Shifting Read online

  It lifted Erik higher and my saber with it. I hung on and gave a tremendous yank to free it. Erik’s headphones dropped to clatter down into the twisting mass of roots, along with an assortment of Ted Nugent and Chili Peppers tapes and lifeless batteries. Like a nest of ravenous snakes, the roots thrashed about, grabbed and tore at each item in blind eagerness. I thought it would lift him up and drop him into its hole, but I do not think it could reach that far. Instead, it just took his leg, starting with the foot, and began to stuff him in. Bones snapped and blood ran down the trunk. Erik’s face was white, and he was beyond screaming, but he had a grip on a knobby twist of the tree branch that served it as an elbow and he was struggling with all he had.

  I could not get any closer. The roots had a hold of my ankles by now. They cinched up on my legs like pythons and I slashed wildly at them. I recall my voice was hoarse from shouting but I have no idea what it was that I said. I pulled out my .45 from my coat pocket and unloaded most of the clip into the trunk. Orange-white, splintery holes appeared in seven spots on the squirming trunk. I was gratified only by a slight shuddering and an increased activity in the roots, which turned into a frenzy.

  Erik was looking at me, and I think he was still aware, and to me, his eyes pleaded with me, although he was unable to speak. I took aim with the last round, before those roots could pull me off my feet, and I put Erik out of his misery. I think he would have done the same thing for me.

  Vance and the others had my arms then and were pulling me out of the thing’s grip. Brigman with his fire axe was the most effective, chopping off roots as they tried to grab us. Vance dragged me, raving, back into the medical center.

  We huddled in there, whimpering and shivering in the dark lobby, surrounded by cheap musty furniture, beige painted cement walls and curled up magazines. We tried hard to be quiet, while outside, the tree crunched on Erik’s bones.

  It seemed to take it a very long time to finish.

  Seventeen

  We spent a hard night in the center, only daring to use the lanterns deep inside the recesses of the building, and only after covering the tiny windows with blankets, tarps or newspaper. None of us knew how many of the trees were alive now; perhaps it was all of them, perhaps only one. We spoke in hushed tones and scurried about in our makeshift fortress like terrified mice in the walls of a cattery.

  “If we all go for it,” said Mrs. Nelson, “I’m sure we can take just one ash tree.”

  “You first,” said Brigman with a snort.

  Jimmy Vanton snored in a chair in the corner.

  Brigman jerked his thumb at Jimmy. “I nominate him for the job.”

  “If we go out there, we can’t be sure we won’t get the attention of more of them,” I said. “But they seem to only react when people are close.”

  “We don’t know that! We don’t know how many are alive, maybe every tree in town, or maybe every tree and tomato vine and thistle bush that storm touched is just waiting out there for us,” shouted Vance, pulling at his face.

  It was about two-thirty in the morning and a group of us were having what amounted to a council of war in the conference room. We burned a Coleman at about a quarter-power to conserve fuel. Most of the others were sleeping fitfully.

  Carlene Mitts had bedded down with her baby, who had seemed cute and joyous only yesterday, but tonight, for reasons known only to the baby gods, the kid cried off and on all night. Everyone in the place cringed every time it so much as gurgled and we all listened closely as she worked hard to shush it. Generally, this didn’t work and the cries built up in strength and finally into a righteous fury. While it coughed and wailed with what seemed like incredible volume in the silence of the night, we all waited for that thing that sat only twenty yards from the front glass doors to come wading into the lobby. In my mind’s eye that great arm lifted off the roof and start devouring us all like a sloth tearing into a termite mound.

  “That kid is starting up again,” hissed out Vance between his teeth.

  “It’ll be okay, nothing happened the last times,” said Brigman.

  I kept quiet. I didn’t tell them that earlier I had crept out into the lobby to peek out and see if the tree was still there. It was there all right. While I crawled back, holding my saber firmly so it didn’t clatter against the chairs, the kid had started up. The roots had definitely sensed it, and had moved around restlessly, questing for the source of the disturbance. Something I had seen had disturbed me even more, however. I decided to tell them about that.

