by Mark Wheaton
“Then why can’t you tell it what to do?”
“I don’t know. So far, that’s been Mia-only.”
“What happens if she tries again and it just pushes back twice as hard?”
“I don’t know,” replied Sineada, shaking her head. “Believe you me, I wish this burden was on me, not her. But if she’s the only one who can reach it, then we’ve got to try.”
• • •
Muhammad picked his way through the hundreds of people on the thirtieth, desperately seeking his wife. When he came up dry, he hurried to the stairs, only to be rebuffed.
“Back of the line, asshole.”
Scanning around, he spotted a wooden ladder one of the construction workers had propped up near a service access point cut in the ceiling. He hurried over, set up the ladder, and clambered up to the next floor.
As he emerged onto the thirty-first floor, he was struck all over again by the blistering cold so high up in the building. There was even less hung up around the exterior of the level to keep out the elements, and rain poured in from holes cut in the ceiling as well. There were only two floors left to go.
People were huddled together in small groups stretched out across the entire level of the building. Most looked shell-shocked by the events of the day or, perhaps more accurately, resigned to their impending doom.
One group looking over the side of the building had a woman with them about Fadela’s height, so Muhammad rushed over, only to be disappointed when he saw it wasn’t her.
“They’re getting closer,” one of the people said.
Muhammad saw that they were positioned directly above one of the gently swaying sludge worms, which now approached from only a couple hundred feet below them. From the street level, they looked like giant earthworms straining upwards as if to climb over a rock. But now, the sight brought to mind what it’d look like to stare straight down over an oil geyser as it exploded from the ground. Something Texas was famous for, even in India.
“Muhammad?”
Muhammad wheeled around and saw Mrs. Fredrik standing behind him.
“Oh, my Lord, it is you,” Mrs. Fredrik exclaimed, holding her face in her hands.
She walked over and immediately embraced her neighbor, tears leaping to her eyes. It was then that Muhammad knew his wife hadn’t made it.
“She saved my life,” Mrs. Fredrik whispered. “I would be gone if it wasn’t for her.”
“How?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know. She was in the garage, I heard her cry out, but when I went down she was nowhere to be seen. I don’t know. I went back upstairs, but then a truck going by looking for survivors picked me up and took me here. I was carried up here in a chair.”
Muhammad had thought he’d steeled himself against the inevitable, that even though his wife might have made it out of their apartment, that didn’t mean she had made it to safety. But as he felt his body reacting to the news, he realized he’d never believed she was alive.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Mrs. Fredrik said.
“It’s okay,” he said finally. “I’m sure I’ll be with her soon enough.”
Chapter 30
It was time to go.
With the columns of sludge now only four flights below them, the poltergeist wind was already blasting through the twenty-ninth floor. For safety’s sake, the mayor and her aides had evacuated the three thousand survivors to the highest floor. There, they had divided them into three lines positioned around each of the fire stairwells. Controversy abounded as to places in line, the younger and presumably faster wanting to be at the front. The slower, the injured, and the elderly refused to go along with it at first, but as there was so little time for dissension, their voices were soon drowned out.
One of Mayor Bresnan’s aides had actually confronted Big Time with the possibility that what they intended to do might bring down the building.
“You’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in property damage with possibly hundreds of millions more if this affects others in this corridor,” he had charged.
“You’re willing to die to save Houston taxpayers a couple of bucks?” Scott had asked, incredulous. “Hell, you ever decide to run for office, you’ve got my vote!”
Still, everyone knew this was a possible no-win scenario. Everyone could die up on the top floors of the building, or they could die in the floodwaters below. There were no guarantees either way. Big Time’s worst fear was that setting these fires could lead to a conflagration that would send smoke up the stairwells, killing hundreds. There was no way to avoid it—chances were good that the fire would be out almost as quickly as it began—but it was a possibility to consider.
Big Time was trying to force this idea from his mind when Muhammad returned, coming down a wooden ladder from the upper levels.
“Did you find your…?”
But Big Time didn’t need to finish the question to know the answer.
“I’m sorry.”
Muhammad nodded but then moved towards the cans of paint thinner set up at the corners of the floor. Officers Gonzales and Franklin had volunteered to help Big Time and Scott, but Gonzales welcomed the return of Muhammad.
“I’m going to head for the stairs. You guys are crazy.”
“I don’t know if I could argue with that,” Scott said.
Muhammad stared down at the approaching worms with grim fascination. Somewhere inside it lay whatever was left of his wife. He saw his mission as one to free her from its maw. It wouldn’t bring her back, but at least he wouldn’t let the beast win.
Scott came over and extended his hand to Muhammad.
“See you down there?”
“Will do,” Muhammad replied, shaking the man’s hand.
“Sorry about all the, you know, douche-y shit.”
“Sorry for wishing you’d be plagued by monstrous sludge worms in return.”
Scott’s eyes lit up.
“A joke! I hope you don’t die, man. I’ll bet you got more of those in you.”
