The Becoming - a novella (4 page)

Karl pulled and
yanked and tugged on the ropy thing which had clamped itself around his wrist
like a vice. It felt scaly and cold but organic. It throbbed with ancient life.
He closed his eyes in silent prayer and then reached up and tried to bite the
thing, and as he did he felt a second ropy tentacle twist its way around his
chest and move relentlessly upward. The thing wrapped and twined and worked its
way to Karl’s mouth, forcing it open.

Karl tried to spit
it out and failed. He twisted and writhed and kicked to no effect; more ropy
things—
Sweet Jesus, where are they all coming from?
—worked their way
around his body. In a matter of seconds, he found himself completely
immobilized.

And then the
invasion began in earnest. His jaws were pulled apart, the cold alien things
wriggling into his mouth, gripping his upper and lower teeth with inhuman
strength and he screamed, long and loud, now beyond all conscious thought, the explosion
forgotten, the mine fire forgotten, Susan forgotten, his children forgotten, Alpha
Seven forgotten.

He twisted and
struggled. It made no difference. A single ropy protrusion slithered into his
mouth, pausing for just a moment on his tongue, flitting back and forth as if
reassuring itself it was safe to proceed. One second later it did, sliding down
Karl Meyer’s throat. As he felt himself being torn apart, possessed from the
inside, Karl wished with all his heart he had stayed inside the main tunnel.
Dying from poison gas would be infinitely better than this.

And then he was
gone.

2

Present
Day

Tonopah,
Pennsylvania

A mountain of blankets covered twelve
year old Tim McKenna’s small form as he lay shivering in his bed. Tim’s mom
felt his forehead with the back of her hand for the third time in the last
twenty minutes. “You’re burning up,” she muttered. “I wish I could find that
darned thermometer. You’re definitely not going to school today, but I’m a
little concerned about leaving you here alone. Your fever seems to be spiking.”

“I’ll be okay,”
Tim told her with a weak smile. “If you could leave some orange juice for me to
drink while I doze, though, that would be good. I’m pretty thirsty.”

“Of course you can
have juice,” she said. “I’ll get it before I leave for work. I have a couple
more minutes before I have to leave, so I’m going to look for that thermometer
one more time. I know I left it in the medicine chest.” She clucked distractedly
and ruffled Tim’s hair and walked out of the bedroom.

Tim waited until
he heard the click-click-click of her high-heeled shoes fading off down the
hallway and then ducked under the covers, pulling them tightly over his head
and anchoring them against the mattress with both hands. He had almost blown
his whole plan the last time his mom left the room by going overboard, staying
under the blankets too long. He had come up for air red-faced and sweating, raising
his body temperature almost to the point where a fever might no longer be
believable.

One thing he
didn’t have to worry about was his mom finding the thermometer. Last night
before bed, Tim had swiped it out of the medicine cabinet—right where Mom
always left it; no wonder she thought she was going crazy—and slid it under his
bed, between the mattress and the box spring. There was no way in the world he
would be able to pull off a fake fever if he had to fool a thermometer as well
as his mom, but as long as he didn’t stay under the covers too long again or do
anything else stupid, in a few minutes Mom would leave for work and he would
have the whole day to himself.

The whole day to
do a little exploring.

Tim McKenna wasn’t
in the habit of ditching school. He didn’t earn straight-A’s or anything like
that, but knew how important it was to his mom that he get an education, “so
you can do something with your life,” she would say wistfully, the unspoken
message clear even to a twelve year old, that she
hadn’t
done that, and
look where it had gotten her.

So even though he
didn’t care much about school, most of the time Tim followed the path of least
resistance. He attended regularly, paid attention in class—more or less—and
generally did at least enough work to keep his mom happy. They had always been
close, but when his dad abandoned them, going out for a drink and never
returning—a scenario straight out of some depressing country song—their bond
had deepened, moving from a typical mother and child to a pair united against
whatever the future might bring.

