Something was happening, and it was nothing good. He yelled some more, but nobody stopped or even answered. The screaming died down and then picked up again, louder than before, a lot of people at once. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to be telling everybody where he was, Rudy thought. He released his grip and backed away from the window. Whatever was going on out there, he was trapped like a rat in a can. Better to just shut up.
The world went quiet again. Maybe a minute passed before Rudy heard the front door of the building open. He dropped to the floor and scrambled beneath the cot. The squeak of a chair, a shuffling sound, a drawer being opened: somebody was searching for something. Then Rudy heard it: the jingling of keys.
“Sheriff?”
No answer.
“Deputy Fry? That you?”
A soft green light filled the corridor.
—
Simultaneously, at the farthest outskirts of Mystic Township, Texas, three virals were emerging from the earth.
Like pupae struggling free of their protective coverings, the members of the pod appeared in stages: first the pearlescent tips of their claws, then the long bony fingers, followed by a busting of soil that laid bare their sleek, inhuman faces to the stars. They rose, shaking off the dirt with a doglike motion, and stretched their slumberous limbs. A moment was required to ascertain their situation. It was night. They were in a field. The field was freshly turned. The first to emerge, the dominant member of the pod, was the widowed shopkeeper, George Pettibrew; the second was the town farrier, Juno Brand; the third was a fourteen-year-old girl from Hunt Township who had been taken up four nights ago when she’d made a midnight run to the outhouse of her family’s farm. These identities lay beyond their powers of recollection, for they had none; all they had was a mission.
They saw the farmhouse.
A lazy curlicue of smoke chuffed from its chimney pipe. They circled the structure, taking stock. It possessed two doors, front and rear. Though it was not in their natures to bother with a door, nor with the dainty human custom of turning a handle, such was their task that this was what they did.
They entered. Their senses roamed the space. A sound from above.
Somebody was snoring.
The first viral, the alpha, crept up the stairs. So fine were his movements that not even a floorboard creaked; he barely parted air. The faint glow of a lantern issued from the room at the top, carelessly left burning after the house’s inhabitants had retired for the night. In the big bed, two were sleeping, a man and a woman.
The viral bent to the woman. She was on her left side, one arm crooked beneath the pillows, the second exposed upon the blankets. Under the subdued light of the lantern, her skin shimmered deliciously. The viral unlocked his jaws and lowered his face toward her. The barest prick, his teeth delicately sliding into the microscopic spaces of her flesh, and it was done.
She stirred, moaned, rolled over. Perhaps she dreamed that she was pruning roses and got punctured by a thorn.
The viral moved to the other side of the bed. Only the man’s head and neck were exposed. The viral sensed as well that the man, whose snores rattled with a phlegmy texture, was not as deeply asleep as the woman. Leaning forward, the viral tilted his head to one side, as if to aim a kiss.
The man’s eyes flew open. “Holy fucking shit!”
He shoved the palm of one hand against the viral’s forehead to hold him at bay while reaching the other hand beneath the pillow. “Dory!” he bellowed, “Dory, wake up!” The viral was stunned into inaction: this was not how things were supposed to be. And that name, Dory. It jostled his mind. Did he know a Dory? Did he know the man as well? Had the two of them, at one time, been people in his life? And what was the man reaching for beneath his pillow?
It was a gun. With a howl, the man shoved the barrel into the viral’s mouth, pressing the muzzle up against his palate, and fired.
A thunder clap, a parabola of blood, the viral’s brain matter caroming through the crown of his skull to splatter on the ceiling. The body rocked forward, dead weight. The woman was awake now, immobilized with terror and screaming to beat the band. The other virals vaulted up the stairs. Shoving the corpse aside, the man fired at the first one as it burst through the door. He wasn’t really aiming anymore. He was simply squeezing the trigger. The third shot connected in a general way, but that was the extent of it. Two more shots and the hammer fell on an empty chamber. As one of the virals leapt toward him, the man grabbed the only thing he could think of—the kerosene lantern—and hurled it at his attackers.
His aim was true. The viral exploded in flames.
And then everything was on fire.