The Forbidden Zone by Whitley Strieber
She drove out to the Northway, intending to crash at the first motel she found. There was no point in trying the Ludlum Inn. Only well-known locals could get a room there without a reservation. Unlike the higher Adirondacks, the Three Counties were not much of a tourist area, so there was a possibility of getting a room on short notice in the summer season.
Even so, the Suisse Chalet was full, the Rodeway Inn likewise.
She finally found a room at the Days Inn. On the way in she bought a Hershey Bar and a 7-Up from vending machines. She didn't even like the walk down to the room from the lobby. It was all she could do not to run.
She called the Ludlum Inn, but they hadn't arrived.
Sitting in the middle of the bed in her ripped jeans and dirty sweatshirt, she ate candy and flipped from channel to channel on the TV, trying to blank her mind. The memories of the past eight hours were not to be touched, not if she wanted to stay sane.
McLaughlin was bellowing on CNBC, tonight's "Larry King Live" repeating on CNN. "The Brady Bunch" flashed past, followed by a chunk of Fort Apache, followed by a story about a school prayer scandal on Headline News.
It should have been reassuring, but instead it was eerie, like peering into a dead man's eyes.
without realizing it, she fell asleep. A soft sound... a tickle along her right arm—and she leaped back against the headboard screaming bloody murder.
She clapped her hands over her mouth, horrified that she'd get thrown out of the motel. There was nothing on her arm, nothing unusual anywhere in the room.
She sighed, drank down the dregs of her 7-Up. It was warm, which surprised her. Then she noticed that she could see the swimming pool.
Incredibly, it was seven-fifteen. She'd slept for three hours. The last thing she remembered, she'd been sitting in the middle of the bed.
She grabbed the phone and called the Ludlum Inn again. This time, they were already gone.
Next she called the Wests' house. Would the phones in Oscola be working?
Nancy answered.
"This is Ellen."
"What happened to you?" She spoke off line. "It's her."
"I'm sorry, I accidentally fell asleep."
Brian came on. "We were worried sick."
"Brian, what in the world are you doing back there? Are you people insane?"
There was a pause. "Look, Ellen, we can't just turn our backs on this."
"We have to!"
"I'm gonna try one last time. I didn't come back for somebody else's shirts and underwear."
"Brian, you took those children, your pregnant wife?"
"It's broad daylight. So far, everything that's happened has taken place at night."
"So far."
"What I'm going to do is look for fragments over near your car, where I did that shooting. And the Wests are packing a few things."
She should put down the phone right now. She should not say what she was about to say. "I'll come help you."
"Ellen—"
"I'll come," she repeated as she hung up. She sat on the bed, fumbling in her purse for a cigarette. Lighting it, taking the first drag, she relaxed a little. Then she daubed her tongue on the shoulder of her shirt. Smoking was a nasty habit. It made her taste bad and smell worse. It made her look weak or stupid or both. But she sure as hell was stuck with it, especially now. She took another drag, a long one.
This problem would not blow away with the smoke.
After washing her face she went to check out, stopping in the hall to buy a cup of vending-machine coffee.
Coffee in hand and cigarette in mouth, she passed the restaurant. There were a couple of people in booths, a couple more at the counter. The morning papers stood near the door in stacks, still tied. Outside, crows perched on the motel's sign, calling to one another. The leaves of an aster quaked in the morning breeze.
Nothing was wrong, nothing at all.
She signed her credit card receipt and went out to the Escort.
Driving back, she watched the road narrow, the woods close in, watched the rolling mountains behind Oscola, thought about what lurked in the shadows, in the depths of the ground, thought of the quietly growing number of empty houses.
She approached Belton Road, the last turnoff before Route 303's unbroken run to Oscola. This was the point of no return. "What are you?" she asked the humming silence as her car passed through the intersection.
Her foot touched the brake, hesitated, wavered, then pressed harder. Just beyond the intersection, she rolled to a stop. She raised the windows and locked the doors.
