THE CRAWLERS
HE built, and the
more he built the more he enjoyed building. Hot sunlight filtered down;
summer breezes stirred around him as he toiled joyfully. When he ran out
of material he paused awhile and rested. His edifice wasn't large; it
was more a practice model than the real thing. One part of his brain
told him that, and another part thrilled with excitement and pride. It
was at least large enough to enter. He crawled down the entrance tunnel
and curled up inside in a contented heap.
Through a rent in
the roof a few bits of dirt rained down. He oozed binder fluid and
reinforced the weak place. In his edifice the air was clean and cool,
almost dust-free. He crawled over the inner walls one last time, leaving
a quick-drying coat of binder over everything. What else was needed? He
was beginning to feel drowsy; in a moment he'd be asleep.
He thought about
it, and then he extended a part of himself up through the still-open
entrance. That part watched and 1istened warily, as the rest of him
dozed off in a grateful slumber. He was peaceful and content, conscious
that from a distance all that was visible was a light mound of dark
clay. No one would notice it: no one would guess what lay beneath.
And if they did
notice, he had methods of taking care of them. The farmer halted his
ancient Ford truck with a grinding shriek of brakes. He cursed and
backed up a few yards. "'There's one. Hop down and take a look at it.
Watch the cars-they go pretty fast along here."
Ernest Gretry
pushed the cabin door open and stepped down gingerly onto the hot
mid-morning pavement. The air smelled of sun and drying grass. Insects
buzzed around him as he advanced cautiously up the highway, hands in his
trouser pockets, lean body bent forward. He stopped and peered down.
The thing was well
mashed. Wheel marks crossed it in four places and its internal organs
had ruptured and burst through. The whole thing was snail-like, a gummy
elongated tube with sense organs at one end and a confusing mass of
protoplasmic extensions at the other.
What got him most
was the face. For a time he couldn't look directly at it: he had to
contemplate the road, the hills, the big cedar trees, anything else.
There was something in the little dead eyes, a glint that was rapidly
fading. They weren't the lusterless eyes of a fish, stupid and vacant.
The life he had seen haunted him, and he had got only a brief glimpse,
as the truck bore down on it and crushed it flat.
"They crawl across
here every Once in awhile," the farmer said quietly. "Sometimes they get
as far as town. The first one I saw was heading down the middle of Grant
Street, about fifty yards an hour. They go pretty slow. Some of the
teenage kids like to run them down. Personally I avoid them, if I see
them."
Gretry kicked
aimlessly at the thing. He wondered vaguely how many more there were in
the bushes and hills. He could see farmhouses set back from the road,
white gleaming squares in the hot Tennessee sun. Horses and sleeping
cattle. Dirty chickens scratching. A sleepy, peaceful countryside,
basking in the late-summer sun.
"Where's the
radiation lab from here?" he asked.
The farmer
indicated. "Over there, on the other side of those hills. You want to
collect the remains? They have one down at the Standard Oil Station in a
big tank. Dead, of course. They filled the tank with kerosene to try to
preserve it. That one's in pretty good shape, compared to this. Joe
Jackson cracked its head with a two-by-four. He found it crawling across
his property one night."
Gretry got shakily
back into the truck. His stomach turned over and he had to take some
long deep breaths. "I didn't realize there were so many. When they sent
me out from Washington they just said a few had been seen."
"There's been
quite a lot." The fanner started up the truck and carefully skirted the
remains on the pavement. "We're trying to get used to them, but we
can't. It's not nice stuff. A lot of people are moving away. You can
feel it in the air, a sort of heaviness. We've got this problem and we
have to meet it." He increased speed, leathery hands tight around the
wheel. "It seems like there's more of them born all the time, and almost
no normal children."
***
Back in town,
Gretry called Freeman long distance from the booth in the shabby hotel
lobby. "We'll have to do something. They're all around here. I'm going
out at three to see a colony of them. The fellow who runs the taxi stand
knows where they are. He says there must be eleven Or twelve of them
together."
