“Tell me about it. Maybe it was just the car settling or—”

Hari suppressed a scream when she saw the slim black tendril sliding up the rear window.

“Where’d that come from?” she whispered.

“Oh, shit!” Donny said, also keeping his voice low. He pressed the side of his face against the passenger window for a better look. “Oh, shit!”

“What-what-what?” She didn’t want to know but she had to know. “What is it?”

“It looks like a giant clump of crude oil that’s washed up from a tanker spill, except it’s moving…oozing out pseudopods like an amoeba.”

What?

“This isn’t a time for jokes, Donny.”

“Who’s joking? It’s partially under the car and it’s big, Hari. You can probably see it on your side too.”

Hari hesitated, then peeked out her window.

Donny’s description had been right on the money: an amorphous flattened blob with a glossy tarry surface reflecting the aurora. It moved like an amoeba, extending pseudopods then flowing into them. Here and there a black, antennalike tendril jutted from its surface and undulated in the air. One of these had struck the rear window.

A dozen feet beyond this one she spotted another dark shape slithering along the ground.

“I see it,” she said. “And it’s not alone. But where do they come from? The ground is solid, no nooks or crannies or crevices. Where were they hiding?”

Donny said, “Better question: How many are there?”

“One way to find out.”

As Hari reached for the steering column, Donny said, “Maybe we ought to—”

She turned on the headlights.

“—think about that—oh, Christ!”

As before, the beams lit up the ranks of semi-trailers. But unlike before, they had glistening ebony creatures crawling over them.

Whatever they were, the plateau appeared to be home to hundreds of these things.

“Are they eating the food?” Donny said.

“The containers inside the trailer I checked showed no damage. Either they can’t get in or they don’t eat human food—if you can call freeze-dried scrambled eggs and beef Stroganoff human food.”

The oil clumps had all been in motion when she’d turned on the lights, but now they froze in place. Even their antenna-tendrils had stopped waving.

“What happened?” Donny said. “Did you scare them?”

“Maybe I should turn the lights off.”

“No, wait. They’re moving again.”

Yes, moving again…the ones climbing the semis reversed direction and oozed toward the ground. And those on the ground…

“Christ, they’re heading this way!” He began hammering the steering wheel. “Turn off the lights, turn off the lights!”

Hari was already there. Darkness returned as the headlights died, but green flashes from the aurora-strewn sky reflected off the surfaces of the clumps.

“They’re still headed this way,” Hari whispered, her mouth going dry. “Why? What do they want?”

“Maybe you triggered some phototropic response.”

“But the lights are out.”

“Maybe it’s sound…or heat.” The survival blanket had bunched up during their clinch. He spread it over them again and said, “Get back under here.”