Strange Highways (29 page)

Interesting..

Seed had encountered the concept of love among half of the species that it had destroyed on other worlds, but nowhere had it perceived the force of love as strongly as in these human beings. Now it realized for the first time that the will of an intelligent creature wasn’t the only important power in the employ of universal order; love also fulfilled that function. And in a species that had both a strong will and an unusually well-developed ability to love, Seed had found the most formidable enemy of chaos.

Not formidable enough, of course. Seed was unstoppable, and within twenty-four hours all of Pineridge would be absorbed.

Seed opened the classroom door. The four of it went inside.

12

LAURA CASWELL WAS SURPRISED TO SEE HER HUSBAND ENTER THE ROOM with Richie Halliwell’s mother, that old scoundrel Teel Pleever, and Jamie. She couldn’t imagine what any of them, other than Jamie, was doing there. Then she realized that Jack was walking, actually
walking
, not shuffling, not dragging himself along stiff legged but walking easily like any man.

Before the wonder of Jack’s recovery could sink in, before Laura could ask him what was happening, even as her students were turning in their seats, terror struck. Jamie Watley held his hands toward a classmate, Tommy Albertson, and hideous, black, wormlike tendrils erupted from his fingertips. They lashed around Tommy, and as the snared boy cried out, a repulsive snakelike thing burst from Jamie’s breastbone and pierced Tommy’s chest, linking them obscenely.

The children screamed and pushed up from their desks to flee, but with astonishing speed they were attacked and silenced. Hateful, glossy worms and thicker snakes spewed forth from Mrs. Halliwell, Pleever, and Jack. Three more of Laura’s nineteen students were seized. Suddenly Tommy Albertson and the other contaminated children joined in the attack; worms and snakes erupted from them toward new victims only seconds after they themselves had first been pierced.

Miss Garner, the teacher in the next room, stepped through the door to see what the shouting was about. She was taken before she could cry out.

In a single minute all but four thoroughly terrorized children had been taken firmly under the control of some nightmare organism. The four survivors—including Jane Halliwell’s son, Richie—gathered around Laura; two were stunned into silence and two were crying. She pushed the kids behind her, into a corner by the chalkboard, and stood between them and the monstrosity that wanted them.

Fifteen possessed children, Pleever, Mrs. Halliwell, Miss Garner, and Jack gathered before her, staring with predatory intensity. For a moment all were still and silent. In their eyes she saw not merely reflections of their own tortured souls but the inhuman hunger of the thing that had taken control of them.

Laura was scared and sick at heart to think of that glistening black
thing
curled inside her Jack, but she was not hobbled by either confusion or disbelief, because she had seen her share of the movies that, for decades, had been preparing the world for precisely this nightmare.
Invaders from Mars. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The War of the Worlds.
She knew immediately that something from beyond the stars had at last found the earth.

The question was: Could it be stopped—and how?

She realized that she was holding her chalkboard pointer as if it were a mighty sword and as if the nineteen alien-infected people in front of her would be kept at bay by that useless weapon. Silly. Nevertheless, she did not cast the pointer aside but thrust it forward challengingly.

She was dismayed to see her hand shaking. She hoped that the four children crouching behind her were not aware that she was in the grip of terror.

From the possessed group that confronted her, three moved slowly forward: Jane Halliwell, Jamie Watley, and Jack.

“Stay back,” she warned.

They took another step toward her.

A bead of perspiration trickled down Laura’s right temple.

Mrs. Halliwell, Jack, and Jamie advanced another step.

Suddenly they didn’t seem to be as well controlled as the others, because they began to twitch and jerk with muscle spasms. Jack said, “Noooo,” in a horrible, low, agonized voice. And Jane Halliwell said, “Please, please,” and shook her head as if to deny the orders that she had been given. Jamie was trembling violently and holding his hands to his head as though trying to get at the thing inside him and wrench it out.

Why were these three being forced to complete the subjugation of the classroom? Why not others?

