had happened to the kid and he was thinking it wasn’t from the crash. And whatever it was, it hadn’t been good.
Mitch finally got the door open and the kid pretty much fell into his arms. He half-carried and half-dragged him into the store, laid him out on the floor. What people remained finally got the picture. They brought over a sleeping bag and wrapped the kid in it.
“Hey!” Hubb cried out, more veins popping on his brow. “Who’s going to pay for this cunt-fucking merchandise?”
The kid was breathing real hard. His mouth kept opening and shutting like a fish gasping for air. His eyes were wide and unfocused. He was drooling and shaking and weird spasms ran right through him from time to time like he was getting irregular jolts of electricity.
There was a siren whining out in the distance and somebody said help was on the way, but it seemed to be getting no closer. A few seconds after it first shrilled, five or six gunshots rang out. It sounded like they came from only a few streets over.
“What in the hell’s going on out there?” somebody said.
“Christ…are we under attack?” Yellow Baseball hat asked.
Tommy looked over at him, said, “Shut the hell up already.”
The kid was coming around now. Mindy had brought a first aid kit and Hubb wasn’t happy about that either, because those cunting bandages cost money. Mitch used alcohol wipes to clean up some of the blood, then a hot washcloth Mindy also provided. She was on her knees next to the kid, an arm around his shoulders. He was still shaking, but he wasn’t having the fits anymore.
Mitch got most of the blood off his face and discovered that there were scratches that began at the kid’s forehead and were scraped right down his cheeks. If he didn’t know better, Mitch would have thought a human hand had caused them. Four scratches that had thankfully missed his eyes.
Sure, he thought, like some maniac with sharp fingernails had tried to peel his face off.
The kid shuddered, looked at Mitch and then at Tommy. He swallowed and shook his head, looked over at Mindy and then at Hubb, Yellow Baseball Cap, and the three or four others gathered around. “We…we were over near River Town, me and my mom…we were over there,” he started saying, eyes going real wide and lips hooking in a sneer. “Our place, man, it was flooded out…but not real deep…me and mom, we waded down there to get some things. Water was up past our hips and…and they came out of the water! I saw them, I tell you I saw them! They came right out of the fucking water! Three of ‘em, just came right out of the fucking water, stinking and muddy and they took mom! They just grabbed her! They were smiling! They…they didn’t have any faces…they didn’t have any fucking eyes!”
He started crying and Mindy held him, held his face tight against her chest and Mitch was figuring there were more than a few jealous men standing there. He kept sobbing and shuddering and nobody was saying much. What the hell could they say? Somebody came out of the water, he said. Three of ‘em. Three people and they didn’t have faces, didn’t even have any eyes.
“Kid’s fucking overwrought, that’s what,” Hubb said. “No faces…what kind of campfire fuck-wongling is that? Jesus and his ugly sister, what the fuck is that?”
Tommy looked at Mitch and they held each other’s gaze a moment. Something might have passed between them, but neither really wanted to acknowledge that or what they were thinking.
When the kid had calmed, Tommy said, “Those people, they scratch you like that?”
The kid started panicking again and it took Tommy, Mitch, and Mindy to keep him sitting down. He told them in a high, whining falsetto that those things had come out of the water. And he emphasized things, made sure they realized he wasn’t talking people here. Those things came out of the water and just took his mom. She screamed and they pulled her under. The kid fought, got scratched, and then two more came after him. He barely got into his car and away before they got him.
Operative question here was: what were they?
“Police’ll be here soon,” Tommy said. “Just take it easy.”
“I bet they’re not coming,” Yellow Baseball Cap said.
This guy was starting to get on Mitch’s nerves. They had some real problems here, they didn’t need this doom and gloom shit. Not now. But he did think about what Baseball Cap said. What if the cops weren’t coming? Jesus, what then? Course, they had to be coming. That dude with the ponytail went to call them on his CB.
Hubb had retreated back to the safety of his counter, joining his posse of Knucker and Hardy. They were trying to get a radio station in and getting nothing but static.
Mitch was getting that bad feeling he’d had earlier. You could put a lot of that down to the stress of the flooding and the mad bullshit with the kid here, but he was thinking there was more to it than that. Sometimes, sometimes you just knew in your guts when things were going south and his guts were wrapped tighter than a fat lady’s corset.
Maybe it was his imagination.
Then something thudded into the side of the store.
8
Everyone jumped.
It came again and sounded roughly like fists pounding out there, dozens of fists. Except it wasn’t at the walls, it was at the back door. The fists kept beating. And then, for no reason, they stopped and what came next was a scraping sound like several hands out there were trying to scratch their way in.
Hubb picked up a baseball bat. “Stay away from that fucking door,” he said.
No problem there. Nobody had moved an inch.
“Is that door locked?” Mitch asked.
“Damn straight it is.”
That scratching sound picked up intensity.
The kid let out a helpless giggle. “I think…I think they’re here.”
Mitch was staring at him, wanting to say things, but unable to find his voice. He looked from the kid to the door back there to where the car had opened up the wall. If, say, somebody was out there and they wanted in, well, it would be real tough to keep them out. He realized this as the cool, damp wind from outside sent a chill up his spine.
Just a dog out there maybe, he found himself thinking, grasping at straws that evaded his fingers. That’s all it is, just a goddamn dog. Why are we acting like this?
Then at the front of the store there was the sound of feet running, people shouting. Before anyone could so much as move, a few forms pushed their way in, bending aside the sheet metal flap Mitch had wrenched with the crowbar. Mitch didn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe people without faces or eyes, but what he got was almost comic relief.
Hot Tamale was back.
She’d brought her boyfriend or husband who was a skinny little guy in a powder-gray cowboy hat with silver cleats around the shaft. There was a stunned blankness to his features.
“What the hell gives here?” Hot Tamale said.
“Kid had a breakdown or something,” Yellow Hat said. “Drove his car right through the wall.”
The scratching at the rear door had stopped now and Mitch let out an audible sigh. A few others did, too.
Tommy and Mitch got up and went over to the flap Hot Tamale had pushed open. They pulled it back and looked out into the streets of Crandon. The rain was coming down harder than ever, drumming on the sheet metal shell of the Quonset. It fell in blowing curtains, pooling in the road, flowing off the smashed driver’s side quarter panel of Mitch’s Jeep like a river. It brought a dirty mist with it and between the two you could barely see the storefronts across the street.
“I guess…I guess we’ll wait until it blows over,” Tommy said. “Then we can get the law over here and you can get back to Lily.”
