“Don’t,” I said. “We need them alive, don’t we? Questions? Information? The government has to get involved in this, right?”
McKesson glanced at me and snorted, as if I still didn’t get it. But he didn’t shoot the wounded enemy. Instead, he kicked away the weapon in the man’s spurred hands, knocking it back into the twisting space from which it had come. It slid over the concrete, then with a transition of sound, slid away into another place.
“Help me out,” he said, bending down and grunting as he picked up one of the bodies.
I stepped forward, disgusted and breathing hard. “What are we going to do with them?”
“We’re tossing them back onto their side.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. Trust me. There’s no point questioning any of them.”
I decided after all I’d seen I had to trust him. I helped him, and we picked up each of the men, one at a time, and gave them the old heave-ho back into their world. We did the same with their weapons. When we were done, I saw the twisted space fade, becoming solid again. The floor was even and smooth and no longer rippled like a mountain stream.
“Why the hell did we do that?” I asked. “Is it some kind of honor thing with them?”
“We did that to get rid of the evidence.”
I stared at him. “What the hell for? Shouldn’t we be calling Washington or something? Does the Pentagon know about this?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. The Community handles those decisions, and I handle what they don’t want to touch.”
McKesson walked to the rows of wine bottles. He picked out a dusty green bottle of burgundy and broke the top off with the butt of his gun. He lifted the bottle and tipped it, letting it flow into his face without touching his lips to the jagged glass. He guzzled the wine, pouring it from the broken neck down his throat. When he was done, he tossed the bottle down and let it smash on the floor.
As he did this, I watched the blurred region of space fade to nothing. There wasn’t much left on the floor of the cellar. Just a big puddle of alien blood, much of it frozen.
The finger was still there, however, at the edge of the blood puddle. I thought I had a new theory on how that finger had gotten there. Perhaps the previous tenants had come down here with their knives and their odd sacrifices. Maybe when the Gray Men had come through, the cultists had used one of their knives to remove an invader’s finger. I had to wonder if the cultists had been taken captive to the far side for their troubles. What had I gotten myself into?
“We have to tell somebody about this,” I said, staring at the scene in disbelief.
“What do you think my job is, you idiot?” McKesson snarled at me. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I don’t investigate these things—I cover them up!”
McKesson climbed up the damaged stairs, leaving me in the cellar. “I’m calling in backup from my car,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll have to make an official statement.”
“Official statement? You mean a work of fiction, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer. He left me staring at the mess in the cellar. Half the wine racks and a section of the stairway were wrecked. The cellar was full of a strange stink—a mixed smell of blood, wine, and expended gunpowder.
I picked up one of the bottles, noticing that it was cracked and the contents had leaked out. I picked up a second bottle, which was intact. At first I’d been hunting for another drink, but after I saw the dates on the bottles, I lost my nerve. These bottles must have cost a thousand dollars each. Shaking my head, I walked to the center of what had, moments ago, been a desperate gun battle. I still had a bottle in each hand, but was uncertain what I planned to do with them.
There was the finger, still lying on the floor. I realized that it was the only solid piece of physical evidence proving the Gray Men had ever been here. One look at that finger would convince anyone it hadn’t come from a normal human hand. The fingernail was purplish with an iridescent shine to it, like a pearl. The shark’s-tooth spur on the joint was the same unusual color. I supposed the Gray Men grew these spurs the way we grew fingernails and toenails.
I paused, staring at the dead, alien finger. An idea slowly formed in my mind. I didn’t like the idea very much, but I acted upon it anyway.
I gazed up the stairs toward where McKesson had disappeared. Then I looked down at the finger again. It was the only solid piece of proof left—but McKesson was sure to make it vanish before the night was over. They would spray down the concrete and wash away the syrupy blood. The finger would go into a jar or a bottle and vanish somewhere on the way to police headquarters.