Free More Stories from the Twilight Zone by Carol Serling Page A

the obstacle of a carpet—I’ve seen one of these roach chariots roll up a vertical wall and across a ceiling upside down. The big question is, when they get where they’re going, how do they kill? And why?”
    â€œ
Two
questions,” Saint-Philèmon said with a slightly haunted smile. “Two deeply perplexing questions,
mon ami
.”
    â€œAnd to answer them I think we had better be both lucky and quick. So far eight people with no apparent connection to one another have died after being informed
You’re next
.”
    â€œNo apparent connection,” the inspector said. “Yet all of the victims seemed to have had a notable deficiency in moral values, and all enjoyed a certain level of notoriety that unfortunately has been enhanced by the mystery surrounding their deaths. Is there a plan? Who or what are we looking for?”
    Nobis rarely smiled. He did so now.
    â€œAnother god gone mad.”
    Â 
    Dinner at the Wrixtons’ showplace home, a mid-nineteenth-century Victorian in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, ends, as do all of their intimate and socially-significant gatherings, at a few minutes past eleven. Wry Wrixton and his coltish third wife Julia, half his age, are fitness fanatics who arise early and play hard at their health club. Tough daily schedules demand of them at least six hours of sound sleep nightly in their third-floor bedroom, overlooking a walled garden and an additional wall of backyard oaks and red maples to further ensure their privacy.
    August in Washington is usually hot enough to boil sap out of the African tribal wood carvings Julia collects, but even with the central-air thermostats set at sixty-eight degrees, Julia still likes to sleep with one window partly open near her bed, to enjoy the sweet midnight breath from the garden below.
    Private security on the perimeter of their property and inside the house has been doubled following the latest, cryptic (death?) threat that appeared three days ago in Wry’s personal e-mail. Just a precaution, Wry tells his wife, while he must be in Washington at the wrong season and for the most part under the radar, conducting secret confabs at the Pentagon.
    He’s in his pj’s and using his ultrasonic toothbrush, eyeing himselffor flaws in the old barbershop mirror mounted behind his-and-hers sinks.
Shave and a haircut, four bits
. Wry moves armaments and ammunition around the world for hefty fees to legitimate governments—and also to less visible tribal and religious troublemakers. He has, at sixty, the shrewd mien, the pitchman’s polished baritone, the eerie essence and urbane lech of a wholesaler of death.
    Julia comes into the bathroom looking perplexed, something in her hand.
    â€œWry, where did this come from?”
    He puts down his toothbrush with another overly wide grin of self-approval (he’s always had marvelous teeth), and turns for a better look at the object.
    â€œToy car.”
    â€œI know, but—”
    â€œYou mean the four sets of wheels? Don’t think I’ve ever seen one like—where did you find it, sweetheart?”
    Now Julia is looking at herself in the kitschy old mirror. Even at the end of a long day, aswirl in frothy, clingy night clothes, she illumines Cecil Beaton’s famous dictum: The Truly Fashionable Are Beyond Fashion.
    â€œOh . . .” Julia reties her hair with a velvet ribbon so it is well off her shoulders and the back of her neck for sleeping. “It was there on the sill when I went to raise the windows by my side of the bed. Probably belongs to Myra’s little boy. He follows her around the house while she does the vacuuming.”
    â€œGreat workmanship,” Wry observes, picking up the little car Julia has left on the marble sink. He gives the four sets of wheels a spin, sets the car down again, and instantly it’s in motion, rolling straight and true to the edge of the sink, where it stops as