was faintly swampy, like rotting organic material and stale water. I could see further out here, the windows had been fogged up with condensation. Outside, it was not so bad, I could make out cars for about twenty feet off, but the chain link was at least a hundred feet away, I calculated from memory.
I heard the door open and a murmur came from behind me. I had an audience. Vance poked his head out behind me.
“Friggin hero,” he muttered in annoyance.
I almost muttered back,
“Vance?” I heard a weak, desperate cry. His voice came from somewhere ahead of us in the thick mist. It didn’t even sound like Erik’s voice really, but it had to be him.
“Make a run for it, Erik,” I told him. “Come to my voice.”
In reaction to my words there was a crunching noise and huge thumping, bashing sounds. Two cars at the edge of my vision shifted. Tires screeched and I saw a bumper spin around. I realized that the entire car had spun with it, as if an elephant had lunged and knocked it aside.
Then finally, I heard the distinct sound of a car door popping open and there came the welcome sound of rapid footsteps out there somewhere in the fog.
“Come to my voice, this way, this way,” I said, speaking louder than I wanted too. I stepped forward and I felt Vance and Brigman come out behind me. I had to give Erik a direction to run, to guide him with my voice. “This way, man, over here, run it!”
I heard him trip and curse. Then he came out of the fog, crawling, scrambling, and dragging one foot. He still had his shotgun and his face was a death’s mask. Something huge thundered forward after him, we still couldn’t see it in the fog, but we heard its fantastically heavy tread and heard what had to be the chain link fence it was dragging. The fence clattered and jangled as it swept over the cars like a bridal train.
I ran out to take his hand.
“Oh sweet Mary-” sobbed Erik. I had time to see that his face and arms were bloody and his shirt was mostly missing. His haunted eyes met mine and then it had him.
When I first saw it, I really thought something had swung down a branch or a log, using it like a club to strike him on the back. It took me a slow second to realize that the wooden thing was a
Erik twisted as he was lifted from the ground and got off one shot with his shotgun. A chunk of bark sprayed as if he had hit a tree, which of course, he had.
The thing in the parking lot was an ash tree come to life, just as we had read about in the newspaper stories. The ash looked nothing like a man in the shape of a tree. It was just an ash tree that could move. The thing’s bark was grayish-brown with black cracks that ran down in runnels over its body. The bark slipped over the wood and seemed more flexible than any normal tree, more like thick, armored skin. The roots, festooned with clumps of fresh black earth, writhed about like questing tentacles. It seemed to walk on its roots-or more exactly: it
I charged the monster and chopped with my saber at the massive arm. I was shocked to see the blade sink in more than an inch. Had the glowing stone really sharpened the edge? Fluid, smelling like fresh sap, welled up from the cut. The thing shuddered a bit, either from pain or rage. It did not cry out, because it had no voice. The upper branches that jutted up into the fog far above me swayed and shivered. Its bright yellow leaves rustled.
I looked up at the trunk expecting to see a face, but there was none. There were no eyes, there was no nose. But there was a maw. On the side of the trunk, about eight feet up, a chomping, grinding hole made chewing motions. I had no doubt that was the destination it had in mind for its prey.
It lifted Erik higher and my saber with it. I hung on and gave a tremendous yank to free it. Erik’s headphones dropped to clatter down into the twisting mass of roots, along with an assortment of Ted Nugent and Chili Peppers tapes and lifeless batteries. Like a nest of ravenous snakes, the roots thrashed about, grabbed and tore at each item in blind eagerness. I thought it would lift him up and drop him into its hole, but I do not think it could reach that far. Instead, it just took his leg, starting with the foot, and began to stuff him in. Bones snapped and blood ran down the trunk. Erik’s face was white, and he was beyond screaming, but he had a grip on a knobby twist of the tree branch that served it as an elbow and he was struggling with all he had.
I could not get any closer. The roots had a hold of my ankles by now. They cinched up on my legs like pythons and I slashed wildly at them. I recall my voice was hoarse from shouting but I have no idea what it was that I said. I pulled out my.45 from my coat pocket and unloaded most of the clip into the trunk. Orange-white, splintery holes appeared in seven spots on the squirming trunk. I was gratified only by a slight shuddering and an increased activity in the roots, which turned into a frenzy.
Erik was looking at me, and I think he was still aware, and to me, his eyes pleaded with me, although he was unable to speak. I took aim with the last round, before those roots could pull me off my feet, and I put Erik out of his misery. I think he would have done the same thing for me.
Vance and the others had my arms then and were pulling me out of the thing’s grip. Brigman with his fire axe was the most effective, chopping off roots as they tried to grab us. Vance dragged me, raving, back into the medical center.
We huddled in there, whimpering and shivering in the dark lobby, surrounded by cheap musty furniture, beige painted cement walls and curled up magazines. We tried hard to be quiet, while outside, the tree crunched on Erik’s bones.
It seemed to take it a very long time to finish.
Seventeen
We spent a hard night in the center, only daring to use the lanterns deep inside the recesses of the building, and only after covering the tiny windows with blankets, tarps or newspaper. None of us knew how many of the trees were alive now; perhaps it was all of them, perhaps only one. We spoke in hushed tones and scurried about in our makeshift fortress like terrified mice in the walls of a cattery.
“If we all go for it,” said Mrs. Nelson, “I’m sure we can take just one ash tree.”
“You first,” said Brigman with a snort.
Jimmy Vanton snored in a chair in the corner.
Brigman jerked his thumb at Jimmy. “I nominate him for the job.”
“If we go out there, we can’t be sure we won’t get the attention of more of them,” I said. “But they seem to only react when people are close.”
“We don’t know that! We don’t know how many are alive, maybe every tree in town, or maybe every tree and tomato vine and thistle bush that storm touched is just waiting out there for us,” shouted Vance, pulling at his face.
It was about two-thirty in the morning and a group of us were having what amounted to a council of war in the conference room. We burned a Coleman at about a quarter-power to conserve fuel. Most of the others were sleeping fitfully.
Carlene Mitts had bedded down with her baby, who had seemed cute and joyous only yesterday, but tonight, for reasons known only to the baby gods, the kid cried off and on all night. Everyone in the place cringed every time it so much as gurgled and we all listened closely as she worked hard to shush it. Generally, this didn’t work and the cries built up in strength and finally into a righteous fury. While it coughed and wailed with what seemed like incredible volume in the silence of the night, we all waited for that thing that sat only twenty yards from the front glass doors to come wading into the lobby. In my mind’s eye that great arm lifted off the roof and start devouring us all like a sloth tearing into a termite mound.
“That kid is starting up again,” hissed out Vance between his teeth.
