Fredric Brown - The Mind Thing

He opened the door of the Volkswagen. “Hurry into the house, Miss Talley. We’ve got a minute’s grace before it can try again, but don’t waste any time.”

He hurried with her. The shotgun was empty, and the extra shells were inside. At the door he turned and looked back and upward. A big bird of some kind, not a buzzard, was circling—but if it was about to attack it was too late. He stepped inside and closed the door.

Quickly, while he was reloading the shotgun, he told her what had happened yesterday and thus far today.

“Oh, Doctor,” she said, “if I’d only insisted that the sheriff—I called him yesterday afternoon and he didn’t seem to believe you were in trouble but he said he’d come out. I couldn’t reach him again until this morning, and then he told me several things had come up, that he hadn’t been able to make it yesterday and wouldn’t be able to until tomorrow. I guess he thought it was just my imagination that anything could be wrong, and he isn’t in any hurry.”

“Tomorrow…” Doc shook his head gloomily. “I’ll never make it—stay awake that long, I mean. And if I’m right that as soon as I go to sleep—I wish you hadn’t come yourself, Miss Talley; now you’re in trouble too.”

“Don’t you think there’s even a chance of our making it into town in my car? With me driving so you can use the gun?”

“A chance in a hundred, Miss Talley. Aside from the fact that there must be cows wherever that bull came from, not to mention more deer in the woods, I’ll bet a really big bird could dive-bomb right through the roof of a light car like that. How soon will you be missed? Will neighbors notice that you don’t get home tonight, if you don’t?”

“Oh, dear, I’m afraid not. Every once in a while I go in to Green Bay to see a show and I have a sister-in-law there who goes with me and I usually stay with her afterwards. So no one will think anything of my not getting home tonight, because my neighbors know that, and won’t worry. Oh, if I’d only thought of calling the state police instead of coming myself—I never thought of them at all.”

Doc Staunton gestured wearily. “Don’t blame yourself for anything, Miss Talley. I made the first mistake—the first two mistakes. I should never have stayed here night before last, after the gray cat killed itself; that made this house, or at least this area, a focus. And yesterday morning, after I learned about Jim Kramer’s death, I should never have come back here just to pack up my possessions. That was the big mistake, the one that caught me.” He sighed.

“Let’s have some coffee. I’ve been drinking it cold, but now that I have someone to talk to, I think I’ll risk a cup of it hot. I’ll even risk sitting down and letting you make it—if you’ll keep talking to me, or vice versa. Maybe we can come up with something. We’ve got to come up with something.”

In the kitchen he compromised by leaning against the wall while she started water boiling for fresh coffee. He did most of the talking, since he had more to tell.

“The alien ,” Miss Talley said firmly, the first time he mentioned the enemy. “Doctor, why not admit we’re fighting —or at any rate defending ourselves against—an extraterrestrial intelligence? What else could it be?”

“A mutant human being, one who was born with or has acquired what Charles Fort called a wild talent.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No,” Doc said. “Nor the only other possibility I’ve been able to think of—a demon or devil. But I won’t narrow it down. Until I know for sure, or until I lose, I’m going to call him the enemy. Let’s not worry about nomenclature. Miss Talley. There’s too much else to worry about. First and foremost, what chance have we got, if any? Of course I can hope I’m wrong in thinking the enemy is keeping me—us, rather—boxed in here until I have to go to sleep.”

“Have you had any ideas at all?”

He told her his thought that wounding an animal controlled by the enemy might give them time for a getaway. “But,” he added, “it’s hard to wound a large animal with a shotgun in such a way that it couldn’t attack, or manage to kill itself. You’d have to break a leg to immobilize it.”

“You don’t have a rifle?”

“Only a twenty-two; it’s still in the station wagon, and not worth the risk of trying to get it. It would be if I had long rifle cartridges for it, but I have only shorts; I intended to use it only for target practice. I have a pistol, but I’m not accurate enough with it to take the risk of trying to wound a charging animal without killing it.”

He shook his head wearily. “I think it recognizes the risk of being wounded and that’s why it prefers to use birds. Even if I could shoot one high enough in the air only to wound it with a few pellets, it would already be diving and the fall would kill it… Lord, but I’m sleepy.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Just keep talking, or listening. By the way, I’m on a hunger strike to keep awake, but don’t let that stop you from getting yourself something any time you want. The refrigerator’s been off since yesterday evening, so don’t take a chance on anything in it. But there’s plenty of canned goods.”

The coffee was finished and she poured two cups and brought them to the table. “Thanks, I’m not hungry yet. But perhaps I should make two or three extra pots of coffee.”

“If you wish. But why?”

“Since he managed to shut off your electricity, he just might figure a way to shut off the gas too. And you don’t want to be without coffee, even if both of us will have to drink it cold.”

“I don’t think he could, short of using a human host. It takes a wrench to turn the valve on the butane tank. There’s nothing to lose, though, if you want to make a couple of extra pots.”

She put more water on the stove to boil and then came to the table and sat across from him.

“How about the water supply? Any chance of his shutting that off? If so, I’d better fill a few buckets, to be safe.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” He explained how the water supply worked. “He could easily enough wreck the pump that brings water from the well to the tank on the roof, but the tank itself is heavy and solid and it must be at least half full; more water than we’ll need. It holds two hundred gallons.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “Talking about water reminds me of something I’ll do when I’ve finished this. A cold bath and a change of clothes will help me; I should have thought of it this morning, but I didn’t.”

“It sounds like a good idea. And I’ll get myself something to eat while you’re upstairs. You must be pretty hungry, and that way you won’t have to watch me eat”

“Fine. But make a circuit of the windows once in a while and call me if you see anything. I’ll take a robe into the bathroom with me so I can come quickly. And that reminds me—”

He started to get up, but Miss Talley, in her best schoolteacher manner, ordered him to sit still and got up to make a circuit of the downstairs windows. She came back to report nothing new except that the buzzards were back at the dead deer. None as yet had gone to the dead bull; the deer was riper and more to their taste.

Doc nodded. “I don’t expect anything to happen. It’s a waiting game—unless one of us tries to leave. He’s made no attempt to get inside the house, in any form, and if he wanted to he could have, long ago. Any big animal could break, through either door, unless I shot it first.”

“Or a human being. I wonder why he hasn’t sent one against you.”

“No reason to, unless he wanted to kill me, and apparently he doesn’t, unless I try to leave. In a way, I wish he would send one. It’s dangerous to try to shoot a leg of a charging bull without killing it. But with a man, it would be relatively easy.”