Jeff Jacobson - Growth

A dozen tendrils rippled across the street and followed. More of them, maybe a hundred, seethed out of the darkness and came at them. Purcell and Axel opened up, blasting a hole in the mass of creatures. They pulled Edgar along, struggling to run, heading south on Fifth Street.

Sandy had a flash. “There!” She pointed at a hulking shape that rose above the houses, silhouetted against the stars. “The water tower! These things, they can’t climb. We’ll get up there and wait for Charlie.”

“I don’t know,” Purcell draped Edgar’s arm over his shoulders and they shuffled along. “We get up there, we’re trapped.”

“Better than down here,” Sandy said, slamming her shotgun into her shoulder and squeezing off two quick shots at a couple of tendrils crawling into the street between two cars.

“Can’t argue with that,” Purcell said.

Axel emptied his clip into the horde that crept across the street. He dropped it and fumbled for a new one.

Sandy heard distant gunfire.

They ran along the gym and passed a row of school buses. Sandy noticed that tendrils of all sizes were tracking them. Most were large, moving along on human limbs. Some were smaller, lower to the ground, using dog, cat, and possum legs. They flowed over each other as if oblivious to the other tentacles. The effect was like a mass of giant, wriggling centipedes, all scurrying to reach the food first.

“Over there,” Sandy said, panting. “At the edge of center field. Near the trees.” They ran onto the baseball diamond. The tendrils followed, and their scrabbling across the dry grass raised a cloud of dust and line chalk. Axel hung back and sprayed the closest fungus tentacles with another twenty rounds. The tendrils kept coming.

And more were rushing out of the darkness of the trees to meet them.

Sandy fired at those, trying to open up a path to the base of the water tower. She kept squeezing the trigger until the shotgun was empty, no way to reload now. They reached the waist-high chain-link fence and threw themselves over. She hoped the fence would slow the tendrils behind them, at least for a minute.

But it was low enough that the first few rows of arms on each tendril were able to pull the long line of limbs over and create enough momentum to keep flowing over.

Sandy’s steps faltered and she almost gave up when she saw how many tendrils were swarming out from the darkness of the trees. Dozens upon dozens, maybe hundreds. Moving through the grass, they made no sound. In some ways this silence unnerved Sandy the most. There was no warning, nothing until they were crawling up your legs. A dog will growl or bark to let you know they are scared or angry, a pissed-off cat will hiss at you, hell, even a goddamn rattlesnake will shake its tail to warn you off, but these things came after you in total silence. You blinked and they were suddenly upon you.

Axel managed to reload and blew the closest tendrils into a fine gray mist. Then the water tower loomed overhead. They pushed Edgar up the ladder first. Purcell was next, sticking close to Edgar in case he fell. Axel continued to fire, sweeping the shotgun back and forth in wild, frantic movements.

Sandy turned and put one foot on the flat piece of steel that jutted from the northwest leg of the water tower. She went to push herself off the ground, and heard a cry, a sound that struck the very core of her soul. She froze. The cry came again.

“Mom!”

It was Kevin.

Sandy jumped off the water tower and whipped her flashlight around.

The tendrils crept closer, closer.

“In the tree!” Kevin yelled.

She raised the Maglite, flashing it into the branches. And twenty yards away, across a heaving mass of tendrils, she saw her son, standing in the crook of an old oak, fifteen feet off the ground. Puffing Bill carefully straddled the branch next to him.

She started toward him, lowering her shotgun and jerking the trigger. Nothing happened. Axel grabbed her. “You’re empty! Get up there!” He shoved her at the ladder.

She knew he was right. She called out to Kevin, “Stay put! I’ll get you. Just stay there!”

She put her foot on the ladder and started climbing. A fresh wave of emotion burst inside her mind, leaving her dazed. Sweet relief and raw fear ricocheted through her body and she had to stop for a second to collect her thoughts. Axel slapped her ass. She started moving, realizing that falling off the water tower wouldn’t help Kevin.

Down below, the tendrils wrapped around the spindly legs of the tower, and even though some of the arms grabbed listlessly at the ladder rungs, they could not climb.

She yelled, “Stay there!” in case he hadn’t heard her the first time. “We’ll get you. Just as soon as I can.” Her promise sounded hollow and desperate. She kept going, hand over hand, until she reached the catwalk.

Axel was right behind her. They crawled out onto the narrow ledge that ran around the top of the water tower. Purcell had pulled Edgar over to make room, and now Edgar sat with his feet dangling over the edge, clutching the railing.

Sandy sidled along the other direction until she was facing Kevin. “Are you okay?” she called.

“Yeah, Mom. We’re good.”

She almost wept as joy swept through her. “Just stay put until we figure something, all right? Just stay put.”

“Okay, Mom.” He might as well have said, “Well, DUH .” Of course they were going to stay put. Where else would they go?

She inched back to Purcell. He looked up at her and gave her a tired smile. “That your boy?”

She nodded.

“Good, good.”

Axel dropped the backpack on the catwalk and slumped back against the cool metal of the water tank, trying to catch his breath. Purcell opened the pack and inventoried the contents. There wasn’t much. Three full clips for the AA-12s. Four more clips for the SPAS-12s. No water. No food.

They were high enough that they could see the entire town, and looked northwest, trying to see if Charlie had reached the truck. It was impossible, though, and all they could really make out were the streetlights spaced along Main Street.

Despite herself, Sandy slumped down and sat next to Axel. Exhaustion spread throughout her body, filling her muscles with lead. She watched the sun sink below the horizon and sometime later, she slept.

Sandy scared everybody, including herself, by screaming out, “Don’t fall asleep!”

“What?” Purcell grabbed her. He’d thought she was falling off the tower.

Axel had a shotgun up and ready to go, “What, what?” echoing his dad.

Before Sandy could answer, reassure them, they all heard a thumping come out of the northern sky.

Three lights opened up on them all at the same time, freezing Sandy, Purcell, his boys, pinning them to the side of the tank. The lights came skimming along the horizon, and swept past them in the roaring wash of three helicopters thundering past the water tank over one hundred miles an hour.

As they passed, the lights vanished at the same time and the helicopters went dark again.

Purcell said to Axel, “You hear them helicopters come back around, you hand me one of them double As. Fuckin’ black helicopters. And you thought I was nuts, telling folks about ’em.”

Two miles to the south, they could see a flash and hear a whoomp , as the hundreds of acres of corn around the Einhorn, Kobritz, and Johnson houses and barns started to burn. Sandy watched as the fires lit the sky with an orange glow.

Edgar said, “What the hell’s that?” He pointed back to the north, back toward Main Street. They saw flashes of a pair of headlights winding their way along the parade. Heard a horn, pressed over and over.