She drove fast, alert for the least sign of movement back in the woods. But 303 seemed abandoned. Nobody passed her, she overtook no other cars. She reached River Road, then crossed the bridge onto Mound, then turned onto Queen's Road at the intersection.
At the Wests' house, she turned off the engine, got out and went up to the front door. From inside came the familiar smell of cooking bacon.
This was one of those small moments that is really huge, and for once she knew it. She was making a commitment here, a big one.
She knocked.
There had been soft voices inside, which now stopped. "It's me," she said through the closed door. She stepped back, suddenly certain that this was a mistake. The door opened a little.
Bob West dragged her inside.
Behind the closed curtains the lights were on. She found herself in a cozy living room. A big photograph of an Adirondack stream hung on the wall above the entertainment system. The room was filled with solid Early American furniture. Some of the pieces were obviously very old. She had seen family antiques like these in everyday use in many Oscola homes.
"Ellen," Loi said from her place lying on the couch, "welcome." The smile seemed warm, but Loi's personality had so many subtle twists and turns, it was impossible to be certain.
"How are you doing, Loi?"
She touched her stomach, smiled. "We are well."
Ellen looked around for the boys. "Chris?"
"He's going to be fine," Nancy said. "There's still a good bit of pain, though."
"Burns hurt," Brian added. He gazed at her. "I've got a theory in place."
She raised her eyebrows, questioning.
"Some of my equations suggested that we could crack a hole in space-time. Somebody must have done it. Built a device and done it."
"They took my husband's work, twisted it."
Bob walked over. His wide, kind face reminded Ellen of her own father. "I remember being in a room full of blue pipes and broken equipment. I was swallowed, for God's sake. Like Jonah in the whale." He paused. "Somebody talked to me, tried to get me to see it his way."
"Who was he?" Ellen asked.
"I remember a tall shape. Blacker than black. A sense of great dignity and... what I would call evil. Essence of evil."
Loi sat up. "The demon."
"Satan," Nancy added.
Loi gave Bob an appraising look. "Did you feel like you wanted to help him?"
"I don't know what I felt. If it was Satan—"
"This isn't about the devil," Brian snapped. "I'm talking about a derangement of reality on the deepest and most subtle level."
"I remember him as being... insectoid. When he moved, it was slow and stealthy until right at the end. Then—wham—he was at your throat."
Nancy went closer to him.
Ellen was fascinated by the idea of just sitting across a table from somebody from another reality, if that was the right way to describe it. "You said he was evil. How could you tell?"
"It radiated from him like a stench. Total contempt, total hate. Like nothing you can imagine."
Loi, who had gone to the kitchen, put a plate of bacon and eggs on the table with a bang. "We've got to eat," she said.
Brian took some eggs. "Then I'm going out to make the last try at evidence."
Again, there was that terrible sadness. Poor Brian. Ellen could see how responsible he felt.
Nancy called her boys and they were so
Brian stared into his own plate. "We're pawns. I'm my own pawn. Or the pawn of my own inaction. Ironic." His voice went low. "My grief over the loss of my first family has placed my second in mortal jeopardy."
Ellen's heart went out to him, but it was Loi who tended his sorrow, putting her arms awkwardly around his big shoulders.
A moment later he looked up from his food, stood, and without a word strode out the door.
"Gotta go, baby," Bob said to Nancy. They kissed and he hurried off behind Brian.
Ellen watched them go in Bob's sedan, watched it kick up dust at the end of the driveway, then disappear around the comer of the house.
Soon Loi and Nancy began to pack, with Loi cooing over Nancy's humdrum wardrobe as if it belonged to a princess royal. The boys turned on the television. Ellen went over to the picture window and opened the curtains. She stared as far as she could see down Queen's Road.
"You don't wait well," Loi said, coming up behind her and putting her arms around her waist. "Best to work." She grasped her shoulders and turned her around. "Put the fancy monogrammed linens in the cardboard box in the hall."
