The Flying Eyes (2 page)

Around him, other people had reached the same frantic decision to flee, and they jumped up and started for the ramps. Their gait was a quick walk—stiff-legged, hurrying, but afraid to hurry too much. The pace steadily increased as the horror over the field penetrated the senses. Bodiless Eyes—nothing behind them—only huge eyeballs and great sweeping lashes. Linc led Kelly and Wes into the fast-moving line of people.

Then, beside him, a woman shoved. Her face peered up into his and her eyes were glassy with a sheer, deep terror. Her mouth was stiff as she tried to form words. She pushed at him, and when he refused to relinquish his place, she opened her mouth and screeched, “They're coming after us! Let me out!” Her cries rose to hysteria. “Let me by! They're coming after us!”

He let her through, but he knew it was too late. A great shock like an electric charge swept through the gathered people and they broke their controlled gait to mill for a moment, and then to run. Shouts broke out, and clawing hands grasped at Linc to push him out of the way. He hurried Kelly forward, having to run to keep his balance in the crush of terror. The thunder of a thousand running feet poured into his ears, and the ordered tiers of the stadium broke into a squirming mass of mingled colors.

“Hang on to me!” he ordered Kelly, and started down the ramp.

People stumbled on the incline and fell forward, caught short by the pillowing mass of people in front of them. The faces he saw were purest ice—panic in wide, terrified eyes and brutal, mean strength in frantic muscles. Elbows crashed into his ribs and the screams were piercing after the dead silence.

At the foot of the ramp, under the stands, they met the bigger crowd pouring down from the other exits. A great tangle formed around him, and he shouldered forward, using his elbows and knees.

To his right, a woman went down, sprawling against the retreating legs of the people before her.

“Help me!” she cried, and her arms flailed upward to Linc.

He grabbed for her, but a shove from behind sent him forward and his hand barely brushed hers. Then she was behind him, still crying for help. The crowd closed over her. Her head dashed forward under the impact of a foot, and he couldn't see her any more.

Everywhere people were being trampled; men ran with their children held high over their heads to keep them from the pounding feet.

He saw the arches of the stadium supports and knew freedom lay that way. He rammed up to the gateway, stopped a moment to make sure Kelly and Wes were with him, and when he tried to move, the fat stomach of a giant man barreled into him.

“Get out of the way!” the man cursed, and an elbow crashed against Linc's head and he was thrown off balance. He went down to one knee. A foot landed on his bent leg and pain shot up his thigh. He toppled forward, scrambling to catch hold of something before he was ground to pulp beneath the mass of running feet. Kelly's hand was strong, holding him up from behind, and then Wes' arm was under his shoulder and was lifting him forward, through the gate. When he regained his feet, he never broke pace.

Everyone was running under the blue sky. The crowd thinned, but the speed of it was a headlong flight aimed at the parked cars. Wes was even with him now, and together they pulled Kelly along, dashing for the red bulk of his car. He pulled the door open and shoved Kelly into the back, then got under the wheel. The engine started without a miss, but there was nowhere to go. Traffic was piled up before him. A parked car blocked him from the rear, and a Linc of honking, roaring cars defied his escape forward.

He craned around, and as he looked toward the stadium, he saw a double line of people, calmly walking in the center of the crazed flight of the rest. They walked as though they didn't see the terror, didn't share it, or care about it. Beside them, people ran and fell; above them, men who had tried to climb down the outside of the stadium walls tumbled howling onto the cement; but the marchers looked neither left nor right. They simply walked.

Over the stadium, a shape appeared, and a great Eye came sailing over the wall, down the line of people, clearing their heads by inches, and fell into place before them. It hovered there and moved along backward, leading them in their strange march, through the parking lot, toward the river, then turned to move parallel to the water. The people followed, and the parking lot suddenly heaved as cars, despite the lack of room, roared forward. The crunch of metal on metal and the breaking of glass were added to the frantic blast of horns.

Linc couldn't sit still any longer. The panic around him fed his own, and he put the car into reverse and rammed into the one parked behind him, pushing it back. He maneuvered forward again, then back, until there was room for him to move into a lane comparatively free of cars. He swerved in and out, taking chances he knew he couldn't afford, but making each one pay.

