"_Government Food Depot Raided!_" The crisp low voice here with us
in the living room was so unexpected that Dora gave a low scream and
clutched me. It was our news-radio which Mrs. Holten had evidently left
on; and now a news announcement was being made. "_Allenville, New York.
Mysterious raiders broke into the Government Surplus Food Depot, here
tonight--probably about 9.50 p.m. Large supplies of sealed cooked food
stolen. Four watchmen found dead--others missing._"
Dora and I stood stricken, listening to the newscaster's droning voice.
Allenville was the Municipal Housing Village we had just left. The
Government Food Storehouses were on its other side half a mile from
where we had heard the music.
"... _and the bodies of the watchmen show that they were attacked by
some mysterious weapon. There are no wounds. The clothing is charred a
little, as though some weird form of heat were applied. Two of the men
have burned spots on the forehead--as though some electric charge of a
lethal power_--"
The signal lights on top of our instrument showed that another
public-news station was signalling it had a visual broadcast of
immediate interest. I reached and tuned to it. The televisor glowed.
Numbed with startled horror, Dora and I stood staring at the moving
image on the televisor grid. It was from a public observor lens mounted
on a pole beside one of the roads leading out of Allenville. An alarm
signal had been turned in by a traffic director there on a crossing
ramp. He had evidently flung on the alarm-light so that all the scene
was bathed in its white actinic glare. And the road-side observing lens
was bringing it now to us, broadcasting it to every receiving set in
the country.
What we saw was the crossing ramp with milling, frightened pedestrians
and the traffic in a tangle. Momentarily the people were blinded by
the glare and deafened by the shrieking of the alarm-siren. In the
background loomed a building which I knew was another of the Government
Food Depots. The alarm evidently had originated there.
"Tom--look--that doorway!" Dora murmured.
From one of the dark doorways of the Food Depot a little figure came
scurrying out. And then another--and at the foot of the ramp where
the crowd was milling, several others suddenly were visible. Figures
identical with the one which had watched us by the bench!
"Oh Tom--dear God!"
For a brief instant one of them was bathed in the alarm-light and our
image of the turmoil showed it clearly. The shrouding garment was open
in front as it faced us. The scurrying little thing was headless! It
seemed to have square wide shoulders, straight across from tip to
tip--no neck--no head! The glimpse was ended in another second as the
thing darted away and was gone in the turmoil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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