Crawlers by John Shirley Read Free Book Online Page B

man despite the weight of his tank, the cold water, and the exertion.
    Cal remembered that you looked for signs of strange behavior in a diver who had been down too long. He might have a mild form of oxygen deprivation—dementia or something. But Dad was already over at the winch, throwing levers so it’d slowly start taking up the slack.
    The Air Force officer came alongside in a launch from the Coast Guard boat. “The boat there, Major Stanner coming aboard.”
    More laboriously than Cal’s dad, Stanner climbed up the ladder and swung himself onto the deck. “You’re starting your equipment already?”
    Dad nodded. “It’s ready to go. The support structures happen to’ve fallen in a configuration that shouldn’t cause any problems. I haven’t started the real lifting yet—if you don’t think it’s ready to come up. But I was able to clear the sand away. It should be solidly grappled.”
    Stanner raised his eyebrows. “You cleared all that sand away? From what we could make out, it’s half buried down there.”
    Dad turned to look blankly at Stanner. “Maybe the sand was loosened by the impact. It’s quite clear now along the upper half of the hull. But the S.N.G. module looks to be cracked. I expect its contents have been destroyed.”
    Cal looked back and forth between his dad and Stanner. The major’s face seemed to go stony, all of a sudden.
    “What’d you call it?” Stanner asked.
    Just a flicker of hesitation from Dad. “I said satellite module. Why?”
    “I thought you said something else.” Stanner looked at him again. Cal’s dad gazed unflinchingly back.
    Shit, the old man could be chilled steel when he needed to.
    Finally Stanner glanced at his watch, looked at the cable slicing down into the water, and said, “We’ve got a small navy vessel coming to take it aboard, be here any minute, so we’d better have it ready. I don’t want it out in the—” He broke off, glancing at the shore. Then he turned to Cal’s dad and said, “Okay. Let’s hope you know what you’re doing. Hoist away.”
    Waylon thought he might be crouching on an anthill. He pictured the ants looking for a good spot to start burrowing under his testicles. He scratched and shifted on the hummock.
    The grassy hummock—
hey, I’m on a grassy knoll, dude!
—was on the hillside in the thicket of fur and oak trees overlooking the old restaurant and the smashed dock. He stood up, to let his blood circulate, shifting his weight from foot to foot, watching the navy vessel—what was it, a PT boat?—hauling ass toward San Francisco Bay, with that big metal thing they claimed was a satellite tied down under a tarp on its aft deck. It might’ve been a satellite. He hadn’t been able to see it very well.
    Probably was. Which was disappointing.
    He shifted around on the hummock. Scratched one knee against the other.
Was
something crawling up his legs? Ants? Something else? Hadn’t Adair said all kinds of nasty shit lived in this woods?
    He left the hummock and climbed up on a nearby tree stump. Probably get termites up his pants, too.
    He had to hunker down and peer between the trees to watch the boat. He made out three boats. The coastguardsmen were following the Navy boat, some kind of escort. The trawler that had winched up the Unknown Artifact, as Waylon thought of it, was tooling off in a different direction, piloted by that older kid, Adair’s brother. Her dad—he thought it was her dad, though he was a ways off and Waylon had seen him only one other time—was walking toward his truck.
    Waylon wished he had binoculars. He thought he’d seen ordinary English-language lettering on the side of the thing when it was hauled up, but he was too far away to be sure. Well, it was under a tarp now anyway.
    He was getting cold and damp and wanted to check his pants to see if he had any unauthorized visitors of his own.
    He sighed. Time to go home. He tended to put off going home because Mom’s anxiety attacks were back