Ellen worked, but her mind was turning over and over, she couldn't stop it. She was worried about Brian and Bob, and that was a fact. She possessed none of Loi's fatalism.
The two men had been gone thirty minutes by the time the women were finished with the packing. "Loi, we've got to go out and look for them."
"Ellen, I am waiting. I will wait a certain time that is in my heart. Then I will go."
"Do you—I mean—I know nothing about Eastern religions. Do you pray for him? What are you?"
"I am somewhat a Buddhist. As much as Brian is a Catholic. Also, my people have their beliefs. Their understanding." Suddenly she went to the front door, threw it open.
"What?"
"Be still."
The sedan appeared.
The three women streamed out into the driveway, followed by the boys. Brian leaned out of the passenger's window. "Your car's gone, Ellen. Not a sign. Just treadmarks."
"Any—"
He shook his head. "The site was as clean as a whistle."
"So we're leaving, then?" Nancy's voice had an edge in it.
"Let's go, Dad," Chris said.
His younger brother added his voice. "Dad, I don't like it around here at night. There's bears!"
They divided into two groups: Ellen and Brian and Loi rode together in Ellen's rental, and the Wests went in their own car. The plan was to continue on to Albany, and meet up again later.
They went in procession down Queen's Road to the four-way intersection where Main became Mound. From here they could see up into the heart of Oscola. "It looks as empty as Towayda did," Brian said. The fact that the roads weren't yet full of refugees seemed a bad sign. He felt sure that each empty house represented a dreadful tragedy. "Turn on the radio."
The Oscola fires were the big story. "Prominent local farmer and professor Brian Kelly" was mentioned as having survived one of the two fires that had struck the Oscola community the previous night.
All the land seemed to be smiling, so beautiful, so completely benign, so harmless.
They were about halfway to Ludlum when they came upon the first sign.
"What's that?" Loi asked.
"I don't know."
Ellen peered beyond the windshield. A cloth object, torn, lay on the roadside. "It's a shirt. Was."
"Look at the red on it." Lois voice was small.
Then they rounded a curve and found a car lying on its side amid a great tumble of possessions. There were shirts and sheets and toys, furniture that had been tied to the top, a lawn mower, an exploded television, all manner of smaller debris.
Brian hit his brakes, and so did Bob behind him. An instant later Bob ran past. Everybody else crowded out of the cars. "It's the Michaelsons," Bob shouted. He clambered up onto the wreck.
"Boys, stay back," Nancy said. She and Loi took their hands. Ellen went forward with Brian.
Bob looked around. "Not a sign of 'em." He dropped back down to the road. The group came together.
"Should I know the Michaelsons?" Ellen asked.
"They're new people over from Rochester," Brian explained. "I don't think the family's been around here more than thirty years or so."
"They must've walked away from it." Bob peered into the woods. His words sounded hollow in the roadside silence.
"How many kids do they have?" Ellen asked.
"Three," Bob said.
"I think I see someone." Loi was looking toward the tree line.
"Where?" Brian asked. His voice had become soft. He could smell the death, too. They all could.
"Get the kids in the car, Nance." Bob's hand went to his hip. There was, of course, no pistol there. He ran a few feet toward the trees. "Hey there, you OK?"
The figure did not move. But its outlines were clear. There was no question but that a man was standing in the woods about two hundred feet away.
"Hey!"
"Could be in shock," Ellen suggested.
"Maybe." Bob went forward. Both of his sons grabbed him. "Daddy, no," the smaller boy said.
"Get in the car! Nancy, take care of 'em!"
"Stay here, Bobby."
"I'll do it." Brian took a step toward the woods.
"No!" Loi threw her arms around his waist.
Silence fell. Nobody moved. Obviously, the fathers and mothers could not take the risk.
3.
Ellen began to walk toward the forest. Nobody stopped her and that was all right. "Are you hurt?" she called into the silence. The figure didn't move or speak.
