Moon Rocks, page 5
Ray flicked on a bank of lights and followed Nick through another door that led to the sample and storage room. Halfway across the room, both of them froze when they saw the shattered container and partially melted pod that lay at its base.
Holy shit! Nick thought to himself.
They continued forward, moving toward the workbench, their shoes making a crunching sound as they walked across the shards of glass that littered the lab floor.
“Jesus Christ,” Nick said, as he stared down at the breached pod. “It—”
“—Hatched,” Ray said, finishing Nick’s thought.
And just as the word “hatched” had rolled off of Ray’s tongue, both of them spun around and frantically began scanning the room, hoping for some sign of the escaped creature.
Nick stepped around the workbench, eyes glued to the floor, and in an even-toned voice, said, “Ray, lock the sample room door. We can’t let this thing get out of the lab.”
Ray shot over to the door, pulled it shut, but just as he was about to lock it, he hesitated, turned to Nick, and said, “Are you sure about locking it? I mean, do we really want to be stuck in here with that thing?”
“Ray! Just do it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” Ray punched a button, locking the door. “Done.”
“You take that side, I’ll start over here. Open every cabinet, check every drawer, sweep every shelf. It’s got to be in here.”
Nick dropped down and began searching the floor beneath a workstation.
Ray moved to a row of overhead cabinets. The top hadn’t been finished and was left open, but the front was faced with doors. He reached up and gripped a handle, then stopped and quickly scanned the floor around his feet. All clear. He took a deep breath, opened the cabinet door, and looked inside. After a brief scan, he quickly shut it and blew out a nervous stream of air, relieved that it was empty. He took another breath and moved to the next door. He yanked it open, saw that it was clear, and pushed it shut with a bang.
Nick lifted a half-full trashcan, turned it upside down, and gave it a shake. Crumpled balls of paper, computer printouts, paper cups, and candy bar wrappers spilled across the floor. Just to be sure, he gave it another shake, then plunked the can down.
Crawling on his hands and knees, he moved forward and reached his hand behind a desk, sliding his arm into the gap between the back of the desk and the wall. All the while, a little voice in his head was saying, This is a bad idea.
He began to paw the floor, sliding his arm farther and farther behind the desk. When he reached his shoulder and could go no farther, his hand fell on an object. He closed his fingers, and felt something bite into his flesh.
Shit!
He yanked his arm back, looked at his hand, and saw two beads of blood on his index finger, about an inch apart. Fangs. It looked like a snake bite.
Nick dropped to the floor, trying to look behind the desk. He cautiously strained forward and saw what had bitten him. Caught between the wall and the desk were a pair of plastic safety glasses. One of the lenses was broken, leaving two sharp points of plastic poking upwards.
Jesus.
Nick let out his breath, wiped away the blood on his finger, and continued searching the room.
Ray moved to the last cabinet door. His heart clearly wasn’t in his work, but he had resigned himself to the necessity of it. He reached up, grabbed the handle, and pulled, and as the door swung open, something inside moved.
Ray jumped, but instead of shutting the door, his fingers caught on the handle and the door swung wide as he lurched back. A bundle of latex gloves tumbled out and spilled across his face, their creepy rubber fingers groping his flesh as the gloves dropped to the floor.
“Fuck me!” Ray yelled, frantically clawing at his face to get the thing off. Jesus Christ.
Nick sprang up, bumping his head on a workbench, and bolted across the room to Ray, thinking he’d found the creature.
“What?” Nick yelled, skidding up to Ray. “Did you find it?”
Ray was beyond responding. He was too busy writhing and stomping, trying to kill the latex gloves with his shoe, still convinced they were the alien creature.
“Ray!” Nick yelled. He grabbed him by the arm, trying to calm him down. “Ray, it’s okay. They’re just gloves. Take it easy.”
After a few more stomps, Ray slowly calmed himself and looked at Nick.
Nick released his arm and said, “What is it? Did you see something?”
