Close Encounters of the Third Kind Page 4

  “Now, I said this wouldn’t take long, and it won’t,” Jack DeForest went on. “I’m going to ask all passengers with cameras, exposed film canisters, boxes of unexposed film, and tape recording devices to turn them over to our courtesy team at this time.”

  Now the reaction was instant and angry. Jack held up a hand, which no one could see except the stewardess. “Just temporarily, folks. You’ll have them all back within two weeks. That’s a promise. You fill in those little cards we handed out with your name, address, and description of whatever you’re turning over to the Air Force. And you will definitely get it all back … slides, prints, whatever … at our expense.”

  Jack DeForest let the complaining run its course. Behind him, Lacombe entered the aircraft, Laughlin at his shoulder. They all watched the passengers, still grumbling, begin filling in the IBM cards.

  Lacombe turned sideways to Laughlin and whispered something to him in French.

  “Mr. DeForest,” Laughlin said, at which point the eyes of every passenger raised up to see what was going to happen now. “Tell the flight crew we need the flight recorder intact. And one thing more.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t wash the plane.”

  Laughlin had snapped out Lacombe’s whispered orders without thinking of anything more than translating them into English. Now, as he watched the passengers’ frightened and concerned reactions, David realized it would have been smarter to have talked to the flight crew personally.

  The passengers’ faces reflected exactly what nobody wanted them to reflect. It had been the business of not washing the plane.

  It was a bad moment. But no one spoke. Perhaps they were too tired. Perhaps they didn’t really want to know. Perhaps they’d just had enough for one day.

  Lacombe, Laughlin, DeForest, and the others knew that at least a couple of the passengers would start searching out the press the next day. But they felt sure that the only accounts of the experience that would ever get into print would appear in the pages of the Enquirer, the Star, Argosy, and other periodicals. Still, Lacombe, Laughlin, DeForest, and the others knew that there was no way to stop what was happening that night. It was only the beginning.

  8

  There was no way the dispatcher could get to Neary. He’d switched off the mobile phone unit in his car. Roy didn’t want Ike Harris calling him. As he drove through the night to Tolono, he could see a blanket of stars above him, although the usual spring night ground fog was rising out of the gullies, bouncing his headlights back at him.

  Neary did not ride alone. He had the police calls for company.

  “U-5. Officer Longly. Over.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Responding to the 10-75 on Cornbread Road and Middletown Pike. I am observing … I think it’s street lights in the foothill residentials. Couple hundred neighbors in their pajamas think it’s Saturday night out here,” Longly observed on the police band.

  A bright group of high beams appeared over Neary’s shoulder out the back window. He was tearing at his maps and absently waved his arm out the side window. The automobile headlights passed him, and somebody shouted out the car, “You’re in the middle of the road, jackass!”

  Neary spread a map over the steering wheel, finally located Cornbread and Middletown. D-5, M-34. He took off, tires screeching.

  Within five minutes, Neary was hopelessly lost. Finally, in utter desperation, he pulled into a row of darkened fast-food franchises. The blackout had, apparently, provided a perfect excuse for everyone to hang out in the parking areas. As soon as a bunch of them saw Neary’s DWP truck, they crowded about him, waving flashlights and cans of Coors.

  “Did your lights come back on?” he asked them.

  “You asking us?” a lady in curlers and kerchief asked. “What do you do for a living?”

  “What about the street lights? When they went off did they come on? On-off, on-off.”

  A wise-ass kid stuck a flashlight in Roy’s face. “Like this?” he said, blinking the light blindingly on and off, on and off in Neary’s eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “No,” the kid said, laughing cretinously.

  “Am I in Tolono or where?” Neary asked Mrs. Curlers.

  “It’s all lit up out here,” Officer Longly’s radio voice said suddenly. “These street lamps … I think sodium vapor. Don’t want to stay still. They’re revolving in some draft. They go up … they go down … wait one … they also want to go a little sideways.”

  “Jesus!” Neary said.

  “Longly,” the dispatcher said, sounding bored. “Give us a location.”

