Part 6 (2/2)
”Stay in the car, kids,” she said, turning to face the children. ”I'll be right back.”
Emily took a deep breath to steady her breathing and exited the vehicle, her heart thumping in her chest. She made sure the SUV's door was ajar, then checked that the door leading from the interior of the house was still closed securely; she didn't want the Simon-thing creeping up behind them.
A large plastic box was fixed to the ceiling right above the Durango's roof. A thick chain, much like the chain of her bike, ran from the box along a metal beam to the door. Fixed to the garage door was a curved arm that extended upward, connecting to the pulley system that raised and lowered the door. That was how the door would open normally, but how the h.e.l.l was she supposed to raise it now? She spotted two aluminum handles at the base of the door, near the floor. She grasped one and gave it a gentle tug. The door rattled, moving up about an inch but then hit resistance and refused to budge any farther. Looking up at the arm attached to the door and the pulley illuminated in the beam of the SUV, she could see there was some kind of hook attachment that meshed into the chain like the spokes of a gear. A nylon cord with a red plastic handle at the end hung from the arm, swinging back and forth gently.
The handle screamed, ”Pull me!”
Again, she found herself holding her breath as she grasped the plastic handle in her hand and tugged. There was a very distinct click as something disengaged from the chain, but there was no other indication of anything else happening. Was that it? Only one way to find out, she told herself. Emily moved back to the door and, ever so gently, pulled the same handle.
This time the door continued to move past the stop, rumbling and rattling along its tracks. When the door was a foot off the ground, she stopped. What if Simon was outside right now? Waiting for her. He could grab her legs and pull her under the door, and that would be it. She let the door drop to the floor with a clang of rattling metal.
There was no doubt in her mind that whatever controlled Simon was going to hear them trying to escape. When it did it would do whatever it could to get to them. What would happen if she opened the garage door and it was waiting outside? She would have a matter of seconds at most to get to the vehicle, figure out how to drive it, and get out of there. And then what? Where would they go? They had no supplies. Everything, including her bike, backpack, and sat-phone was at the other house.
That was the least of her problems.
She needed to figure out whether she should lift the garage door first and then hope the car started before Simon found them. Or did she start the car first and hope the garage door would open?
”Jesus,” Emily hissed. Despite the cool night air, she felt sweat trickle down the insides of her arms.
It made no sense to raise the barrier between them, she reasoned, only to find that the Dodge would not start. That would leave them completely exposed. Car first. Then worry about the garage doors. She climbed back into the driver's seat and looked at the kids. ”Okay, you two, here we go.” Reaching for the ignition keys, she twisted them all the way forward.
Nothing happened.
”s.h.i.+t,” she cried and thumped the steering wheel. The engine was dead. They had been through all this only for the f.u.c.king SUV to not start? You had to be kidding.
”You have to step on the brake,” said a voice from the backseat. Emily flashed around to face Rhiannon, trying to keep the anger and disappointment from her voice.
”What?”
”You have to step on the brake to start the car,” Rhiannon repeated. ”It's a safety feature,” she added proudly, probably repeating some tidbit of information she had learned from her dad.
Emily looked down at her feet. Which pedal was the brake? It had to be the larger of the two, she reasoned and pressed her left foot down and twisted the ignition key again.
The big V-8 engine of the Dodge Durango exploded into life. It was incredibly loud in the enclosed s.p.a.ce of the garage. Emily flipped around and shot a huge smile at Rhiannon, all anger dissipating with the deep roar of the engine. She could already smell the acrid stench of the vehicle's exhaust seeping through the open driver's door and gave a little cough. It wouldn't do to breathe this c.r.a.p in for very long, but she needed to leave the door open, every second would count. Sorry, kids, she thought as she leaped from the driver's seat and ran over to the garage door.
She grasped the metal handle again and began pulling with all the strength she had. If there had been any doubt that Simon would not be alerted to their escape attempt, it was quickly dispelled as the door rattled along the tracks, even louder, it seemed to Emily, than the rumble of the SUV's engine. With the door halfway up, Emily dipped her head under the gap and scanned the area beyond the garage. The light from the SUV illuminated the ground directly in front of the garage, pus.h.i.+ng the darkness away. There was no sign of anything waiting outside to grab her. Thank G.o.d.
Flipping her grip on the handle she began pus.h.i.+ng the door up rather than pulling it. The door was almost at its zenith when Emily heard the clattering of dislodged roof tiles as something huge scrambled over the roof toward her.
”Oh, s.h.i.+t! Oh, s.h.i.+t!”
What was she supposed to do now? The door was still only three-quarters of the way up. She let go of it for a second and watched as it began to slowly slide back toward the ground. She grabbed the handle again and began pus.h.i.+ng. There was no way she was going to get back into the car in time to figure out the controls and get out of the garage before the door closed on them again or the thing scrambling across the roof reached her.
Run, her frightened mind screamed. Just leave the kids and run.
No way! There was not a chance in h.e.l.l that she was going to do that. She would rather just- She felt the metal garage door click into place. Looking up, she could see the hook had engaged itself again onto the stud on the pulley. She let go of the handle and the door settled back slightly but stayed exactly where it should be, suspended above her head.
”Thank you,” she sighed and sprinted back to the SUV. She was about to clamber into the driver's seat when a cascade of adobe-colored roof tiles fell to the concrete just outside the entrance of the garage, shattering like broken plates across the drive. Before the last broken piece had skittered across the concrete, a shape dropped from the roof, landing low to the ground just on the other side of the door, red eyes staring unblinking into the lights of the SUV.
”Simon,” she whimpered as she leaped into the driver's seat, slamming the door behind her.
”Rhiannon,” Emily yelled. ”Cover your brother's eyes...now!”
