Invasion of The Body Snatchers

Chapter nineteen

They had Chet Meeker and the little stout man first. Becky and I were in the middle, Mannie and Budlong directly behind us. There was no reason I could think of for waiting, and as we approached the first between-the-floors landing, I brought my hands together, arms hanging loosely before me, and the thumb and forefinger of my left hand reached into my right sleeve, thumb and forefinger of the other hand into the left sleeve. The fingers of each hand touched and pulled loose the strips of adhesive just above my cuff lines. Then – this was Becky's plan – each hand held a loaded hypodermic syringe.

Stepping onto the landing, beginning the half-circle turn to the next flight of stairs, the little stout man was on the inside, gripping the stair rail, and Chet Meeker swung out to walk beside him. I stepped suddenly forward, directly behind them, shoving Becky to one side with an elbow, flinging her into a corner of the landing; both my hands shot instantly forward, hard and fast, the needles clenched tight between my fingers, thumbs on the depressors, and I gave each man 2 cc. of morphine in the great muscles of the buttocks, and plunged the depressors home.

They yelped and swung toward me as Mannie and Budlong crashed onto my back, and I was smashed to the steel floor, gouging, kicking, and stabbing out with my needles. But four against one had me in seconds, one needle kicked out of my hand, the other ground to powder and glass fragments under a heel. They had an arm and both legs pinned tight, and I was wrenching and jerking the free arm, trying to keep them from pinning it. Becky – I saw it, and so did they – stood huddled in a corner against the white concrete-brick walls, trying to keep clear of the struggling mass of men, the flying feet and arms; and she cowered helplessly, eyes wide and frightened, both hands raised in a gesture of horror to her open mouth. Then, as I struggled, the sound of our panting and grunts loud and echoing, Becky's fingers – her hands still upraised, eyes still wide and astonished – flickered at the sleeves of her dress, and the buttons were open. She yanked both strips of adhesive loose, stepped forward suddenly, as Budlong and Mannie leaned over me grabbing at my flailing arm, and plunged both needles home. The two men straightened. I lay there motionless, staring and fascinated, and for a moment we all stood, knelt, or lay in a frozen tableau. They stared at Becky, then looked down at me. "What are you doing?" Budlong said puzzledly. "I don't understand." Then I rolled to my knees, starting to rise, and they were on me again.

It isn't easy to judge how long we struggled there. But then Chet Meeker, kneeling on my arm, sighed gently and toppled limply sideways onto the next flight of stairs and rolled, slowly bumping each step, till his feet caught in the stair rail, and he lay there stirring sluggishly and staring up at us. They stared after him, and Mannie said, "Hey." Then the little stout man, kneeling at my head, directly in back of me, hands on my jaws, let go and dropped back, slumping against the wall in a sitting position, and sat there blinking at us.

Budlong looked down at me, his mouth opened to speak, then his knees bent and he sat down hard enough to make the steel floor throb dully, then he lay down on his side, muttering something I couldn't make out. Mannie had grabbed the thin tubular steel railing with both hands, and now he bent over to lay his forehead on the backs of his clenched hands. After a few moments he slowly knelt to the floor, then his head dropped to hang for a moment between his still clinging arms; then his hands loosened their grip and, still kneeling, he lay face downward on the corrugated metal floor, like a man salaaming.

We ran, not too fast; I kept aware that it was possible, for Becky especially, in high-heeled shoes, to slip and break a bone. Then, in a minute perhaps, we were at the metal back door of the building, pushing against it.

It wouldn't open; it was locked, the building empty, and full of week-end silence. And there was simply nothing to do but turn, walk the length of the building lobby, past the big wall directory, toward the doors that opened onto Main Street. I remembered to say to Becky, "Keep your eyes a little wide and blank, not much expression on your face; but don't overdo it." Then I pushed open the doors, and we stepped onto the street, out among the people of dead and forsaken Santa Mira.

Within five steps we passed a man, my age; I'd known him in high school and, my face uninterested and uncaring, I simply nodded, letting my eyes pass over his face in dull recognition. He nodded in the same way, and then we had passed him; I felt Becky's arm, under mine, trembling. We passed a short, plump little woman, carrying a shopping bag, who didn't glance at us. Half a dozen yards ahead, a man slid out of the front seat of a parked car and stood waiting for us, a man in uniform, a policeman, Sam Pink.

I didn't let us break stride or hesitate, and we walked up to him and stopped. "Well, Sam," I said dully, "now we're with you, and it's not so bad." He nodded, but frowningly, and glanced into his car at the humming radio. "They were supposed to let us know," he said. "Kaufman was supposed to phone the station, then we'd get a call."

"I know" – I nodded. "He phoned, but the line was busy; they're calling again now." I turned to gesture with my head at my office building behind us.

Sam was no less and no more bright or quick than he ever had been, and now he stood staring at me, turning over in his mind what I'd said. I waited, uninterested; a moment passed, and then as though I took his silence for the conversation's conclusion, I nodded. "See you, Sam," I said emptily and, Becky's arm tight under mine, walked on.

