Wonder Stories Super Pack. Fletcher PrattЧитать онлайн книгу.
“It don’t seem to me like all that business is necessary.”
Ben shook his head decisively. “You haven’t seen these things,” he said. “In fact, I think it would be a good idea for us all to get some guns and ammunition and do target practice.”
The meeting broke up on that note and the members of the colony filed into the room where the supply of arms was stored, and presently to form an automobile procession through the streets in search of a suitable shooting gallery.
When targets were finally set up in the street in automobile lights, the general mechanical efficiency of the colony revealed itself once more. Gloria Rutherford was a dead shot and the artilleryman from Governor’s Island almost as good; Ben himself and Murray Lee, who had been to Plattsburg, knew at least the mechanism of rifles, but the rest could only shut their eyes and pull the trigger, with the vaguest of ideas as to where the bullet would go. And as Ben pointed out after the buildings along the street had been peppered with the major portion of Abercrombie and Fitch’s stock of ammunition, the supply was not inexhaustible.
“And what shall we do for weapons then?” he asked.
Yoshio, the little Japanese, raised his hand for attention.
“I have slight suggestion, perhaps merely cat’s meow and not worthy exalted attention,” he offered. “Why not all people as gentlemen old time in my country, carry sword? It is better than without weapon.”
“Why not, indeed?” said Ben above a hum of laughter. “Let’s go.” And an hour later the company re-emerged from an antique store, belted with the strangest collection of swords and knives and fishing gaffs ever borne by an earthly army.
“I wonder, though,” said Gloria to Murray Lee, as they reached the Institute as dawn was streaking up the sky. “All this hooey doesn’t seem to mean much. If those birds are as big as that they aren’t going to be scared by these little toad-stabbers.”
She was right. That night Ola Mae Roberts was missing.
*
The siege came a week later.
It was a week of strained tenseness; a certain electricity seemed at hand in the atmosphere, inhibiting speech. The colonists felt almost as though they were required to whisper....
A week during which Murray, with Dangerfield and Tholfsen, worked energetically at their radio, and progressed far enough so they could do a fairly competent job of sending and receiving in Morse code. A week during which the naval party got a freighter from the South Street docks and brought her round into the Hudson.
At dawn one morning, Gloria, with Farrelly, Kevitz and Yoshio, piled into a limousine with the idea of taking the freighter on a trip to Coney Island. Murray accompanied them to try communicating with the shore via the ship’s wireless.
The day was dark, with lowering clouds, which explains why they missed seeing the tetrapteryxes. But for the General Sherman statue they never would have seen them until too late. The general’s intervention was purely passive; Murray noticed and called Gloria’s attention to the curious expression the misty light gave the bronze face and she looked up to see, to be recalled to her driving by a yell from Kevitz announcing the metallic carcass of a policeman squarely in their path.
Gloria twisted the wheel sharply to avoid it; the car skidded on the damp pavement, and reeling crazily, caromed into the iron fence around the statue with a crash. At the same moment an enormous mass of rock struck the place where they should have been and burst like a shell, sending a shower of fragments whistling about their ears.
Shaken and dazed by the shock, they rolled out of the car, for the moment mistaking the two impacts for one; and as they did so there came a rush of wild wings, an eldritch scream and Yoshio was snatched into the air before their very eyes. Kevitz fired first, wildly and at random. Murray steadied himself, dropping his gun across his left forearm, and shot cool and straight—but at too great a distance, and they saw nothing but a feather or two floating down from the great four-winged bird as it swung off over Central Park, carrying the little Jap. They saw him squirm in the thing’s grip, trying to get his sword loose, and then with a rattle of dropped stones around them, more of the birds charged home.
Only Gloria had thought of this and withheld her fire. The others swung round as she shot and in an instant the whole group was a maze of whirling wings, clutching claws, shouts, shots and screams. In twenty seconds it was done: Gloria and Murray rose panting and breathless, and looked about. Beside them, two gigantic bird-forms were spilling their lives in convulsive agony. Dangerfield and Farrelly were gone—and a rending screech from behind the buildings told only too well where.
“What’s the next step?” asked Murray with such owlish solemnity that Gloria gave a burst of half-hysterical laughter. She looked round.
“Beat it for that building,” she said, and gathering her torn skirts about her, set the example.
They made it by the narrowest of margins, standing breathless in what had been the Peacock Alley of one of New York’s finest hotels to see one of the great birds strut past the door like a clumsy caricature of an angel.
“And poo-poo for you,” said Murray, thumbing his nose at the apparition. “But what we’ll do now I don’t know.”
“Play pinochle till they come look us up,” suggested Gloria. “Besides, my bullets are all gone.”
... They waited all day, taking tentative glances from one or another of the windows. The birds remained invisible, apparently not caring for the prospect of a battle in the constricted space of the hotel rooms. But amid the rain and low-hung clouds they might be lurking just outside and both Murray and Gloria judged it too dangerous to venture a dash. As night came on, however, they made a try for the hotel’s garage, achieved it without accident, and between them, rolled one of the cars to the door.
“Wait,” said Murray, as Gloria got in, “what was that?”
“This dam’ starter.” She stirred her foot vigorously. “It won’t work.”
“No. Wait.” He held out a restraining hand. A sudden gust of wind bore a dash of rain down against them and with it, from the northeast, a far-away scream, then a tapping and a heavy thud.
“Hot dog!” ejaculated Murray. “They’re getting after the crowd. And at night, too.”
The car jerked forward suddenly as the starter caught. “Hold it,” cried Murray. “Douse those headlights.” They dodged the wreck of a street car, swung round a corner and headed for First Avenue, gathering speed. Another corner, taken on two wheels in the darkness, the way to the Institute lay before them.
Suddenly a great flame of light sprang out in the sky, throwing the whole scene into sharpest relief. There was a crash of rifle-fire from window and door of the building and across the front of it one of the birds coasted past. Crash! In the street before them something like a bomb burst, vomiting pennons of fire. Gloria swung the wheel, swung it back; they had a mad glimpse of brilliantly burning flames inside one of the buildings across the street from the Institute, and then they were tumbling out of the car with rifle-fire beating all around them and the thud of dropping objects on either side.
*
Murray stumbled, but the door was flung open and they were jerked in, just as one of the huge bird forms flung itself down past them.
“Thank God, you’re safe,” said Ben Ruby’s voice. “They got Dearborn and Harris and they’re besieging us here.” He pointed out of the window across the street, where the rapidly-gaining fire was engulfing the building.
“Did the birds do that little trick?” asked Gloria.
“I hope to tell you, sister. You ain’t seen nothing yet, either. They’re shedding incendiary bombs all over the shop. How about Kevitz and Farrelly?”
“Got them, too. At the Plaza—and the little Jap. Too bad; I liked that little sprout.”
“I thank