The Influence Read online

  This was scary.

  In rural areas such as the desert surrounding Magdalena, outbreaks weren’t usually so sudden or spread out, and already he was wracking his brain trying to determine what it could possibly be. In the back of his mind was the nagging specter of a man-made pathogen, an airborne biological weapon that had escaped from some secret lab.

  Even though it was New Year’s and he was supposed to have the day off, the veterinarian promised to come out to Holt’s ranch as soon as possible, and he quickly cross-referenced the symptoms that had been described to him, using both the textbooks on hand and several dedicated websites. He found nothing promising, and by the time he got to the first ranch—Cal Denholm’s—Jose was worried enough that he put on a surgical mask.

  The six steers were lying on the dirt, bodies stretched out and arranged in the shape of a rectangle, two forming one long side, two another, and one each creating the short sides connecting them. Denholm had said nothing of this, and the sight, while bizarre, eased Jose’s mind. The animals had been deliberately placed—they certainly could not have died and fallen this way by accident—and that meant human involvement. Poison, most likely. In his mind, the chance of an airborne pathogen diminished greatly.

  More confident now, he strode over to the bodies and bent down to examine one. The eyes, he saw, were milky and occluded. He was about to ask Denholm if he’d noticed that before the animal died, or if he’d noted anything unusual in the steers’ appearance or behavior, when sudden movement near the lower portion of the steer’s face startled him and made him yank his hand back.

  From the cow’s mouth slithered a creature unlike any he had ever seen, a terrible wormlike organism that thrashed in crazed death spasms as soon as it emerged fully into the air. Initially a sickly greenish color, it quickly dissolved into a gray gluelike mess on the dirt.

  “What the fuck is that?” Denholm shouted, stepping back and away.

  The other animals started moving. Their legs trembled and jerked, their heavy bodies shuddered, and then suddenly those wormlike creatures were everywhere, wiggling out from both ends of each steer, thrashing about as they hit the air, dissolving into slime once they were fully exposed.

  The rancher and his cowhands watched from afar, having backed up several yards. Jose, too, moved away. On an intellectual level, he was fascinated by what he saw, but on a human level, he was repulsed and frightened in a way he had not been since childhood. Part of him wanted to stand here and observe, while part of him wanted to run away as fast as his feet would carry him.

  Intellect overrode emotion, and he remained in place, watching, until it was all over. From the emergence of the first creature to the dissolving of the last, not more than three minutes had elapsed. It was a frighteningly quick episode, and when it was done, the dirt was wet with sticky gray goo and the six steers were little more than hide-covered skeletons. Whatever those wormlike organisms had been, they’d hollowed out the animals’ insides.

  In his bag, Jose had tongue depressors and petri dishes, and he used one of the wooden sticks to scoop up some of the gluelike residue from the dirt. He had no illusions that he would be able to identify its origin, but he wanted to examine the substance anyway. He’d also send a sample off to the lab he used in Tucson. They should be able to provide him with a detailed chemical analysis, although he had absolutely no idea what that would show.

  “What the hell happened?” Denholm said. They were the first words any of them had spoken since the dead steers had started convulsing.

  Jose usually tried to give comfort to the owners of his patients, to provide them with hope even when he was unsure of an outcome. But this time, he was forced to be honest. “I have no idea,” he said.

  It was the same at the other three ranches, though in each case he arrived too late to see what happened to the animals’ corpses. Strangely, descriptions of the witnesses were different at each location. At Joe Portis’ place, yellow spiderlike creatures had spilled from the cattle’s mouths and anuses, again dissolving once encountering air. Jack Judd’s cows expelled multi-legged things that vaguely resembled centipedes, and at Cameron Holt’s, bright red moths flew out of the animals, falling instantly to earth as sticky gray gloop.

  Jose took samples at each location.

  From the positioning of the bodies, he still believed that someone was involved, that a person had deliberately arranged the cattle into specific shapes, but he had to admit that he had no clue as to how or why. And the presence of those creatures pretty much threw his poison theory out the window.

  He had never encountered anything like this.

  He was not sure anyone had.

  And as he headed back to his office, he kept glancing at the seat next to him, where his petri dishes sat in his black bag, to make sure that some new monster didn’t emerge from the collected slime to attack and kill him as he drove.

  EIGHT

  Having fallen asleep in front of the television and then gone to bed early the night before, Ross awoke with the dawn on New Year’s day. He’d been planning to make himself french toast but found that he didn’t feel like going to such effort. Instead, he heated water for oatmeal in the microwave, poured himself some orange juice and turned on the TV. It was what he usually did on this morning—eating breakfast while watching the Rose Parade—but something seemed wrong today. He felt listless and low. Even the parade floats looked less colorful than usual. Outside, the sky was leaden, high clouds blocking out both the sun and any trace of blue, the monochromatic grayness mirroring his mood.

  The feeling did not dissipate as he went out to feed the chickens and collect eggs. The hens, too, seemed unusually subdued, making very little noise and pecking at their food in a desultory fashion. There were probably half as many eggs to be gathered as on a usual day and when he took them over to the house, the doors and drapes were closed. Ross left the egg basket on the back porch then returned to the guest house. He thought he might go online and do…something. But his laptop was unable to access the internet. That was probably to be expected so far from civilization, but he had had no problem until now, and, on impulse, he tried to access the internet using his cell phone.