As he neared the river, the cars creeping ahead of him were a slow-running snake. Then the one directly before him stopped. The doors opened and two people emerged, their faces free of panic, their bodies almost limp. They left the car doors open and walked off at a slow pace toward the river, where the two Eyes had taken up hovering positions. More cars stopped, and more people crawled out to join the strange march. The abandoned cars blocked traffic, but there was only one between Linc and freedom. The rest of his particular Linc had gained the road.

“I'll get it,” Wes shouted and jumped out. He ran forward and leaned in the driver's side of the other car, turned the wheel, and motioned for Linc to push. Linc edged up, gave it a firm shove, and it wheeled off to the side. He stepped hard on the accelerator and raced for the clear space. He paused for Wes, then took off at full speed for the road, heading away from the river.

The river route was the shorter into town, but he had seen what was happening down there. The dead-marching people were crossing the road, and cars were backed up waiting for a passage through that never came. The people paid no attention to honkings or shouts. One car raced through them, knocking down six people and running them over, but others filled their places.

“I'm turning off to take side streets home,” Linc said. “Everybody else will want to stay on the main route.”

At the first side street, he blasted his horn and cut recklessly across the path of the oncoming cars. His tires squealed as he took the corner at seventy, but he beat the nearest car by a taillight and the street ahead of him was clear.

He sped past houses where people had come onto their porches to investigate the noises coming from the stadium. It wouldn't be long before the question on their faces would turn to panic, too. Home seemed the only safety in the world, and he had to reach it before his hard-pressed sanity revolted and fled to a safety of its own.

CHAPTER TWO

The white frame house the lab had rented and then given to Wes and Linc, stood on a quiet street, shaded by elms and maples. But the peace that usually comforted Linc when he saw it wasn't there today. It no longer looked like home. Now it was simply a refuge.

He wheeled the car into the drive, and with Wes' help, got Kelly into the house. She was trembling, her slim body alive with fear. She made no sound except a rapid gasping for breath.

They sat her down on the couch, and Linc poured a brandy, holding it to her lips and helping her drink. Wes watched anxiously until she began to sob, then he simply sat down and patted the head of his spotted, mongrel dog.

“Do you want a drink?” Linc asked him.

Wes shook his head.

“Well, I do.” He swallowed the rest of Kelly's brandy, embarrassed at the tremor of his own hands. He circled her with one arm. “Please, Kelly. It's all right now.” He looked to Wes. “What shall I do with her?”

“Let her cry it out,” Wes said. “It's the best way.” He stood up and headed out of the room, the dog walking beside him.

“Where are you going?” Linc called.

“To feed Ichabod. His supper is overdue and he has a hungry look. Haven't you, old fellow?”

The dog lopped out his tongue and whined under his breath. “See?” Wes smiled. “He agrees.”

Linc watched him go helplessly. Wes invariably turned to his dog for comfort, carrying on one-sided conversations with the mongrel. Linc had never cared much for the animal. The energy Wes spent on him seemed a waste.

“Kelly?” he asked, and turned her face up to his own.

She looked like a frightened child, her green eyes red-rimmed.

“Where's the old Irish?” he asked her. “Come on, honey, take a deep breath and pull yourself together.”

“Give her a few minutes,” Wes called from the kitchen. “We all need a chance to calm down.”

“But we can't waste time rallying our nerves,” Linc protested. “We've got to find out what's happening and make plans.”

“What plans?” Kelly cried. “What were those things, Linc? What were they doing to those people? Did you see them? They walked as though they were dead.”

She broke off shivering, and Linc left her, unable to bear the impatience of listening to her cry, while incapable of doing anything about it.

“Let's get some news,” he growled, and snapped on the radio.

Ichabod waddled back into the room, and Wes followed, to resume patting the dog's head. A lethargy had settled over him, and Linc felt suddenly alone. Kelly was hysterical, Wes was numb, and he was alone with the terrible need for action.

The radio sputtered to life with the frantic voice of an announcer:

“…and people are following them—where, no one knows—why, no one knows. They just follow. The giant Eyes are sailing out from the stadium. Two of them are in the downtown shopping area, and two more at the Recreation Center. The city has gone wild. There was no estimate of anything. There is no one sane enough to estimate. And still people follow the Eyes. I've seen them, ladies and gentlemen. Right now, looking out of the window here on top of the Garner Building, I can see one of them. It's a great, blue Eye—just an Eye—and it hovers above the street and blinks its giant lids and stirs up papers on the street with the sweep of its lashes. There's something ominous in it aside from its immensity—something that looks out of it, weird and foreign. It has no expression. It is just pure horror, and it—”

Linc snapped the set off angrily. “That guy should be horse-whipped for putting out a broadcast like that. He's scaring hundreds of people to death who haven't even seen the things.”

