Growth (22 page)

She'd also been thinking of trying for the barn, and now wondered if it was full of bugs. The darkness inside didn't look so inviting anymore.

That left Cochran and the car.

He was still just sitting there, and she finally realized Cochran didn't have the keys. She was worried she might have to take her chances in the corn when she heard Cochran yell something. The third man came into view, yelling back, “Thanks for contaminating the car, asshole.” Liquid flame spurted out of the end of his weapon.

Just before it reached the car, Cochran fired. An explosion of fire blew out the windows of the rental car at the same moment the bullet took out the third man's forehead. He collapsed, finger still tight on the trigger. The jet of flame arced over his head and burned a streak in the lawn.

Sandy thought she heard Cochran screaming for a moment, then all she could hear was the crackle of flames and the hissing and popping of the old wood of the house as it burned. She tentatively emerged from the bushes and took it all in. The house was fully engulfed in flames. Both cars were on fire, sending black, poisonous-looking smoke into the cloudless blue sky. The flamethrower finally ran out of fuel, and the grass smoked in the sunlight.

She pulled out her cell phone and saw that it had been cracked from one of her falls. The screen wouldn't respond to her touch. At least she still had her radio. She hit the button, “Liz? Liz? You there?”

“This is an official channel. Identify yourself. And this better not be who I think it is,” Sheriff Hoyt's voice came back.

Bob was happy.

He felt like he was back in high school, in the homecoming parade. He'd been voted Homecoming King, and Carol, the Homecoming Queen, had red hair and a curvy figure and a reputation for drinking beer with the boys and getting frisky in her daddy's Chevy. All was right with the world.

Something jostled him and he looked down at the surprisingly modern controls of one his combines. He had to remind himself that this wasn't 1976. All the red, white, and blue that covered the town wasn't for the bicentennial. This was the Fourth of July parade, and he was bringing in his son's crop to show everyone in town that his son was just as much of a farmer as his father and grandfather before him.

This was perhaps the proudest moment of his life.

He just wished he felt better. There was a coldness in his chest, and something was wrong with his eyes. They wouldn't focus. And his arms and legs wouldn't respond for about two or three seconds after he tried to get them to move.

Good thing the combine pretty much drove itself.

He couldn't remember signing up for the parade, but the antique car club stopped and gave him plenty of room to follow Troop 2957. He gave all the scouts a cheerful wave. At least, he hoped it was a wave. It was getting a little hard to tell what his arms were doing. The combine was still moving; he could feel it rumbling along at least.

That was all right, though. He could make out the green of the park coming up on the right, and that's where he wanted to stop and rest for a while. Maybe he would let one of his men drive the combine home.

He was feeling a little tired, after all.

 

 

Sheriff Hoyt had just about had enough from this self-entitled bitch. “You were warned and I guarantee you this: I will see you in jail before sundown.”

“Listen to me, asshole. You've got bigger problems. Arrest me later. Right now, we have an emergency. There's something in the corn. Look southeast. You'll see the smoke. There's—”

Sheriff Hoyt cut her off. “I know you think you're something special, but you are gonna find out the hard way that . . .” He trailed off, still keeping the button on his radio down. The sound of grinding metal overpowered the halfhearted theme from
Raiders of the Lost Ark
as the local high school marching band stomped past the viewing stage.

He had been standing back behind the stage, and now pushed and elbowed people aside to reach the curb. The mayor was up at the microphone, making calming gestures and talking, but the mike wasn't turned on. Nobody was paying much attention anyway; they were all standing and pointing down the street.

Sheriff Hoyt took a step off the curb and saw that some idiot was driving a goddamn combine corn harvester up the middle of the street, scattering panicked Boy Scouts before the giant tractor like it was a sleepy dog that had wandered into a rabbit warren. The driver must have been drunk, because the massive combine was drifting across both lanes, scraping the shit out of the parked cars on either side of the street.

He started toward it. Somebody had to stop the dumb son of a bitch. In nearly thirty years of law enforcement, Sheriff Hoyt had never seen anything quite like this. He'd arrested drunks driving nearly every make and model of vehicle on the highway, hauled in punks drinking on those troublesome ATVs, even had to put the cuffs on a wasted cowboy on a horse. The only thing that even came close to this mess was when he caught a couple of Mexicans drunk on a John Deere, but that was in a field, not even on one of the back-county roads.

This, this took the goddamn cake.

Sheriff Hoyt hit the button on his radio. “Chisel, you sit tight. I'll deal with you soon enough. We got a situation in town that requires real law enforcement.” He didn't bother to listen to her response and turned his radio off for the time being. Just until he got this new mess sorted out.

