From a Buick 8 Read online

  The rest of them watched Curt run toward Shed B, dropping his baseball cap on the pavement as he went and slipping the goggles over his eyes. Much as Sandy liked and respected the newest member of Troop D, he did not see anything heroic in this advance, not even while it was happening. Heroism is the act of going forward in the face of fear. Curt Wilcox felt no fear that night, not the slightest twinge of it. He was simply bugshit with excitement and a curiosity so deep it was a compulsion. Much later, Sandy would decide the Old Sarge had let Curtis go because he saw there was no chance of holding him back.

  Curt stopped about ten feet in front of the roll-up door, raising his hands to block his eyes as a particularly brilliant flash erupted from inside the shed. Sandy saw the light shining through Curt's fingers in purple-white spokes. At the same time, Curt's shadow appeared on the mist like the figure of a giant. Then the light died and through a blot of afterimage Sandy saw Curt advance again. He reached the door and looked inside. He stood that way until the next flash came. He recoiled when it did, then at once went back to the window.

  Meanwhile, here came Dicky-Duck Eliot back from his errand, whatever it had been. Sandy saw what he was holding as Dicky-Duck went past. The Sarge insisted that all of his D-cars should go out equipped with Polaroid cameras, and Dicky-Duck had run to fetch one of them. He handed it to Tony, cringing involuntarily as the shed lit up in another silent fusillade of light.

  Tony took the camera and jogged across to Curtis, who was still peering into the shed arid recoiling at each new flash (or series of them). Even the welder's goggles weren't enough protection from what was going on in there, it seemed.

  Something nuzzled Sandy's hand and he almost screamed before looking down and seeing the barracks dog. Mister Dillon had likely slept through the whole thing until then, snoring on the linoleum between the sink and the stove, his favorite spot. Now he'd emerged to see what all the excitement was about. It was clear to Sandy from the brilliance of his eyes, the peak of his cars, and the high set of his head that he knew something was going on, but his previous terror wasn't in evidence. The flashing lights didn't seem to bother him in the slightest.

  Curtis tried to grab the Polaroid, but Tony wouldn't let it go. They stood there in front of the Shed B door, turned into flinching silhouettes by each new flash from the shed. Arguing? Sandy didn't think so. Not quite, anyway. It looked to him like they were having the sort of heated discussion any two scientists might have while observing some new phenomenon. Or maybe it's not a phenomenon at all, Sandy thought. Maybe it's an experiment, and we're the guinea pigs.

  He began to measure the length of the dark intervals as he and the others stood watching the two men in front of the shed, one wearing an oversized pair of goggles and the other holding a boxy Polaroid camera, both of them outlined like figures on a laser-lit dancefloor. The flashes had been like chain lightning when they began, but now there were significant pauses. Sandy counted six seconds between . . . ten seconds . . . seven . . . fourteen . . . twenty.

  Beside him, Buck Flanders said: "I think it's ending."

  Mister D barked and made as if to start forward. Sandy grabbed him by the collar and held him back. Maybe the dog just wanted to go to Curt and Tony, but maybe it was the thing in the shed he wanted to go to. Maybe it was calling him again. Sandy didn't care which; he liked Mister Dillon right where he was.

  Tony and Curt went around to the walk-in door. There they engaged in another warm discussion. At last Tony nodded--reluctantly, Sandy thought--and handed over the camera. Curt opened the door, and as he did the thing flashed out again, burying him in a glare of brilliant light. Sandy fully expected him to be gone when it died out, disintegrated or perhaps teleported to a galaxy far, far away where he'd spend the rest of his life lubing X-wing fighters or maybe polishing Darth Vader's shiny black ass.

  He had just time to register Curt still standing there, one hand upraised to shield his goggled eyes. To his right and slightly behind him, Tony Schoondist was caught in the act of turning away from the glare, hands upraised to shield his face. Sunglasses were simply no protection; Sandy was wearing his own and knew that. When he could see again, Curt had gone into the shed.

  At that moment, all of Sandy's attention switched to Mister Dillon, who was lunging forward in spite of the hold Sandy had on his collar. The dog's former calm was gone. He was growling and whining, ears flat against his skull, muzzle wrinkled back to show the white wink of teeth.