Wes' tone was gentler. “He has one of the things staring him in the face and he's letting out his fear in words.”

Linc turned in annoyance and strode to the window and looked out at the quiet street. Birds whistled and fluttered in the trees. The neighbor's cat sat on the porch, washing its face with an orange paw, oblivious to anything out of the ordinary. It was impossible to believe what he had seen less than an hour ago when he viewed it from this vantage point. It was impossible, and the memory of it was so distorted with fear and frenzy that he welcomed the doubts that assailed him. Unanswered questions—mysteries—always infuriated him. The world was a sensible, ordered place with an answer for everything, if sane men would only search for it. There had to be an answer for this, too.

He swung from the window. “We've let ourselves be made fools of. We saw something unusual, and we panicked and built it all out of proportion. We were too blind with panic even to know what we saw.”

“I know what I saw,” Kelly said huskily. “A little girl—somebody stepped on her face.”

“Don't focus on those things! They were the result, not the cause. I'm talking about those eyes. Our own panic made them grow, made them appear menacing.”

“We saw them before the panic started,” Wes argued.

“I wonder. Maybe the panic really started the first second you pointed them out. You know what terror can do. Light a match in a crowded theater—make a little smoke and smell—then yell ‘Fire!' and people will stampede. They'll run and crush each other, and later report that they saw flames jumping, when there was nothing there but a little smoke and somebody yelling.”

Wes was doubtful. “Then what do you think it was?”

“I don't know.” Linc turned away. “But unless we suppose it was something perfectly normal, and examine it from that viewpoint, we'll never get anywhere except deeper in fear. Eyes. What could they have been? Machines? A publicity stunt? Big balloons, sent over the stadium? Or what about mass hallucination?”

“No!” Kelly's shout quavered with her voice. “Balloons or hallucinations don't make people walk like zombies.”

“And the announcer on the radio?” Wes asked. “Hallucination is contagious—fear is contagious.”

“I can't go along with you,” Wes answered. “Everything you say about the psychology of terror is true, I admit that, but this was something else again. This terror had a basis.”

“Look out the window!” Linc commanded. “Where's the terror on Colt Street? It hasn't spread here yet, and it won't, if somebody has the sense to muzzle that announcer.”

“The Eyes haven't spread here either. You're reaching too hard, Linc. You want this thing explained, so you're explaining it any way you can.”

“I'll prove it to you,” Linc said. “I'm going to the lab. Iverson has probably started to figure it out already.”

“You can't go outside!” Kelly stood up. “You're not foolhardy enough to go out there with those Eyes?”

“You stay here—let Wes hold your hand. You'll be safe here. I've got to move.”

He started for the door, but Wes was quickly beside him. “If you feel you have to go, then I'll go with you.”

Linc looked at him, his dark eyes and well-planed face, and all he could manage was a nod of consent. He went through the door and toward the car, admitting that he was angry and argumentative because he was mad at himself. As for Kelly, he was sure she would be safe in the house, and just as sure that she wouldn't venture out.

As he pulled open the car door, the neighbor's orange cat suddenly darted from the porch, beneath the car, and out the other side, headed for the shelter of its hiding place tinder the back shed. Inside the house, Ichabod set up a howl. Wes looked at Linc over the roof of the car, his eyes questioning.

The question was swiftly answered. A stirring of the fall-colored leaves drew their attention upward, and there, sailing over Colt Street was the six-foot length of an Eye. The skin of the lids was a monstrous rubbery mass, the pores visible holes, and the lash-hairs were as big around as matchsticks at the roots.

“Do you want to go back?” Wes asked in a low voice.

The Eye had passed their house, and now the back of it was visible. Linc's heart sank as all of his speculations were ruled out. The Eye wasn't a fake. The back of it was horror enough to make him clutch his stomach in an effort to hold it down. It was the back of an eye: bloody membrane and nerves—skinless, unprotected, horror.

“We've got to go,” he told Wes. “Now we've got to go!”

Wes' answer was simply to get into the car. “Take the side streets,” he said, “and don't go through the campus.”

