Something had landed on the glass outside one of the loopholes.
“Oh my Jesus!” the man who had been watching there screamed. “Let me out! Let me out of this!” He tore around in a rambling circle, his eyes starting from his face, a thin lick of saliva at one corner of his mouth glimmering in the deepening shadows. Then he took off straight up the far aisle past the frozen-food cases.
There were answering cries. Some people ran toward the front to see what had happened. Many others retreated toward the back, not caring and not wanting to see whatever was crawling on the glass out there.
I started down toward the loophole, Ollie by my side. His hand was in the pocket that held Dumfries’ gun. Now one of the other watchers let out a cry-not so much of fear as disgust.
Ollie and I slipped through one of the checkout lanes. Now I could see what had frightened the guy from his post. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I could see it. It looked like one of the minor creatures in a Bosch painting-one of his hellacious murals. There was something almost horribly comic about it, too, because it also looked a little like one of those strange creations of vinyl and plastic you can buy for $1.89 to spring on your friends… in fact, exactly the sort of thing Norton had accused me of planting in the storage area.
It was maybe two feet long, segmented, the pinkish color of burned flesh that has healed over. Bulbous eyes peered in two different directions at once from the ends of short, limber stalks. It clung to the window on fat sucker-pads. From the opposite end there protruded something that was either a sexual organ or a stinger. And from its back there sprouted oversized, membranous wings, like the wings of a housefly. They were moving very slowly as Ollie and I approached the glass.
At the loophole to the left of us, where the man had made the disgusted cawing sound, three of the things were crawling on the glass. They moved sluggishly across it, leaving sticky snail trails behind them. Their eyes—if that is what they were—joggled on the end of the finger-thick stalks. The biggest was maybe four feet long. At times they crawled right over each other.
“Look at those goddam things,” Tom Smalley said in a sickened voice. He was standing at the loophole on our right. I didn’t reply. The bugs were all over the loopholes now, which meant they were probably crawling all over the building… like maggots on a piece of meat. It wasn’t a pleasant image, and I could feel what chicken I had managed to eat now wanting to come up.
Someone was sobbing. Carmody was screaming about abominations from within the earth. Someone told her gruffly that she’d shut up if she knew what was good for her. Same old shit.
Ollie took Dumfries’ gun from his pocket and I grabbed his arm. “Don’t be crazy.” He shook free. “I know what I’m doing,” he said.
He tapped the barrel of the gun on the window, his face set in a nearly masklike expression of distaste. The speed of the creatures’ wings increased until they were only a blur-if you hadn’t known, you might have believed they weren’t winged creatures at all.
Then they simply flew away.
Some of the others saw what Ollie had done and got the idea. They used the mop handles to tap on the windows.
The things flew away, but came right back. Apparently they had no more brains than your average housefly, either. The near-panic dissolved in a babble of conversation.
I heard someone asking someone else what he thought those things would do if they landed on you. That was a question I had no interest in seeing answered.
The tapping on the windows began to die away. Ollie turned toward me and started to say something, but before he could do more than open his mouth, something came out of the fog and snatched one of the crawling things off the glass. I think I screamed. I’m not sure.
It was a flying thing. Beyond that I could not have said for sure. The fog appeared to darken in exactly the way Ollie had described, only the dark smutch didn’t fade away; it solidified into something with flapping, leathery wings, an albino-white body, and reddish eyes. it thudded into the glass hard enough to make it shiver. Its beak opened. It scooped the pink thing in and was gone. The whole incident took no more than five seconds. I had a bare final impression of the pink thing wiggling and flapping as it went down the hatch, the way a small fish will wiggle and flap in the beak of a seagull.
Now there was another thud, and yet another. People began screaming again, and there was a stampede toward the back of the store. Then there was a more piercing scream, one of pain, and Ollie said, “Oh my God, that old lady fell down and they just ran over her.” He ran back through the checkout aisle. I turned to follow, and then I saw something that stopped me dead where I was standing.
High up and to my right, one of the lawn-food bags was sliding slowly backward.
Tom Smalley was right under it, staring out into the mist through his loophole.
Another of the pink bugs landed on the thick plate glass of the loophole where Ollie and I had been standing. One of the flying things swooped down and grabbed it.
The old woman who had been trampled went on screaming in a shrill, cracked voice.
That bag. That sliding bag.
“Smalley!” I shouted. “Look out’ Heads up!” In the general confusion, he never heard me. The bag teetered, then fell. It struck him squarely on-the head. He went down hard, catching his jaw on the shelf that ran below the show window.
One of the albino flying things was squirming its way through the jagged hole in the glass. I could hear the soft scraping sound that it made, now that some of the screaming had stopped. Its red eyes glittered in its triangular head, which was slightly cocked to one side. A heavy, hooked beak opened and closed rapaciously. It looked a bit like the paintings of pterodactyls you may have seen in the dinosaur books, more like something out of a lunatic’s nightmare.
I grabbed one of the torches and slam-dunked it into a can of charcoal lighter fluid, tipping it over and spilling a pool of the stuff across the floor.
The flying creature paused on top of the lawn-Food bags, glaring around, shifting slowly and malignantly from one taloned foot to, the other. It was a stupid creature, I am quite sure of that. Twice it tried to spread its wings, which struck the walls and then folded themselves over its hunched back like the wings of a griffin. The third time it tried, it lost its balance and fell clumsily from its perch, still trying to spread its wings. It landed on Tom Smalley’s back. One flex of its claws and Tom’s shirt ripped wide open.
Blood began to flow.
I was there, less than three feet away, My torch was dripping lighter fluid. I was emotionally pumped up to kill it if I could… and then realized I had no matches to light it with. I had used the last one lighting a cigar for McVey an hour ago.
The place was in pandemonium now. People had seen the thing roosting on Smalley’s back, something no one in the world had seen before. it darted its head forward at a questing angle, and tore a chunk of meat from the back of Smalley’s neck.
I was getting ready to use the torch as a bludgeon when the cloth-wrapped head of it suddenly blazed alight. Dan Miller was there, holding a Zippo lighter with a Marine emblem on it. His face was as harsh as a rock with horror and fury.
“Kill it,” he said hoarsely. “Kill it if you can.” Standing beside him was Ollie. He had Dumfries’.38 in his hand, but he had no clear shot.
The thing spread its wings and flapped them once -apparently not to fly away but to secure a better hold on its prey-and then its leathery-white, membranous wings enfolded poor Smalley’s entire upper body. Then the sounds came-mortal tearing sounds that I cannot bear to describe in any detail.
All of this happened in bare seconds. Then I thrust my torch at the thing. There was the sensation of striking something with no more real substance than a box kite. The next moment the entire creature was blazing. It made a screeching sound and its wings spread; its head jerked and its reddish eyes rolled with what I most sincerely hope was great agony. It took off with a sound like linen bedsheets flapping on a clothesline in a stiff spring breeze. It uttered that rusty shrieking sound again.