They slipped through the guardrails on the left side of the ramp, giving the station wagon the widest berth possible, then cut across the parking lot. When they got to Pete, the little girl let go of her brother, sat down, and put her face in her hands. She had braids her mom had probably fixed for her. Looking at them and knowing the kid’s mother would never fix them for her again made Pete feel horrible.
The little boy looked up solemnly. “It ate mommy-n- daddy. It ate the horse-lady and Trooper Jimmy, too. It’s going to eat everyone, I guess. It’s going to eat the world.”
If Pete Simmons had been twenty, he might have asked a lot of bullshit questions that didn’t matter. Because he was only half that age, and able to accept what he had just seen, he asked something simpler and more pertinent. “Hey, little girl. Are more police coming? Is that why you were yelling ‘Thirty’?”
She dropped her hands and looked up at him. Her eyes were raw and red. “Yes, but Blakie’s right. It will eat them, too. I told Trooper Jimmy, but he didn’t believe me.”
Pete believed her, because he had seen. But she was right. The police wouldn’t believe. They would eventually, they’d have to, but maybe not before the monster car ate a bunch more of them.
“I think it’s from space,” he said. “Like on Doctor Who.”
“Mommy-n-daddy won’t let us watch that,” the little boy told him. “They say it’s too scary. But this is scarier.”
“It’s alive.” Pete spoke more to himself than to them.
“Duh,” Rachel said, and gave a long, miserable sniffle.
The sun ducked briefly behind one of the unraveling clouds. When it came out again, an idea came with it. Pete had been hoping to show Normie Therriault and the rest of the Rip-Ass Raiders something that would amaze them enough to let him be part of their gang. Then George had given him a big-brother reality check: They’ve all seen that baby trick a thousand times.
Maybe so, but maybe that thing down there hadn’t seen it a thousand times. Or even once. Maybe they didn’t have magnifying glasses where it came from. Or sun, for that matter. He remembered a Doctor Who episode about a planet where it was dark all the time.
He could hear a siren in the distance. A cop was coming. A cop who wouldn’t believe anything little kids said, because as far as grownups were concerned, little kids were all full of shit.
“You guys stay here. I’m going to try something.”
“No!” The little girl grasped his wrist with fingers that felt like claws. “It’ll eat you, too!”
“I don’t think it can move around,” Pete told her, disengaging his hand. She had left a couple of bleeding scratches, but he wasn’t mad and he didn’t blame her. He probably would have done the same, if it had been his parents. “I think it’s stuck in one place.”
“It can reach,” she said. “It can reach with its tires. They melt.”
“I’ll watch out,” Pete said, “but I have to try this. Because you’re right. Those cops will come, and it will eat them, too. Stay put.”
He walked toward the station wagon. When he was close (but not too close), he unzipped the saddlebag. I have to try this, he had told the kids, but the truth was a little balder: he wanted to try this. It would be like a science experiment. That would probably sound bizarre if he told someone, but he didn’t have to tell. He just had to do it. Very. very. carefully.
He was sweating. With the sun out, the day had turned warm, but that wasn’t the only reason, and he knew it. He looked up, squinting at the brightness. Don’t you go back behind a cloud. Don’t you dare. I need you.
He took his Richforth magnifying glass out of the saddlebag, and bent to put the saddlebag on the pavement. The joints of his knees cracked, and the station wagon’s door swung open a few inches.
It knows I’m here. I don’t know if it can see me, but it heard me just now. And maybe it smells me.