Until his mom had
found Matt, of course, but that was another story. Matt was okay, Tim knew Matt
cared about his mom and was happy she had found someone to make her stop crying
every night after she thought he was asleep, but Tim wasn’t in the market for
another dad and mostly just tried to stay out of his way.

Despite the fact
Tim wasn’t exactly a pro at skipping school with a fake illness, he had known
the minute his teacher covered the infamous Tonopah mining tragedy in history
class last week that he was going to take a little field trip out to the site
of the disaster the moment he could work out the details.

He had to check it
out for himself. The disaster involving the Tonopah Mining Company had
everything a kid could want: explosions, fire, crooked business owners
sacrificing the safety of their workers for the savings of a few dollars,
death, destruction. Heck, there were even legends of murderous ghosts! The
whole thing had happened almost a hundred years ago, but it was still a darned
good story, even if it
was
ancient history.

He learned in
history class that the mine had had a notoriously poor safety record for
decades, and then in 1925 a worker simply disappeared, vanishing without a
trace after a suspicious underground fire. Government authorities had come in
and abruptly shut down the entire operation, sealing up the entrance to the
main shaft and throwing the mine’s owner in jail for negligence to boot.

But the best part of
the whole story was that the mining camp was located only a couple of miles
away and had never been destroyed. After they finished sealing the thing off,
everyone had simply walked away. What had once been a busy, heavily-traveled
road between the center of Tonopah Township and the Tonopah Mine had fallen
into disrepair and was now nothing more than an overgrown path through the
woods, with the Pennsylvania forest mostly reclaiming the land for itself. Tim
assumed the mine was also heavily overgrown—no one he knew had ever been there,
so he could only guess—but he figured if he looked hard enough it would be
pretty easy to find.

Tim had listened, spellbound,
over the three days Miss Henderson recounted the tale, amazed that an event
which had made headlines all over the country—heck, all over the
world
—had
taken place right here in little Tonopah, Pennsylvania, the town where nothing
exciting
ever
happened. Tim was immediately filled with enthusiasm about
the prospect of exploring the old mine and just knew his small circle of
friends would be as well.

But he had been
disappointed. No one would agree to skip school to trek out to the mine for a
little field trip. As the newcomer in town, and a smallish, shy kid as well,
Tim had struggled to make friends in the year since he and his mom moved here from
Harrisburg to be with Matt. He had a grand total of just three friends, and all
three had flat-out refused to consider it. They hadn’t even bothered to discuss
the matter. It was as if they had been brainwashed by their parents or
something.

Tim couldn’t
understand it. Everybody knew there was no such thing as ghosts or monsters.
Sure, they made cool subjects for books and movies, and
especially
for
video games, where zombies routinely attacked and twelve years old were
routinely called upon to save the world. But that was fantasy, not reality. It
seemed obvious to Tim that there was an important distinction there.

His friends,
however, failed to recognize that distinction. Jake Mallory, not exactly a
tough guy but the acknowledged leader of the small group, not only refused to hike
out to the mine but told Tim if he was going to be so fucking stupid he could
just find himself a new bunch of kids to hang out with. That was how he said
it, too: “so fucking stupid.”

Well, Tim didn’t
think it was stupid, he thought it sounded like one heck of a lot of fun,
certainly better than sitting around in Jake’s basement watching reruns of Two
and a Half men.
That
was fucking stupid, as far as he was concerned. Tim
had shut his mouth and pretended to let the issue drop, all the while figuring
out a way to get some time to himself.

He heard his mom
clomping down the hallway—thank God for the high-heeled shoes she liked to wear
to work—and burst out from the blankets, worrying he had once again stayed
under too long. He was so busy brooding about Jake Mallory and his other two
friends, wondering where their sense of adventure had gone, that he may have
blown everything.

“I don’t know,
honey,” his mom said, opening the door and poking her head in to smile at Tim.
“I can’t find that darned thermometer anywhere, and I thought I knew exactly
where I had put it. I guess I’ll have to buy a new one.” She looked him over
critically. “You seem even more flushed than before. Are you sure . . .”

