Читать книгу Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls - Mark McLaughlin - Страница 9

THE FINAL BROADCAST OF SUGARVILLE’S CHANNEL 7 ACTION NEWS

With a sweeping rush of majestic orchestra music, bright lights came up on the set of Sugarville’s CHANNEL 7 ACTION NEWS, 10 p.m. broadcast. The name of the program was emblazoned on the back wall of the set in bold italic, sans serif, purple letters edged with gold. Under the letters was a large monitor showing random scenes from the Sugarville metro area.

The two anchorpeople chatted at the sky-blue news desk, their tanned faces set in expressions of cheery attentiveness. As the music faded, they turned simultaneously toward the camera.

“Good evening, and welcome to Channel 7 Action News at ten! I’m Brett Bellamy!” The anchorman had green eyes, a square jaw and dark-brown hair with golden highlights.

“And I’m Jessica Michaels!” The anchorwoman had bright blue eyes, an almond-shaped face and shoulder-length, moussed black hair with a long, ash-blonde forelock. “Tonight’s top story—Sugarville find itself locked in the icy grip of a cold snap!”

The expressions of the anchorpeople turned deadly serious as the theme music blared, while on the monitor, a navy-blue and icy cyan logo sprang up that read, COLD SNAP! SUGARVILLE IN PERIL.

“So far, we’ve been enjoying a fairly mild October,” Brett said, “with a daytime high of sixty-eight degrees, and a nighttime low of forty-seven. But this evening at 9 p.m., Sugarville citizens trembled as the mercury dropped to forty-four degrees! But that wasn’t the worst. Brisk winds combined with that frigid temperature to create a wind-chill factor of forty-one degrees. And since that time, the temperature has dropped even further—to an arctic thirty-nine degrees!”

“Bone-chilling!” said Jessica, brushing her forelock, which was drooping a bit, away from her cheek. “We now have a live report from Chad Yamata, who is out in the community in our Channel 7 Action News Van, experiencing this sudden change in the weather firsthand.”

On the monitor, a handsome Asian man in a suede jacket appeared. He wore blue contact lenses and his black hair was frosted golden-brown at the temples. At his side was a middle-aged, heavyset woman in an orange parka. “Thanks, Jessica!” Chad said. Curls of mist lightly billowed from his lips. “I’m on Lincoln Street, talking with Emily Randolph, who tells us her puppy, Mindy, ran out of the house when one of her children left the door open after coming home from a friend’s house. The puppy is now lost—outside—in these icy temperatures.”

“Outside!” Jessica repeated with dread.

“Mrs. Randolph,” Chad said, “what is going through your mind right now, knowing that little Mindy is somewhere out in the cold, alone and helpless?”

“It’s not that cold,” Emily Randolph said. “I mean, it’s no big deal. Why are you even here? Geez, this must really be a slow news day! You’re stirring up a big panic over nothing.”

“Have you printed up posters of the missing puppy?” Chad asked earnestly, his face a study in polite concern. “How much are you willing to offer as a reward?”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Give me a break! It’s not even cold enough to freeze an ice cube out here. Mindy will be okay.”

“Maybe so,” Chad said. “But what if it suddenly gets even colder? In blustery conditions, every second counts!”

The housewife shrugged. “I suppose I could run some posters off on my laser printer, and put them around the neighborhood first thing in the morning. It’s a black-and-white printer, though. The posters don’t have to be color, do they?”

Chad raised an eyebrow. “A color printout would be much more helpful in ensuring positive identification of the missing family member.”

“Wha—? It’s not like one of my kids is lost. It’s just a puppy.” The woman sighed. “Well, my boy Skip has a scanner on his computer. I suppose I could scan in a color picture, take it down to Kinko’s on a disk and—”

Suddenly a boy’s voice rang out off-camera. “Hey, Mom! I found Mindy! She was in the garage.”

“And there you have it!” Chad said. “Crisis averted here on Lincoln Street. A beloved puppy has been reunited with her human family!”

Jessica breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close call.”

Chad nodded. “Maybe a little too close. Back to you, Brett and Jessica!”

“Thanks, Chad.” Brett smiled for the camera. “We’ll be right back. When we return—more on Cold Snap! Sugarville in Peril!”

It was time for a commercial break.

A potbellied man shoveled snow from the sidewalk in front of his house. He waved to his wife, watching him from the living room window. Suddenly he clutched his chest and collapsed.

“Don’t let this happen to you!” boomed a deep male voice. “Clearing the walk can be a breeze with a Winter-Pro Sno-Blower, on sale now at Munsen Hardware.”

The image of Munsen Hardware filled the screen. By the door stood the owner, Harold Munsen, who said, with a cheery nasal twang, “Serving Sugarville for twenty-seven years! We’re at the intersection of Lombard Street and Culpepper Avenue, with plenty of free parking. And as always, free balloons for the kids!”