  The message No Signal appeared on his screen.

  The TV continued to come in fine—all channels, as far as he could tell after a quick check—and he was able to use the land line and call his parents to wish them a happy New Year’s, so there was probably nothing major wrong, only a temporary glitch. But building on his already gloomy mood, the lack of internet access bothered him, and he felt distracted and unsettled as he played previously loaded games on his computer for the rest of the morning until Lita invited him over to the house for lunch.

  ****

  Ross could tell something was wrong when Lita called around dinnertime. There was a strange hitch in her voice, and when he walked over to their house (the Big House, as he’d started to think of it), both she and Dave were seated on the couch in the living room. Usually, around this hour of the evening, Lita would have been cooking, but there was no smell of food from the kitchen, and neither of them looked as though they had any desire to eat. Indeed, Dave seemed stunned, almost in shock as he stared blankly at the coffee table in front of him, nodding listlessly in response to Ross’ greeting.

  Ross stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do or say, uncertain as to what was going on, and it was Lita who filled him in, taking him into the kitchen, away from Dave. “We got a call about a half hour ago,” she said quietly. “Dave’s parents were killed in a car crash.”

  “Oh my God.”

  She nodded. “Some drunk conventioner from Des Moines driving a rented SUV. Head-on collision. Neither of them made it to the hospital.”

  He didn’t know what to say. What could a person say at a time like this that wasn’t trite and ineffectual?

  A bitterness crept into Lita’s voice. “The drunk driver, of course, survived.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Ross said. “Is th
ere anything you want…I mean, what can I…?”

  “We have to go to Las Vegas. We could be gone for awhile,” she said. “A week, maybe. I don’t know. Do you think—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he assured her. “I’ll take care of everything. I’ll even sell at the market if you need me to.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll have enough to sell, based on what you brought in today.” She touched his shoulder, spoke softly. “Thank you, though. I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what we’d do if you weren’t.”

  “When are you leaving?” Ross asked.

  “In the morning. I’m driving, but I want him to get some sleep. I’m worried about him.”

  Ross nodded.

  “I was wondering…” She seemed hesitant.

  “What?”

  “If we could borrow your car. The truck’s been making some weird noises, and another long trip might—”

  Ross cut her off. “Of course,” he said.

  She threw her arms around his shoulders, giving him a grateful hug. “Thank you.”

  They returned to the living room. Dave seemed slightly more alert, though definitely not his normal self. He looked up at them as they entered. “She told you?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry…” That sounded lame. “For your loss.” That sounded lamer. He stood there awkwardly, not saying anything more, hoping that silence would be more effective at expressing his feelings than his words had been.

  Dave looked at Lita. “Is it all right?”

  “Yes,” she assured him. “He’ll take care of everything.”

  “We’re sorry to do this to you,” Dave apologized.

  Ross waved him away. “You have more important things to deal with right now. In fact, I’m going to leave you two alone, so you can…do…whatever you need to do.” Stupid! He glanced over at Lita. “Unless you need me for something.”

  “No, you go on.” She tried to smile, but just looked sad and tired.

  “Okay, then. I’m there if you need me, though. Just…give me a call.” He left before he embarrassed himself, and after making a sandwich for dinner, he watched the national news, turned off the TV, checked his email, turned on the TV, tried to play a video game, walked restlessly onto the porch, then settled down to watch a Doctor Who DVD. The lights went off in the Big House around nine, and he waited a half-hour to make sure he wasn’t needed before going to bed himself.

  Exhausted by the stress of the day, he fell asleep instantly.

  In the morning he awoke early, while it was still dark, hoping to see them off, but they’d already gone. Lita had left a note taped to his screen door, telling Ross that he could use their house while they were gone and to help himself to anything in the kitchen. She said there were instructions for him on the kitchen table, and when he went over to the Big House, he found that Dave had provided a feeding schedule for the horse and the goat, as well as detailed directions for monitoring the bees, and watering the garden and the fruit trees.

  It was another bad day for egg harvesting—he collected exactly ten—but whatever was wrong went far beyond poor egg production. The chickens themselves seemed…different. If he told anyone about it he would sound crazy, but several times he thought he caught some of the hens peeking at him from behind a wall of the coop. Watching him. Spying on him. That made no sense, of course, was probably not even possible, but it creeped him out nevertheless, and he hurriedly fed the fowl and collected all the eggs he could find before bailing.

  He was afraid of the bees, so he stayed away from them. They’d survive for a day without being scrutinized, and if Lita and Dave weren’t back by tomorrow evening, he’d check on the hives the following morning. He was also afraid of the horse and goat, he was embarrassed to admit, and without his cousin or her husband around to run interference for him, he threw the hay over the fence in the horse’s general direction and dumped the feed in an area where he knew the goat would find it. He had no problem watering the garden.