"How do the people
around there feel?"
"How the hell do
you expect? They think it's God's Judgment. Maybe they're right."
"We should have
made them move earlier. We should have cleaned out the whole area for
miles around. Then we wouldn't have this problem." Freeman paused. "What
do you suggest?"
"That island we
took over for the H-bomb tests."
"It's a damn big
island. There was a whole group of natives we moved off and resettled."
Freeman choked. "Good God, are there that many of them?"
"The staunch
citizens exaggerate, of course. But I get the impression there must be
at least a hundred."
Freeman was silent
a long time. "I didn't realize," he said finally. "I'll have to put it
through channels, of course. We were going to make further tests On that
island. But I see your point."
"I'd like it,"
Gretry said. 'This is a bad business. We can't have things like this.
People can't live with this sort of thing. You ought to drop out here
and take a look. It's something to remember."
"I'll-see what I
can do. I'll talk to Gordon. Give me a ring tomorrow."
Gretry hung up and
wandered out of the drab, dirty lobby onto the blazing sidewalk. Dingy
stores and parked cars. A few old men hunched over on steps and sagging
cane-bottom chairs. He lit a cigarette and shakily examined his watch.
It was almost three. He moved slowly toward the taxi stand.
The town was dead.
Nothing stirred. Only the motionless old men in their chairs and the
out-of-town cars zipping along the highway. Dust and silence layover
everything. Age, like a gray ;spider web, covered all the houses and
stores. No laughter. No sounds of any kind.
No children
playing games.
A dirty blue
taxicab pulled up silently beside him. "Okay, mister," the driver said,
a rat-faced man in his thirties, toothpick hanging between his crooked
teeth. He kicked the bent door open. "Here we go."
"How far is it?"
Gretry asked, as he climbed. in.
"Just outside
town." The cab picked up speed and hurtled noisily along, bouncing and
bucking. "You from the FBI?"
"No."'
"I thought from
your suit and hat you was." The driver eyed him curiously. "How'd you
hear about the crawlers?"
"From the
radiation lab."
"Yeah, it's that
hot stuff they got there." The driver turned off the highway and onto a
dirt side-road. "It's up here on the Higgins farm. The crazy damn things
picked the bottom of old lady Higgins' place to build their houses."
"Houses?"
"They've got some
sort of city, down under the ground. You'll see it-the entrances, at
least. They work together, building and fussing." He twisted the cab off
the dirt road, between two huge cedars, over a bumpy field, and finally
brought it to rest at the edge of a rocky gully. "This is it."
It was the first
time Gretry had seen one alive.
He got out of the
cab awkwardly, his legs numb and unresponding. The things were moving
slowly between the woods and the entrance tunnels in the center of the
clearing. They were bringing building material, clay and weeds. Smearing
it with some kind of ooze and plastering it in rough forms which were
carefully carried beneath the ground.
The crawlers were two or three
feet long; some were older than others, darker and heavier. All of them
moved with agonizing slowness, a silent flowing motion across the
sun-baked ground. They were soft, shell-less, and looked harmless.
Again, he was
fascinated and hypnotized by their faces. The weird parody of human
faces. Wizened little baby features, tiny shoebutton eyes, slit of a
mouth, twisted ears, and a few wisps of damp hair. What should have been
arms were elongated pseudopods that grew and receded like soft dough.
The crawlers seemed incredibly flexible; they extended themselves, then
snapped their bodies back, as their feelers made contact with
obstructions. They paid no attention to the two men; they didn't even
seem to be aware of them.
"How dangerous are
they?" Gretry asked finally.
"Well, they have
some sort of stinger. They stung a dog, I know. Stung him pretty hard.
He swelled up and his tongue turned black. He had fits and got hard. He
died." The driver added half-apologetically, "He was nosing around.