  "Help me, help me out here!" Sandy shouted.

  Buck Flanders and Phil Candleton also grabbed Mister D's collar, but at first it made no difference. The dog went motoring on, coughing and dripping slobber on the pavement, eyes fixed on the side door. He was ordinarily the sweetest mutt in creation, but right then Sandy wished for a leash and a muzzle. If D turned to bite, one of them was apt to wind up a finger or two shy.

  "Shut the door!" Sandy bawled at the Sergeant. "If you don't want D in there with him, shut the damn door"

  Tony looked startled, then saw what was wrong and closed the door. Almost at once Mister Dillon relaxed. The growling stopped, then the whining. He gave out a couple of puzzled barks, as if he couldn't remember exactly what had been bugging him. Sandy wondered if it was the hum, which was appreciably louder with the door open, or some smell. He thought the latter, but there was no way of telling for sure. The Buick wasn't about what you knew but what you didn't.

  Tony saw a couple of men moving forward and told them to stay clear. Hearing his normal speaking voice so clearly was calming, but it still seemed wrong. Sandy couldn't help feeling there should have been whoops and screams in the background, movie-soundtrack explosions, perhaps rumbles from the outraged earth itself.

  Tony turned back to the windows running along the roll-up door and peered in.

  "What's he doing, Sarge?" Matt Babicki asked. "He all right?"

  "He's fine," Tony said. "Walking around the car taking pictures. What are you doing out here, Matt? Get in on dispatch, for Christ's sake."

  "The radio's FUBAR, boss. Static."

  "Well, maybe it's getting better. Because this is getting better." To Sandy he sounded normal on top--like the Sergeant--but underneath, that excitement still throbbed in his voice. And as Matt turned away, Tony added: "Not a word about this goes out over the air, you hear me? Not in the clear, anyway. Now or ever. If you have to talk about the Buick, it's . . . it's Code D. You understand?"

  "Yessir," Matt said, and went up the back steps with his shoulders slumped, as if he had been spanked.

  "Sandy!" Tony called. "What's up with the dog?"

  "Dog's fine. Now. What's up with the car?"

  "The car also appears to be fine. Nothing's burning and there's no sign anything exploded. The thermometer says fifty-four degrees. It's cold in there, if anything."

  "If the car's fine, why's he taking pictures of it?" Buck asked.

  "Y's a crooked letter that can't be made straight," Sergeant Schoondist replied, as if this explained everything. He kept his eye on Curtis, who went on circling the car like a fashion photographer circling a model, snapping photos, tucking each Polaroid as it came out of the slot into the waistband of the old khaki shorts he was wearing. While this was going on, Tony allowed the rest of those present to approach by fours and take a look. When Sandy's turn came, he was struck by how Curtis's ankles lit up green each time the Buick flashed out. Radiation! he thought. Jesus Christ, he's got radiation burns! Then he remembered what Curt had been doing earlier and had to laugh. Michelle hadn't wanted to call him in to the phone because he was mowing the grass. And that was what was on his ankles--grass-stains.

  "Come outta there," Phil muttered from Sandy's left. He still had the dog by the collar, although now Mister D seemed quite docile. "Come on out, don't be pressing your luck."

  Curt started backing toward the door as if he'd heard Phil--or all of them, thinking that same thing. More likely he was just out of film.

  As soon as he came through the door, To
ny put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him aside. As they stood talking, a final weak pulse of purple light came. It was really no more than a twitch. Sandy looked at his watch. It was ten minutes of nine. The entire event had lasted not quite an hour.

  Tony and Curt were looking at the Polaroids with an intensity Sandy couldn't understand. If, that was, Tony had been telling the truth when he said the Buick and the other stuff in the shed was unchanged. And to Sandy, all of it did look unchanged.

  At last Tony nodded as if something was settled and walked back to the rest of the Troopers. Curt, meanwhile, went to the roll-up door for a final peek. The welder's goggles were pushed up on his forehead by then. Tony ordered everyone back into the barracks except for George Stankowski and Herb Avery. Herb had come in from patrol while the lightshow was still going on, probably to take a dump. Herb would drive five miles out of his way to take a dump at the barracks; he was famous for it, and took all ribbing stoically. He said you could get diseases from strange toilet seats, and anyone who didn't believe that deserved what he got. Sandy thought Herb was simply partial to the magazines in the upstairs crapper. Trooper Avery, who would be killed in a rollover car crash ten years later, was an American Heritage man.