“Yeah, Mom, I’ll
be okay.” Tim remembered to put a little weakness into his voice. “I’ll call
you if I start feeling really bad, I promise.”

She paused for
what felt like forever, staring at him through narrowed eyes, but Tim knew he
had her. At twelve, he didn’t know—or care—much about finances, but he had
overheard enough conversations between Matt and his mom to know they needed
money, and while he felt guilty as heck about deceiving her, he knew she
wouldn’t stay home just because he was running a little fever.

“All right,” she
finally said. “But not too much TV, okay? Try to get some sleep. And drink
plenty of fluids.” She walked over to his bed and bent down to give him a quick
kiss on the forehead, furrowing her eyebrows in concern when she felt the
warmth of his skin. Tim felt another, more powerful surge of guilt and almost
confessed the whole thing—pretending to be sick, planning the hike out to the
old abandoned mine, everything—but somehow kept his mouth shut and then the
feeling passed.

His mom smiled
down at him and ruffled his hair again. Then she turned and walked out the door
with a wave. Tim listened do the click-click-click of her high heels on the
hallway floor as she headed toward the front door. He stayed under the blankets
pretending to be sick until he heard her car start up and back down the
driveway. He pushed the covers back and sat on the edge of his bed, listening
to sound of her Honda’s rough-running engine fading and then disappearing
entirely.

Then he got to
work.

***

Sweat poured down Tim’s face as he
struggled through the underbrush. He had filled a backpack with supplies—three
water bottles and a few snacks, as well as some tools he thought he might need—before
leaving the house and his pack seemed to have grown steadily heavier as he
hiked. Mosquitoes buzzed around his head and he swatted and cursed.

He had been
walking for over two hours and it seemed as though he should have run across
the old mine by now. The long-abandoned road had been mostly retaken by the
forest over the last eighty years, but it was still easy enough to follow.
Eighty year old fir trees and oaks were hard to miss when they were surrounded
on all sides by trees easily three or four times that.

Tim paused for a
moment, taking a seat on a boulder and unzipping his pack. He took a long drink
of water—it was no longer cold but still tasted sweet and refreshing—and then
checked his map. Miss Henderson had let him borrow the authentic 1920’s era
road map she had shown the class as part of her presentation on the Tonopah
Mining disaster, pleased that one of her students was showing an interest in
the tragedy that had played such an influential part in local history.

Tim scratched his
head and shooed away mosquitoes and wondered how much farther he would have to
walk. The mine should be impossible to miss, because for one thing the road
didn’t lead anywhere else—it had been built specifically for use by the miners
to get to work—and for another, the clearing where the old base of operations
had been built had to be at least an acre in circumference, if the ancient map
could be believed.

Tim wondered if he
had been played for a fool by his friends. No one wanted to come out here
because they all knew the mine didn’t even exist. It was either a figment of
everyone’s imagination or, more likely, had been demolished by the government
after being closed down. The map was a fake and the whole story had been
concocted by his class to make him look silly.

But of course both
possibilities were ridiculous. The mining disaster had been national news. Miss
Henderson had shown the class old, yellowed, brittle copies of the New York
Times and the Chicago Tribune, both papers splashing headlines about the
disaster across the front page.

So it had definitely
happened. And as far as the mine being demolished, even if that were the case,
there would still have to be some kind of evidence the place had existed, even
if the evidence was nothing more than a big empty clearing.

Tim sighed and
took one last drink, then stowed his stuff in his pack and zipped it up. He
shrugged it onto his back and stood. He decided he would walk another half hour
or so and if he still came up empty, he would admit defeat and hike back home.
It wasn’t like anybody knew he was coming out here, so no one would call him a
quitter or give him a hard time about giving up. And even if he somehow found
out, Jake Mallory couldn’t say much; he had refused to come!