by Ronan Cray
Mason couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Tuk stumbled over the rubble to the absent wall. He stood silently surveying what must have been a devastating scene. “Just as the great whale hunters of old had no shortage of prey, so do those who would prey on man,” he seemed to say to himself. The rain flattened his white hair. He looked very old. When he spoke again, he did so as if he had rehearsed it to the point where he didn’t need to pay attention anymore. “You’re a bright young man, strong enough to survive this long. We can use you. Join us.” He turned to face Mason, holding out his arms just as he did in welcome that first day. ”You belong with us. Help us build something real. Let us dye your hair white and enjoy living within the Wall.”
“The Wall is gone.” Mason rolled off the table and was in the process of standing when a living mass of coiling Creepers swarmed through the hole. They fell over Tuk like a flood.
Mason pressed himself up against the wall, wishing he could levitate. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the roiling mass of pods that tackled Tuk. His corpse provided such a bloody frenzy that they had not yet sensed him in the room. More pods piled through the gaping hole in the wall, silent beneath the thunderous crush of rain on the roof.
Maybe he could go out the roof, climb the cliff to safety. The tarpaulins sagged under an immense weight of water. Droplets of moisture presaged an imminent collapse. Mason clung to the wainscoting to get off the floor. He felt the ceiling, turgid against the onslaught outside. He swiped Tuk’s knife off the table and leapt on top of a china cabinet. With one hand still gripping the wall, he reached out with the other.
The knife ripped through the tarp like air. Great sheets of water gushed down on the pods, rolling them out the wall. Rain flashed through the gaping hole in a torrent. One glimpse up the wet cliff face gave him no hope of escaping in that direction. He leapt off the wall to follow the wave out. Where Tuk had fallen, the Creepers left nothing behind.
Water pounded him the instant he stepped outside. His eyes refused to remain open as the lashes failed against an onslaught of spray. Half blind, still half deaf from the explosion, he stumbled around the building until he hugged the rock face.
All around him, the pods recovered from the flood. In fact, they multiplied, sprouting tendrils in the water like high speed hydroponics. Each new tendril grew its own pod and then split in two.
Through the insanity, Mason caught a glimpse of the staircase leading up to the top of the Wall. Without a second thought, he took them two at a time.
A small river washed down the steps. He slipped as a saturated ledge gave way beneath him. Two tendrils hissed up behind him to catch his feet, but retracted immediately when they came in contact with the salt. Even half destroyed, it still worked its magic. He clambered up out of reach on hands and knees.
Once at the top of the wall, Mason surveyed the damage. Out on the dunes, Departure Camp bloomed with pods. He couldn’t even make out the structures beneath the vegetation. Anyone who sought refuge there had no hope at all.
A mountain of blackened, shriveled pods lay against the outside wall, covered by an even more immense mass of living ones. The sheer pressure of the invaders coming off the hurricane soaked sand pressed them against the salt, killing them en masse. Each new wave tumbled over the first, only to die beneath the next. Those vegetable bodies piled up quickly, and it wouldn’t be long before they covered the wall completely, creating a sacrificial ramp for their brethren to pour over the top and into the compound. He had no more than ten minutes before the breach.
Inside the compound, there wasn’t much left for the pods to destroy. The housing looked like a lost city, wrapped in thick vines. Much of it collapsed under the weight of vegetation.
The rain was responsible for its own bit of calamity. Streams raced down the mountain like wet lava. On the plain, these streams met in flash floods. One such monster had torn out the supports of the greenhouses. It proceeded to rip them apart, one section at a time, bearing them like coffins to the sea.
Only the salt pools remained Creeper free. Water filled them and coursed over the edges. A battlefield of raindrops pockmarked the surface. The pod’s tentacles wrapped them like boa constrictors, around and around, but would not enter the brackish pools, even as they filled with fresh water.