  “I did see something when I last checked on it.”

  The others looked at me, not sure if they should ask.

  “The flying types, they are roosting all over it,” I told them.

  Vance stood up then, that had done it for him. “We’re screwed. We are surrounded. The Preacher got us all in here and never even made it down to join us. I bet he and the Captain are both dead.”

  With those grim words he left. I didn’t go after him and try to argue, as was our usual pattern. I was tired and I knew he might very well be right.

  It was Brigman’s turn to rub his face. “Well,” he sighed. “I’m willing to go down fighting. We can’t just sit in here for a week or two until the supplies run out. I think we’ll have to take a look at the situation in the morning and go for it.”

  I agreed and we all found places to bed down for the last few hours until dawn.

  * * *

  To everyone’s relief, the mist dissipated overnight. By morning, it was hazy and overcast, but relatively clear. Peeping out the windows, we could see the tree clearly now. Bits of Erik Foti’s clothing still hung in strips from its boughs, its roots and the open maw in the trunk. A great dark stain of dried gore ran down the face of it.

  The parking lot around the tree was a wreck. The cars were damaged and stacked at odd angles like a spilled box of dominos. The two trees closest to where the ash had been planted were both sycamore trees. They did show splintered rips in their bark where the chain link fencing had been ripped away, but showed no obvious signs of life. They were still rooted in place.

  It was Mrs. Hatchell who came up with the winning plan. She woke up Monika and I at dawn to tell us about it.

  “We’ll burn it,” she said in a voice filled with resolve. I recalled that Erik had been one of those students who had hung around her counseling office for years. She had never had any children, she thought of all us school kids as her children and her hate for the tree that had killed Erik was palpable.

  “How?” asked Monika. She was still lying on her cot in the same room with me. Mrs. Hatchell had found us there again, but this time she hadn’t complained about fraternization among the young or anyone else’s delicate state of mind. This morning she was on a mission. A mission to kill a tree.

  “We’ve got propane tanks, but no blow torches,” I said.

  “No, not the propane. The gasoline,” she said, eyeing me directly.

  I opened my mouth to say, “What gasoline?” then stopped. “You mean from the basement, from the generators.”

  “Right. They aren’t working now anyway, so what the hell good are they? If we live, we can get more fuel. There is plenty in town, we can refill them later.”

  I nodded, it made sense.

  “We need liquid, something that will stick,” she went on. I could see in the dark pit of her eyes that she had been thinking about it all night.

  “I wonder how much burn damage it can take and still live?” I said out loud. “A normal tree, full of green sap and soaked with rainwater, is not easy to burn down to a stump.”

  “I doubt we’ll have to burn it to a stump,” said Mrs. Hatchell. “The thing seems to eat now. It had to change significantly to do that. I doubt it is even made of wood all the way through.”

  Monika came up and touched my back with a small hand. Her other hand, with her wrist in a cast, she hugged against her chest. “I don’t want you to fight the tree again, Gannon,” she said. There was a pleading qua
lity to her voice. I was surprised and wasn’t sure how I felt.

  Mrs. Hatchell turned narrow eyes on her. “Gannon isn’t just your personal protector, Monika. We all need him on the front line. I doubt the rest would have the guts to face that thing without him. But if he goes after it, they will join him.”

  Monika narrowed her eyes in return, and the way her lips tightened I knew very bad words were about to be exchanged. I’d already learned that Monika had a quick temper. I put myself between them and said, “Look, I’ll go talk to Doc Wilton about this. I think it is a good idea, we just need to talk it over with the others.”

  Mrs. Hatchell wasn’t having any of that, however. “Forget her. She’s given up. You’re the leader now. After yesterday, it’s obvious.”

  I opened my mouth in surprise. I didn’t want to be anybody’s leader, I wasn’t even thirty yet. I didn’t want to have to think for a group. I wondered where the hell the Preacher was and hoped he was still alive. “I’ve just been trying to do the right thing,” I said lamely.

