The Flying Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

caught the sound of shouting and the blare of horns. Grand Street made a brightness ahead of them, and they strode toward it, shoulder to shoulder. All Linc could see of the thoroughfare was a tight-packed line of cars. Occasionally the figure of a man or woman hurried across the intersection. But there were no Eyes.
    They took the last block at a slow lope. As they rounded the corner onto Grand, Linc thought, “Now we’ll see,” and drew in his breath to face the unexpected.
    But it was too unexpected. He stopped in mid-stride and groped for the glass show window of the store nearest him, bumping into Wes, dragging the other man back with him. Ten feet away—ten feet away and two feet above the ground—hovered the hideous oval of an Eye. It had widened in startled surprise as he came into view, and now, as he skittered sideways, the blue iris followed him, rolling sideways between the lids until red appeared at the corners.
    They stood, backs to the wall, huddled together. Linc couldn’t force his legs to move. His knees were limp and he feared he would fall. Something pulled at him that he didn’t understand. But it was compelling and powerful, and the urge of it revolted him until fear was a taste in his mouth, and the acid of it jolted him back to sense.
    â€œCross the street!” he hissed at Wes, and took off at a dead run. As he edged between the cars and climbed over the hoods of others, he cursed himself for a fool. He should have gone back around the corner, back to safety. Why had he chosen to stay?
    He stopped in the shelter of a doorway and Wes panted up beside him. Wes was no longer a tanned, gentle giant of a man. His face was dead white and his lips gray. He pointed toward the center of town, and Linc stepped out of the shelter to see.
    The street, itself, was a tangle of stalled cars, some climbing the backs of others, wrecked and abandoned. Glass gleamed broken on the cement, and water ran in streams into the gutters.
    People sat in some of the cars, their heads visible in the street lights and the flash of neon signs. More people ran among them, or clamored up and down the sidewalks, or peered frozen from the shops.
    And over the street, caught here and there in the light, were six Eyes. They glided back and forth with an even beat as though they were breathing. They sailed up and down the street, turning their whole enormous bulk, tilting downward to gaze into the cars and the stores. Their blinking was a vast closing and opening, their bodiless rolling was a horror against nature. They moved quickly, tipping, and coming low. The street lights caught them and were reflected in their depths and the glint was almost phosphorescent, alien and eerie.
    The fantastic scene went on for blocks. The Eyes bobbed and sailed, flushing people out of hiding places. In the street, a man tried to gain the safety of a car, an Eye close behind him. A woman in the car struck his grasping hand with the steel spike of a shoe, rolled up the window and locked her door. The man ran on, but the Eye stayed over his head. As he came to a black sedan, a little girl cried and ran from her hiding place, another man behind her. The father caught the child but the Eye had fastened on him now. It swung low, its lashes brushing the child’s head. He pushed the child through the car window, reached in the back and pulled out an umbrella, and climbed to the roof of the sedan. The Eye rose up even with his face and he slashed at it with the umbrella; short, vicious stabs. The Eye recoiled, blinking rapidly. The man slashed again, and as the Eye turned away, its interest shifted to a group of four people creeping along behind its back, and went after them.
    â€œLook down at the corner,” Wes said into Linc’s ear.
    Collected in a side street at the intersection was a crowd—a large crowd of fifty or sixty people. And they didn’t seem frightened. Linc walked closer to get a better view until