  “Give me one, too,” said Neary.

  “It’s over the Ingelside Elementary School heading northeast.”

  Roy yelled out the window, “Where’s the Ingelside Elementary School … Anybody?”

  “That’s easy,” said a guy, who was carrying a shotgun for some reason. “You go back to seventy, then—”

  “No, wait a sec,” Longly called. “Heading northwest on Daytona.”

  “Where’s Daytona? Quick!”

  “That’s even easier.” The gunslinger was seeing action now. “Okay, Jack, take any road out east of here till you get to city nine and farm eleven, but don’t stop there ’cause there’s a detour sign: ‘Pardon Our Progress.’ ”

  He was still going on as Neary shifted gears and backed away.

  Five minutes later, Neary was lost in his own home town. He was on some country road, surrounded by more of that insipid ground fog. Bumping over a rutted crossroads, the DWP truck stopped and Roy Neary shone his spotlight at a street sign. Shit! he checked the map again. Shit! Neary scooped out two troughs of Indiana clay as he ground the gears backward; he stopped again and spread the map over the steering wheel, twisting the little gooseneck lamp into bright submission.

  Behind him a bank of lights from an approaching vehicle lit up the rear window. They drew right up behind Neary and stopped. The glare, bouncing off his rear-and side-view mirrors, was almost as irritating as that municipal map with all of its myopic lines. Absently, he stuck his hand out the side window and waved the other vehicle around him.

  For a moment, nothing happened. The intense light, as if from a semi-truck’s double-beams, now stung his eyes. Impatiently now, he waved them around again.

  Without a sound, moving at a slow, hypnotic pace, the super high beams complied … rising vertically out of sight, leaving darkness behind.

  Intent on the map, Roy Neary had seen none of this. His subconscious registered vaguely that the bright lights were no longer bothering him. What finally penetrated his consciousness was the noise. It sounded like the rattling of tin. Neary looked up, then around, and finally shone his spotlight on the road sign.

  It was vibrating so fast that the letters seemed to multiply and superimpose. He looked again, unknowingly making a “Huuuh?” sound. Next, the truck’s spotlight, dashboard lamp and headlights faded to a faint amber glow and then went out.

  Abruptly, the entire area for thirty yards around him was assaulted by a silent explosion of the brightest light imaginable. It was suddenly daytime. Neary tried to look out his open window, but the light was too bright and he had to duck back in. He felt an immediate burning, followed by a prickling sensation on the side of his face that he had been unwise enough to stick out the window. Neary went for the phone, but it was dead. The broadband radio had crackled out, too.

  By now, Roy was too frightened to budge. Just his eyes moved. Then he threw his hands over his eyes and groped for his metal-rimmed sunglasses clipped to the visor above the windshield. He managed to get them on, and then—to his horror—found they were buzzing at his temples, vibrating as intensely as the road sign.

  That was when the glove compartment, falling open at the hinges, began to rattle violently as everything metallic started sticking together. A box of paper clips popped open and dozens of the damn things flew past Neary’s head and fastened themselves to the roof of the truck.

&nb
sp; The sunglasses were too hot. They were burning his skin. Neary whipped them off his face and let them drop to the seat. Instead, they, too, flew past his head and stuck to the roof. He closed his eyes against the fierce light. The ashtray emptied itself out as though sucked weightless by a current of air from outside the truck and—

  The hot light was gone. Paper clips rained down on Roy’s head. He could no longer hear the sign shaking. He looked up and—for a second—saw the stars. Then, as if some tremendous tray were sliding out overhead, all the stars (except a few around the edges) were inked out by the limbo shape. Fluidly, the mass moved on and the stars started coming back out.

  A distant rattling caused Neary to bring his head back inside and swing around in his seat. Suddenly his high beams, spot and lamp switched back on. Down the road there was a four-way stop. All four signs were dancing to and fro, vibrating so violently that metal around the signs’ edges curled against the force. For a second the intersection was awash in that same blinding light. But for only a second. And in the dark, the signs were no longer vibrating.