"Everything OK?" Brian called.
"So far." As she walked forward Ellen recognized a new set of reactions—lack of muscle control, extreme tightness of throat, whistling breath. This was a state of fear she had never entered before. Then her vision blurred. She shook away a great flood of tears. Her heart was humming, her face was hot, every cell in her body screaming at her to turn and run.
Brian stayed back, unwilling to leave Lois side, yet also unwilling to completely abandon Ellen.
She took a jerky step forward, then another. This was ridiculous, she was barely in control of her own body. Instincts she didn't even know she possessed were being engaged. If she'd had a pistol she might have done something outrageous, like empty it right into that shadow.
The drone of flies was loud. She could see the definite shape of a man, even that he was wearing a blue denim shirt. "Hello? Can you hear me?"
No reply. She took three quick steps closer.
"Be careful, Elbe!"
She sucked in a breath, let her hands go to fists, and forced herself to step into the forest, pushing aside the leaves of some maple saplings.
Her first clear impression was of a glaring eye. Then teeth, a tight smile. She did not exactly scream, but rather made the kind of gasp of surprised agony that comes from stepping on a scorpion or having a centipede bury its red legs in your thigh.
She twisted against herself, her fists coming up to her throat. There remained a tiny spark of self-control. But when she saw the horrific distortion of the man's neck, she shrank back in panicky confusion. It was a ropy stalk an impossible three feet long. It was the color and consistency of dried beef jerky.
Then she saw the left arm.
She shrieked, a terrible, inarticulate wail that brought them all running down from the road, even the boys.
Brian was the first into the woods beside her. "Ellie!"
"God help us all!" She threw herself away from it, as if the mere sight of it was a slamming, crushing blow across the face.
Brian gagged, bent double, stumbled back.
Under its ripped, bulging clothes, the body was a great mound of tight, twisted flesh jutting with bones. Knots of muscle and fat distorted stomach and thighs.
The right arm was a bloated dirigible of black, wet skin, covered almost completely with flies. It was as
The face above the hideously stretched neck was grinning, the teeth visible all the way back to the molars. Unlike the right arm, the head had been sucked of every molecule of blood. It was the face of a mummy, the eyes pulled wide, the cheeks sunken against the bones. Flies raced between the teeth, and the tongue within was the shape and color of a rotted fig.
The neck was as tight as wire, and with every stirring of the air the head bobbed on its springlike neck.
But they weren't looking at the head, not at the swollen right arm, not at the bulging humps.
They were watching in horrified fascination as the left arm grew and grew and grew. It seethed, its fingers turning to claws, its muscles bunching and popping, an awful, crunching creak coming from the torsioned bones.
This was the fate of the people who went to the judge's house: before their eyes was unfolding the future not only of their little community, but of all mankind.
A smell filled the air, of hot electric wiring, as if a machine somewhere nearby was working at extreme speed.
"We've got to go," Loi rasped.
Suddenly Bob grunted, plunged off into the wall of leaves. He charged forward rapidly, thrashing through the dense foliage. Then he was coming back, and the others saw the dangling arms and legs of a child.
Bob emerged carrying the poor little burden, a dead naked girl. Her hair was blond and long, still done up with a pink plastic barrette. There was no visible damage. Even her skin still seemed to glow with life.
As they got closer, though, Ellen saw that this was very far from the case. In some infinitely delicate and inhuman operation, the outer layer of the girl's skin had been eaten from her body.
And the glow came not from life—it came from something inside the child, something packed in tight under the remaining skin.
Ellen had seen them before.
"Drop her! Oh my dear God, run!"
Then young Chris cried out, "It's Lizzie!" His voice was high and clear, and stopped the grasshoppers that were singing in the meadow. Chris sat down on the ground. His mother hid her other son's eyes. With a child's insatiable curiosity, he fought her. "I want to see, Mommy!"