Jack Finney - Invasion of The Body Snatchers

We talked for a minute or so longer, and Ben tried to think of something helpful and suggested getting in touch with the papers. But I pointed out that they'd treat the story like one more flying-saucer item; probably be very cute and humorous about it. He suggested the FBI then. I said I'd think about it, promised to keep in touch with him, and all that, then we said good-bye and hung up. A moment or so later, Jack came down the stairs.

"Well?" he said, and I just shrugged; there wasn't anything to say. After a moment Jack said, "Want to try the FBI?"

I didn't know or much care at that point, and I just nodded at the telephone. "There's the phone; go ahead if you want to." And Jack opened the San Francisco phone book.

A few moments later, he dialled the number, and I watched him – KL 2-2155. Jack held the phone at an angle to his ear so I could hear, and I heard the ringing sound begin. It was interrupted, a man's voice said, "Hel – " and the line went dead; a moment later the dial tone began.

Jack dialled again, very carefully. He finished, and before the ringing could begin, the operator cut in. "What number are you calling, please?" Jack told her, and she said, "Just a moment, please." Then the ringing began; and it continued – ring, then a pause, ring, then a pause, for half a dozen times. "Your party does not answer," the operator said presently, in that mechanical telephone-company voice they use. For just a moment Jack held the phone before him, staring at it; then he raised it to his mouth. "Okay" he said softly. "Never mind."

He looked up at me, and spoke quietly, his voice rigidly calm. "They won't let the call get through, Miles. There's someone there, we heard him answer, but they won't ring that number again for us. Miles, they've got the telephone office now, and God knows what else."

I nodded. "Looks like it," I said, and then the panic ripped loose in our minds.

We thought we were thinking, but actually we moved in a wild, spontaneous, mindless impulse. We had the girls on their feet, blinking in the light, questioning us bewilderedly, but at the looks on our faces when we didn't reply, the panic leaped from us to them like a contagion. Then all of us rushed through that house, gathering up clothes; Jack had a butcher knife thrust into his belt, I took every cent of money I had in the place, and we found Theodora down in the kitchen, half dressed, packing canned goods into a small carton; I don't know what she thought she was doing.

We actually bumped into one another in hallways, on the stairs, and rushing out of rooms; it must have looked like an old-time silent-film comedy, only there was no laughter in it. We were running – out of that house, and out of that town, as fast as we could move. We were suddenly overwhelmed, not knowing what else to do, how to fight back, or against what. Something impossibly terrible, yet utterly real, was menacing us in a way beyond our comprehension or abilities; and we fled.

Theodora still in bedroom slippers, we were slamming into Jack's car on the dark, silent street just out of the pool of swaying light from the overhead street lamp, our foolish armfuls of clothes tossed into the back seat. The starter ground, the motor caught, then Jack squealed rubber, pulling away from the curb, and we weren't thinking at all, just running, running, running, till we were on US. 101, and Santa Mira eleven miles behind us.

Then, moving along over the almost deserted highway, I began to feel a return of some sort of ordered thinking, or at least the illusion of it. Successful rapid flight, the piling up of distance, becomes in itself a calming thing, an antidote for fear, and I turned to Becky in the back seat beside me, smiling, my mouth opening to speak. Then I saw she was asleep, her face pale and drained in the light from a passing car, and the fright roared up in me again, worse than ever, bursting in my brain in a silent explosion of pure panic.

I was shaking Jack's shoulder, shouting at him to stop, then we were bouncing off the dark road onto the narrow dirt-and-gravel shoulder. Jack's hand brake rasped, then, leaning far across Theodora, he brought his fist down on the glove-compartment button, it flew open, he fumbled inside it, then scrambled out of the car, his face wild and questioning. I was leaning past him, yanking his keys from the dashboard, then we were running toward the back of the car. But Jack ran on, down the narrow dirt shoulder, and I had my mouth open to yell at him, when he dropped to one knee, and I knew what he was doing.

Jack once had the back of his car smashed in while he was changing a tyre, and now it's second nature with him, when he stops off the road, to set out a flare. It sputtered in his hand, now, then flared into smoky pink-red flame, and as Jack raised it high to jam the spike into the ground, I shoved a key into the lock of his trunk, twisting it frantically.

Then Jack had the keys, yanking them from the lock. He found the right one, inserted it, turned, then heaved up the lid of the trunk. And there they lay, in the advancing, retreating waves of flickering red light: two enormous pods already burst open in one or two places, and I reached in with both hands, and tumbled them out onto the dirt. They were as weightless as children's balloons, harsh and dry on my palms and fingers. At the feel of them on my skin, I lost my mind completely, and then I was trampling them, smashing and crushing them under my plunging feet and legs, not even knowing that I was uttering a sort of hoarse, meaningless cry – "Unhh! Unhh! Unhh!" – of fright, animal disgust, and rage. The wind had the flare, twisting the flame till it sputtered and choked, and on the high cutaway embankment beside me, I saw a giant shadow – mine – squirming and dancing in a wild, flickering, insane caper, the whole nightmare scene bathed in a mad light the colour of froth from a wound, and I think I came close to losing my mind.

Jack was yanking hard on my arm, dragging me away, and we turned to the trunk again. Jack pulled out the red-painted, spare can of gasoline he carried. He got the top off, and there at the side of the road, in the pink washes of smoky light, he drenched those two great weightless masses, and they dissolved into a mushy pulp of nothingness. Then I had the flare, wrenching it from the ground, and, running back, I hurled it into the soupy mass lying there in the dirt and gravel.

Pulling away fast, the car bumping onto the road again, I looked back, and the flames suddenly shot high, five or six feet; orange flames in a pink wash of light, the thick, greasy smoke twisting and rolling away in the heat waves. Watching, as Jack shifted into second, and then into high, I saw the flames drop quickly and subside into a score of inch-high, blue-and-red flickering tongues, the smoke blood-pink once again. Suddenly they went out, or were lost to view over a small rise of ground, I never knew which.

And now I didn't even try to talk or think; none of us did; we were drained of thought, feeling, and emotion. I just sat, holding Becky's hand, steering the car with my eyes, around the curves, up and down the hills, piling up distance, Becky silent and bolt upright beside me.

An hour or so later, the green neon Vacancy sign looking cold and unfriendly, we stopped at a motel, the Rancho Something-or-other. Jack got out, and as I opened my door, Becky leaned toward me and whispered, "Don't get me a room alone, Miles; I'm too scared. I just couldn't stay by myself tonight; I couldn't. Miles, please; I'm so scared." I nodded – there was simply nothing else to do – and got out. We awakened the proprietor, a perpetually tired and irritated middle-aged woman in slippers and robe, who had long since given up wondering about the people who woke her at any and all hours of the night. With no more than half a dozen words, we got two double rooms, paid for them, were given keys, and we signed the registration cards. Without consciously thinking about it, I signed a false name, and then felt ashamed; then I noticed Jack doing the same thing, and realized why we had. It was idiotic, of course, but it seemed terribly important just then to make ourselves anonymous, and crawl into a hole and out of sight, no one in the world knowing where we were.