In the middle of the furthest pool, three survivors huddled, rain shearing off them like fountains. He couldn’t make out who they were. If they stayed put, they looked safe. Perhaps they could wait out the storm.
Mason felt a moment of hope. If he could join them, he just might make it. The only thing that prevented him was… his eyes searched out every path to the pool. The only thing preventing him was the absence of a continuous wall between him and the sea, a quarter of a mile of man-eating vegetables and strangling vines, and three flash floods boiling over razor sharp igneous rock. He let out a long, slow breath. “Right,” he said, all hope abandoned.
With an enormous crack, the Manor House pushed away from the cliff. A geyser of water erupted from the cave he had just evacuated. The explosion must have tapped into a hidden river which now burst forth from the cliff, pushing the entire structure across the plain the way a fire hose pushes a leaf. The dining hall, the housing, all reduced immediately to their component parts. Hunks of steel and fiberglass and plastic churned across the plain like a horizontal tornado, crushing and rending each other in a race to the sea.
With horror, Mason watched that devastating force head directly for the three figures in the pool. In a momentary whisper, they were gone. They never had a chance.
Neither did Mason. He knew that now. He must be the only person left alive on the island. As soon as those creatures reached the top of the wall, even that statistical anomaly would be remedied. Water, everywhere, soaked the walls, poured into his eyes, pounded his head.
Somewhere in the gale, he heard a high pitched keening. He couldn’t make it out. With dull resignation, he expected one last threat to emerge from the dark clouds and deliver him to his maker.
No. It was a whistle, the same whistle he’d heard in the water a lifetime ago. Amy! The whistle came from behind him on the cliff. He turned to see, not ten feet above him, a face peering through the gloaming. A blurry hand waved him up.
He reached the end of the wall where it crumbled into Mt. Elvis. A hand reached down for him over the black rock. He looked up to see Eddie’s face. Both men paused for a split second, then Eddie reached further. “Come on! The salt is going to fail!”
Sure enough, a crack formed under Mason’s feet. A bolt of lightning lit up the sky as half the wall slid away, crashing into a sea of Creepers like an iceberg in Hell. Mason leapt for Eddie’s hand. As he crested the rock, Paul and Amy reached for him as well.
“We saw everything! We waited for you!” Amy hugged him.
Eddie’s eyes narrowed.
“We can’t stay here!” Paul pointed to the pile of Creepers already slithering up the face of Elvis. “We have to get higher!” He started up an almost invisible path.
“After you,” Mason shouted at Eddie. After a moment’s hesitation, Eddie jogged to catch up with Paul. Mason helped Amy next and took up the rear. Which one do you take across Mount Elvis first? The sheep or the wolf?
An hour later, he thought they’d never reach the summit. His arms burned. His legs shook. More than once the wind almost wiped him off the mountain. Above them, the black cone stretched on forever, the top boiling in angry clouds. Mason tried not to think at all, just put one foot in front of the other. He had an old man, a hated enemy, and a woman in front of him. He couldn’t show any weakness now. “Where are we going?” No one answered.
Around the next bend, everyone disappeared. He stopped, panting. Had he missed a turn? Had they all fallen? He shielded his eyes hopelessly and peered through the curtain of droplets.
“Paul!”
Panic rose in him. He’d never find his way up or down without Paul.
“Amy!?”
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sp; Only the wind answered him. Reluctantly he shouted for the last person he wanted to save him, again. “Eddie!?”
Eddie’s head appeared out of a shadow. “In here!”
It was a cave. Paul and Amy waited for him in the darkness.
“What is this place?”
“It’s a cave.” Eddie rolled his eyes.
“Are there bats?” Amy peered into the darkness.
“Yes. Are you afraid of bats?”
She tried to shake her head convincingly. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Paul chimed in. “We’re not staying. We’ll rest here, but then we’re going back out as soon as the hurricane’s eye passes over us.”
“What?” Eddie didn’t look happy. “Why? It’s dry. There’re no creatures. Let’s stay in here.”
