My head was above water, which worried me, but the Mother had switched her focus to the bags on the stairway. The distant mob was nearly at the top now. A few more seconds and they’d get through.
I could see Anne and Chuck pressed up against the spools at the top of the stairs, trying to push them over. I hoped that they could shift the heavy stack before the bags reached them, because otherwise the wave of creatures would easily push it over on top of them.
I reached the Mother’s massive trunk and began to curve around it, chain in tow. She wasn’t much more than about twenty feet thick at the waterline, so I figured it would only take a few moments to circle her with the chain.
Black tentacles erupted from the water next to me and a huge splay-faced worm wrapped itself around my chest. The damned thing thrashed and looped its tail around me, trying to capture my arms, while at the same time gripping and jerking rhythmically with its teeth trying to dig into my chest as deeply as possible. Spray flew as it writhed, its tail slapping the surface of the water.
A quick glance at the staircase showed that there was no time to try and get free. I kept moving, fighting to keep my arms free of the worm’s tail and slowly closing the gap as I circled the Mother’s body.
Chuck and Anne threw themselves at the massive tower of steel-wrapped spools. It tipped forwards slowly, imperceptibly, and then suddenly it was past the point of no return.
The spools separated as the tower fell. The bags directly underneath the cascade were crushed, while the ones nearby were hurled off of the steps to fall into the water below like raindrops.
The massive spools bounced on the stone stairs, each impact sounding like a car crash, and plowed into the mob, spinning and tumbling all the way down the top section of the stairs before flying off into space.
It wasn’t enough to make a clean sweep of the stairway. At least fifteen of the things remained at the bottom, but it gave Chuck and Anne time to sprint for the shack in relative safety.
I had to look away as I finally closed the circle and snapped the hook over the massive chain, encircling the Mother in a wide loop of steel. I gripped the fat links with both hands and began to climb, dragging the heavy worm clamped around my chest out of the water with me.
I sucked in as much air as I could and bellowed, “Now! Pull the lever now!”
In the distance, Anne and Chuck turned their heads towards me. Anne ducked out of the shotgun strap around her shoulder and dropped the weapon on the roof.
That’s when I realized that I had made a serious mistake. The bags were already at the top of the stairs and running for the improvised steps at the shed. There was no way that Anne was going to be able to get back on the roof in time if she ran to the crane and back.
I tried to stop her. “Anne! Don’t jump! Get back!”
It was too late.
She raced to the side of the building farthest from the bags and hung from the edge, letting herself down as far as she could before letting go and dropping to the ground. She rolled to her feet and sprinted to the crane lever.
Some of the bags began to notice her. They split off from the group charging the shack and ran towards the crane.
Anne yanked the lever back and the chain began hauling me skyward. It clicked and twitched as the hook slipped over the links below me and cinched up tight against the Mother’s trunk.
I looked down in time to see one of the Mother’s tentacles whipping through the air at me. She hit me with the toothed side of her tentacle, which would have flayed me down to the bone if not for her offspring wrapped around my torso. The long serrated teeth struck me in the middle of my back and ripped all the way through her spawn, penetrating just far enough to rake my skin underneath. Both halves of the worm dropped lifelessly off of me to flutter down and splash into the water below.
At the top of the quarry Anne ran for the far side of the shack. Five or six bags were right behind her. Chuck threw himself flat on his stomach with his arms reaching down off of the edge.
Anne leaped with everything she had. They connected. Chuck pulled her up as she scrabbled for purchase with her toes, and together they managed to get her back up on top of the roof. The shack trembled and thrummed with the impact of the bags as they slammed into the side below her.
The chain drew me steadily upwards until I reached the tip of the crane. Far below, the surface of the lake boiled as the Mother thrashed at the end of her noose.
46
I picked my way down the sloping crane arm as quickly as I could. When I reached the ground I pushed the lever back to the center position, locking the drum into place. The Mother hung half out the water, twisting and jerking against the chain biting into her flesh. The entire crane arm bobbed and groaned in time with her struggles. I knew she wouldn’t be trapped for much longer.
I needed to get into the shack. I couldn’t go through the ring of frenzied bags around it, so that left just the one option. I looked hard at the roof, took two running steps, and leapt.
I sailed upward and out, pin-wheeling my arms in an attempt not to tumble and keeping my eyes on the rapidly approaching tin roof below. Chuck and Anne both looked up with wide, disbelieving eyes as I dropped down out of the sky, nearly on top of them.
The building boomed and rattled as I hit the roof flat on my back not two feet from the edge. The impact knocked the wind out of me.
Anne helped me to my feet. “That was amazing! I can’t believe you just did that!”
“I promise you, it wasn’t my first choice.”
“Now what?” The shotgun in her hands boomed. A bag with the face of a snarling, bearded man pitched back and out of sight below the roofline.
I beckoned to Chuck, and when he came over, I reached out and tore off one of his sleeves. Having just come out of the water, my clothes were still soaking wet.
“Hey!”
“Sorry, I need the fabric.”
The roof was made up of several overlapping sheets of tin. It was easy enough to peel one back, exposing a wide gap between the two-by-fours supporting the roof. When I judged it wide enough, I dropped through.