Interrupting their building. They work all the time. Keep busy."
"Is this most of
them?"
"I guess so. They
sort of congregate here. I see them crawling this way:' The driver
gestured. "See, they're born in different places. One or two at each
farmhouse, near the radiation lab."
"Which way is Mrs.
Higgins' farmhouse?" Gretry asked.
"Up there. See it
through the trees? You want to-"
"I'll be right
back," Gretry said, and started abruptly off. "Wait here."
***
The old woman was
watering the dark red geraniums that grew around her front porch, when
Gretry approached. She looked up quickly, her ancient wrinkled face
shrewd and suspicious, the sprinkling can poised like a blunt
instrument.
"Afternoon,"
Gretry said. He tipped his hat and showed her his credentials. "I'm
investigating the-crawlers. At the edge of your land."
"Why?" Her voice
was empty, bleak, cold. Like her withered face and body.
"We're trying to
find a solution." Gretry felt awkward and uncertain. "It's been
suggested we transport them away from here, out to an island in the Gulf
of Mexico. They shouldn't be here. It's too hard on people. It isn't
right," he finished lamely.
"No. It isn't
right."
"And we've already
begun moving everybody away from the radiation lab. I guess we should
have done that a long time ago."
The old woman's
eyes flashed. "You people and your machines. See what you've done!" She
jabbed a bony finger at him excitedly. "Now you have to fix it. You have
to do something."
"We're taking them
away to an island as soon as possible. But there's one problem. We have
to be sure about the parents. They have complete custody of them. We
can't just-" He broke off futilely. "How do they feel? Would they let us
cart up their children, and haul them away?"
Mrs. Higgins
turned and headed into the house. Uncertainly, Gretry followed her
through the dim, dusty interior rooms. Musty chambers full of oil lamps
and faded pictures, ancient sofas and tables. She led him through a
great kitchen of immense cast iron pots and pans down a flight of wooden
stairs to a painted white door. She knocked sharply.
Flurry and
movement on the other side. The sound of people whispering and moving
things hurriedly.
"Open the door,"
Mrs. Higgins commanded. After an agonized pause the door opened slowly.
Mrs. Higgins pushed it wide and motioned Gretry to follow her.
In the room stood
a young man and woman. They backed away as Gretry came in. The woman
hugged a long pasteboard carton which the man had suddenly passed to
her.
"Who are you?" the
man demanded. He abruptly grabbed the carton back; his wife's small
hands were trembling under the shifting weight. Gretry was seeing the
parents of one of them. The young woman, brown-haired, not more than
nineteen. Slender and small in a cheap green dress, a full-breasted girl
with dark frightened eyes. The man was bigger and stronger, a handsome
dark youth with massive arms and competent hands gripping the pasteboard
carton tight.
Gretry couldn't
stop looking at the carton. Holes had been punched in the top; the
carton moved slightly in the man's arms, and there was a faint shudder
that rocked it back and forth.
"This man," Mrs.
Higgins said to the husband, ''has come to take it away."
The couple
accepted the information in silence. The husband made no move except to
get a better grip on the box.
"He's going to
take all of them to an island," Mrs. Higgins said. "It's all arranged.
Nobody'll harm them. They'll be safe and they can do what they want.
Build and crawl around where nobody has to look at them."
The young woman
nodded blankly.
"Give it to him,"
Mrs. Higgins ordered impatiently. "Give him the box and let's get it
over with once and for all."
After a moment the
husband carried the box over to a table and put it down. "You know
anything about them?" he demanded. "You know what they eat?"
"We-" Gretry began
helplessly.
"They eat leaves.
Nothing but leaves and grass. We've been bringing in the smallest leaves
we could find."
"It's only a month
old," the young woman said huskily. "It already wants to go down with
the others, but we keep it here. We don't want it to go down there. Not
yet. Later, maybe, we thought. We didn't know what to do. We weren't
sure." Her large dark eyes flashed briefly in mute appeal, then faded
out again. "It's a hard thing to know."