The screen returned to the sidewalk, where the wife was proudly pushing a Winter-Pro Sno-Blower as the paramedics took away her dead husband.

In the next commercial, a thin, pale man in a black suit blew his icy breath over an old woman’s hands as she tried to unlock her ice-encrusted front door on a winter’s day. The man’s face glittered like a fresh snowball. The woman winced with pain.

“When winter’s numbing gusts make your arthritis flare up, take action!” purred a throaty but still very feminine voice. “Soooothe the pain with deep penetrating Campho-Supreme.”

The old woman pulled an orange tube out of her purse and rubbed some pink cream onto her hands.

Three chorus girls in orange sequined gowns then danced into view. The old woman finally opened the door of the house and the three dancers led the pale man inside. Suddenly the girls and the man, minus their eveningwear, are seen soaking in a large hot tub. Behind them, the old woman happily opened pickle jars and broke walnuts with a nutcracker, delighted by her newfound manual dexterity.

The pale man sighed with pleasure as he slowly melted into the tub. Apparently his flesh and bones were made of packed snow.

“Campho-Supreme!” purred the voice. “Available at all HealthPal Drugstores!”

With a blare of dramatic music, the news returned.

“We’ve just learned,” Brett said, “that the temperature has dropped another two degrees.”

On the monitor, the logo popped up again—COLD SNAP! SUGARVILLE IN PERIL.

A crew member moussed Jessica’s hair a bit higher during the commercial. “Let’s look in on Channel 7 Action News meteorologist Jason Kincaid,” the anchorwoman said. “Jason, are these temperatures just going to keep dropping and dropping until Sugarville reaches absolute zero?”

“Ummm…” Jason sported red hair, a golden moustache and a black goatee. The weather set was actually located less than forty feet to the right of the news desk. “That sort of thing very rarely happens, Jessica. In fact, it never happens.”

He then turned to the huge map of the metro area and outlying communities behind him. Sugarville was represented by red outlines around various districts of the city. Jason glanced at an off-camera monitor to check the wall behind him, since from his perspective, it was only a flat blue-screen surface.

Turbulent white and gray swirls appeared to be closing in on the city. Within one of the larger swirls, a bizarre, multi-limbed figure writhed fitfully. “We have an—unusual—atmospheric condition on our hands tonight, Jessica.”

“Is this the start of a new Ice Age?” she suggested.

“Ordinarily,” Jason said, “I would tell you…no. That’s really unlikely. But—” He gestured toward the writhing figure. “With this squirmy, spidery thing here, which seems to be some kind of living creature—I’m not sure what to tell you.”

“So Jason,” Brett said, “this spidery-looking thingamajig we’re looking at… That’s not normal?”

The weatherman cocked his head to one side. “Earth to Brett! No, it is not normal. Calling it unusual would even be a gigantic understatement. This is way beyond weird. This is like some kind of alien freakshow from space-Hell. It’s horrible. Frightening. And it’s happening to us.”

“Did you say ‘alien’?” Jessica said, her eyes bright with the promise of a sensational story.

Brett nodded. “He did indeed say ‘alien’. And I think the question on everybody’s mind right now is: What does this alien being want, and why is it trying to freeze Sugarville?”

Suddenly a new logo appeared on the monitor—a picture of the multi-limbed shape, surrounded by the blood-red, dripping words ALIEN MENACE! SUGARVILLE IN TERROR.

Brett’s forehead furrowed with concern. “Jason, do you think there’s any connection between this alien and the Martians in the classic science-fiction movie, War of the Worlds?”

On the weather map, the writhing figure began to grow and swirl, swirl and grow, until it was three times bigger than before. Jason saw this on the off-camera monitor. Alarmed, he studied yet another monitor to check the latest weather readings. “Oh my God!” he shouted. “The temperature has just dropped thirty degrees! I can’t believe you people. Some kind of freaky space-spider is freezing Sugarville and you’re all just as flaky as ever, acting like this is some kind of movie, logos and all! Well, I quit! I’m leaving before this stupid town turns into one big idiot iceberg!”

So saying, he snatched off his chip-on microphone, threw it to the floor and ran out of the studio.

Jessica and Brett gazed at the weather map, enthralled by the unearthly image that stirred there. The grotesque silhouette had at least a dozen twitching, multi-jointed legs, as well as numerous clusters of groping tentacles.

“We have another report from Chad Yamata and the Channel 7 Action News Van,” Brett said at last. “Chad, what’s happening on the streets of Sugarville?”

On the monitor, Chad had his coat wrapped tightly around him. The wind had whipped his moussed hair into a frenzied bird’s-nest. Behind him, the sky had the same color scheme as a three-day-old bruise—mostly deep purple, but lightly tinted with pus-yellow and a nauseating shade of green.