Laura’s mind worked feverishly, sensing an advantage, searching for it, but not sure if she would recognize it when she found it. Perhaps the thing in Jane Halliwell wanted her to infect her own son, Richie, who hid behind Laura’s skirts, as a test of its control over the woman. And for the same reason it might want Jack to experience the horror of inducting his wife into this colony of the damned. As for poor Jamie … well, Laura was aware of the boy’s fierce crush on her, so maybe he was being tested as well, to see if he could be made to attack the person he loved.

But if they had to be tested, their master was not yet entirely certain of its dominance. And where it had doubt, surely its intended victims had hope.

13

SEED WAS IMPRESSED WITH THE RESISTANCE EXHIBITED BY THREE OF ITS hosts when the moment came to infect their loved ones.

The mother was furious at the thought of her son being brought into the fold. She pried at the restraints on her mind and struggled fiercely to regain her body. She posed a mildly difficult problem of control, but Seed squeezed her consciousness into an even tighter, darker place than that to which it had at first condemned her. It pushed her mind down, down, as if it were thrusting her into a pool of water, and then it weighted her in that deep place as if stacking heavy stones upon her.

Jamie Watley was equally troublesome, motivated as he was by pure, clean puppy love. But Seed reasserted authority over Jamie as well, stopped the boy’s muscle spasms, and forced him forward toward the woman and children in the corner of the room.

The husband, Jack Caswell, was the most difficult of the three, for his will was the strongest; and his love was the most powerful. He raged against confinement, actually bent the bars of his mental prison, and would have gladly killed himself before taking Seed to Laura Caswell. For more than a minute he resisted his master’s orders, and for one startling moment he seemed about to break free of control, but at last Seed squeezed him into full if grudging compliance.

The fourteen other captured children in Mrs. Caswell’s sixth-grade class were easily seized and controlled, although they also exhibited signs of rebellion. As the teacher backed into the corner, as the three chosen hosts approached her, a hot wave of rage went through every child in the room, for they all loved her and could not bear the thought of her possessed. Seed clamped down on them at once, hard, and their brief exertions of will faded like sparks on an arctic wind.

Under the guidance of Seed, Jack Caswell stepped in front of his wife. He tore the pointer out of her hand and threw it aside.

Seed burst from Jack’s fingertips, seized Laura, and held her, although she struggled fiercely to pull free. Opening the mouth of its host, Seed shot forth a thick stalk, pierced the woman’s breast, and surged into her, triumphant.

14

NO!

Laura felt it slithering along her nervous system, questing coldly in her brain, and she denied it. With the iron determination that she had brought to her campaign to make Jack walk, with the unlimited patience that she always brought to the instruction of her students, with the unshakable sense of self-worth and individuality with which she faced every day of her life, she fought the thing at every turn. When it cast restraining bands of psychic energy around her mind, she snapped them and threw them off. When it tried to drag her into a dark place and imprison her there under psychic stones, she threw off those weights as well and soared to the surface. She sensed the thing’s surprise, and she took advantage of its confusion, delving into its mind, learning about it. In an instant she realized that it dwelled in all the minds of its hosts simultaneously, so she reached out to Jack and found him-

-I love you, Jack, I love you more than life itself-

-and she tore at his mental bonds with all the enthusiasm that she had shown when assisting him in therapeutic exercises for his ruined legs. Questing outward across the psychic net by which Seed linked its hosts, she found Jamie Watley-

-You’re a sweet kid, Jamie, the sweetest, and I’ve always wanted to tell you that it doesn’t matter what kind of people your parents are, doesn’t matter if they’re selfish mean-spirited drunks; what matters is that you have the capacity to be far better than they are; you have the capacity to lave and to learn and to know the joy of a fulfilling life-

-and Seed swarmed over her, trying to draw her consciousness back into her own body, out of the minds of the others. However, in spite of its billions of years of experience and its vast knowledge acquired from hundreds of doomed species, it found itself unequal to the task. Laura examined it and judged it inferior because it did not need love, could not give love. Its will was weaker than human will because humans could love, and in their love they found a reason to strive, a reason to seek order out of chaos, to make better lives for those whom they cherished. Love gave purpose to will and made it infinitely stronger. To some species, Seed might be a welcome master, offering the false security of a single purpose, a single law. But to humankind, Seed was anathema-