“I’m not sure.” He pointed to the open cabinet. “Something moved in there.”
Nick went to the cabinet, gripped the door, and leaned forward, not knowing what to expect. He reached a hand inside and shifted a box of dust masks so he could see all the way to the back.
Another bundle of gloves rolled forward, tumbled out, and bounced off his chest.
Nick jumped back and yelled, “Shit!” He looked down at the pile of gloves at his feet. After his heart started beating normally again, he moved back to the cabinet, gave it another inspection, and turned back to Ray, who had retreated halfway across the room. “All clear,” he said.
Ray stared back, white as a sheet. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Just an overstocked supply cabinet. Now come on, we’ve got to find this thing.”
“Right,” Ray said with a total lack of conviction. “I’m on it.”
Nick resumed searching where Ray had left off, combing the floor and scanning the deep shadows behind some diagnostic equipment.
Ray moved to the other side of the room, away from the alien rubber gloves, and inched along the wall, taking his time, watching his every step. Every so often he’d stop and glance over at Nick, just to make sure he was still there and hadn’t been eaten by some alien bug.
Nick backed out from beneath a workstation, and just as he was about to double check a shelf containing various chemical solutions, his cell phone rang, the ring tone muffled from inside his pocket.
Nick straightened, fished his phone out of his pants, put it to his ear, and said, “This is Nick.”
“Hi, it’s me,” the voice on the other end said. “Kylie.”
“Kylie?” Nick repeated, sounding flustered and caught off guard by her unexpected call.
After an uncomfortable moment, Kylie said, “Remember me? Science teacher. Salt Springs High School.”
“Yes. Yes, of course I do.”
“Am I calling at a bad time?”
“Yeah, no—um, no, not at all. This is a great time,” Nick said, trying to sound relaxed. “Actually, I’m here with Ray. And he—ah—Ray lost his glasses. And now we’re trying to find them. His glasses.”
“Oh,” Kylie said. In an attempt to smooth things over, she added, “I hate when that happens.”
“You wear glasses?” Nick asked, suddenly sounding very interested in the subject.
“Well, no…not glasses glasses. Sunglasses.”
“Right. The reason I asked is that I didn’t remember you wearing any…glasses glasses, I mean.”
“Okay… Um, right. No glasses glasses, just sunglasses.” After an awkward pause, she said, “Anyway, I’m calling about the tour—”
“The tour,” Nick said, cutting her off. “Right, the tour. Perfect. Um, listen, Kylie, let me call you back. I’ve got to help Ray. He’s useless without his glasses. Blind as a bat.”
“Sure…” Kylie said after a long pause, her voice sounding distant and filled with regret, like she was sorry that she’d called in the first place. “Sure, call me back.”
“Great, thanks. Thanks for understanding. I’ll get back to you. Promise.” Nick ended the call and jammed the phone in his pocket, anxious to get back to the business at hand.
Ray, who had heard the whole thing, removed his glasses, held them out to Nick, shook his head and said, “Glasses?”
Nick gave him a look and shrugged. “What was I going to say? ‘Hang on, Kylie, I can’t talk right now. Ray and I are looking for an escaped alien creature.’”
“Right,” Ray said, conceding the point with a nod. “Anyway, nice job, dude. Kylie Sinclair is a total catch.”
Nick didn’t respond. He was already back on the floor, searching for the lost creature.
Ray continued along the opposite wall, stopping when he came to a handcart stacked with boxes that had been left next to a steel utility door. Standing at arm’s length, he began shifting boxes left and right, making sure the creature wasn’t hiding there.
After he rummaged through all the boxes, he took a breath, placed his hands on the cart’s handle, and gingerly eased it back from the wall, all the while expecting the creature to shoot out across the floor. After a long moment, he stepped out, his hands still clamped on the cart, and leaned forward to look behind it.
There was nothing—just polished tile flooring and empty wall space. Relieved, he let out a breath. He went to push the cart back against the wall, but something caught his eye.