  "You two have got the first watch," Tony said. "Sing out if you see anything peculiar. Even if you only think it's peculiar."

  Herb groaned at getting sentry duty and started to protest.

  "Put a sock in it," Tony said, pointing at him. "Not one more word."

  Herb noted the red spots on his SC's cheeks and closed his mouth at once. Sandy thought that showed excellent sense.

  Matt Babicki was talking on the radio as the rest of them crossed the ready-room behind Sergeant Schoondist. When Matt told Unit 6 to state his twenty, Andy Colucci's response was strong and perfectly clear. The static had cleared out again.

  They filled the seats in the little living room upstairs, those last in line having to content themselves with grabbing patches of rug. The ready-room downstairs was bigger and had more chairs, but Sandy thought Tony's decision to bring the crew up here was a good one. This was family business, not police business.

  Not strictly police business, at least.

  Curtis Wilcox came last, holding his Polaroids in one hand, goggles still pushed up on his forehead, rubber flip-flops on his green feet. His T-shirt read HORLICKS UNIVERSITY ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT.

  He went to the Sergeant and the two of them conferred in murmurs while the rest waited. Then Tony turned back to the others. "There was no explosion, and neither Curt nor I think there was any sort of radiation leak, either."

  Big sighs of relief greeted this, but several of the Troopers still looked doubtful. Sandy didn't know how he looked, there was no mirror handy, but he still felt doubtful.

  "Pass these around, if you want," Curt said, and handed out his stack of Polaroids by twos and threes. Some had been taken during the flashes and showed almost nothing: a glimmer of grillwork, a piece of the Buick's roof. Others were much clearer. The best had that odd, flat, declamatory quality which is the sole property of Polaroid photographs. I see a world where there's only cause and effect, they seem to say. A world where every object is an avatar and no gods move behind the scenes.

  "Like conventional film, or the badges workers in radiation-intensive environments have to wear," Tony said, "Polaroid stock fogs when it's exposed to strong gamma radiation. Some of these photos are overexposed, but none of them are fogged. We're not hot, in other words."

  Phil Candleton said, "No offense to you, Sarge, but I'm not crazy about trusting my 'nads to the Polaroid Corporation of America."

  "I'll go up to The Burg tomorrow, first thing, and buy a Geiger counter," Curt said. He spoke calmly and reasonably, but they could still hear the pulse of excitement in his voice. Under the cool will-you-please-step-out-of-your-car-sir voice, Curt Wilcox was close to blowing his top. "They sell them at the Army Surplus store on Grand. I think they go for around three hundred bucks. I'll take the money out of the contingency fund, if no one objects."

  No one did.

  "In the meantime," Tony said, "it's more important than ever that we keep this quiet. I believe that, either by luck or providence, that thing has fallen into the hands of men who can actually do that. Will you?"

  There were murmurs of agreement.

  Dicky-Duck was sitting cross-legged on the floor, stroking Mister Dillon's head. D was asleep with his muzzle on his paws. For the barracks mascot, the excitement was definitely over. "I'm all right with that as long as the needle on the old Geiger doesn't move out of the green," Dicky-Duck said. "If it does, I vote we call the feds."

  "Do you think they can take care of it any better than we can?" Curt asked hotly. "Jesus Christ, Dicky! The Feebs can't get out of their own way, and--"

  "Unless you have plans to lead-line Shed B out of the contingency fund--" someone else began.

  "That's a pretty stupid--" Curt began, and then Tony put a hand on his shoulder, stilling the kid before he could go any farther and maybe hurt himself.

  "If it's hot," Tony promised them, "we'll get rid of it. That's a promise."

  Curt gave him a betrayed look. Tony stared back calmly. We know it's not radioactive, that gaze said, the film proves it, so why do you want to start chasing your own tail?