-Tommy, you can tear loose if you’ll think of your sister Edna, because I know you love Edna more than anything; and you, Melissa, you must think of your father and mother because they love you so much, because they almost lost you when you were a baby (did you know that?) and losing you would have broken them; and you, Helen, you’re one heck of a little girl, and I couldn’t love you more if you were my own, you have such a sweet concern for others, and I know you can throw this damn thing off because you’re all love from head to toe; and you, Jane Halliwell, I know you love your son and your husband because your love for Richie is so evident in the self-confidence you’ve given him and in the manners and courtesy you’ve taught him; you, Jimmy Corman, oh, yes, you talk tough and you act tough, but I know how much you love your brother Harry and how sad it makes you that Harry was born with a deformed hand, and I know that if someone made fun of poor Harry’s twisted hand, you’d fight him with every bit of strength you have, so turn that love for Harry against this thing, this Seed, and destroy it, don’t let it have you because if it gets you then it’ll get Harry too-

-and Laura walked into the room, among the possessed, touching them, hugging this one, lovingly squeezing the hand of the next one, looking into their eyes and using the power of love to bring them to her, out of their darkness and into the light with her.

15

AS HE SHATTERED THE BONDS THAT HELD HIM, AS HE CAST OFF SEED, Jamie Watley experienced a wave of dizziness and actually blacked out for an instant, not even long enough to collapse to the floor. Blackness flickered through him, and he swayed, but he came to his senses as his knees were buckling. He grabbed the edge of Mrs. Caswell’s desk and steadied himself.

When he looked around the classroom, he saw the adults and the other children in similar shaky postures. Many were looking down in disgust, and Jamie saw that they were staring at the slick, mucus-wet black substance of Seed, which had been expelled from them and which writhed in pieces on the classroom floor.

Most of the alien tissue seemed to be dying, and a few pieces were actually decomposing with an awful stench. But suddenly one lump coalesced into the shape of a football. In seconds it formed a mottled blue-green-black shell, and as if bazooka-shot, it exploded through the ceiling of the room, showering them with plaster and bits of lath. It smashed through the roof of the one-story schoolhouse and disappeared straight up into the blue October sky.

16

TEACHERS AND KIDS CAME FROM ALL OVER THE BUILDING TO FIND OUT what had happened, and later the police arrived. The following day, both uniformed air-force officers and plainclothes government men visited the Caswell house among others. Throughout, Jack would not move far from Laura. He preferred to hold her—or at least her hand—and when they had to separate for a few minutes, he held fast to a mental picture of her, as if that image were a psychic totem that guaranteed her safe return.

Eventually the furor subsided, and the reporters went away, and life returned to normal—or as close to normal as it would ever be. By Christmas, Jack’s nightmares began to diminish in both frequency and vividness, though he knew that he would need years to scrub out the residue of fear that was left from Seed’s possession of him.

On Christmas Eve, sitting on the floor in front of the tree, sipping wine and eating walnuts, he and Laura exchanged gifts, for Christmas Day itself was always reserved for visiting their families. When the packages had been opened, they moved to a pair of armchairs in front of the fireplace.

After sitting quietly for a while, sipping at a final glass of wine and watching the flames, Laura said, “I’ve got one more gift that will have to be opened soon.”

“One more? But I’ve nothing more for you.”

“This is a gift for everyone,” she said.

Her smile was so enigmatic that Jack was instantly intrigued. He leaned sideways in his chair and reached for her hand. “What’re you being so mysterious about?”

“The thing healed you,” she said.

His legs were propped on a hassock, as healthy and useful as they had been before his accident.

“At least some good came of it,” he said.

“More than you know,” she said. “During those awful moments when I was trying to expel the thing from my mind and body, while I was trying to get the kids to expel it from theirs, I was acutely aware of the creature’s own mind. Heck, I was
within
its mind. And since I’d noticed that you were healed and figured the creature must have been responsible for knitting up your legs, I poked around in its thoughts to see how it had worked that miracle.”