Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

In a second, some atavistic instinct drove Willie Stott to jump the ditch on the left side of the road and crash headlong into the corn. As the tall ears swallowed him up, he glanced back for only a second. As he did so he saw a large, dark shape scuttling across the road behind him at a terrible speed.

Stott crashed through the next row, and the next, forcing himself as deeply as possible into the dark, suffocating corn, gasping out loud. But always he heard the crash of dry ears being trampled behind him.

He took a ninety-degree angle and ran down a row. Behind, the crashing stopped.

Stott ran. He had long legs and in high school he’d been on the track team. That had been years ago, but he still knew how to run. And so he ran, thinking of nothing else except planting one foot before the other, outrunning whatever it was behind him.

Despite the encircling corn, he was not yet fully disoriented. Medicine Creek lay ahead of him, just over a mile away. He could still make it. . .

Behind him now, he could hear the loud slapping of feet against earth. And with each step, a rhythmic grunt.

Muh. Muh. Muh.

The long row of corn made a slow curve along the topography of the land, and he flew along it, running with a speed born of sheer terror.

Muh. Muh. Muh.

Christ, it was getting closer. He swerved, desperately crashing through another row, still running.

He heard an echoing crash behind him as the pursuer broke through the row, following him, closing in.

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” he screamed.

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

It was getting closer, so close he almost imagined he could feel puffs of hot breath on his neck, keeping time with the thudding feet. A sudden wet warmth flooded his thighs as his bladder let go. He swerved, crashed through yet another row, swerved, veered back. The thing kept right behind him, closer, ever closer.

Muh! Muh! Muh! Muh!

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

It was still gaining, and gaining fast.

Stott felt something grab his hair, something horribly strong. He tried to jerk his head away, the sudden pain awful, but the grip held fast. His lungs were on fire. He could feel his legs slackening with terror.

“ Somebody, help me! ” he screamed, diving to one side, jerking and thrashing his head so violently he could feel his scalp begin to separate from his skull. The thing was now almost on top of him. And then he felt a sudden, viselike grip on the back of his neck, a brutal twist and snap, and suddenly it seemed as if he had left the ground and was flying, flying, up into the dark sky, while a triumphant voice screamed:

Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Nineteen

S mit Ludwig locked the door to the Cry County Courier and dropped the keys into his pocket. As he angled across the street he glanced up at the early morning sky. Big sterile thunderheads were piling up on the northern horizon, just as they had done every day for the past two weeks. They would spread across the sky by nightfall and be gone by morning. One of these days the heat would break and there would be one hell of a storm. But it looked as if the heat would grip the town for a while more, at least.

Ludwig had a pretty good idea what Art Ridder and the sheriff wanted to talk to him about. Well, tough: he’d already written the story about the dog, and it was going to run that very afternoon. He strode down the sidewalk, feeling the heat soaking through the soles of his shoes, feeling the pressure of the sun on his head. Magg’s Candlepin Castle was only a five minute walk, but two minutes into it Ludwig realized his mistake in not driving. He would arrive sweaty and disheveled: a tactical error. At least, he told himself, Magg’s was air-conditioned to tundra-like temperatures.

He pushed through the double doors into a blast of icy air, and was greeted by silence: at this time of the morning the alleys were dark, the pins like tall white teeth in the gloom, the racking machines mute. At the far end of the alley he could see the lights of the Castle Club, where every morning Art Ridder held court with his paper and his breakfast. Ludwig adjusted his collar, straightened his shoulders, and started forward.

The Castle Club was not so much a club as a glassed-in eating area with red fake-leather banquettes, Formica tables made to look like wood, and beveled mirrors shot through with faux gold marbling. Ludwig pushed through the door and approached the corner table, where Ridder and Sheriff Hazen were seated, talking in low tones. Ridder caught sight of Ludwig, rose with a big smile, held out his hand, and guided the reporter into a chair.

“Smitty! Real good of you to come.”

“Sure, Art.”

The sheriff had not risen, and now he simply nodded through a wash of cigarette smoke. “Smit.”

“Sheriff.”

There was a short silence. Ridder looked around, his polyester collar stretching this way and that. “Em! Coffee! And bring Mr. Ludwig some bacon and eggs.”

“I don’t eat much of a breakfast.”

“Nonsense. Today’s an important day.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Dr. Stanton Chauncy, the professor from KSU, will be joining us in fifteen minutes. I’m going to show him the town.”

There was a short pause. Art Ridder was wearing a pink short-sleeved shirt and light gray doubleknit trousers, his white blazer thrown over the back of the chair. He was rounded, but not especially soft. All those years wrestling turkeys had put muscles on his arms that, it seemed, would never wither. He glowed with ruddy good health.

“We don’t have much time, Smitty, so I’ll be direct. You know me: Mr. Direct.” Ridder gave a little chuckle.

“Sure, Art.” Ludwig leaned back to allow the waitress to slide a greasy plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. He wondered what a real reporter would do at this point. Walk out? Politely decline?

“Okay, Smitty, here’s the deal. You know this guy, Chauncy, is looking for a place to put in an experimental cornfield for Kansas State. It’s either us or Deeper. Deeper’s got a motel, Deeper’s got two gas stations, Deeper’s twenty miles closer to the interstate. Okay? So you might ask, where’s the contest? Why us? You following me?”

Ludwig nodded. You following me? was Art Ridder’s signature phrase.

Ridder raised the coffee mug, flexed his hairy arm, took a sip.

“We’ve got something Deeper doesn’t. Now listen to me good, because this isn’t the official KSU line. We’ve got isolation. ” He paused dramatically. “Why is isolation important? ’Cause this cornfield’s going to be used for testing genetically—altered—corn. ” He hummed the Twilight Zone theme, then grinned. “You following me?”

“Not really.”

“We all know that genetically modified corn is harmless. But there are a bunch of ignorant city folks, liberals, enviros—you know who I’m talking about—who think there’s something dangerous about genetically altered corn.” He hummed Twilight Zone again. “The real reason Medicine Creek is in the running is because we’re isolated. No hotel. Long drive. No big mall. Closest radio and television station one hundred miles away. In short, this is the world’s lousiest place to organize a protest. Of course, Dale Estrem and the Farmer’s Co-op aren’t too pleased about it, either, but they’re just a few and I can handle them. You following me?”

Ludwig nodded.

“But now we’ve got a small problem. We’ve got a sonofabitch wacko running around. He’s killed a person, killed a dog, and God knows what the hell else he’s up to, maybe he’s fucking sheep, too. Right when Stanton Chauncy, project director for the Agricultural Extension Program of Kansas State University, is in town to see if Medicine Creek is the right place to site these fields. And we want to show him it is a good place. A calm, law-and-order town. No drugs, no hippies, no protests. Sure, he’s heard about the murder, but he figures it’s just some random, one-time thing. He’s not concerned, and I want him to stay that way. So I need your help with two things.”