  “And you’ve been doing a fine job of it. Yesterday’s trauma would have put some men into a shaking, broken state, but you are back and ready for more. Every tribe needs a chieftain, especially when there’s a war on. Just do it.”

  Monika tucked her good hand into my belt behind me, getting a grip on me as if she felt I was going to get away. It was a possessive action, and I noticed she was still glaring at Mrs. Hatchell.

  I put my hands up in a gesture for calm. “Emotions are running high here,” I told them both. “I’m going to talk to the others, we were talking about this all night, and we do want to make a try for it. Maybe you two should talk together a bit.”

  Catching Mrs. Hatchell’s eye I made a significant gesture toward Monika.

  “Okay,” she said. “We have plenty to talk about.”

  When I moved to leave, Monika held on and followed me into the hallway. She came close and it became hard to think.

  “Gannon, you tried to stop it. Erik is dead, but that is not your fault,” she told me. “You have done enough. Someone else can do the finish.”

  I nodded, kissed her on the head, and said, “I’m just going to talk to them.”

  I left her and went to find the others. I thought she might be crying, but I didn’t look back.

  Eighteen

  The gasoline idea went over big. We could imagine setting the thing alight and standing back to toast marshmallows while it flailed about. No one wanted to take hatchets to it like a pack of pygmies pin-pricking an elephant while it ate us one at a time.

  “First, we’ll pick off the flying things, sniper-style,” I said.

  I teamed up three people with hunting rifles to take care of the flyers. Wilton had always been more into hunting than most women, so I suggested she should lead the sniper team. I paired her up with Nick Hackler and Jason Dagen, both of whom knew their way around a rifle.

  “We’ll try not to miss,” she said with a weak grin.

  “Who’s fast on their feet?” I asked the huddle, I looked around and pointed at Vance. “You, Vance. You will be the decoy.”

  “Decoy?” he choked.

  “Someone will have to give it something to chase. Once it’s on fire, we don’t want it crashing into the lobby and burning this whole place down.”

  “So, I’m the bait? What, am I supposed to tie an ass-load of tin cans to myself and run around in the street?”

  I nodded, “Something like that. Whatever gets it to chase you while it is burning. Certainly, you need to be louder than the rest of us while we retreat into the building.”

  Vance’s mouth hung open. “And what is everyone else going to be up to?”

  “I’ll get the gas out of the gens,” said Brigman. “And I’ll swing this axe when it comes down to it.”

  “I’ll throw the gas on it,” said Carlene.

  “I will too,” said Monika. I had been surprised when she had joined the group. She seemed to have decided to become a fighter.

  “What about your wrist?” I asked her.

  She pursed her lips. “It’s okay.” She demonstrated by clonking the cast on a tabletop and flexing her fingers. It did look like she could heft a bucket if she had to. It troubled me that she was going out there with us, but I couldn’t really see a reason to keep her out of it. She was half the age of some of the others who were going, and if an old bat like Mrs. Hatchell was going, why shouldn’t a younger, stronger woman join the battle? It wasn’t like we had a SWAT team of athletic professionals handy.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s have each of the women ready with a half-full bucket of gas. The men will carry the heaviest cutting tools we have in case a root gets hold of someone. Vance will be the rabbit, and once it’s burning hard and chasing him, we’ll all slip back inside.”

  “And how do I get back?” demanded Vance.

  “You outrun it and circle back. It should be pretty well messed up after burning for awhile.”

  Vance breathed hard and blinked for a few seconds. He was probably thinking of all the other things the strange storm might have awakened out there, all of the things we didn’t have any inkling about yet. He was critical to the plan. If I did the running around, and something went wrong, I wasn’t sure I could keep the rest of them together. I wasn’t sure we could keep it together in any regard. If one of us was grabbed by those roots and dragged into the inferno, would the others keep throwing gas on? Would they stand their ground against a nightmare ten times the size of any we’d seen before? I didn’t know.

  “I always wanted to be the hero,” said Vance after a bit, looking around at everyone. “I guess this is my chance.”