  "I sort of think we ought to turn it over to the government anyway," Buck said. "They might be able to help us . . . you know . . . or find stuff out . . . defense stuff . . ." His voice getting smaller and smaller as he sensed the silent disapproval all around him. PSP officers worked with the federal government in one form or another every day--FBI, IRS, DEA, OSHA, and, most of all, the Interstate Commerce Commission. It didn't take many years on the job to learn most of those federal boys were not smarter than the average bear. Sandy's opinion was that when the feds did show the occasional flash of intelligence, it tended to be self-serving and sometimes downright malicious. Mostly they were slaves to the grind, worshippers at the altar of Routine Procedure. Before joining the PSP, Sandy had seen the same sort of dull go-through-the-proper-channels thinking in the Army. Also, he wasn't much older than Curtis himself, which made him young enough to hate the idea of giving the Roadmaster up. Better to hand it over to scientists in the private sector, though, if it came to that--perhaps even a bunch from the college advertised on the front of Curtis's lawn-mowing shirt.

  But best of all, the Troop. The gray family.

  Buck had petered out into silence. "Not a good idea, I guess," he said.

  "Don't worry," someone said. "You do win the Grolier Encylcopedia, and our exciting home game."

  Tony waited for a few chuckles to ripple across the room and die away before going on. "I want everyone who works out of this barracks to know what went on tonight, so they'll know what to expect if it happens again. Spread the word. Spread the code for the Buick as well--D as in dog. Just D. Right? And I'll let you all know what happens next, starting with the Geiger counter. That test will be made before second shift tomorrow, I guarantee it. We're not going to tell our wives or sisters or brothers or best friends off the force what we have here, gentlemen, but we are going to keep each other exquisitely well informed. That's my promise to you. We're going to do it the old-fashioned way, by verbal report. There has been no paperwork directly concerning the vehicle out there--if it is a vehicle--and that's how it's going to stay. All understood?"

  There was another murmur of agreement.

  "I won't tolerate a blabbermouth in Troop D, gentlemen; no gossip and no pillow-talk. Is that understood?"

  It seemed it was.

  "Look at this one," Phil said suddenly, holding up one of the Polaroids. "The trunk's open."

  Curt nodded. "Closed again now, though. It opened during one of the flashes, and I think it closed during the next one."

  Sandy thought of Ennis and had an image, very brief but very clear, of the Buick's trunk-lid opening and closing like a hungry mouth. See the living crocodile, take a good loo
k, but for God's sake don't stick your fingers in its mouth.

  Curt went on, "I also believe the windshield wipers ran briefly, although my eyes were too dazzled by then for me to be sure, and none of the pictures show it."

  "Why?" Phil asked. "Why would stuff like that happen?"

  "Electrical surge," Sandy guessed. "The same thing that screwed up the radio in dispatch."

  "Maybe the wipers, but the trunk of a car doesn't run on electricity. When you want to open the trunk, you just push the button and lift the lid."

  Sandy had no answer for that.

  "The temperature in the shed has gone down another couple of degrees," Curt said. "That'll bear watching."

  The meeting ended, and Sandy went back out on patrol. Every now and then, when radioing back to Base, he'd ask Matt Babicki if D was 5-by. The response was always Roger, D is 5-by-5. In later years, it would become a standard call-and-response in the Short Hills area surrounding Statler, Pogus City, and Patchin. A few other barracks eventually picked it up, even a couple over the Ohio state line. They took it to mean Is everything cool back home? This amused the men working out of Troop D, because that was what Is D still 5-by? did mean.

  By the next morning, everyone in Troop D was indeed in the picture, but it was business as usual. Curt and Tony went to Pittsburgh to get a Geiger counter. Sandy was off-shift but stopped by two or three times to check on the Buick just the same. It was quiet in there, the car simply sitting on the concrete and looking like an art exhibit, but the needle on the big red thermometer hung from the beam continued to ease down. That struck everyone as extremely eerie, silent confirmation that something was going on in there. Something beyond the ability of mere State Troopers to understand, let alone control.

  No one actually went inside the shed until Curt and Tony got back in Curt's Bel Aire--SC's orders. Huddie Royer was looking through the shed windows at the Buick when the two of them turned up. He strolled over as Curt opened the carton sitting on the hood of his car and took the Geiger counter out. "Where's your Andromeda Strain suits?" Huddie asked.