The inside of the shed was free of bags. The first time I had been in the shack, I had noticed a striker in the moldering pile of old welding aprons and gloves. Used to light a welding torch, a striker is just a spring loaded handle that rubs a piece of flint against a steel plate. It’s small, lightweight, and reliable. Better yet, it still works if it gets wet.
I stuck that and a can of turpentine into the back pockets of my jeans, and then went over to the drum of diesel. I turned it over onto its side and started punching holes in it with a screwdriver from the bench. I worked as fast as I could, since the noise was sure to attract attention from the outside, and also because I wanted as much fuel left in the barrel as possible when I was done.
I grabbed the leaky drum by the ends and hefted it. It was a hell of a lot heavier than I expected, but I managed a controlled run to the door. One good kick sent it flying open, knocking a couple of bags out of the way and opening a path between the door and the crane. I shot out of the doorway at a dead run.
I could hear them in pursuit as I got close to the crane, but they couldn’t catch me by the time I was close enough to jump up onto the arm. I braved the slope of the crane like a man on a tightrope. The bags lacked the coordination to follow and quickly turned back to the mob surrounding the shed.
Slippery, stinking fuel poured off of the barrel and made the metal struts slick under my feet. If it hadn’t been for the rust to give me traction, I wouldn’t have made it ten steps. As it was, I had several close calls hefting a couple of hundred pounds of fuel up the ever-narrowing steel path.
By the time I reached the top, diesel was running down my arms and soaking into my shirt and pants. At the apex, I could feel the Mother thrashing down below. The crane arm juddered under my feet.
I dropped the barrel straight down into center of her hideously toothed maw. The impact sent sickening ripples t
hrough the rubbery flesh. The mouth contracted hard around the drum and I could clearly hear razor-sharp teeth punching through the metal sides. Diesel fountained out of the barrel, creating pools of fuel in the creases and crevices of the Mother’s pit of a mouth.
I wiped my hands off as well as I could on the back of my wet jeans and shirt, hoping to get enough of the oily stuff off of my hands to keep me from going up like a torch, and then pulled the turpentine can out of my pocket. I unscrewed the silver metal cap and tossed it away into the wind.
Chuck’s cotton sleeve made a fine wick once twisted into the mouth of the can. Turning the container upside-down for a moment allowed the thin liquid to soak the cloth all the way through. I pulled out the striker and squeezed the arms of the handle together. A shower of bright orange sparks fell across the cloth. It caught instantly.
I tossed my makeshift torch off the edge and watched as it flared and smoked on the way down. It landed by the barrel in a shallow pool of diesel, the tiny yellow flame a pinprick far below.
I chanted “C’mon, c’mon” under my breath for long seconds until I saw pale flames run out in waves and tendrils all around the barrel, growing higher and fiercer as I watched.
The crane arm lurched hard under my feet as the Mother convulsed, forcing me into a crouch, my fingers gripping the struts with white knuckles. The fire grew into a roaring pillar. Thick, greasy smoke billowed up past me and tentacles whipped and slashed the air as the Mother tried to bend and twist against the chain, fighting to duck beneath the water only a few feet below her head.
The stink of burning meat and petrochemicals was becoming overpowering, pushing me back down the arm a good ten feet or more. Half of the thick tentacles were now hanging limply off to one side, the flesh charred and dead, and the other half jerked around randomly as what passed for the Mother’s brain began to roast and die.
Standing high over the lake, I looked down at the carnage that I had wrought. Just as there had been recognition on an instinctive level, some part of me mourned her passage as she burned.
The Mother’s struggles became feeble and random in her final moments, so I turned and started walking back down towards the ground, watching the crowd around the shed closely. If I was right, the bags would drop any second, unable to survive the loss of their controlling intelligence, the same as when the prime worm inside a bag was killed.
I felt a long, shuddering tremor through the soles of my shoes when the Mother died. I was right in that the reaction from the bags was immediate. But I was completely wrong about what that reaction would be.
47
The bags didn’t drop. Instead they went berserk, attacking everything in sight. They were clawing and biting and stabbing the metal walls of the shed while other bags next to them were slicing and ripping the flesh off of their bones. They died without ever seeming to notice.
Bags who were looking up when the Mother died became fixated on the roof and began leaping up with newfound strength, no doubt ripping muscles and ligaments with abandon, and catching the rooftop easily.
Chuck was out of ammo. Anne aimed and shot with impressive speed and precision as bags began pulling themselves up to the roofline, but I could see that she was now down to the shells containing shot in the last half of the drum. Bags were coming up on all sides of the roof now, and I knew that Anne and Chuck would be overrun in moments.
I ran down the crane and made one last leap to the roof. I kept my feet this time and drew my baton.
“You couldn’t kill the Mother?” said Anne as she backed towards me.
“I killed her.”
“You said that the bags would all die when she did! These things are ten times more dangerous now than they were while she was alive.”