He got close enough to see inside the combine's cab. It almost looked like that was Bob Morton himself in there.
Shit
. Well, this situation just got a hell of a lot more complicated. Sheriff Hoyt resnapped his holster. He'd been thinking he might have to make an impression on the driver, but now that he saw it was Bob Morton, well, his job was going to require a bit more finesse than simply sticking a pistol in somebody's face and telling him to grab the pavement.

He looked up and down the street, but the only law enforcement he could see right away was that pussy town deputy, Hendricks. He raised his arm, got the numbskull's attention, and pointed at the combine. The dumbshit waved back. Sheriff Hoyt shook his head. It was a wonder the man hadn't shot himself cleaning his own weapon.

At least they didn't have to jump onto a moving vehicle. Bob took care of that.

The combine veered away from the left side of the street, scaring away a whole flock of parade watchers, and smashed the twelve-row header right into Phil Larkins's 1957 Chevy pickup. Four of the header's conical snouts impaled the poor old antique like a pitchfork sinking into a bale of hay. Sheriff Hoyt winced. Larkins's insurance guys were going to raise holy hell. The trailer couldn't take the sudden turn and twisted helplessly behind the combine, spilling two acres' worth of corn into the street.

Bob sat in the cab and it didn't look like he was moving much.

Deputy Hendricks finally got the hint that he was supposed to help out. He joined Sheriff Hoyt at the foot of the huge, bright green John Deere combine. Damn thing had tank-like treads for the front drivers, instead of regular wheels. A six-foot ladder rose to the cab. Hendricks hung back and made it clear that he didn't want to be the first one up there.

Neither paid much attention to the gray cloud that swirled from the spilled corn and rolled out across Main Street.

Sheriff Hoyt started up the steep stairs. He got up to the catwalk and was surprised to find the windows of the cab fogging up or something. It was hard to see inside and he could just make out Bob's shape, sitting in the bucket seat. He gave it a minute, giving the man a chance to collect himself before he came out and embarrassed himself in front of the whole damn town.

When Bob didn't move, Sheriff Hoyt knocked on the glass, still polite. He gave it a few moments, but his patience was running out. He knocked again. “Mr. Morton? Bob, that you? Fun's over. Time to come out now.”

Sheriff Hoyt looked down the ladder at Hendricks, who shrugged. Sheriff Hoyt shook his head. The deputy was about as useless as tits on a boar. He took hold of the door handle, when some instinct, born out of decades of standing guard at the threshold of law and order, keeping the forces of chaos and wild, merciless rage at bay, whispered quietly in the back of his mind. It was the kind of voice he would listen to very carefully if it spoke to him when approaching a strange vehicle or knocking on a quiet door. A sixth sense that he took seriously, but would never acknowledge out loud.

Only this time it had Sandy's voice.

So he ignored it and opened the cab door.

It took Sheriff Hoyt a few seconds to recognize Bob Morton. He'd never seen anybody this bloated and gray still sitting upright. If he hadn't seen the man only the day before, Sheriff Hoyt would have sworn that Bob had been pulled out of the Mississippi River after a week or two of festering on the bottom. His first thought was that this was some kind of sick joke, and somebody had stuffed Bob's dead body in the combine cab.

But then Bob moved his head, and tried to say something.

Sheriff Hoyt leaned closer to listen.

Unintelligible words came out as a kind of wheezing moan. It didn't look like Bob could fully retract his tongue, and so it poked out from between black teeth, swollen and discolored. He opened his mouth wider and Sheriff Hoyt could see dozens upon dozens of little gray nubs erupting out of his tongue, his gums, the insides of his cheeks. The smallest were the diameter of a single grain of rice, the largest the rounded end of a Q-tip.

Up close, Sheriff Hoyt could now see more of the tiny buds sticking out of Bob's nostrils, his ears, even pushing out of his eyelids. Bob couldn't even blink with all those things in the way. From a distance, it looked like someone in a hurry had applied cheap, clumping eyeliner to the farmer's eyes.

Bob had never been a fitness model, but he had kept himself relatively trim for a man in his fifties. Now, though, his distended stomach almost reached the steering wheel. His fingers were swollen, like sausages that had been left on the grill too long. He wheezed again, his arm flopping against the control console.

Sheriff Hoyt realized he should remove the keys, just in case Bob hit the wrong button. He didn't want to get any closer, but reached in and as his fingers brushed against the keys, Bob started to make deep, retching sounds.