The husband untied
the heavy brown twine and took the lid from the carton. "Here. You can
see it."
***
It was the
smallest Gretry had seen. Pale and soft, less than a foot long. It had
crawled in a comer of the box and was curled up in a messy web of chewed
leaves and some kind of wax. A translucent covering spun clumsily around
it, behind which it lay asleep. It paid no attention to them; they were
out of its scope. Gretry felt a strange helpless horror rise up in him.
He moved away, and the young man replaced the lid.
"We knew what it
was," he said hoarsely. "Right away, as soon as it was born. Up the
road, there was one we saw. One of the first. Bob Douglas made us come
over and look at it. It was his and Julie's. That was before they
started coming down and collecting together by the gully."
"'Tell him what
happened," Mrs. Higgins said.
"Douglas mashed
its head with a rock. Then he poured gasoline on it and burned it up.
Last week he and Julie packed and left."
"Have many of them
been destroyed?" Gretry managed to ask.
"A few. A lot of
men, they see something like that and they go sort of wild. You can't
blame them." The man's dark eyes darted hopelessly. "I guess I almost
did the same thing."
"Maybe we should
have," his wife murmured. "Maybe I should have let you."
Gretry picked up
the pasteboard carton and moved toward the door. ''We'll get this done
as quickly as we can. The trucks are on the way. It should be over in a
day."
"Thank God for
that," Mrs. Higgins exclaimed in a clipped, emotionless voice. She held
the door open, and Gretry carried the carton through the dim, musty
house, down the sagging front steps and out into the blazing
mid-afternoon sun.
Mrs. Higgins
stopped at the red geraniums and picked up her sprinkling can. ''When
you take them, take them all. Don't leave any behind. Understand?"
"Yes," Gretry
muttered.
"Keep some of your
men and trucks here. Keep checking. Don't let any stay where we have to
look at them."
''When we get the
people near the radiation lab moved away there shouldn't be any more
of-"
He broke off. Mrs.
Higgins had turned her back and was watering the geraniums. Bees buzzed
around her. The Bowers swayed dully with the hot wind. The old woman
passed on around the side of the house, still watering and stooping
over. In a few moments she was gone and Gretry was alone with his
carton.
Embarrassed and
ashamed, he carried the carton slowly down the hill and across the field
to the ravine. The taxi driver was standing by his cab, smoking a
cigarette and waiting patiently for him. The colony of crawlers was
working steadily on its city. There were streets and passages. On some
of the entrance-mounds he noticed intricate scratches that might have
been words. Some of the crawlers were grouped together, setting up
involved things he couldn't make out.
"Let's go," he
said wearily to the driver.
The driver grinned
and yanked the back door. "I left the meter running," he said, his ratty
face bright with craft. "You guys all have a swindle sheet-you don't
care."
***
He built, and the
more he built the more he enjoyed building. By now the city was over
eighty miles deep and five miles in diameter. The whole island had been
converted into a single vast city that honeycombed and interlaced
farther each day. Eventually it would reach the land beyond the ocean;
then the work would begin in earnest.
To his right, a
thousand methodically moving companions toiled silently on the
structural support that was to reinforce the main breeding chamber. As
soon as it was in place everyone would feel better; the mothers were
just now beginning to bring forth their young.
That was what
worried him. It took some of the joy out of building. He had seen one of
the first born-before it was quickly hidden and the thing hushed up. A
brief glimpse of a bulbous head, foreshortened body, incredibly rigid
extensions. It shrieked and wailed and turned red in the face. Gurgled
and plucked aimlessly and kicked its feet.
In horror,
somebody had finally mashed the throwback with a rock. And hoped there
wouldn't be any more.
_______________
The Crawlers: Copyright © 1954 by Greenleaf Publications, Inc. From
Imagination, July 1954