An old man with white hair and bloody hands pulled himself up to the roof in front of her. The gun in her hands dry fired on an empty chamber. Anne waited until he got a foot onto the roof and let go with his hands to stand up. In that instant she skipped forward and hit him in the face with a hard forward jab of the stock. With nothing to hang on to, he fell backwards off of the roof, only to be torn to pieces by the bags he landed on below.
“It’s more dangerous, but it won’t last. Look.”
Down below, two thirds of the bags were already dead, gutted and in some cases literally pulled apart limb from limb by the rest. “Pretty soon they’ll kill each other off, leaving just a couple for us to deal with. We’re going to be okay.”
And this time, I was right. I don’t know how long I raced back and forth on that rooftop knocking bags to the ground with my baton, but it seemed like days . Just another endless, frantic combat memory to stack up with the rest of my collection. Eventually the things stopped coming. I walked to the edge and looked down at the last few bags tearing at each other mindlessly.
In moments, only three were left, and those were tearing their own hands to shreds on the sharp, ragged holes that now covered the sides of the shed. I jumped down and finished them. They died still attacking the unfeeling metal walls.
We staggered away from the grisly scene and down the quarry stairs, not stopping until we reached the parking lot.
Trying not to think about what might still be swimming in the black water, I jumped in to rinse off the worst of the diesel and the blood. I stayed in for as long as I dared, and climbed back out.
I flopped down beside Anne and Chuck who were already lying on their backs on the cool gravel, exhausted. It seemed like my entire body was covered with puncture wounds and cuts, all marinated in diesel. Every inch of me burned or ached.
I rolled my head to one side to look at my companions. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”
Anne punched me in the shoulder. Hard. Then she started to laugh. A few seconds later Chuck joined in, and then we were all chuckling and giggling like mad people.
I felt good in a way that I hadn’t since the war. We made a difference here. And it mattered. When I heard about Pearl Harbor as a boy, I left my family to throw myself into the biggest conflict the world had ever seen. For the first time in my life I wasn’t just fighting, but fighting for something. But since then, I went from a person who protects to someone who avenges. And then to a person who just inflicts pain because he can.
I felt like the man I used to be. I felt clean. Tears and laughter mixed together unexpectedly. Embarrassed, I covered my face until it passed.
When I was able, I got stiffly to my feet and then helped Anne and Chuck up, grabbing each of them by the hand and pulling them upright, eliciting a pitiful chorus of groans.
“I guess it’s time we headed back. We need to check in with Greg and Mazie at the house and see if they found out anything more about …” The words trailed off as I realized what we had done.
Chuck gave me a quizzical look, but Anne got it immediately. “Oh, God! The whole town is still full of bags.” We all turned to look up at the blood soaked shed in the distance.
Realization dawned on Chuck’s face. “Oh, shit.”
48
I didn’t need any directions from Chuck as I turned back towards town. I simply pointed the truck’s nose towards the fat columns of black smoke standing tall in the fading light.
Steady clicking sounds filled the truck as Anne and Chuck loaded numerous pistol magazines and both fifty round drums for the shotgun with bad tidings and vengeance. No one spoke as we rumbled down the road, but we all shared the same thought. One way or another, this was going to end tonight.
The residential section of town, an oblong blob between the quarry and the square of businesses framing Main Street, was quiet and deserted, with only the orange glow of the occasional house fire and a few abandoned cars still idling in the road to give any indication of how badly things had gone wrong here. I threaded the streets nervously, keeping one eye on the road and one on Anne as we made our way towards Greg’s house.
The good news was that the place wasn’t on fire. The bad news was that the front door was laying in the front l
awn in two pieces, split right down the middle.
I drew my baton and stepped through the doorway into the murky living room. Two figures lay unmoving on the carpet, haloed by dark stains. Fearing the worst, I flicked on the lights, only to sigh with relief when, instead of Greg and Mazie, I saw two heavyset bags facedown on the floor with 30-.06 exit wounds in their skulls.
Chuck covered our left side with his Taurus, and Anne covered the right with the shotgun. It said a lot that the sight of the two corpses failed to elicit a comment from either.
I crossed the room quickly and listened at the base of the stairs, but I didn’t hear anything. I had expected to be stiff and sore as I climbed, but found that all the various punctures and cuts I had suffered at the quarry were already healed. As much as the psychological consequences of my condition worried me, I had never failed to be grateful for the physical ones.
I climbed as quietly as I could, stepping over the spent brass shell casings on the steps. A foul, swampy smell mixed with copper hit me when I stepped into the hallway at the top. All of the doors were open except for Valerie’s room.
I put one finger to my lips and Anne and Chuck nodded. Then I put my head against the door and listened to the silence on the other side for a full minute. Not hearing anything, I stepped back and kicked the door in, shattering the frame and tearing out the top hinge, leaving the door hanging wide open and leaning halfway to the ground.
The coppery sewage smell billowed out of the room. I stepped inside and flicked on the lights, which in hindsight was something of a mistake. Valerie lay in the center of her shattered bed. Her legs were still tied to the foot board posts, but the headboard was broken apart, the pieces still tied to her wrists. The cords had cut her down to the bone, disappearing into the black, tarry channels on her wrists.
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