“A fraternal order will have need of my services later this morning, but we have plenty of time before I’m due there.”
HARI
Hari screamed. She’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t, but when the shiny black tendril extruded through the windshield, the scream burst free unbidden.
They’d tried everything they could think of, even going so far as to start the engine and drive blindly, accelerating, then jerking to a halt in an effort to dislodge the tarry clumps. But no use. They’d somehow glued themselves to the doors and windows and weren’t leaving.
She’d watched with growing horror as the acid they secreted ate away at the window glass—not just the dozen or so spots on the windshield, but the side and rear windows as well. On the upside, it proved an agonizingly slow process that took hours upon hours; on the downside, the clumps seemed to have infinite patience.
Adding to the terror was the frustration of watching the clock creep toward 5:30. If, as they predicted and hoped, the passage reopened around that time, they’d have no way of knowing. And even if by some chance they did know, they wouldn’t be able to reach it driving blind.
So they sat and watched the deepening pocks on the glass. Only a matter of time before—
And then it happened. The glass thinned to the point where the outside pressure of the clumps penetrated in one…two…three places, allowing tendrils to writhe through. They undulated wildly, angling this way and that as if sniffing the air in search of prey.
Hari pressed herself back as far as the seat cushion would allow. For a rapid heartbeat or two she thought she might have confused the thing, but then, after freezing for an instant, it darted toward her face.
That was when she screamed. She raised her hands in defense and the tendril tip fastened onto her forearm like cold dry lips in an obscene kiss.
“Donny!”
But he was tangled with two of them. And then a fourth and a fifth broke through, searching for nourishment or whatever it was they wanted. A second tendril fastened onto her other arm and Hari screamed again in plain, flat-out horror and despair because she saw their doom snaking all around them and no way to fight back and—
What?
The tendrils stopped their writhing and sucking and froze in position. Then they abruptly retracted through the holes in the glass. As they slid off the windshield, the plateau became visible again. The aurora was gone. The sky had lightened while they were under attack, but they hadn’t had a clue. And now the huge red sun was cresting the mountaintops. Despite the alienness of the whole scene, Hari thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful.
“Sunrise…” Donny said, breathless. “You think that’s it? Those things only come out at night?”
Hari was checking her forearms. The sucking tips of the tendrils hadn’t had a chance to break the skin, but…
“I’ve got hickies!”
Donny pointed through the Swiss-cheesed windshield. “Hey, look at the oil slick thingies.”
The black clumps were flattening themselves, then seeping into the ground like liquid, leaving no trace.
“That’s why we had no idea they were here,” Hari said. A glance in the rearview mirror made her jerk upright in her seat. “The passage! It’s opening!”
She started the engine, rammed into drive, and started a tire-screeching 180 turn.
“Easy, easy,” Donny said. “Let’s make sure it’s completely open before we bowl into it.”
Hari could appreciate his concern. The area of the cliff wall that was opening had a misty look that darkened as the red sunlight brightened.
“That’s it!” Donny cried. “The star’s light triggers the passage.”
Hari checked the rearview again. The big red ball was halfway risen. She slowed the Tahoe.
“Let’s hope so. I’ll keep us at a crawl until it fully clears the horizon. If you’re right, we should be good then.”
The opening darkened and deepened as more and more of the sun came into view. When it finally looked again like it had when they’d arrived, Hari eased forward and into the passage. A few minutes later they emerged onto a wooded mountainside with their own sun, smaller and gloriously yellow, sitting above a forested horizon.
Hari paused for a moment to drink in the delicious familiarity, then turned downhill and drove as fast as she dared to get off this mountain before the sheriff and the convoy arrived to drop off another load. She kept a death grip on the steering wheel and didn’t relax until they turned onto Taconic Trail.
“What happened to us back there?” she said, slumping in her seat. “Were we really on another planet being attacked by living oil slicks? Or did someone slip some LSD into our morning coffee?”
Donny stuck an index finger through one of the holes in the windshield.
“We didn’t hallucinate these. And—oh, Christ. Look at the hood!”
Hari had been concentrating so much on the twisty mountain road she hadn’t noticed how large patches of the car’s paint job had been corroded away.
“Those things must have been secreting all sorts of acids. How do we explain this to the rental folks?”
“Vandals,” Donny said. “Antifa vandals thought we were Republicans and attacked us with acid. Works for me.”
As they neared the New York-Massachusetts border, they came upon a convoy of a dozen or so trucks hauling freight and tanker trailers toward Norum Hill.
“We never got a chance to talk about what they might be up to,” Donny said.
Hari had barely had time to think, what with all that had happened, but now…
“Tons of freeze-dried food and water to reconstitute it. Pretty obvious they’re planning on feeding people—either a select group for a long time, or a fair-sized population for a short time. Either way, it’s pretty clear they’re expecting an apocalypse.”
“But what kind? Environmental? Economic? Viral? Zombies? What?”
“Check the radio,” she said. “See if anything happened while we were out of touch. Try AM.”
“AM?” Donny made a face. “I didn’t think anyone still listened to AM.”
“It’s your best chance of finding an all-news station.”
After