Paul ushered Eddie over to the mouth of the cave. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“No.”
Paul pushed him forward. A few feet from the entrance, the ground dropped away. It was a dizzying view, and Eddie stepped back immediately. “Now maybe a little scared.”
Paul pushed him forward again. “No. Look.”
Eddie leaned out again, looking down the wall. He froze a moment, and then breathed out, “Fuck me.”
Those two blasphemous words uttered with such reverence chilled Mason to the bone. He carefully leaned past Eddie to look down.
The gray light afforded a view straight down the cliff. Not two hundred yards from them, Creepers boiled in a tangle of vegetable flesh. Rising. “Yeah, fuck you, let’s get out of here.”
“Not so fast.” Paul moved to the back of the cave. “You have to help me get a few things.”
“Bats?” Amy said, but followed him anyway.
From a hidden crack, Paul produced a small fish oil lamp and lit it by striking a rock against the wall. Smoky flames illuminated the cave in an orange glow. It tunneled back into the mountain in darkness.
Amy put a death grip on Mason’s arm. “Oh. My. God. Look at all those bats.” He followed her eyes upward. Hundreds of tiny bats slumbered upside down on the ceiling.
“Don’t make any loud noises, and they won’t wake up.”
“Shit,” said Eddie. They looked back to see him inspecting a substance clumped to his boot.
“It’s called guano,” said Paul. “And it makes for great fertilizer. I’d ask you to keep that if we were sticking around.”
“Why, are we going somewhere?” Eddie laughed.
“Yes.” Paul let the matter lie and moved further into the cave. “We’ve spent many a storm up here, let me tell you. Those damn Creepers are persistently reproductive. This isn’t the first time they’ve overrun the Flow. We keep a supply of food and water and other essentials up here for rainy days. Here, catch this.” He tossed Eddie a plastic bag. He picked up several bottles of water and opened one for Amy. “As for me, I’ve kept something special up here for a few years, waiting for my chance to use it. That time has come.” He struggled with a large bundle of fabric overstuffed into a bag.
“It’s a parachute?”
“It was. Now it is something much more practical. Instead of going down, we’ll go up.”
“A balloon,” Amy remarked. “Where did you get the fabric?”
“Same place the others did. They never knew I had it.”
“Yeah, great idea.” Eddie threw up his hands. “We all saw how well that worked out.”
“We’re not going to crash.”
“Right. On a calm sunny day, your compadres flew their balloon straight into the ground. We’ll top that by lifting off into a hurricane and come out rosy? Is that what you have in mind? Is that why you brought us all the way up here?”
“No.” Paul seethed. It was clear no one ever took him seriously. “No, I brought you up here because you’d be dead at the base of the mountain now. If you prefer, you’re welcome to go back.”
Eddie said nothing.
“Look, that’s the good news. The bad news is that before this storm is done, this whole mountain will be a man-eating jungle. In fact, I’d say within the next hour. Do I think this balloon idea will work? Well, I’ve been building it for almost a year, so, yeah, I think it will work.”
“But, the hurricane…”
“The NOAA launches weather balloons in every hurricane to gather data. If they can fly, so can we!”
“Weather balloons don’t have people on them!” Eddie argued. “We’ll be tossed like a salad!”
“They wait for the eye. When the eye comes, they launch the balloon right through it like threading a needle. We can do that. We wait for the eye and we get up over the storm.”
“What if the eye doesn’t pass over us?”
Amy shouted at Eddie. “Why do you have to be so negative!”
Mason interrupted, “Look, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have any choice. It’s either the hurricane or those things back there!” He threw a glance over his shoulder. Any crevice that held water gave the Creepers a new root, and there was no shortage of water. “I’m willing to give the balloon a shot.”
Paul calmed and patted him on the shoulder. “We have an hour, at least. Sit down and let me tell you a story.” They made themselves as comfortable as possible.