  Along with instructions, Dave had left him a list of the customers who might come by during the week to pick up their standing orders, and one of them arrived that afternoon, Ben Stanard, the old man from the grocery store. He was no less hostile out of his natural environment, and Ross actually experienced a small sense of satisfaction when the store owner demanded twelve dozen eggs and he told Stanard he could only have six.

  The old man glared at him. “My order’s for twelve.”

  “Sorry.” He felt like smiling, but he didn’t.

  “Where’s Dave?” Stanard demanded. “Let me talk to him.”

  “He and his wife are out of state right now. Family emergency. I’m in charge until they get back.”

  “We had a deal.”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s a production problem. I have no control over that.”

  The store owner frowned, spit on the ground, then walked over to the handtruck where Ross had stacked the egg cartons. “This is bullshit,” the old man growled as he loaded them up in his SUV. “Dave’s gonna hear about this!”

  This time, Ross did smile. “Have a nice day!” he called out.

  Lita called in the evening. She sounded tired. The funeral, she said, was going to be held on Wednesday. She thought they would probably be back by the weekend. It was only a preliminary estimate, but with the life insurance and the assets, and the fact that Dave was his parents’ only child, she said they could be getting something close to a million dollars.

  He was silent, stunned.

  “Are you still there?” she asked.

  “A million dollars?” he said incredulously.

  “They had a lot of insurance.” There was sadness in her voice but also an audible relief, and Ross realized that, egg problems or not, Lita and Dave would probably now be in the position to have the ranch they always wanted.

  “So what’s happening there?” she asked. “Is everything all right?”

  He described his day.

  After Ben Stanard had left that afternoon, Ross had gone into the cellar on the side of the house to do inventory. There were more eggs stored there than he realized (he probably could have given the store owner his full order), and quite a few jars of honey. He told Lita now that he wanted to sell at the farmer’s market on Thursday—if she and Dave would trust him with the truck—and she gave him permission to go ahead, though he could tell that she didn’t care one way or the other. He understood. There were far more important things on her mind at the moment. He didn’t want to bother her with details, so he assured her that everything was fine here at home, then told her to make sure she got enough sleep before he hung up.

  In the morning, he forced himself to check out the bees. In his note, Dave had said that if Ross carefully followed all of the instructions, the bees would neither swarm nor sting, and, indeed, that was the case. He was too untrained to be able to extract honey or even tell if honey was being produced, but the bees themselves were fine, and that would suffice until Dave returned to take over.

  Again, the chickens acted odd, and this time one of them actually pecked his ankle. The pain was immediate and much greater than he would have expected, and instinctively Ross reacted by kicking the animal, sending it squawking away, flapping its prodigious feathers. He felt bad about that until he looked down at his ankle, pulled up his pantleg and saw blood, a trail of it dripping down his skin and into his sock. Angrily, he looked up, but the attacking bird had blended into the pack. Good thing for it; because he would have kicked the animal again if he could find it.

  Ross tossed out the rest of the feed, dumping it in a pile rather than sprinkling it across the yard, and postponed egg collection until he washed off his wound and put a couple of Band-Aids over the surprisingly deep gash. When he did return to the yard, he found only two eggs, one unusually small and one extraordinarily big. Neither looked like anything that could be sold, and though he didn’t really want to touch them, he picked both up and took them to the root cellar, leaving them in the basket. D
ave could check them out when he returned. Maybe he could figure out what was wrong.

  Ross finished his chores and had an early lunch, making himself a sandwich and washing it down with some Beck’s.

  He felt weird and ill-at-ease. It was daytime and his computer was on, but the ranch still seemed creepy. He was all alone here aside from the horse, the goat, the bees and those freaky chickens, and he was far enough away from town or the nearest house that, as the movie tagline said, no one could hear him scream. So if he tripped and conked his head on a rock, or if he choked on his food and suffocated, there’d be no one to rescue him.

  Tripped or choked?

  That wasn’t really what spooked him, was it?

  No. It was something less tangible, and for some reason he found himself thinking about Christmas night, when he’d seen—or, more precisely, felt—that big black thing swooping low and silent over the ranch. Goose bumps popped up on his arms, and he decided to call Alex, knowing he’d feel better if he had someone to talk to.

  His cellphone battery was dead, though he’d just charged it last night, so he used the land line in the shack to phone his friend. The news was not good. Just as Ross had had to abandon his life in Phoenix in order to survive, Alex was planning to move to Salt Lake City, where he’d found a job as an IT supervisor for a small company that made rubber floor mats.

  The news made Ross depressed. “Kind of far afield, isn’t it?”

  “I won’t have to declare bankruptcy.”

  “But you’re an engineer.”

  “So are you.”

  Ross looked out his window at the chicken coop. “You’re right.”

  They spent the next hour commiserating, catching up on the doings of their other friends, glumly appraising their respective futures, and by the time he hung up, Ross no longer felt afraid. His apprehension had been stupid and childish, nothing more than a symptom of cabin fever, and he decided to take the pickup and drive into town. There wasn’t much to do in Magdalena, so he ended up going into the bar, where the only other patron was Jackass McDaniels, the handyman, who remembered him from the farmer’s market and invited Ross over by patting the stool next to him and saying, “Sit your ass down, bud. Any cousin a Lita’s…ah, you know the drill.”