“This cold snap has really taken a sudden turn for the worse,” Chad said. “It’s as cold as a deep-freeze out here. The wind has gone wild—and then there’s that thing up there…” He pointed up, and the camera-man diligently aimed above their heads.

And there it was.

The creature from the weather screen.

Except here it wasn’t a mere silhouette.

Here it was a loathsome abnormality with flesh like ice-blue alligator hide. Crystalline fibers grew in bristly tufts all over its body. Muscular tentacles sprouted from the joints of its flexing legs. The monster stared down at Sugarville with six clusters of blood-red eyes, like enormous cocktail rings loaded with rubies as big as watermelons.

But the creature’s most horrific feature by far was its mouth. Its gnashing, vertical maw was loaded with saber-like teeth, with two prominent tusks in the center of each sideways jaw. The mouth was surrounded by longer groupings of the crystalline bristles, and judging from the direction in which they moved in the wind, it looked like the creature was sucking in air rapidly as it descended upon the city.

On the roof of the Sugarville Bank Building, a man in a trench coat took pictures of the monster. Suddenly he was caught up in the wind that rushed into that insatiable mouth. He was carried aloft, and the grinding sabers slashed him into thin red ribbons in mere seconds.

“Good night, Sugarville,” Chad said. “We’re getting the hell out of here! Terry, let’s roll!”

“You bet your ass,” a gruff voice said as the camera was clicked off.

Brett gnawed his lower lip lightly, fretfully. A minute passed. Then at last he turned toward the studio camera. “And so an unspeakable alien menace threatens Sugarville.” He then moved to face Jessica—

But Jessica wasn’t there.

He reached over to her chair and picked up a piece of paper. “Jessica left a note. It says, ‘Brett, I’m going to get my kid and then we’re heading south. You and the crew had better take off, too. Save yourself. Love, Jess.’”

Brett stood up and looked out past the cameras.

“Well,” he said, resuming his seat, “I see the crew has already left. Looks like it’s just me, this camera and whoever happens to be watching. Wow.”

He stared straight ahead, thinking.

“My wife left me two years ago,” he said. “We never had any kids. I don’t have any pets. All my relatives hate me—personal matter, no need to get into that. So I guess I’ll…stay. I don’t have anywhere else to go.

“Besides, this TV station is probably a pretty safe place to be. It’s on the outskirts of town, so maybe that spider-thing won’t notice it.

“It looked like that creature was sucking in air… Maybe it’s somehow sucking in all the heat. But then, I’m no scientist, so what do I know? The thing seemed to be made of some kind of icy stuff, so that could also be part of the whole temperature deal.

“If there’s anybody watching, I just want you to know I’ve had a lot of fun being your news guy. When I was little, my family always called me stupid—my wife used to call me ‘the talking head’ and I know she didn’t mean that in any kind of nice way. But being a news guy, that has always made me feel smart. Really, I had mostly good grades in high school and college. I’m not an idiot.”

He pulled a small earphone out of his left ear. “I mean, sure, I have this little whatchamacallit so they can tell me what to say if there’s a problem. I guess Ashley must’ve left, too. That’s the copywriter at the other end of this thing. She was the one who came up with that War of the Worlds line. That was pretty stupid. I mean, that movie was all made-up stuff, right? That Ashley! She could have at least said goodbye.”

He threw the earphone across the studio. Then he simply sat and listened.

Outside the building, the wind—and perhaps something else—roared like thunder. Then the ground began to shake.

“Listen to that!” Brett cried. “That big space-monster must be coming this way! It’s so fucking huge—maybe it’s already destroyed Sugarville. Something that big, it wouldn’t take long!

“You know what? I’m just going to stay right here. If it gets me—it gets me. As simple as that. I’m no technical wizard, but the power is still on, so this place must have some kind of back-up generator. And Camera One’s little red light is still on! I bet somewhere in the building, this broadcast is being recorded. Maybe my death can be a big contribution to the news world, and science, and humanity in general. Folks can watch that thing eat me close-up, and then maybe in the process, they’ll learn something really important about the monster…something that will help Earth to defeat it.”

A tear rolled down his cheek. “I really do care what happens to people. I’m not just a talking head. And by the way, my name’s not Brett Bellamy. It’s Harry Peters. Yeah, go ahead, make fun of my name. I don’t care. Make fun of some poor guy who’s probably going to be dead in about two minutes.”

At that moment, an enormous ice-blue cylinder—a single leg of the creature—burst through the wall and then jerked quickly upward, flinging off the entire roof.

Harry Peters looked up in utter horror at a mouth filled with hundreds of enormous teeth, streaked with bright blood and dark gore. The larger tusks gnashed hungrily.

Harry turned with a crazed smile toward the camera.

“Are you watching? Are you? Watch, you fuckers! Watch this! Watch! Watch!”

The nightmare mouth began to descend.

Then the creature stepped inside the building to steady itself.

An enormous, razor-clawed foot landed right on Camera One, smashing it to bits.