“Just another few moments,” Hugo said, his eyes pressed against binoculars jutting through the wooden slats of the bell tower. It was cold up here, the breeze rippling through the cramped space so that the single bell resonated a constant eerie chime that sounded too similar to a groan for Finn’s liking.
“Wait until they’re all in,” Gerald instructed Emmie.
Finn could see his great-grandfather was in pain, and furrowed his brow in sympathy. Gerald glared at him. “Pain tells me I’m still alive, even if we are reduced to sitting still, waiting to press a button. We might as well be at an amusement arcade. I hate amusement arcades.”
“Any moment now,” Hugo whispered to Emmie. Across the town, they could see more Legends heading towards the tunnels. From a distance, Finn urged them in. Some were still waiting to enter, or smashing things up. Some had disappeared from view.
“Are they all going in?” Finn asked his dad.
“Most, I think. I can’t see every one of them.”
From below them, a loud whisper carried up the stairs to the bell tower. “There is some concern that nothing appears to have happened yet,” said Estravon’s voice. They heard the sound of his boots on the wooden steps grow louder until he himself appeared at the top of the ladder.
“We will trigger the device when the moment is right,” said Hugo, half turning to him, “not because someone needs the toilet.”
“Actually,” said Estravon, “quite a few in there need the toilet at the moment, but that’s not the only reason for impatience.”
“I’m ready, Hugo,” Emmie said.
“Not all the Legends are in the tunnels yet,” said Hugo.
Finn peered through his binoculars and could just about make out a commotion where the phone box had been ripped from the ground. A Fomorian had become stuck at the shoulders, and Gantrua had motioned for the Hydra to stamp him in.
“We’ll be ready when we’re ready,” said Gerald. “Honestly. These people. They almost make a man regret coming back from the dead.”
“One more moment,” said Hugo.
“I’m concerned about the health-and-safety aspects of having all those civilians in such close proximity to so many irritable, weapon-bearing Half-Hunters,” Estravon said.
“You should be more concerned about the health-and-safety aspects of Fomorians getting in here and ripping everyone’s arms off to use as chopsticks,” said Hugo.
Grumbling, Estravon retreated.
“I like that image,” said Gerald. “At least some of what I taught you clearly rubbed off.”
“There are a lot of very grumpy people down here,” Clara said from the stairs. “Including me.”
“Sorry,” said Hugo with a sigh. “Thanks,” he said to his grandfather.
Gerald looked at him, less impressed.
“Would you prefer to be down there dealing with the people, or up here dealing with the Fomorians?” Hugo asked him. “Clara has the tougher job, trust me.”
Gerald seemed to quietly acknowledge this.
Finn watched the Hydra tromp over and lift a leg, and the unfortunate Fomorian looked up aghast at the gigantic foot being raised above his head, ready to pound him into the tunnel like a cork being pushed into a bottle. The Hydra stamped down hard on the wedged Fomorian, a clomp that sent a tremor through the street.
When the Hydra lifted its leg and stepped back, the Fomorian was still stuck, and utterly dazed.
“OK, we’d better not take any more risks,” said Hugo. “There are a lot of Fomorians in there now, and we’ll have to mop up whatever’s left on the streets.” He looked at Emmie. “Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she confirmed.
“Now.”
Emmie pressed the switch.
Nothing seemed to happen.
She pressed it again.
Still nothing happened. The Legends were still at the entrances to the tunnels. The stragglers, plus Gantrua and the Hydra, were still crashing about Darkmouth.
Finn took the device from her, pressed the switch.
“Again,” insisted Hugo, concerned.
Nothing was happening, no matter how many times Finn pressed it.
“Let me have a go,” said Gerald, grabbing the remote control from Finn and thumping the button aggressively. “You must have rigged this wrong, Hugo.”
“You rigged it,” Hugo said.
“You watched me do it,” said Gerald. “If there was a problem, you should have spotted it.”
Estravon popped his head into the bell tower again. “Excuse me,” he said. “It must be time to activate the device now.”