  * * *

  The first steps went off without a hitch. We snuck down into the large, dank basement. We weaved past old office furniture and medical equipment that should have been hauled away years ago. There were broken gurneys and outdated X-ray machines and ancient computer terminals that were now wired together only by cobwebs. In a back room where the generators slept, we broke out the surgical tubing and prepared to siphon off the gas. The basement reeked of mold and wet concrete, until we started to fill the buckets and then all odors were replaced with the special stink of gasoline. We got about six gallons out of the two generators plus a few more from the cans kept down there. We had plenty of two-gallon plastic buckets, and after filling each one with about a gallon we hauled them upstairs again and handed out three buckets each to the women. We thought about rigging up Molotov cocktails but figured it was too risky without practicing. The last thing we wanted was a nasty accident.

  To light the monster, we soaked mops in the buckets of gasoline. The smell in the lobby was overpowering and everyone was forbidden to even think about lighters or matches or lanterns until we got outside.

  By ten A.M we were ready to roll. The hunters had carefully wriggled into place and cracked open frosted glass windows. They took careful aim at the dozen or so kite-shaped things that hung like huge bats from the tree limbs. I heard Wilton shout, “Fire!” and three booming shots rang out. Two of the things popped in fleshy explosions. Several others took flight and fluttered around the tree like angry wasps. Another volley boomed and two more went down. By then all the rest were flying, and I grimaced, wondering if they could kill them in the air. I doubted it; we would need shotguns out in the open for that.

  And then, before things even got really started, they went horribly wrong. A bullet had clipped the tree trunk, furrowing a line across its bark. There was a spray of orange-white wood pulp and it seemed like a sappy vein was hit, because a dark, yellowy, thick fluid flowed out of the tree’s skin, looking for all the world like alien blood.

  “That did the trick,” said Vance beside me.

  And indeed, it had. The tree woke up, and it didn’t just wake up, it went berserk. It heaved up on its roots like an angry father standing up out of an easy chair and raised its sagging, single arm. The arm had two knobby elbows in it, and it struck out with sw
eeping, groping motions like the blind abomination it was. The thick fingers latched onto the heavy towing bumper of a small white pickup and yanked the rear wheels off the ground with a groan of twisting metal.

  “Let’s GO!” I shouted to my stunned troops and charged outside. They paused for only a heartbeat, and then I heard them following me. Once outside, we lit our dripping mops. The mop heads flared up into balls of orange heat and black rippling smoke.

  “Throw the gas, come on, ladies!” shouted Brigman beside me. His deep sonorous teacher’s voice rang out in the cold still morning air.

  The tree shuddered in response to that voice, and I knew it had heard him, and I knew it was enraged.

  “Get out there Vance, get its attention,” I hissed urgently.

  Vance ran by, pushing a dilapidated shopping cart he had gotten from somewhere. It rattled and squeaked and crashed when he ran it into cars purposefully as he headed across the parking lot. The tree paid no attention, however. It still came toward the lobby, toward the spot where it had heard Brigman’s voice. We were all streaming out under the covered entrance in front of the lobby and taking up our positions, but the tree had a target, it had fixated on the spot where Brigman’s voice had come from. It was headed straight for the lobby doors.

  I think Brigman knew it, too. He hung back under the covering, he had his red axe raised, but I could tell he was close to running back inside.

  Everyone was moving a bit too slowly, no one knew quite what to do, we were way off script and everyone was yelling now.

  “It’s not following Vance.”

  “Burn the frigger!”

  “Gannon!”

  “Gas, gas, just throw it!” I screamed. The women finally moved and threw. They threw it a bit too early, from too far back, and only splattered the roots. Carlene sloshed a load over her sweater, half-tripping as she threw it.

  “More gas before we—” I started, but it was too late. Someone had thrown in his mop. I think it was Jimmy Vanton. It did go up with an amazing and gratifying whoosh. The tree paused and the roots thrashed in what looked like agony, and I felt good inside to know that it was hurting.