“We’re going over to the drugstore to see what the situation is there. Hopefully, we’ll be able to bring something back to aid Clapham.” She was the lady who had been trampled yesterday, when the bugs came. One of her legs had been broken and she was in a great deal of pain.
Miller looked us over. “We’re not going to take any chances,” he said. “At the first sign of anything threatening, we’re going to pop back into the market—”
“And bring all the fiends of hell down on our heads!” Carmody cried.
“She’s right!” one of the summer ladies seconded. “You’ll make them notice us!
You’ll make them come! Why can’t you just leave well enough alone?” There was a murmur of agreement from some of the people who had gathered to watch us go.
I said, “Lady, is this what you call well enough ?” She dropped her eyes, confused.
Carmody marched a step forward. Her eyes were blazing. “You’ll die out there, David Drayton! Do you want to make your son an orphan ?” She raised her eyes and raked all of us with them. Buddy Eagleton dropped his eyes and simultaneously raised the pinchbar, as if to ward her off.
“All of you will die out there! Haven’t you realized that the end of the world has come? The Fiend has been let loose! Star Wormwood blazes and each one of you that steps out that door will be torn apart! And they’ll come for those of us who are left, just as this good woman said! Are you people going to let that happen ?” She was appealing to the onlookers now, and a little mutter ran through them. “After what happened to the unbelievers yesterday? it’s death! It’s death! It’s—” A can of peas flew across two of the checkout lanes suddenly and struck Carmody on the right breast. She staggered backward with a startled squawk.
Amanda stood forward. “Shut up,” she said. “Shut up, you miserable buzzard.”
“She serves the Foul One!” Carmody screamed. A jittery smile hung on her face. “Who did you sleep with last night, missus? Who did you lie down with last night?
Mother Carmody sees, oh yes, Mother Carmody sees what others miss.” But the moment’s spell she had created was broken, and Amanda’s eyes never wavered.
“Are we going or are we going to stand here all day?” Reppler asked.
And we went. God help us, we went.
Dan Miller was in the lead. Ollie came second, I was last, with Reppler in front of me. I was as scared as I’ve ever been, I think, and the hand wrapped around my broom handle was sweaty-slick.
There was that thin, acrid, and unnatural smell of the mist. By the time I got out the door, Miller and Ollie had already faded into it, and Hatlen, who was third, was nearly out of sight.
Only twenty feet, I kept telling myself. Only twenty feet.
Reppler walked slowly and firmly ahead of me, her tennis racket swinging lightly from her right hand. To our left was a red cinderblock wall. To our right the first rank of cars, looming out of the the mist like ghost ships. Another trash barrel materialized out of the whiteness, and beyond that was a bench where people sometimes sat to wait their turn at the pay phone. Only twenty feet, Miller’s probably the” by now, twenty feet is only ten or twelve paces, so
“Oh my God!” Miller screamed. “Oh dear sweet God, look at this!” Miller had gotten there, all right.
Buddy Eagleton was ahead of Reppler and he turned to run, his eyes wide and stary. She batted him lightly in the chest with her tennis racket. “Where do you thing you’re going?” she asked in her tough, slightly raspy voice, and that was all the panic there was.
The rest of us drew up to Miller. I took one glance back over my shoulder and saw that the Federal had been swallowed up by the mist. The red cinderblock wall faded to a thin wash pink and then disappeared utterly, probably five feet on the Bridgton Pharmacy side of the OUT door. I felt more isolated, more simply alone, than ever in my life. It was as if I had lost the womb.
The pharmacy had been the scene of a slaughter.
Miller and I, of course, were very close to it-almost on top of it. All the things in the mist operated primarily by sense of smell. It stood to reason. Sight would have been almost completely useless to them. Hearing a little better, but as I’ve said, the mist had a way of screwing Up the acoustics, making things that were close sound distant and—sometimes—things that were far away sound close. The things in the mist followed their truest sense. They followed their noses.
Those of us in the market had been saved by the power outage as much as by anything else. The electric-eye doors wouldn’t operate. In a sense, the market had been scaled up when the mist came. But the pharmacy doors… they had been chocked open.
The power failure had killed their air conditioning and they had opened the doors to let in the breeze. Only something else had come in as well.
A man in a maroon T-shirt lay facedown in the doorway. Or at first I thought his T-shirt was maroon; then I saw a few white patches at the bottom and understood that once it had been all white. The maroon was dried blood. And there was something else wrong with him. I puzzled it over in my mind. Even when Buddy Eagleton turned around and was noisily sick, it didn’t come immediately. I guess when something that… that final happens to someone, your mind rejects it at first-unless maybe you’re in a war.
His head was gone, that’s what it was. His legs were splayed out inside the pharmacy doors, and his head should have been hanging over the low step. But his head just wasn’t.
Jim Grondin had had enough. He turned away, his hands over his mouth, his bloodshot eyes gazing madly into mine. Then he stumbled -staggered back toward the market.
The others took no notice. Miller had stepped inside. Mike Hatlen followed. Reppler stationed herself at one side of the double doors with her tennis racket. Ollie stood on the other side with Amanda’s gun drawn and pointing at the pavement.
He said quietly, “I seem to be running out of hope, David.” Buddy Eagleton was leaning weakly against the pay-phone stall like someone who has just gotten bad news from home. His broad shoulders shook with the force of his sobs.
“Don’t count us out yet,” I said to Ollie. I stepped up to the door. I didn’t want to go inside, but I had promised my son a comic book.
The Bridgton Pharmacy was a crazy shambles. Paperbacks and magazines were everywhere. There was a Spiderman comic and an Incredible Hulk almost at my feet, and without thinking, I picked them up and jammed them into my back pocket for Billy.
Bottles and boxes lay in the aisles. A hand hung over one of the racks.
Unreality washed over me. The wreckage… the carnage-that was bad enough. But the place also looked like it had been the scene of some crazy party. It was hung and festooned with what I at first took to be streamers. But they weren’t broad and flat; they were more like very thick strings or very thin cables. It struck me that they were almost the same bright white as the mist itself, and a cold chill sketched its way up my back like frost. Not crepe.
What? Magazines and books hung dangling in the air from some of them.
Mike Hatlen was prodding a strange black thing with one foot. it was long and bristly. “What the fuck is this?” he asked no one in particular.
And suddenly I knew. I knew what had killed all those unlucky enough to be in the pharmacy when the mist came. The people who had been unlucky enough to get smelled out. Out—
“Out,” I said. My throat was completely dry, and the word came out like a lint-covered bullet. “Get out of here.” Ollie looked at me. “David –”
“They’re spiderwebs,” I said. And then two screams came out of the mist. The first of fear, maybe. The second of pain. It was Jim. If there were dues to be paid, he was paying them.
“Get out! ” I shouted at Mike and Dan Miller.
Then something looped out of the mist. It was impossible to see it against that white background, but I could hear it. It sounded like a bullwhip that had been halfheartedly flicked. And I could see it when it twisted around the thigh of Buddy Eagleton’s jeans.
He screamed and grabbed for the first thing handy, which happened to be the telephone. The handset flew the length of its cord and then swung back and forth. “Oh Jesus that HURTS!” Buddy screamed.