And just as Sheriff Hoyt managed to twist the keys and kill the engine, Bob's head exploded in a dry mist, as if someone violently twisted a desiccated orange, popping it open, spitting dried seeds and dusty pulp into the air.

Bob's torso was next, splitting open in four or five wrenching cracks, spraying the inside of the cab with a dark, wet cloud. Gray slime slid down the windows and dripped from the ergonomic controls.

Sheriff Hoyt caught the blast full in the face and was dead before his knees collapsed. He pitched off the combine and landed on his head in the middle of Main Street.

Deputy Hendricks leaned over him and asked, “You okay, Sheriff?”

The gentle winds took the gray cloud from the cab and the trailer and pushed it playfully every which way into the crowds, up and down the street. There was a single scream, but the spores were met primarily with stupefied confusion. A few people understood that something bad was blowing through the town and tried to gather their families and run.

By then, it was all too late.

 

 

Sandy spun in a circle, taking it in, the hulking barn, the burning house, the smoldering cars, the dead man on the lawn, and surrounding it all, the green, whispering, waiting corn. She'd seen Cochran's monsters crawling over the man in the basement, and now she had no doubt that the fields were full of them. And maybe even worse things.

She had to get to town to find Kevin. Something in Sheriff Hoyt's voice, just before he clicked off, had raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She had no doubt that whatever havoc this corn fungus was wreaking out in the fields had spread somehow to the center of Parker's Mill.

But she had no vehicle, no phone, and even the radio was useless now, thanks to Sheriff Hoyt. She took one last glance around, making sure she wasn't forgetting something, and started down the driveway at a jog. As she ran, she kept her eyes at the edge of the corn on either side of the gravel driveway. She hoped Cochran was right about the things wanting to stay out of the sunlight. Either way, she stayed in the center of the driveway all the way out to the highway.

The Johnsons had to have heard all the shooting and Sandy wouldn't have been surprised if Meredith had been keeping an eye on all the unfamiliar traffic heading up the driveway to the Einhorn farm. Sandy hoped she had already called 911 again. The call would have been rerouted to the Manchester County Sheriff's Department, but she didn't care as long as they sent somebody out to investigate.

Sandy crossed Highway 17 and ran up to the front door. The possibility that the Johnsons were at the parade occurred to her as she ran. Sandy didn't know if that would be considered too secular or just patriotic. If they were in town, she didn't think it would be difficult to smash a window and climb inside to use their phone. Meredith would undoubtedly file some sort of official complaint, but Sandy didn't particularly give a damn.

Sandy hit the doorbell and listened for movement inside. They had to know she was here. She knocked first, then pounded on the door. No response. The house was silent.

She knew this place didn't have a basement and went to the big picture windows, cupped her hands to her eyes, and peered inside. The windows looked out from the combination living and dining room. The living room had a simple couch and a recliner. The ancient TV was still a piece of furniture in and of itself, wedged into a corner near the front door. A small, circular table filled the dining room. A beige and yellow kitchen waited beyond. All were empty.

She ran around to the back and saw that the big Suburban was still parked in front of the garage and a huge pile of firewood. It looked like they were still home. She went up to the sliding glass back door, stopping a moment when she noticed a stack of fire extinguishers on the patio. Peering at the gauges, she saw that they were all empty.

Sandy tried the sliding glass back door and it slid open. She stepped inside. “Meredith? Albert? You guys home?” It felt like an echo of the Einhorn farmhouse; no one was there. She left the door open and searched through the rest of the first floor. It smelled like something had died under the house. The kids' rooms were full of bunk beds and crayon drawings of Jesus, but no children.

She stopped at the bottom of the staircase. Knocked on the wall. She'd learned the hard way not to sneak up on people in rural areas. Too many carried loaded firearms, and were liable to shoot you if you surprised them. “Hello? Meredith? Albert?”

No answer.

Sandy took her Taser out and went cautiously up the stairs. At the top, she checked the first door on the left. Bathroom. It was a mess, but empty. Sandy recoiled from the stench, raised her wrist to her nose, and tried to breathe through her mouth.

Unraveled brown and gray bandages had been strewn across the sink. Strips of medical tape festooned the counter like shriveled snakeskins. The gray crust that coated everything reminded her of what she had seen on the floor in the Einhorn kitchen. Clumps of toilet paper had been scattered throughout the bathroom as if somebody had been throwing them like confetti. They coalesced into a tiny mountain near the toilet at the far end. The pile of white paper had stuck together in winding lines, as if the darkened, soiled globs had drawn together like magnets. This left the clean tufted edges of toilet paper to unfurl like pale wisps of flowers on knotty gray vines.