  All was still.

  But when the radio blasted on, Neary screamed.

  It was making noises that sounded like an electrical overload, and the voices weren’t much better so far as Roy was concerned.

  “I don’t know. I’m asking you. Is there a full moon tonight?” came a police voice.

  “That’s a negativethe dispatcher, a female voice, said. “New moon on the thirteenth.”

  “Get out of here. Me and my partner are seeing this thing over Signal Hill. This is the thing everybody is screaming about. It’s the moon …” There was a lot of static. “Wait a sec. Okay. It’s starting to move now. West to east.”

  “This is Tolono Police,” a new voice came on. “We are watching it, confirming it is definitely the moon. Be advised it is not moving. The clouds behind it are moving, giving it the illusion of movement over—”

  “Where’d you study astronomy, Tolono?” a voice that Roy recognized as Longly’s broke in. “When did you ever see clouds moving behind the moon?”

  “What’s your location?” the lady dispatcher asked wearily.

  “Just off the Telemar Expressway and east toward Harper Valley.”

  “Oh, my God!” Roy Neary cried. “I know where that is.”

  Neary hit ninety-plus. He found himself entering a long, dark tunnel and as his high headlights cut through it, Roy became aware again of the prickling sensation on the side of his face. He also remembered how frightened he had been back there, and now here he was chasing after the thing that had so scared him. He really ought to stop, turn around and go back to Earl and the other guys. But, Neary realized, he was more excited than frightened now. He felt like a kid. It was too late to stop now. He was having too much fun. And so were the police.

  “I see them, Charlie! I’m in pursuit.”

  “You can take it for what it’s worth. These things were not manufactured in Detroit.” That was Longly!

  “It’s decelerating. I don’t know why it’s decelerating, but it’s getting closer. Three hundred yards.”

  “Can you catch up to it?” the dispatcher asked.

  “I don’t think so. About two hundred yards. That’s it for me. I don’t think we should rush into it.”

  “It’s following all the S-turns. It’s following all the roads.”

  “Radar shows ’em down to twenty-five miles per hour.”

  “Shit, that’s a school zone they just passed through.”

  “Look at the traffic lights! They turn to green just as they get up to them.”

  A lot of static.

  “Yes, sir … They’re going right out east on Harper Valley.”

  Neary came out of the tunnel and rounded a curve at ninety-five miles an hour, traded paint with a guardrail, went into a skid and managed to correct without running off into the central divider gully. He shot past a sign: EAST HARPER VALLEY EXIT—3 MILES. Then Neary really stood on the accelerator, slowing to eighty-five when the Harper Valley exit loomed up.

  Skidding and braking, he whipped the truck off onto the exit road. It turned onto a two-lane country road, and Roy came down to a more cautious seventy.

  Up ahead he thought he might have seen something on the—

  A child!

  Neary stood on the brakes. An instant later, a woman ran out onto the road and grabbed for the child. The truck was skidding wildly now as Roy fought the wheel. The woman and child were frozen in his headlights for another instant—yards, feet ahead, directly under the wheels.

  Neary threw the wheel hard left, skidded by the two bodies, and plowed into a snow fence, taking some of it with him before coming to rest.

  For a long moment, everything was very still except for his panting breath. He switched off the engine. It took him three tries to get the door handle to work, so shaky were his arm muscles.

  Neary finally staggered out of the high weeds and back to the center of the road. The woman stared blindly at him, her arms around the little boy, her hands over the boy’s eyes, as if still shutting away from him the high, bright headlights bearing down upon them.

  “Lady,” Roy began, “you shouldn’t let your little boy—”

  “I’ve been searching for him for hours,” Jillian Guiler burst out. “He wandered away from our house. I’ve been looking for hours. He just ran away. Hours and hours I’ve been—”

  “Okay,” Neary said. “Okay, I’m sorry I—”

  “That’s a dangerous curve,” a voice said.