“We know,” Hugo and Gerald said simultaneously. They stood, Gerald a bit more gingerly, but not wishing to betray any discomfort.
“It didn’t work. I’ll have to go and trigger it from within the tunnels,” said Finn’s father, working his way down the creaking wooden steps towards the main body of the church.
“You can’t do that,” said Clara, waiting with Estravon at the bottom of the stairs. “The people in here need protecting. You can’t run out on them.”
“She’s right,” agreed Gerald. “I know those tunnels. I’ll have to do it.”
“Your body is breaking down. You mightn’t make it alone.”
“How about I—” started Finn as he and Emmie followed.
“Don’t be stubborn, Hugo,” said Gerald.
“Don’t keep trying to do my job for me,” Hugo argued back.
“I could—” said Finn.
Hugo pushed open a door from the bell tower into the church, to reveal the rest of the town, hidden here all evening and terribly annoyed by it. They erupted in protest.
“This is ridiculous,” said Mrs Cross.
“There’s a town full of people getting on each other’s nerves down here,” said Clara. “But not nearly as much as they’re getting on my nerves.” She raised her hands to calm them. “It’ll be OK, not much longer.”
“That’s what you said when I had that tooth out last year,” complained a woman.
“I only gave you a scale and polish,” said Clara.
“There’s an awful smell in here,” someone griped.
Manus and Conn Savage sniggered with gleeful guilt.
“We need to keep our voices down,” urged Estravon.
“Look, I know this is no fun for anyone—” said Clara.
“Actually, I think it’s kind of exciting,” squeaked a voice.
“—but we need to remain calm while Hugo sorts this out.”
“I don’t remember them being this ungrateful,” Gerald said to Hugo. “Although, on second thoughts …”
“If you leave, this church is undefended against whatever’s out there,” said Clara.
“We don’t have a choice,” said Hugo.
“I will go,” Gerald insisted. “I came back to sort out this mess, it’s about time I did it.”
“There are plenty of Half-Hunters who can do it,” Clara said.
“They don’t know how the device beneath the obelisk is rigged,” Hugo said. “They won’t be able to release the fluid. No, this is our town. Our problem.”
“You won’t have a town left if you leave this church,” Clara said.
The whispered arguing continued, the voices melding into one haggled blend of words, watched by the entire town, assistants and visiting Half-Hunters.
Except for Estravon. Who had noticed something.
“Listen to me,” he said.
They didn’t.
“Listen. To. Me.”
That finally hushed everyone.
“Where are Finn and Emmie?”
“We need an entrance as close to the obelisk as possible,” said Finn, peeking an eye out from a shopfront to look for danger. “There’s a bin on the street very close to it, and beneath it is a hatch. If we can get to that without being found, we can drop in, open the pipe manually and get back out again quickly. Go.”
Emmie dashed from the shopfront, up one block be
tween laneways, then ducked into the entrance to the pet shop. Finn followed immediately behind, and together they crouched at the door, unseen by anything but a cockatoo, two gerbils and a disinterested stick insect.
“We’ve not got much time until Mr Glad comes back,” said Emmie. “What if he does and we miss him? What if we miss my dad?”
“We’ll make it,” said Finn. “Come on.”
They left the gazing animals behind, found themselves further up the street at the bookshop, a chunk of its second floor sitting incongruously on the street, paper and covers everywhere.
“The Legends are in the middle sections of the tunnels,” Finn said, his eyes on the quiet, empty street. “We have a few minutes before they reach the section under the obelisk.”
“How are we going to get him back?” asked Emmie.
Finn didn’t know the answer to that yet. He could only deal with one disaster at a time.