As Scott headed back to his corner, Franklin and Big Time hurried to theirs. Thin strips of cloth hung from the mouths of the paint thinner cans, the caps keeping them loosely in place. Franklin’s hand was shaking as he tested the lighter in his palm. Each man had five lighters, all requisitioned from the survivors upstairs. They all worked, in theory, but Scott hadn’t wanted to take any chances.
“What happens if I drop it and it misses the worm?” asked Franklin.
“Don’t think twice,” Big Time replied. “Light the next one and let it drop. We’ve each got three five-gallon cans. It’s all theoretical, but it should only take one.”
“How so?”
“When the can blows up, it’ll ignite the thinner, and instead of one fire, there’ll be fifty raining down on the worm. The worm itself it flammable as all hell, and if a handful of those fires lands on it, the flames should just suck down that fuel like mother’s milk.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, we’re going for the big prize on this one. Good luck.”
The officer shook Big Time’s hand and took up his position on the northwest corner as Big Time stood over the worm moving up the northeast side. It had only gotten larger in the intervening ten minutes or so since he’d checked it out. It looked like a tower of ebony, polished to a shine. As the rain spattered down onto it, it was hard to conceive that it was in some way alive instead of a rocky edifice that had been rising there for generations.
The go-signal was a nod from Big Time that would lead Officer Franklin to discharge his firearm three times into the rain. The exodus of people would begin down the stairs, and the makeshift bombs would be dropped.
Big Time looked over at Scott on the southeast and nodded. Scott quickly lit the wicks on his bombs and signaled for Muhammad, outside Big Time’s plane of vision, to do the same. He then knelt down and lit his own as, fifty feet away, Officer Franklin did similarly.
A quick glance from Scott and Big Time signale
d Franklin. Franklin had only fired his weapon a handful of times in the line of duty, but as he pulled the Heckler & Koch 9mm from his holster, he wondered if he’d ever get the chance again. He pulled the trigger three times, and three shots echoed out over the storm.
“Here goes nothing,” Big Time whispered to himself.
He took the first can and quickly lowered it as far as he could over the flimsy wooden guard rail, positioning it directly over the slowly moving sludge worm. With rain now threatening to douse the flames, Big Time let go. He immediately pulled himself back from the edge, but glanced down to see the effect.
Which was nothing.
The can hit the worm straight on, but immediately bounced off. The wick was extinguished, the cap fell off, and the thinner splashed out of the can as it spun harmlessly down to the flooded street below.
“Shit!”
Big Time tightened the caps on the next two before hesitating a beat. He waited for the wicks to burn down, almost to the can. He then picked both up, lowered them as far as he dared, and dropped the pair together.
The wind blew out the wick on one of the cans almost as soon as it was airborne, and it landed harmlessly on top of the worm. The second can missed the worm entirely. Big Time was about to curse his luck and run to the fire stairs when he heard the can explode.
The small blast had an incredible effect. Having exploded a few feet below the top of the worm but directly alongside it, super-heated shards of metal and flaming liquid were showered onto the creature. At multiple contact points, the worm immediately caught fire.
But instead of the flames spreading across the surface as Scott had postulated, each small fire ignited veins that shot deep into the worm like lightning bolts tearing through the body. This had the effect of shattering the worm like a split log. Several splinters, glowing orange and red with fire albeit still attached to the main body, peeled away and down into the floodwaters.
Like a blossoming flower, the sludge worm divided into thousands upon thousands of ever-thinning tendrils as it thrashed against the building and sank.
Big Time watched all this for a moment, enraptured, until Scott’s hand grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
“Time to go.”
• • •
Three thousand people or not, the rapid descent down the three stairwells was nowhere near as harried as everyone expected. People were terrified and going as fast as they could, but a strange order ruled the day. It was as if after all they’d suffered, they were determined to prove they weren’t willing to sacrifice their humanity even in the face of death. Young people helped senior citizens. When people fell down, there were six hands offered to help them up. No one pushed or shoved. Because of this, it was only five minutes before the first few made it down to the parking garage.
Big Time had told them about the obstructions, but no one seemed to care. Everyone shared a single-minded goal of exiting out the Shell building parking lot, barricades be damned. Despite what they’d glimpsed through the stairwell windows and heard as rumors went up and down the chain of people, no one believed that the monster had been vanquished.
Scott, Muhammad, Officer Franklin, and Big Time had joined the crush of people in the center stairwell, receiving a round of applause even as folks raced past.
“Hope Zakiyah didn’t get itchy down there and head off without us,” Scott joked.
“You really think she knows how to drive that thing?” Big Time called back. “She wouldn’t get six feet.”
Muhammad smiled at this but then glanced up. Something hit him clear as day. He patted Big Time on the shoulder.
“Don’t wait for me.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
Muhammad simply smiled and headed up the stairs against the current. Scott eyed him curiously but then hurried after Big Time.
“Where the hell is he going?”
“No clue. Didn’t look like a guy ready to throw himself off a building.”