  Neary turned to see—of all things—an old farmer sitting in a chair on the back of an ancient pickup. His family, a wife and two sons, were grouped around him, some with binoculars, one boy with a toy telescope.

  “Just like the circus coming to town,” the farmer was saying, taking a swig from a bottle of something. “They come through at night … they come through late so they don’t disturb the residents.”

  A sudden wind sent Jillian’s hair flying back from her face. Roy could feel his own hair blown in the same direction. He turned to face the wind, whistling now through the snow fence.

  In Neary’s truck, tangled in yards of torn-up snow fence, the police radio talked on.

  “Can you run a make on them?”

  “… I may be gaining again.”

  “As long as they keep following the road.”

  “This is Randolph County. We’re monitoring you on the emergency frequency. What’ve you guys got down there?”

  Squinting downwind, Neary could see something coming along the road, but it turned out to be a low-winging flight of birds, escaping something. Something on the horizon. Something that glowed.

  A group of rabbits bounded past, ears flat against their heads.

  “Here they come again,” the farmer said.

  Neary whirled back to stare down the road.

  “Jesus!” he whispered to himself. “Jesus Chr—”

  The very breath seemed to have been sucked out of his lungs. The vacuum was filled by a bass rumble, as though the air was being disturbed by lightning. Closing soundlessly on them at high speed was what looked like a sudden sunrise at two A.M., flying past him from east to west. Without thinking, Roy covered his face with one arm and grabbed for the woman and the boy with the other. Jillian felt her face and neck burn, then prickle. The three clung tightly together as something like an Indian-summer sunset, flashing and blinking autumn colors, swept past them, slowing above the road ahead. A billboard featuring McDonald’s golden arches was studied by six fingers of light before the massive Christmas ornament moved on, a white spotlight picking out the dotted line on the road beneath it.

  A third vehicle—resembling a jack-o’-lantern to Neary because there almost seemed to be a phantom face leering out of each of the bright lights, out of each of the thousands of little stained-glass colored sections—closed over, then passed them and, following the road, made a right turn, signaled by three sequential directional lights flashing red li
ke a T-bird.

  Neary and Jillian were gasping with fright, but little Barry was jumping up and down, shouting, “Ice cream! Ice cream!” and laughing.

  The old farmer, still sitting in his chair in the back of the pickup, said casually, “Yep, they can fly rings around the moon, but we’re years ahead of ’em on the highway.”

  That was too much for Roy and Jillian. Their eyes locked, but they could think of nothing to say.

  Neary swallowed, trying to get some words, some sounds, something out of his mouth. Something more was coming down the road. With a desperate shove, he threw himself, Jillian, and Barry off to the side of the road.

  Just in time. Two police cruisers howled past at well over one hundred miles per hour.

  Neary headed back to his truck.

  “Stick around,” the farmer said to him. “You should’ve seen it an hour ago.”

  “This is nuts,” said Neary, just as another Indiana cruiser roared by.

  “I may be drunk but I know I’m here,” the old man shouted over the roar.

  Barry was laughing again.

  Neary got into the truck and started backing it out of the tangle of snow fence and high weeds. He spun his wheels in frustration, then calmed down and got the truck out of there.

  “Where are we?” Neary asked Jillian.

  “Harper Valley.”

  The truck took off.

  “They just play,” Barry said, snuggling up against his mother.

  “What, Barry?”

  “They play nice.”

  9

  Accelerator jammed on the floor, Neary hunched close to the windshield, following the curves of the on-ramp and the glow ahead and above.

  As he shot onto the highway, he heard the police calling to one another, although he did not yet have them in sight.

  “I’m gaining on them, Bob!”

  Roy’s head was almost touching the glass. He moved back a moment and glanced down at the speedometer. Ninety-five, ninety-seven, ninety-nine.

  “… that’s the Ohio tolls up there!”

  Up ahead the flashing red and yellow lights of the last of the cruisers came into Neary’s view. He had to slow slightly to hold on to the road as they swept around long bends. The formation of brilliant lights was still far ahead, sweeping smoothly around the bends as if gravity was some ancient law.