Emily pushed the accelerator to the floor and slipped the gear stick into the drive position. There was a squealing noise, and, in the rearview mirror, Emily saw smoke begin to fill the garage. What was she doing wrong? Why weren't they moving?
Through the winds.h.i.+eld, Emily could see Simon, and for a second her heart seemed to stop. He had undergone a stunning metamorphosis. His arms had rotated 180 degrees in their sockets and now jutted forward from each elbow. His legs were impossibly twisted at the knees, so he now walked on all fours rather than upright. The tentacle trailing from the back of Simon's head pulsed once as it pushed something dark and viscous down its elongated length. Whatever that stuff was had an instant effect on Simon; his neck began to stretch inch by inch until, finally, it had grown in length by six inches or more.
”Oh no,” she squeaked as she fumbled with the gear stick, pus.h.i.+ng it back into Park. What the h.e.l.l am I doing wrong? What? She chanced another look outside.
Simon's head arced back on his newly elongated neck, like a snake rising to strike. A trickle of black liquid that could have been blood, or spillover from whatever s.h.i.+t the thing controlling Simon had pumped into him, dribbled from the corners of his mouth. And then he leaped into the air, pus.h.i.+ng himself into the air like some weird, alien gra.s.shopper.
He landed with a resounding thud on the hood of the SUV.
Emily screamed and pulled the gear stick back into drive. The screeching of tires and the roar of the engine filled her ears again, but still they did not move, and with only a quarter inch of gla.s.s separating them, she stared into the black dead eyes of a monster that had once been Simon Keller.
”You have to take your foot off the brake,” Rhiannon yelled from the backseat just as Emily realized her mistake and yanked her foot from the pedal. The SUV shot forward, and Emily was pretty sure everyone inside the vehicle screamed at the same moment. It was hard for her to tell because her attention was completely focused on Simon; his twisted body blocked her view ahead of her.
He flew forward, hitting the winds.h.i.+eld face-first, leaving a smear of black fluid behind as his body rolled up and onto the roof of the SUV. A second later and his misshapen face appeared at the pa.s.senger door window, his eyes searching for some way into the vehicle.
”Don't look,” Emily yelled as she fought for control of the rapidly accelerating vehicle, but the warning came too late as she heard Rhiannon's sorrowful scream of ”Daddy?”
Anger flowed through Emily. She was going to end this...right here...right now.
She took her foot off the accelerator and hit the brake. The Dodge came to a sudden, jarring halt, and Emily saw Simon's body fly through the air, the three tentacles trailing behind him like marionette strings. He landed on the concrete driveway in front of the car, rolled three times, then flipped to his feet and began to scuttle toward them again.
Emily floored the accelerator, and the SUV lurched forward.
Simon froze midstep, caught like the proverbial rabbit in the lights of the rapidly accelerating SUV. A fraction of a second before the vehicle would have flattened him, he leaped into the air and landed on the hood of the Durango, one misshapen hand clinging to the seam of the hood below the winds.h.i.+eld wipers.
And then he was gone, as his fingers lost their grip and he tumbled sideways off the hood.
In the rearview mirror, Emily saw Simon's body disappear into the white bank of smoke from her tires and then even that vanished as the SUV was swallowed by the darkness.
”Oh my G.o.d! Oh my G.o.d!” Emily yelled as the SUV continued to accelerate, careening along the gravel driveway, sending stones and rocks flying into the dark as the back end fishtailed wildly from side to side, its tires scrabbling for grip on the loose rock. The children's screams from the back row of seats rang in her ears, but they were nothing compared to the screaming in her own head as she careened into the darkness.
Technically she had never learned to drive, never even been behind the wheel of a car or a truck before. But as her mind raced to find some kind of previous experience that might help her out, she remembered a visit to Coney Island and the b.u.mper cars attraction. The principle had to be the same, right? Press the pedal to go and release it to slow down while using the steering wheel to point the SUV in the direction you wanted to go.
In the fear-induced clarity of the moment, her mind seized that little bit of knowledge and held on to it like a s.h.i.+pwreck survivor holding on to a life preserver in the middle of an angry ocean. Who had she been trying to fool all this time? How freaking hard could it be to drive one of these things? After all, it was just an oversize b.u.mper car at heart. Right? She glanced down at the speedometer; the arm was just below the forty-five miles per hour mark. In the second or so that she stared at it, the speedometer climbed up to just under fifty miles per hour.
Outside the rapidly accelerating vehicle, it was as though someone had dropped a curtain of black all around them as it plummeted through the darkness. She could see nothing on either side of her but vague shadows; the only light was the swath cut ahead of her by the powerful headlights. Emily had no idea where she was going, but for now the gravel path led only one way: forward. Away from the house and the Simon-thing that she had left there.
She glanced in the rearview mirror to check on the kids. She could hear both of them whimpering in the backseat, but she couldn't tell if they were hurt or just frightened. Looking back over her right shoulder, she saw the two kids huddled together, still strapped in by their safety belts. Thor had disappeared from the seat, and she could not see him. A whimper from somewhere behind the pa.s.senger seat told her he had decided the floor of the Durango was probably a safer place to be for now.
When she turned back, the gravel road before them had disappeared, replaced by blacktop that curved away at a ninety-degree angle to the right. In that split second of recognition, she already knew she was going too fast to make the turn, and before she could even decide whether to hit the brakes, the SUV had left the road and was in flight.
The Dodge smashed through a corrugated aluminum barrier that had been placed there to stop just such a thing from happening, although she was sure whoever had erected the barrier had never antic.i.p.ated a nondriver with a vehicle full of kids being chased by their late father under the control of some shadowy alien. The SUV exploded off a gra.s.sy berm, and for a few long moments Emily knew what Commander Mulligan must have felt when she first experienced the weightlessness of s.p.a.ce.
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