Clifford Simak - Our Children's Children

"Somehow," said Bentley, "you don't sound like no gentleman to me and that's what you're supposed to be, ain't it, an officer and a gentleman. There wouldn't be any gentleman set up no gun in the middle of a flower bed and there wouldn't be any officer aim his gun at a bunch of refugees and…"

A shrill scream split the night and Bentley spun around and saw that there was something very terrible happening in the tunnel. There were people still coming out of it, but they weren't marching out four and five abreast, the way they had before. They were running out of it, fighting to get out, and overriding them and plowing through them was a horror that Bentley, in that moment, never quite got sorted in his mind. He had the impression of wicked teeth and drooling jaws, of mighty talons protruding from massive, furry paws, of terrible power and ferocity, and quite by habit his hands went down to grip a camera and bring it to his eye.

Through the lens, he saw that there was not one, but two of the creatures, one almost through the tunnel and the other close behind. He saw the bodies of people flying through the air like limp dolls thrown about by children, and others that were crushed beneath the monster's treading feet. And he saw, as well, writhing tentacles, as if the creatures could not quite make up their minds if they were animals or octopi.

Behind him sharp orders rang out and almost at his elbow the gun belched sudden flame that lit up all the houses and the yards and gardens. A thunderclap concussion knocked him to one side and as he hit the ground and rolled, he saw a number of things slantwise out of the corner of his eyes. The tunnel had suddenly blinked out in an explosion that was little more than a continuation of the concussion, although it was more mind-numbing and nerve-shaking than the concussion and there were dead people and a dead monster that smoked as if it had been fried. But while one of the monsters lay upon the lawn beneath the great oak tree that had marked the tunnel, the other monster was very much alive and somehow the one live monster and the gun and gun crew were very much mixed up and people were running, screaming and in terror.

Bentley scrambled to his feet and took one quick glance around and in that single glance he saw the gun crew dead, ripped and flung and trampled, with the gun tipped over, smoke still trailing from its muzzle. From down the street came shrill, high screams and he caught, for an instant only, the flickering motion of something large and dark, moving very swiftly, whipping across one corner of a yard, with a picket fence exploding to a shower of white slivers as the dark thing went straight through it.

He sprinted around the corner of the house and burst through the kitchen door, clawing for the phone, dialing almost by instinct, praying that the line was open.

"Global News," said a raspy voice. "Manning."

"Tom, this is Bentley."

"Yes, Bentley. What is it now? Where are you?"

"I am home. Out at Joe's place. And I got some news."

"Are you sober?"

"Well, I stopped by a place I know and had a drink or two. Sunday, you know. None of the regular places open. And when I come home I found a gun crew out in the yard, right in Edna's flower bed."

"Hell," said Manning, "that is not any news. We had that a couple of hours ago. They set up guns at all the tunnels for some reason."

"I know the reason."

"Well, now, that's nice," said Manning.

"Yeah, there was a monster come through the tunnel and…"

"A monster! What' kind of monster?"

"Well, I don't know," said Bentley. "I never got a real good look at it, And there wasn't only one monster. There was two of them. One of them the gun killed, but the other got away. It killed the gun crew and tipped over the gun and all the people ran screaming and it got away. I saw it bust right through a picket fence…"

"Now, Bentley," said Manning, "stop talking quite so fast. Take it a little slow and tell me. You say one monster got away. There is a monster loose…"

"There sure is. He killed the gun crew and maybe other people, too. The tunnel is shut down and there's a dead monster out there."

"Now tell me about the monster. What kind of monster was it?"

"I can't tell you that," said Bentley, "but I got pictures of it."

"Of the dead one, I suppose."

"No, the live one," said Bentley, his voice bright with scorn. "I wouldn't never bother with no dead monster when there's a live one."

"Now, listen, Bentley. Listen closely. Are you in shape to drive?"

"Sure, I'm in shape to drive. I drove out here, didn't I?" "All right. I'll send someone else out there. And you — I want you to get in here as quickly as you can with the pictures that you have. And, Bentley…"

"Yes?"

"You're sure you're right? There really was a monster?"

"I'm sure I'm right," said Bentley piously. "I only had a drink or two."

Steve Wilson went into the press lounge in search of coffee and sandwiches. A dozen or so newsmen still were there.

"Anything new, Steve?" asked Carl Anders, of the AP.

Wilson shook his head. "Everything seems to be quiet. If there were anything of consequence going on, I think that I would know it."

"And tell us?"

"And tell you," Wilson said sharply. "You know damn well we've played fair with you."

"Yeah? How about the guns?"

"Simply routine emergency precaution. How about some sandwiches or did you guys eat them all?"

"Over there in the corner, Steve," said John Gates, of the Washington Post.

Wilson piled two sandwiches on a plate and got a cup of coffee. As he came back across the room, Gates slid over on the davenport where he had been lounging and patted a place beside him. Wilson sat down, putting the plate and cup of coffee on the table that stood in front of the davenport.

Anders came over to take a nearby chair. Henry Hunt, the New York Times man, sat down on the davenport on the other side of Wilson.

"It's been a long day, Steve," he said.

Wilson bit into a sandwich. "Rough," he said.

"What's going on right now?" asked Anders.

"Perhaps quite a bit. Nothing that I know of. There's nothing I can tell, nothing that I know."

Gates chuckled. "You can talk, can't you?"

"Sure I can talk. But I can't give you anything. You guys know procedure. If I should happen to say something that makes sense, it is off the record."

"Well, hell, yes, of course," said Anders. "You news-papered yourself. You know how it is."

"I know how it is," said Wilson.

"What bothers me," said Hunt, "is how anyone, even the President, knows where to take hold of a thing like this. There is no precedent. Nothing like this has ever happened before, nothing remotely like it. As a rule a crisis will build up; you can see it coming and be halfway ready for it. But not this one. This one exploded without warning."

"That's bothering me, too," said Anders. "How do you find a handle?"

"You're stuck with it," said Wilson. "You can't just ignore it. You do the best you can. You try to find out what it's all about. In a case like this, you have to be somewhat skeptical and that doesn't allow you to move as fast as you'd like to move. You have to talk with a lot of people, you have to check around and you have to develop some sort of judgment. I suspect you might pray a lot. Oh, not informal praying, nothing like that…"

"Is that what the President did?" asked. Anders.

"That's not what I said. I was just trying to think through a hypothetical question."

"What do you think of it, Steve?" asked Gates. "You, not the President."

"It's hard to tell," said Wilson. "It's all too new. I found myself, just a while ago, wondering if it was all delusion, if it might not be gone by morning. Of course, I know it won't be. But it boggles the mind to think of it. I have brought myself to believe these people are really from the future. But even if they're not, they're here and we have to deal with them. I suppose it doesn't really matter where they came from."