedale. Its left foreleg appeared to be broken. Its tongue was lolling. Its hair was lank and knotted; it looked disheveled, whipped. It took another lurching step, paused to lick its wounded leg, and whined pitifully.

Bryce was riveted by the sudden appearance of the dog. This was the first survivor they had found, not in very good shape, but alive.

But why was it alive? What was different about him that had saved him when everything else had perished?

If they could discover the answer, it might help them save themselves.

Gordy was the first to act.

The sight of the injured Airedale affected him more strongly than it affected any of the others. He couldn't bear to see an animal in pain. He would rather suffer himself. His heart started beating faster. This time, the reaction was even stronger than usual, for he knew that this was no ordinary dog needing help and comfort. This Airedale was a sign from God. Yes. A sign that God was giving Gordon Brogan one more chance to accept His gift. He had the same way with animals that St. Francis of Assisi had, and he must not spurn it or take it lightly. If he turned his back on God's gift, as he had done before, he would be damned for sure this time. But if he chose to help this dog… Tears burned in the corners of Gordy's eyes; they trickled down his cheeks. Tears of relief and happiness. He was overwhelmed by the mercy of God. There was no doubt what he must do. He hurried toward the Airedale, which was about twenty feet away.

At first, Jenny was dumbstruck by the dog. She gaped at it. And then a fierce joy began to swell within her. Life had somehow triumphed over death. It hadn't gotten every living thing in Snowfield, after all.

This dog (which sat down wearily when Gordy started toward it) had survived, which meant maybe they, themselves, would manage to leave this town alive—

— and then she thought of the moth.

The moth had been a living thing. But it hadn't been friendly.

And Stu Wargle's reanimated corpse.

Back there on the sidewalk, at the edge of shadows, the dog put its head down on the pavement and whimpered, begging to be comforted.

Gordy approached it, crouching, speaking in encouraging, loving tones: “Don't be afraid, boy. Easy, boy. Easy now. What a nice dog you are. Everything'll be okay. Everything'll be all right, boy. Easy…”

Horror rose in Jenny. She opened her mouth to scream, but others beat her to it.

“Gordy, no!” Lisa cried.

“Get back!” Bryce shouted, as did Frank Autry.

Tal shouted: “Get away from it, Gordy!”

But Gordy didn't seem to hear them.

As Gordy drew near the Airedale, it lifted its chin off the sidewalk, raised its square head, and made soft, ingratiating noises. It was a fine specimen. With its leg mended, with its coat washed and brushed and shining, it would be beautiful.

He put a hand out to the dog.

It nuzzled him but didn't lick.

He stroked it. The poor thing was cold, incredibly cold, and slightly damp.

“Poor baby,” Gordy said.

The dog had an odd smell, too. Acrid. Nauseating, really. Gordy had never smelled anything quite like it.

“Where on earth have you been?” he asked the dog, “What kind of muck have you been rolling around in?”

The pooch whined and shivered.

Behind him, Gordy heard the others shouting, but he was much too involved with the Airedale to listen. He got both hands around the dog, lifted it off the pavement, stood up, and held it close to his chest, with its injured leg dangling.

He had never felt an animal this cold. It wasn't just that its coat was wet, and therefore, cold; there didn't seem to be any heat rising from beneath the coat, either.

It licked his hand.

Its tongue was cold.

Frank stopped shouting. He just stared.,Gordy had picked up the mutt, had begun cuddling it and fussing over it, and nothing terrible had happened. So maybe it was just a dog, after all. Maybe it—

Then.

The dog licked Gordy's hand, and a strange expression crossed Gordy's face, and the dog began to… change.

Christ.

It was like a lump of putty being reshaped under an invisible sculptor's swiftly working hands. The matted hair appeared to change color, then the texture changed, too, until it looked more like scales than anything else, greenish scales, and the head began to sink back into the body, which wasn't really a body any more, just a shapeless thing, a lump of writhing tissue, and the legs shortened and grew thicker, and all this happened in just five or six seconds, and then—

Gordy stared in shock at the thing in his hands.

A lizard head with wicked yellow eyes began to take form in the enormous mass into which the dog had degenerated. The lizard's mouth appeared in the puddinglike tissue, and a forked tongue flickered, and their were lots of pointy little teeth.

Gordy tried to throw the thing down, but it clung to him, Jesus, clung tight to him, as if it had reshaped itself around his hands and arms, as if his hands were actually inside of it now.

Then it ceased to be cold. Suddenly it was warm. And then hot. Painfully hot.

Before the lizard had completely risen out of the throbbing mass of tissue, it began to dissolve, and a new animal started to take shape, a fox, but the fox quickly degenerated before it was entirely formed, and it became squirrels, a pair of them, their bodies joined like Siamese twins but swiftly separating, and—

Gordy began to scream. He shook his arms up and down, trying to throw the thing off.

The heat was like a fire now. The pain was unbearable.

Jesus, please.

Pain ate its way up his arms, across his shoulders.

He screamed and sobbed and staggered forward one step, shook his arms again, tried to pull his hands apart, but the thing clung to him.

The half-formed squirrels melted away, and a cat began to appear in the amorphous tissue that he held and that held him, and then the cat swiftly faded, and something else arose Jesus, no, no, Jesus, no — something insectile, big as an Airedale but with six or eight eyes across the top of its hateful head and a lot of spiky legs and —

Pain roared through him. He stumbled sideways, fell to his knees, then onto his side. He kicked and twisted in agony, writhed and heaved on the sidewalk.

Sara Yamaguchi stared in disbelief. The beast attacking Gordy seemed to have total control of its DNA. It could change its shape at will and with astonishing speed.