The Weird Company by Pete Rawlik Read Free Book Online

cross country took me longer than it should have. A man can ride the train, take buses, stay in hotels, and eat food in restaurants. A thing such as I had become has no such options. I still rode the train, but not in the passenger car, but rather in with the baggage, sometimes with cattle. I still ate food prepared by restaurants, but more often than not I stole it from unlocked back doors or out of bins. I travelled light, only what I could carry on my back and in my pockets. A few changes of clothes were the bulk of what I carried, everything else I left behind, with the life I no longer had any use for. The only thing that mattered was moving east, back to Massachusetts, back to Essex County, back to Innsmouth where I hoped I would be welcomed back and conveyed into the sea and beyond.
    It soon became obvious that the homecoming I had hoped for could never occur. I had underestimated the extent of the occupation. Miles from my destination my journey came to a sudden halt. The old bus route, which had once run through the village, the one that had been run by a man who would have been sympathetic to my condition, no longer operated. Here, so close to my goal I had to be doubly careful. In Ohio and New York I could still pass for human, deformed but still human. The stares and gasps from people who caught a glimpse of my countenance were tolerable, but they didn’t pose much of a threat. Here they knew the Innsmouth look for what it was, and here if they saw me I would be stopped, arrested, taken away, and interred, like all the others. If I were to complete my journey I was going to have to do what I had so recently become adept at doing: I was going to have to secrete myself amidst the cargo, the packages, and the livestock that was regularly moved into Innsmouth.
    Despite the attempt to make it so, Innsmouth was no fortress, indeed there were still farms and hamlets that bordered on the picket line that the Federal Government had established. It was easy to find a truck that was heading in the right direction, and easier still to conceal myself under a tarp amidst the earthy sacks of feed, flour and cans of food. I waited for the farmer to start the truck and get on the road before I let my guard down and closed my eyes. My travels had apparently exhausted me, for the ramshackle truck had barely gone a mile before the droning engine lulled me into a state bordering on sleep. I lay still in that drowsy condition, neither awake nor asleep, but rather in a kind of semiconscious torpor. It was an hour, slightly more when the truck suddenly jerked to a halt. With all the caution I could muster, I peered out from underneath the tarp and saw why my transport had ceased its motion.
    At the juncture of the main road and the turnoff to the small hamlet to the North had been built an imposing stone edifice not unlike a small fort or bunker. The driver exited the truck and headed toward the building, his heavy work boots crunching the gravel underneath. As the driver opened the door and went inside, voices offered greetings and a drink. Fearing that the truck was to be searched, I took the brief opportunity to slip out and run off into the brush. Moving through the woods, I could see that the little building served as a checkpoint on the road which was now blocked in both directions by a heavy steel pipe that functioned as a crude but effective road gate. The road may have been blocked, but there were no guards visible. Apparently there was no real concern about any foot traffic moving in to the town. I could understand their logic. Who in their right mind would try to break into what had essentially become a prison?
    Past the farms, the land around Innsmouth quickly becomes soft and wet, and transitions into swamps and marshes. The closer I stayed to the road, the firmer the ground was, and the faster I made my way. Walking carefully down the side of that dark and deserted road I kept expecting to encounter a vehicle or a patrol of