“I don’t see any Legends – let’s go,” Finn said, and dashed along another block of shopfronts, carefully pressing himself against the wall as it curved round towards where the obelisk squatted. He stopped at a grocery store, its door ajar. He slid in through the door for shelter. Emmie followed and they crouched at the open ice-cream freezer, beside a shelf of baked beans and wine, while watching carefully for any activity down the street. Finn’s mouth was dry with fear. He swallowed, trying to keep it down. At the same time, he pushed away the nagging thought that bravery would only lead him into the jaws of death. Actual jaws. Crunching, mangling, slicing jaws of …
“Is the tunnel entrance close?” Emmie asked.
“Just around the corner,” Finn confirmed, glad for something else to distract him. “I’ll go first, but you’ll have to give me a hand just to push it open quickly. Then we get in, trigger the obelisk and get out before we’re desiccated ourselves in the flood. You ready?”
Behind him, Emmie grunted.
“There’s just one thing worrying me, though,” Finn said. “We haven’t seen the Hydra since we left the church. It must be up to something.”
Emmie didn’t respond.
“Just keep an eye out for it, all right?” he said.
Still no answer from Emmie.
“Emmie, did you hear—”
He turned around and saw her pressed back against the wall, a finger at her lips. At the window was an eye.
An enormous eye.
Then the eye moved back a little, became a head. Teeth. It was so close the breath of its nostrils was fogging the window.
Finn and Emmie did not move. They did not breathe. They dared not blink in case the breeze of a fluttering eyelash alerted the Hydra to their presence. They couldn’t be sure if it saw them behind the freezer, where they were curled up as tight as possible. Finn felt that old familiar fear rising in him again. Mixed in with it was that strange lurking energy he couldn’t control.
At that point, he decided he would definitely take a thousand Completion Ceremonies, with 10,000 scorpions, over this any day.
Slow moments passed.
Finn and Emmie concentrated on breathing quietly.
Apparently seeing nothing of interest, the Hydra head turned away.
Finn and Emmie watched it draw back from the window and stand in the street. They could see the full scale of the thing now. It was dragging a couple of heads, eyes blank. On the two-headed neck, one looked fully crazed. And high on its back, spindly legs just about visible, was strapped a distressed and exhausted Hogboon, still trying to get a word out from behind its muzzle.
“Ssssggggssssss!” they heard Broonie say. “Sssssgggsssss!!”
The Hydra began to move away from them, down the street, sending a shudder through the shop.
Thud. Thud.
On the shelf above Finn and Emmie, champagne bottles rattled, shook, wobbled. Pop. A cork shot from one. Pop. Another.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Finn and Emmie looked at each other, aghast.
The shop’s till opened with a ting.
The Hydra stopped, whipped a head back to the window and blew so hard it shattered the glass. It sniffed at the air, nostrils quivering, then thrust its head in, teeth snapping.
The Hydra’s head bit at them, so close that Finn and Emmie could feel its wet breath as they scrambled for an escape out of the rear of the shop. Finn reached the back door first, fighting with its lock while Emmie joined him.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she said.
“I am hurrying!”
Another Hydra head smashed through the front window, rushing through the shop, its neck sweeping aside shelves, sending magazines and newspapers flying into the air.
The head filled the space, its fangs taller than either of them.
“Hurry!” Emmie said again.
The lock clicked and the door released them into the yard just as the Hydra head snapped at them. It wedged itself in the doorframe, growling as it struggled to release itself while Finn and Emmie ran through the small yard towards the back wall. Behind them, the Legend’s head withdrew violently, gouging a Hydra-head-shaped chunk through the wall.
Another head came swooping over the shop’s low, flat roof, headbutting the wall with a terrifying smack as Finn and Emmie scrambled over it into the back lane.
“Ssssssgggssssss!” Broonie was saying as he fought with the restraints pinning him to the creature.
“We need to find another entrance to the tunnels!” shouted Emmie as she and Finn sprinted down the narrow cobbled alley.
“We can’t,” Finn replied, panting. “We’ll run into Legends down there. We need to get to that bin by the obelisk. It’s this way.” He turned a sharp left, stopping dead at the sight of a double-headed Hydra neck, one head with utterly mad eyes, leading the rest of the Hydra straight for them.