“I used to be a pilot. I owned a one-man, one-plane company ferrying tourists and businesspeople from Casablanca to Dakar once a week. Let’s just say I’d come down in the world and had farther to go. One night, we had instrument problems that led us out to sea. I know solar storms can affect GPS systems, so maybe that’s what happened. I still don’t know. Our fuel ran out. I thought we’d have to ditch in the water. I was so glad to see this island.” Laughing. “If only I’d known then…
“Anyway, we forced the plane down on the sand at the end of the island. Copilot died on impact. Our three tourists were pretty beat up. I had hardly a scratch on me, which was a miracle considering the condition of the plane. The sand ripped it to shreds. Within an hour, Tuk’s crew found us. I couldn’t believe anyone lived on this splinter of land in the middle of nowhere, much less that they would find us so fast.
“I don’t have to tell you how Tuk’s hospitality had a few holes in it. It wasn’t long before my three passengers disappeared. I thought I was next.
“I tried so hard to get off this damn island. I built a raft out of refuse and meant to use these parachutes as a sail. Tuk found out. He was adamant that no one leave the island. I don’t know why. He exiled me outside the Wall to run Departure Camp.
“It was a death sentence. Technically, he needed someone to watch over the survivors and herd them in and out of the Gate each day. Previously he just turned them out each night while we slept inside the wall. That looked a little suspicious to the first few groups, so he wanted to install someone to keep an eye on them, keep them complacent. I wasn’t qualified for the task, but Tuk expected a Creeper to take me out sooner or later. For him, it was a win-win.
“As bad as that seemed at the time, it had its advantages. Tuk only cares about what happens inside the Wall. In exile, I was free. I had carte blanche for my activities. As long as I shuttled survivors to their work details in the morning and met them for campfire at night, I could do whatever I wanted.
“I spent a lot of time out at the wreck trying to salvage anything that might prove useful. The radio gear, which was fine when we were pulled out of the wreck, had been destroyed. That was my first big clue that rescue wasn’t on its way, but it took me a long time to come up with a plan.
“Unfortunately, I made two big mistakes.
“The first mistake was letting Sammy know about the balloon idea. At the time, it was just an idea. Before I was exiled, I was so disappointed that Tuk took my raft, I was ranting about how I’d do something else, maybe build a balloon. Sammy listened. He seemed like the kind of guy who could make it happen, so I tried to bring him in. He and I worked on the plans for a night or two. Then Departure Camp became my isolation chamber. I rarely saw Sammy again.
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sp; “It would be years before I tried to build the damn thing. I spent a year up here putting mine together. I still can’t believe Sammy slapped his up in two weeks. That guy could do anything if he put his mind to it. And no, Eddie, it wasn’t haste that kept his balloon from flying.
“It was me. It was my second mistake.
“I got careless the last few nights. With the storm coming and Sammy building his own, I figured it was time to get out of Dodge. I snuck up here every night to finish my balloon, even as I watched Sammy’s progress on his.
“I still don’t know how Angel spotted me, but as I made my way up the mountain a few nights ago, there he was behind me. He followed me, but I was pretty certain he didn’t know who he was following. It was just too dark. I used that to my advantage. I knew he’d poke around until he found my project, so I led him straight to Sammy’s balloon. Better him than me. I found a hiding place and watched.
“Angel is as thorough as he is cunning. He didn’t just poke holes or tear up the fabric. After about five minutes’ thought, that crafty bastard spent a full hour, in the middle of the night, pulling out individual silk threads. He accomplished two things. First, no one would be able to find his handiwork. Second, the balloon would still inflate. He created a weakness in the fabric that would blow when put under too much pressure. I’m pretty sure that patch blew shortly after takeoff, bringing it down on the Flow. Even as they fell to their deaths, those poor fools never knew what went wrong.
“I don't feel bad. They were using my chutes and my gear, and they didn't even invite me to participate. They got what they deserved.”