We didn't look back, and we neither increased nor decreased our pace. We walked to the next corner, then turned right. As we turned, I saw Sam Pink, hurrying, turn into the office building and disappear from sight.

And now we ran – down the dead-end half block of small homes that ended in the low range of hills paralleling Main Street. Halfway there, a woman stepped out from the walk leading to one of the houses and confronted us, a little old woman who held up her hand in the abrupt, peremptory manner with which old people sometimes halt traffic in order to stroll across the street. Habit rules us, and I stopped, knowing that this little old lady – a Mrs. Worth, a widow; I recognized her now – was no little old lady at all, and that I ought to smash her to the ground with my fist, not even breaking stride. But I couldn't; she looked like a woman, old, tiny, and frail, and for a moment I just stood there, staring at her. Then, suddenly, I brushed her aside, pushed her with my outflung forearm, and she staggered back and nearly fell.

Then we were at the end of the concrete walk, our feet hitting red dirt, and an instant later we were climbing, turning onto one of the packed-dirt paths that wound up and through the Marin County hills, and we were hidden from the street by the straggling undergrowth and wild, tangled shrubbery.

Becky lost her shoes, high-heeled slippers, in the first dozen steps, and though I knew what the path, the pebbles, twigs, exposed rocks and roots were doing, and would do, to her feet, we couldn't stop.

We had no chance; the string was nearly played out, and I knew it, and didn't try to fool myself about it. I knew these paths and hills, every foot of them, but so did others, plenty of others. And between us and Highway 101 – the passing cars and humanity from outside – lay more than two miles of hills, paths, open fields, and farmland. Against any kind of search and pursuit at all, we couldn't get through, and even as I was thinking so, the town fire signal began blasting the air, sounding very close, the fire station only two blocks away in a straight line. Santa Mira uses, not a siren, but a hoarse, deep-voiced air-blast signal; in timbre and pitch it's the note of a foghorn, but the deep notes are short, emitted quickly in a rapid series of deep growls that vibrate the air for miles, penetrating everything. The unending, identical blasts of sound filled the air and our ears, building a terrible sense of panicky excitement, and I realized that it could make us lose our heads, so that we simply ran blindly and hopelessly.

I knew that men were already flinging themselves into cars, that starters were grinding, motors catching, cars lurching forward, carrying men after us and ahead of us; more and more with every blast of that deep, ominous, and terrible sound. Far ahead, men were leaving homes and farmhouses to spread through these hills, hunting or waiting for us. The next few minutes – no more than five, perhaps – were the last moments left in which we could even hope to stay unobserved.

Higher on the two-hundred-foot hill sloping up to our right, the underbrush dwindled and gave place to an open, exposed, useless stretch of field, waist high with summer-browned weeds. Walking in that field, or any of the many others like it ahead, we'd be instantly visible to the first man or men to come over the hill's crest or step out from the underbrush below it. Yet to continue walking this path could only mean stepping into the arms of the men who would be prowling it, and every other, within minutes.

Holding Becky by the arm, I stopped and just stood in a panic of confused indecision, trying to make one of two hopeless choices. If it were only dark, we wouldn't be limited by the paths; the area of search would be expanded, and – But it was bright daylight, foggy still, but with wide patches of sunlight. Full darkness was several hours off. I turned suddenly, leading Becky off the path, climbing the hill to the beginning edge of the exposed, momentarily sunlit field of weeds that curved on up to the crest. Stooping, my arms moving fast, I began yanking great handfuls of weeds loose, snapping their brittle stems, gesturing violently at Becky to do the same. Then we had, each of us, a huge armload of weeds, like sheaves of wheat. "Walk ahead," I said to Becky, "out in the field," and without questioning me, she moved, her body pushing through the weeds, leaving a wide swath, a trail of bent weeds behind her. I followed, walking sideways, sidling along, and with my free arm moving in a steady, scythe-like sweep, I caught up the weeds we'd bent down, straightening them again as I walked. I moved fast, working with desperate carefulness, sweeping the bent weeds to an exactly upright position again. When we'd gone twenty yards, I could see no visible trail behind us.

In the centre of the field now, I had Becky lie down, then I lay down beside her. I scattered her armload of yellow weeds over us, covering us completely; then, as well as I could, I straightened the weeds around us, then set those I carried upright on top of us, spreading them apart till they stood – leaning, sagging in places – but held up by each other in more or less vertical position.

Exactly what it would look like to an observer on the edge of the field, I didn't know; but with no trail leading to it, I could only hope it wouldn't be particularly noticeable. Lying in the middle of a wide and exposed field, apparently searchable at a glance, was, I hoped, a hiding place that wouldn't occur to whoever passed it; a hunter, I told myself, expects the fugitive to run.

Several minutes passed; then – very close, it seemed – I heard a voice call out. I couldn't understand it, quite, but it seemed to be a name – Al, maybe – and another voice answered, "Yeah." I heard the crackling of underbrush; it continued for a time, then faded away, and I reached carefully for Becky's hand and held it tight.