On the far side of the utility door, just above the floor, was a small conical pile of granulated cement that looked like a miniature version of the mounds of salt scattered around the Clayton Mine. Directly above the mound, a perfectly round hole about the size of a golf ball had been bored through the wall.
Holy shit, Ray thought as he looked at the hole, that thing went through 18 inches of reinforced concrete like it was nothing.
He moved up to the hole and crouched down for a better look. A halo of precise cuts ringed the opening.
Claw marks.
But not like those that a dog or other wild animal would make. These were freakishly uniform and symmetrical—like a machine had made them. Ray dropped to his knees and looked through the hole. All he saw was Texas sunshine.
“Over here,” Ray said, climbing to his feet. “I know where it went.”
Chapter 16
Standing next to the open utility door, Nick and Ray studied a line of little footprints that ran from the lab and onto the salt and then abruptly disappeared where squall whipped rains had washed them away.
Nick shaded his eyes and stared out over the dry lake, thinking, Jesus, how are we going to find this thing?
“What’s going on, Walker?”
Nick and Ray turned and saw Slade, his hands on his hips, glaring at them from just inside the lab door. Freshly shaved and with his hair coiffed to perfection, Slade was dressed in a navy pinstripe suit, a crisp white shirt, and a red power tie, all set for the big announcement.
Nick glanced from Ray to Slade and said, “There’s been a change of plans.”
* * * *
Back in Slade’s office, Nick watched as Slade paced anxiously in front of a window, every so often bumping into a model of the space shuttle Enterprise that dangled from the ceiling.
Slade blew out a frustrated breath and straightened the sleeve of his coat, then turned to Nick and said, “Tell me again, Walker. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“There’s nothing more to tell. Ray and I entered the lab early this morning about seven o’clock, saw the shattered container, and discovered that the creature had escaped through a hole that it made in the sample storage room wall.”
“But how? It was trapped in that casing—or pod or whatever it was.”
“Like I already said, it wasn’t trapped. It hatched. The outer shell was some kind of cocoon.”
The office fell into uncomfortable silence. Slade moved to the window, stared out, and after a long pause said, “It couldn’t have gone far. The thing is tiny. What could it do?”
“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it,” Nick said, staring at the back of Slade’s head. “But we do know this: it just went through a foot and half of poured concrete like it wasn’t there.”
Slade glanced from the window back to Nick. “Jesus, Walker, we’ve got to find it.”
“You get on the phone to Houston and Washington—tell them what happened, tell them what we know. Tell them everything.” Nick pushed up from the arms of his chair and stood. “Ray and I will start combing the grounds around the lab.”
“Good,” Slade said, firming up his voice, trying to sound in control. He turned from the window and gave Nick a direct look. “But before we involve NASA or Washington, let’s make sure of the situation. Let’s make sure of what we’ve got, what we’re dealing with. Why not see if we can catch it, then—”
“Then what? Are you crazy? It’s over. We’re past keeping a lid on this thing. The White House needs to know.”
A brick red flush swept across Slade’s face. He began to speak, but stopped, his thought disappearing in a bitter swallow. After a long moment, he nodded at Nick and said, “Okay.”
Chapter 17
A translucent line of dust rose from behind Nick’s Land Cruiser as it rumbled across the salt flat that surrounded the field lab.
Ray rode shotgun next to Nick, and Willie Clayton hung on in the backseat. Willie had stopped by the lab earlier to get another look at the fossil he’d found yesterday. He had been devastated when he’d learned that Nick had given it away.
After calming him down and assuring him the fossil had gone to a worthy home, Nick decided to invite Willie to join the search party, thinking a little local knowledge might come in handy and might give them just the edge they needed to find this thing.
The Land Cruiser lurched forward, nosed down, and seesawed through a wash, pitching Ray forward and causing his glasses to slip down the bridge of his nose.
Ray gripped the door handle and righted himself, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I don’t get it. Seems like we should be concentrating our efforts closer to the lab.”