Emmie ran into the back of him.
“Go right!” he instructed, spinning and going on a straight sprint down the laneway, grass growing through its stones. His Desiccator felt like a dead weight in his hands, a hindrance rather than a help against the Hydra. The Hydra was gaining on them.
“Here!” shouted Finn, taking a running jump into a rotting wooden door. It came straight off its hinges, falling flat with Finn spreadeagled on top of it. Emmie followed, dodging the two-headed neck as it ploughed the cobbles behind her in a spray of shattered stone.
She helped Finn up, and they realised they’d escaped into the pre-school. A brightly coloured sign on its wall read: Little Monsters.
The Hydra sent three heads after them. Over the wall, Finn could make out Broonie, tossed around like a rubber duck on a stormy sea. But, even in the dark, the whites of his eyes were clear. He looked as scared as Finn felt.
Either side of its back door, the pre-school’s two windows were open, probably a result of the town evacuating quickly. Finn and Emmie took one each, climbing awkwardly through them. As he fell into the building, now separated from Emmie by a hallway, Finn caught his boot in the latch and hung, stranded, by one foot.
From the room on the far side of the corridor, he heard Emmie drop from the window, followed by the breaking of glass as a Hydra head followed after her. Through the door, he saw her lean back and fire her Desiccator point-blank at the head. She’d had no choice, but as the blasted neck retreated it was already budding two new heads.
She scrambled from the room. “Where are you, Finn?” she called.
Finn meanwhile was fighting to release his boot, trying to undo the laces to get rid of it. But pulling at them only made the knot tighter. A Hydra head swung from the darkness, smacking against the pane, cracking it but not breaking it. Yet.
Even as his mind worked overtime to imagine all the ways he might die now – well, one way: horribly, by Hydra – a bit of him, some kind of instinct or training or composure, gave him the clarity to reach for his belt, pull out a small knife and slice his bootlace.
Crash.
The window caved in as the Hydra hit it again. It gulped down the boot left behind as Fi
nn crawled away on his hands and knees.
“Come on, Finn!” cried Emmie from the front of the building.
The Hydra reared up, most of its heads especially angry, two of those heads with extra heads on them, and it crashed down on the building, children’s paintings scattering everywhere, masonry firing in chunks all about them. A piece struck Finn in the back and he fell forward, winded, just as a swinging head passed centimetres over his head.
They were in a playground at the front of the pre-school. Emmie jumped on to a roundabout, turning away from an onrushing head, jumping from the spinning wheel and running up a slide to jump off it as another head snatched at her.
She landed on a small bouncy castle.
Even in this moment of terror, Finn was impressed by that move.
Then it was his turn. He rolled, stood, made it to the other side of a swing. The Hydra thrust a head in towards him, its fierce fangs biting, skin like boiled lava. Out of pure fright, he pulled the swing down hard around its neck, so that the rope snagged the Hydra, becoming more knotted with every attempt it made to break free.
“Broonie!” Finn shouted. “Do something!”
“Sssssggggssssss!!!” replied Broonie, strapped tight on the creature’s back.
The rest of the Hydra was wearing the school like a uniform, one leg outside, three in. Five necks whipping wildly, two still subdued for some reason. Finn didn’t understand. Didn’t have time to.
He backed away further while he tried to pull the Desiccator canister from his weapon, and press the button that would set the charge on it. He needed to get under that belly.
Emmie was trying to get through a small window at the back of the bouncy castle. There was a bang and a deep hiss as a head bit into the springy structure. The castle quickly deflated, swallowing her in multicoloured rubber. The Hydra head snuffled for her, but she crawled out quickly from the flattened fun, crawling, then running, towards a bulbous climbing frame shaped like an upturned submarine.
Finn, shaking with nerves and adrenalin, struggled with the canister, and finally pulled it free. Then he dropped it.
Get a grip, he thought, trying to literally get a grip on it with his shaking fingers.
His hand stretched …
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