“I'll go the country way,” Linc agreed, and sped down Colt Street, away from the thing that was drifting off behind them.

* * * *

The clustered buildings of the Space Research Lab sat alone on a poorly landscaped piece of property out beyond the campus. The biggest building housed the reactor and the artificial gravity research room. Smaller buildings beside it were offices and specialized labs. It looked innocuous sitting there behind its chain-link fence. There was nothing in its appearance to generate the suspicion the townspeople held toward the place. But they still held it.

The parking lot was full, but there was no activity around the buildings.

“Everybody's probably in Iverson's office,” Wes said.

Jan Iverson's office was in the administration building, and their heels jarred loudly on the concrete floor as they entered. Linc respected Iverson. As the project's head, he had a frustrating job. He was pure scientist—the artificial gravity project was his life, and all he wanted was to work on it, but he was saddled with the headaches of administration besides. He had to listen, to judge, to approve or disapprove the grumblings and snap ideas of fifty men. Wes was his human bulldozer, Linc his Maginot Linc against crisis. Whatever peace and chance to work he had came from them.

As they entered his office, Iverson rose, a relief on his face that was gratifying. He said, “I was sure you'd come.” Linc glanced over the assembly. There were only three others present: Bennet, Myers and Tony Collins. Collins he could do without. A wiry, hawk-faced man, Collins hated Linc's guts and wanted Linc's job. Everybody knew it. But “assistant” Collins stayed.

“Have you seen ‘them' firsthand?” Iverson asked.

“We were at the game,” Linc explained.

“Then you had the best chance of any of us to observe. What conclusions have you reached?”

Wes laughed sourly. “We came out here to see if you had reached any conclusions.”

“Oh.” Iverson's hope fell. “In other words, you two know just as much as we do—which is nothing.”

“Not even a guess?” Linc asked Iverson. “You must have been getting reports.”

“Reports we've got by the dozen,” Collins said. “The things are all over the place. They've even sailed over here a couple of times. Wherever people are gathered, the Eyes gather, too. They took an estimated seventy-five people out of the Zoo alone.”

“What about Washington?” Linc asked.

“I called them first thing, of course,” Iverson sighed. “This thing is local from all appearances. At least it's local so far. They're sending someone out—they wanted to know if we're going to need the National Guard. I suppose we should expect trouble, but it's up to the governor to declare martial law.”

There was a hopelessness in Iverson's voice, and in the faces of the rest of them, that jarred Linc. To look at them, anyone would think a battle had already been lost, when, actually, no counter offensive had been started. “And everybody around here is just going to sit down and give up, is that it?” he snapped.

“I suppose you've got it figured out already,” Collins sneered.

“No.” Linc challenged Collins' thrust with honesty. “But once I get my hands on enough facts, I will. Reports of where the Eyes are and what they are doing aren't enough. Where did they come from? Where are they taking the people they capture?”

“We have some knowledge of that,” Iverson told him. “One of the boys went out in a helicopter and followed a Linc of people going north, out of town. They disappeared into the woods out there—on the game preserve—and from what he could see, there was something big and dark down among the trees. Something like a pit. He didn't get a good look, and we had no chance to question him because he didn't make it back. He was talking, reporting, and then he said an Eye had spotted him and was coming up fast, and—that was all. He must have gone down.”

Linc absorbed the information and it was somehow more menacing knowing that it had been not knowing. Something huge and black down inside the woods—something like a pit. It made his skin crawl. They should have discovered more, because with this fractional description the imagination was free to run wild and create atrocities and horrors that he prayed wouldn't prove to be true. Lines of people—zombie-like people—following the naked, flying Eyes down the road, into the trees; and something big and black, and perhaps pitlike, waiting there for them. To do what?

“What's being done?” he asked, steering himself back to the solid ground of action.

“This isn't our worry,” Collins said. “It belongs to the local officials, to the government.”

“The Eyes are over our buildings, so it belongs to us,” Linc slammed back. “We can't sit around and wait for the major to move. This is a government lab. We've got a high concentration of intelligence here, and we're under a firm obligation to use it.”

“Linc's right,” Wes backed him up. “We have the best chance of anybody, locally.”

The others rallied at Linc's show of firmness. He had seen that reaction before. If he spoke calmly and surely, they all thought he had a plan and waited for him to explain it. But this time they were wrong. This time he had no plan and could only sit mute before them.