From a Buick 8(71)

'That was the right call,' Sandy said. 'Come on.'

They hurried out, stopping just long enough so Sandy could look in the kitchen and then bawl upstairs to the common room. No one. The barracks was never deserted, but it was deserted now, and why? Because there was never a cop around when you needed one, that was why. Herb Avery was running dispatch that night, at least that was one, and he joined them.

'Want me to call someone in off the road, Sandy? I can, if you want.'

'No.' Sandy was looking around, trying to remember where he'd last seen the coil of rope. In the hutch, probably. Unless some yo-yo had taken it home to haul something upstairs with, which would be just about par for the course. 'Come on, George.'

The two of them crossed the parking lot in the red sunset light, their trailing shadows all but infinite, going first to the roll-up door for a little look-see. The Buick sat there as it had ever since old Johnny Parker dragged it in behind his tow-truck (Johnny now retired and getting through his nights with an oxygen tank beside his bed ? but still smoking). It cast its own shadow on the concrete floor.

Sandy started to turn away, meaning to check the hutch for the rope, and just as he did there came another thump. It was strong and flat and unemphatic. The trunk-lid shivered, dimpled up in the middle for a moment, then went back down. It looked to Sandy as if the Roadmaster actually rocked a little bit on its springs.

'There! You see?' George said. He started to add something else, and that was when the Buick's trunk came unlatched and the lid sprang up on its hinges and the fish fell out.

Of course, it was a fish no more than the bat-thing was a bat, but they both knew at once it was nothing made to live on land; it had not one gill on the side they could see but four of them in a line, parallel slashes in its skin, which was the color of dark tarnished silver. It had a ragged and membranous tail. It unfolded out of the trunk with a last convulsive, dying shiver. Its bottom half curved and flexed, and Sandy could see how it might have made that thumping sound. Yes, that was clear enough, but how a thing of such size could ever have fit into the closed trunk of the Buick in the first place was beyond both of them. What hit the concrete floor of Shed B with a flat wet slap was the size of a sofa.

George and Sandy clutched each other like children and screamed. For a moment they were children, with every adult thought driven out of their heads. Somewhere inside the barracks, Mister Dillon began to bark.

It lay there on the floor, no more a fish than a wolf is a housepet, although it may look quite a bit like a dog. And in any case, this fish was only a fish up to the purple slashes of its gills. Where a fish's head would have been ? something that at least had the steadying sanity of eyes and a mouth ? there was a knotted, naked mass of pink things, too thin and stiff to be tentacles, too thick to be hair. Each was tipped with a black node and Sandy's first coherent thought was A shrimp, the top half of it's some kind of shrimp and those black things are its eyes.

'What's wrong?' someone bawled. 'What is it?'

Sandy turned and saw Herb Avery on the back step. His eyes were wild and he had his Ruger in his hand. Sandy opened his mouth and at first nothing came out but a phlegmy little wheeze. Beside him, George hadn't even turned; he was still looking through the window, mouth hanging slack in an idiot's gape.

Sandy took a deep breath and tried again. What was meant for a shout emerged as a faint punched-in-the-belly wheeze, but at least it was something. 'Everything's okay, Herb ? five-by-five. Go back inside.'

'Then why did you ? '

'Go inside!' There, that's a little better, Sandy thought. 'Go on, now, Herb. And holster that piece.'

Herb looked down at the gun as if unaware until then that he had drawn it. He put it back in his holster, looked at Sandy as if to ask was he sure. Sandy made little flapping gestures with his hands and thought, Granny Dearborn says go back inside, dad-rattit!

Herb went, yelling for Mister D to shut up that foolish barking as he did.

Sandy turned back to George, who had gone white. 'It was breathing, Sandy ? or trying to. The gills were moving and the side was going up and down. Now it's stopped.' His eyes were huge, like the eyes of a child who has been in a car accident. 'I think it's dead.' His lips were quivering. 'Man, I hope it's dead.'

Sandy looked in. At first he was sure George was wrong: the thing was still alive. Still breathing, or trying to breathe. Then he realized what he was seeing and told George to get the videocam out of the hutch.

'What about the r ? '

'We won't need the rope, because we're not going in there ? not yet, we're not ? but get the camera. Fast as you can.'

George went around the side of the garage, not moving very well. Shock had made him gawky. Sandy looked back into the shed, cupping his eyes to the sides of his face to cut the red sunset glare. There was motion in the shed, all right, but not life's motion. It was mist rising from the thing's silver side and also from the purple slashes of its gills. The bat-thing hadn't decomposed, but the leaves had, and quickly. This thing was staring to rot like the leaves, and Sandy had the feeling that once the process really got going, it would go fast.

Even standing outside, with the closed door between him and it, he could smell it. An acrid, watery reek of mixed cabbage and cucumber and salt, the smell of a broth you might feed to someone if you wanted to make them sicker instead of well.