Jeff Jacobson - Growth

Sandy let go of the door with her right hand and patted her belt. She replaced the pepper spray and found the flashlight. She splashed it around the closet for a second, and was slightly disappointed to see a double-barreled .12 gauge leaning against the back wall. She’d been hoping for an assault rifle or something equally indicative of a family with a healthy fear of God’s wrath. Still, she wasn’t going to complain as she shut off the light and checked if it was loaded by feel. It was.

Sandy, as the police chief of Parker’s Mill, felt a momentary reflexive pang of anger at Meredith and Albert for keeping a loaded gun in an unlocked closet in a houseful of children. She checked for more ammo and found none.

Meredith started to scream.

Sandy knew it might be her only chance to get out of the closet. She made sure the safety was off and opened the door. A few of the tendrils were still agitated and exploring her side of the bed, but most seemed to be concentrating mostly on Meredith’s head, leaving her body to flop around. Sandy couldn’t quite see what exactly the tendrils were doing to Meredith because her upper half was hidden behind the bed, but she realized she was fine with that. She didn’t want to know.

She shouldered the shotgun, found the closest tentacle and squeezed the trigger. The cloud of lead balls blasted the tiny fingers into a gray mist and left greasy strings flopping from the ragged end. There was no blood. Sandy wanted to put the second round into the center mass, but she was worried it might release spores or God knew what, and didn’t think she should be breathing in the same room. So she fired at another tentacle creeping closer and went through the door. She slammed it shut behind her.

At the top of the stairs, she glanced back at the bedroom door to make sure the tentacles weren’t flowing down the hall at her. It was still closed. Meredith wasn’t screaming as loud anymore.

Sandy ran downstairs and in the kitchen found a phone from her youth with buttons in the handset and a fifteen-foot spiral cord to the base. She grabbed it and went through the sliding glass door. Slammed it behind her in case any tendrils came downstairs. She dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“This is Chief Chisel. I need—”

“Oh, hello Chief Chisel. Sheriff Hoyt told us all about what you need. If you insist on wasting our time at the dispatch center, we were instructed to inform you that charges will be filed. Thank you.” A click and the line went dead.

Sandy looked at the phone in disbelief. “Motherfucking BITCH!” She tried dialing the FBI. Job protocol made her memorize the number, along with a dozen others. This time, she couldn’t even get a dial tone. She tried the CDC. The phone was out.

Sandy found the keys to the Suburban and was about to leave when she looked up at the ceiling. The thought of what was happening upstairs, how the entire family had been consumed, transformed, swallowed , made her nauseous. She’d be damned if she let it continue. Even if she had no power as chief anymore, she couldn’t let it go.

She lifted the range on the stovetop and blew out the pilot light, then cranked all the burners on. The slight hiss and telltale odor of natural gas filled the kitchen. Under the sink she found an aerosol can of Raid. It was full. She shook it up and put it in the microwave, punched in thirty minutes, and turned it on. The metal started sparking immediately.

Sandy shut the door behind her, got in the Suburban, and took off for town.

When the combine hit the old pickup, Puffing Bill went berserk. He’d been whining and pulling back on his leash as the massive harvester grew closer and closer up the street, and when it finally crashed to a stop, he dug his three feet into the grass and whipped his head back and forth to pull away from the leash.

All it took was for Kevin to move toward him. Instead of backing away, trying to wriggle out of his collar, he turned and began to pull the boy forward, as if he was trying to drag Kevin across the park.

“Maybe he has to go to the bathroom,” Patty said. It was clear that she wanted nothing to do with that particular act and preferred that it happened far, far away from her. “Go. Go.”

Kevin knew this wasn’t Puffing Bill trying to tell him that he needed to go take a shit. The dog wasn’t shy, and would do his business wherever he felt like it, as long as he was outside. This was something close to panic, and it scared Kevin. He held on to the leash and allowed Puffing Bill to lead him wherever the dog wanted to go. They raced through the park and across the street and down through the residential streets.

Kevin thought he could hear something happening back at the parade, but they were blocks away before Puffing Bill slowed down. Despite this, the dog was still uneasy, whining and constantly keeping his head moving. His ears flicked at the rustle of every leaf, the creak of branches rubbing in the breeze.

Tuned to the quiet of the street, Kevin eventually realized he couldn’t hear any birds. No squirrels chasing each other around. In fact, no dogs barked. It was like the town had been emptied of anything that moved on its own when no one was looking.

He stopped on a corner and realized that he was across the street from the high school. The place filled him with a vague unease, as if the halls were filled with students like Jerm, all looking for someone weak. Although, Kevin reflected, Jerm himself would never be swaggering through these halls. He didn’t know how that made him feel, and he briefly touched the bandage on the back of his head. Part of him knew that Jerm had been sick, that something was wrong, and therefore didn’t blame him, but the other part, the part he didn’t want to acknowledge, was glad Jerm was gone.

He started down the narrow access street that ran between the school and the administrative parking lot, cutting between the buildings and a row of a dozen or so school buses. It felt good to walk through the shadow cast by the gym and get out of the heat of the day. He thought they could hang out in the coolness under the baseball stands again, give Puffing Bill a chance to calm down, then go back to Elliot and his parents before the end of the parade.

Puffing Bill growled. Kevin couldn’t see anything. Just the empty street, the silent buses, the side of the gym. School was closed for the holiday. There was no one around. “What?” he asked the dog. “What is it?”

Puffing Bill growled again and pulled away from the shadow cast by the gym. He backed up to the buses, barking at the side of the building. Kevin didn’t understand. He couldn’t see anything. He dropped Puffing Bill’s leash and took two steps toward the side of the gym. The dog didn’t run, but his barking grew louder, more insistent.

Kevin couldn’t hear anything over the barking, but movement caught his eye. He’d been keeping an eye on the double doors to the gym and had missed it at first. Down in the old leaves that coated the three or four storm drains that stretched along the gutter, he caught a flash of something. Something like a snake, maybe? Whatever it was, something was moving underneath the leaves.

When it came crawling out of the storm drain, Kevin thought it was some kind of big furry spider. Then it kept coming, endless rows of scrabbling small legs, scurrying at them with surprising speed. Kevin froze. He thought he could see the legs of cats, some small dogs, raccoons, and others that he couldn’t identify, as if some sadistic taxidermist had sewed them into two long rows on either side of a long gray tube.

Another one squirmed out of the next storm drain farther down.

Puffing Bill turned and was now barking at the other side of the street. More of the things were climbing out of those drains. The tendrils stayed low, moving from side to side the same way a sidewinder skims across sand, keeping to the shadows.