“I thought about that,” Nick said, braking and hauling the wheel over to avoid a mound of scrub. After they were safely past, he glanced at Ray and said, “But I’m playing a hunch.”
He pointed through the windshield at the salt that surrounded them in all directions. “It’s got to be pushing a hundred degrees out there on the ground.”
Ray stared out, watching the heat waves shimmering above the salt. A light bulb went off in his head and he blurted, “Shelter! The creature would want shelter.” The Land Cruiser’s tires found another pothole, sending him shooting up and down like a piston. “Salt Springs Cavern, or the Clayton Mine.”
“Bingo,” Nick said with a nod. “Give the man a stuffed animal.”
Hearing the words “Clayton Mine,” Willie thrust his head between the front seats and cranked his face toward Nick. “What exactly is this thing, Doc?”
Nick glanced at Willie and said, “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, Willie, I can’t really discuss it, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Willie said and immediately asked, “Well, how big is the thing?”
Nick shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. Small.”
“Small…” Willie repeated, mulling over that bit of information. “Small like a lizard, or a rat?”
“A lizard, maybe,” Ray said, “But with—”
“We don’t know,” Nick said, cutting Ray off. “We don’t know what it looks like. We really can’t say.”
“Hell, Doc, it sounds like what you don’t know about this thing is a lot.”
“Willie,” Nick said, his voice pointed. “Just…just keep your eyes open and help us find this thing.”
“Sure, Doc,” Willie said, slumping back in his seat. “Sure, I’ll keep my eyes open. But if I don’t know what it looks like, how am I gonna know if I see it or not?”
“Trust me,” Ray said, “you’ll know it when you see it.”
On Ray’s comment, the cabin fell silent, all of them staring out, scanning the salt for any sign of the creature. They bounced along like that for another minute, then Nick maneuvered the Land Cruiser on to a jeep trail that cut across the salt and emptied out a few miles up ahead on the main road in front of the entrance to the Salt Cavern State Preserve.
“Ah, that’s much better,” Ray said, commenting on the improved ride and then reached out an dialed up the AC.
They continued on for a few more minutes, all of them craning their necks left and right, anxious for some sign of the creature. Nick let off the gas, thinking he’d spotted something. But after a closer look, it was just a piece of scrub tumbling across the salt, pushed along by a gust of wind.
Nick accelerated again, and as his eyes drifted across the salt, he suddenly found himself doubting his gut feeling, thinking that his hunch may have been the wrong play.
“Look!” Willie said. He began excitedly pointing out his window. “Over there. Some animal.”
Nick braked, cranked the wheel over, and sent the Land Cruiser careening through the salt in the direction Willie was pointing in.
About twenty yards directly in front of them, the animal that Willie had spotted lay sprawled on the ground.
The Toyota raced toward it, tires crunching through the salt like it was freshly fallen snow, swerved to avoid a rise covered with Indiangrass, and skidded to a stop ten feet in front of the fallen animal.
Nick, Ray, and Willie got out of the car and approached the animal. Willie blurted out what they were all thinking. “It’s a deer. A buck.”
There, lying helplessly on its side, legs sticking out in the late stages of rigor mortis, was a two hundred and twenty pound mule deer.
“It’s a deer. A dead deer,” Ray said, stepping up to the carcass.
“A dead mule deer,” Willie corrected, then reached out and touched one of the spikes on the buck’s seven-point rack. When he touched it, the deer’s eyes sprang open and rolled toward him.
“Shit!” Willie yelled, jumping back in shock, his heart thudding in his chest. “There’s no way that thing is still alive.”
Nick moved forward and knelt next to the deer. He reached out and gently placed a hand on its ribcage. A panic-filled eye cut toward him, but the rest of the deer’s body remained still and lifeless.
Weird.
“It’s some sort of motor paralysis,” Nick said, removing his hand from the deer’s body. “But it doesn’t seem to be affecting systolic and respiratory functions.”