“Yeah, but neither do we,” Scott said. “It’s been hitting me. We get out of this, what do our lives look like, anyway? Is it really worth going to all this trouble?”
Big Time knew what his life was going to look like, as he’d already been down this road. He’d have to find a new city to settle in, hopefully somewhere with jobs. He’d have to find a new school for Tony. He’d probably want to be near his brother. He knew what it was to lose his house, job, health insurance, car, etc., but he’d had his family to hold onto.
“Don’t think like that, man,” Big Time said, as much to Scott as to himself. “We’re in this together. You and me and my son, Tony. That’s a start, right?”
Scott nodded, but didn’t reply.
When Big Time and Scott reached the parking garage, they split off from the rest of the evacuees and kept going down to the lower level.
“Where are you headed?” called Officer Franklin.
“Got a truck and some friends waiting a few levels down,” Big Time called.
Franklin pounded Big Time’s fist and offered him a grin.
“See you on the street.”
“Good luck.”
• • •
On P5, water had begun rising almost as soon as Big Time and the others had headed up the stairs, a source of increasing alarm for Zakiyah and Tony. One foot became two feet and just as quickly became three.
“Maybe they need our help,” Tony said, antsy. “Should we drive around and look where the water’s coming in?”
“You want to be halfway across the parking lot when your daddy comes tearing out of there with twenty of those things chasing after him?” Zakiyah asked.
“No.”
“Well, then, we sit tight.”
A few minutes later, they heard a tremendous noise coming down the stairwell. Zakiyah thought it was the building coming down, but the water remained still around the truck. Still, she turned the key in the ignition and fired up the dump truck.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Tony as the sound got louder. “You think those are people?”
They didn’t have to wait long for confirmation. Dozens of voices could be heard echoing down the stairwell along with the parade of footsteps.
“You know what the best part of this is?” asked Tony. “They’re not screaming.”
Zakiyah snorted and waited. A minute or two later, Big Time and Scott came racing out of the stairwell, looking ragged. Tony leaped out of the truck and hugged his dad as Scott clambered into the front seat.
“What about Muhammad?” Zakiyah asked, alarmed.
“Don’t know the answer to that one,” Scott sighed. “Seems he had something to do.”
“Did he find his wife?”
Scott shook his head. Zakiyah dropped it and scooted over to hand driving duties back to Big Time. Moments later, they were racing through the water towards the exit ramp.
• • •
“Are you going to go back to India?”
Muhammad was surprised by Mrs. Fredrik’s question. He tried to figure out what answer would make her happy before deciding on the affirmative.
“Yes, probably,” he replied. “I still have family there.”
He hadn’t wanted to tell her that they’d probably be dead within minutes.
“I have a sister in Round Rock,” Mrs. Fredrik said. “That’s just north of Austin. Only thing is, she lives with my niece’s family, so I don’t think I can go there.”
Mrs. Fredrik had told Muhammad that she’d been carried up all the flights of stairs on a chair. He figured she’d need his help on the way down. Sure enough, he’d found her alone on the thirty-first floor, staring over the city. Taking her by the arm, he began to lead her down the long flight to the lobby.
“I’m getting nervous,” she whispered as they reached the twentieth floor. “I keep waiting to hear it, but nothing’s coming.”
Muhammad eyed her curiously at this. He’d been listening to the distant screams and pounding against the walls for the last three or f
our minutes. At the very least, he thought the old woman would feel the vibrations running up the guard rail as the foundation of the building began to quake.
Then he realized, she probably did.
“It’ll be all right,” Muhammad said calmly. “We’ll hear it soon enough.”
Laa ilaaha illa-Allah.
Chapter 31
The monster felt no pain even as it was torn apart by flames, only confusion. It had been driving relentlessly forward on its task when it was interrupted. The momentum was lost, and for a moment or two, there was no guidance. The collective had lost its unifying integrity. Several thousand tendrils splashed down into the floodwaters with no direction where next to go. The entire mass reacted as if stunned, caught unawares by a vicious opponent and sent to the mat.
But even as it fell, attempts were being made to reunify its movements.
It could feel the human exodus in the nearby building, but was temporarily unable to do anything about it. No, the creature was temporarily stretched too thin to make any kind of attack.
Besides, the people were moving towards the water.
A reflex of motivation surged down every tentacle at once. As it had done after detecting the large numbers populating Brammeier Tower an hour before, the collective began pulling itself back together into a single contiguous mass.
Just as the last few stragglers made it into the parking garage and began racing over to the Shell building, the revived monster attacked with renewed vigor. Instead of having to ascend the sides of the tower, it found its target far more concentrated in the sublevels. A single, massive strike from the poltergeist effect shattered the flooded first floor of the building, sending water sweeping into the parking garage. Several people were killed outright by the ceiling collapse. Others screamed. They knew what was coming next.
Thousands of tentacles rode the floodwaters down from the lobby and into the sublevel. The garage was only flooded by a foot or two, but that was all that was necessary. The sludge worms entered the safe confines of the water, selected their targets, and rocketed forward like torpedoes.