14

by Peter Clines

  Nate’s toes found the cinderblock. This time he braced the ball of his foot on it and gave a steady push. It scraped free of the door and the hydraulic arm took the weight. He tried to pull it, but it hissed at him. The same damned arm that made it close automatically also made sure it closed at a slow, steady rate.

  The old woman flopped back down onto her back and her arm bounced on the ground. Her sundress and one side of her cardigan were twisted into a ball on her chest. There was a distant sound, like someone grunting through a mouthful of water.

  Clive dragged him back into the building and the door shut itself. There was a loud click as the latch struck the plate. Their hands smacked together reaching for the lock and both pulled back. They tried again and both hesitated. Nate’s hand lunged in and locked the door.

  There was a blur of movement and a dry rasp from outside.

  A pair of hands sat at the edge of the concrete slab. They had spidery fingers and skin like an eel. Nate and Clive heard a low hiss and a third hand reached up. The top of a head appeared. It was bald with patches of hair. There were small spots that might have been melanomas, but Nate thought they were scales catching the light.

  The head bobbed up for a moment, slipped down again, and reappeared as a forearm was heaved up onto the slab. The creature grunted with effort. Nate saw a jaw like a bear trap, bristling with narrow, glassy teeth. A swollen, pale eye the size of a silver dollar dominated one side of its head. The other side had two small eyes, the eyes of a rat or a spider. None of them had lids. It was the face of a deep sea monstrosity that should never see the sun. Not a sun in the prime of its life, anyway.

  The overseer’s hand shifted and landed on Auntie’s arm. The limb shifted and her body slid toward the edge. The creature flailed for a better grip and sank its hand into the old woman’s stomach. Her body rolled onto its side again, and this time it rolled all the way over and off the edge. The spidery hands vanished and they heard the distant sound of impact and chittering.

  “If she hadn’t been there,” murmured Clive, “they would’ve gotten up.”

  “You think this door’s going to hold?”

  Clive looked at it. “Not much else we can do,” he said. “Metal door, brick walls, concrete floor.” He tapped his foot on the landing, then glanced back at the rear stairwell’s institutional banister. “We could tie it off. Just tie the knob to the banister to hold it shut. I’ve got some sash cord upstairs.”

  Nate nodded. “Let’s get it. And that big board for the front—”

  The blast of the shotgun echoed down the stairwell.

  They looked down the hall at Roger. He’d heard it, too. He locked eyes with Nate. “Go!” he yelled. “Get the damned machine turned back on!”

  Seventy Seven

  Veek curled up in a ball on the floor. “Jesus,” she wailed. “Oh, fuck that hurts.”

  Xela dropped to the floor and winced as her leg flared. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She tried to pry Veek’s hands away from her stomach. “Let me see it.”

  Veek howled again. Mandy moaned and pulled herself back into her ball of knees and arms.

  “What happened?” yelled Clive as he ran in from the hall.

  “She got shot,” said Debbie. Her lip was split and blood trailed down her chin. “Andrew got loose and he hit the gun and—”

  Nate limped in and ran to her. “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Xela. “She won’t let me see.”

  He fell to his knees and leaned forward. Veek grabbed his arm. Something crunched under him. He glanced at the floor between them.

  A lumpy circle of fabric sat just under his kneecap. He swiped at it and felt the pellets inside shift. It was still warm to the touch.

  Xela followed his eyes. “What is it?”

  “It’s a little—it’s a beanbag,” said Nate. “He really loaded it with beanbags.”

  “I got shot,” yelled Veek.

  “With a beanbag,” said Nate. He hugged her hard and planted a kiss on her head. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “Well it hurts like all hell!”

  He kissed her again and looked at Xela. “The machine?”

  She nodded. “I think we can do it.”

  The chattering and grunting outside the window grew louder. Clive ran back downstairs with his rope, Debbie right behind him.

  “Help me up, you bastards,” growled Veek.

  “God, you’re such a wuss,” said Xela. She hugged the shorter woman and then gathered up her scattered papers.

  “What do we need to do?” asked Nate. He offered an arm to each of them and they stood up together.

  “Okay,” said Xela. “If I’ve got this all right, there’s fifty-three controls that need to move. Almost all of them are the small switches and pushbuttons except for—” she double-checked her sketches, “—this dial, that one, that lever there, and that long one there.” She gestured at each control as she named it.

  Nate looked at the diagram and nodded. He set his hand on the last lever she’d pointed at. “So this goes up, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Wait,” said Veek. She kept one arm wrapped around her gut. “What if sequence matters? What if we crash the system or something because it boots in the wrong order?”

  Xela’s shoulders slumped. “Oh shit,” she said. She looked at the wall of controls.

  Nate shook his head. “Then we’re all dead,” he said. “It’s this or nothing.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. Veek took a breath, crossed her fingers, and smiled at Nate. “Jinkies.”

  Xela snorted a laugh. Nate grinned and kissed Veek hard on the mouth. He set his hand on the lever. It was a brass bar with a knob the size of a golf ball at the end. It fit well in his hand. The lever slid up and settled against a contact. A faint clunk shivered up through the bar and it tingled with static electricity.

  * * *

  Roger still had his foot against the door. So far the security door outside had held against the monsters. He knew if they made it through, having his foot there wasn’t going to make too much difference. But focusing on his foot kept him from putting the pistol to the window and emptying into the crowd of monsters.

  He could smell his piss-soaked jeans and his own blood. Roger glanced toward the back door. Clive and Debbie were tying it off to the banister. From the front door, Roger saw the bruise puffing up one side of her face. He could see shadows moving, but the noise at his door drowned out whatever sounds the creatures made out back.

  One of the overseers on the front stoop glared in at him between strikes to the door. The black mesh between them blurred its appearance, but he could see enough to know he didn’t want a better look. As it was, there was no mistaking the rage in the thing’s eyes. It wanted him dead. It wanted him and his friends dead in the most brutal way possible.

  The creature gnashed its jaws, stepped back, and stabbed at the security door again with its spear. The overseers on either side added theirs and the weapons banged against the barrier.

  One of the spears jammed deep into the security door. The mesh broke around it and made a rent an inch and a half long. The overseer at the other end of the spear twisted and levered its weapon and the rent tripled in size.

  Without a pause or a word—at least, not a word he could understand—the growling horde switched from battering the door to prying at it. Spears jammed into the mesh and the creatures heaved side to side or up and down or twisted their spears in wide circles. There was a sound like popcorn cooking and Roger saw a handful of rivets shoot away into the mob. The mesh peeled away from the security door’s frame.

  “Guys!” he bellowed. “They’re getting in!”

  * * *

  Xela held up the drawings one at a time while Nate and Veek reset controls. He checked the diagram again, counted along a row, and pushed up another switch. Xela marked it off with a scribble while he moved to the next one.

  Veek had her hand on a knob. She peered a
t the sketch. “What does that say? Set it to...two-eighteen?”

  “Two-sixteen,” said Xela. “That’s a six.”

  Roger’s shout echoed up to them. Nate glanced at the open door of the apartment and then at the window. “How much more is there to go?”

  “One more,” said Xela. “There’s only a couple things on the last page.”

  “Almost there!” Nate shouted at the doorway.

  He flipped another switch and looked for the next one. Veek hit two side-by-side pushbuttons. Nate ran his hand down a line of switches and set his fingertip against one. He double-checked the picture and pushed the switch up with a solid click. “I think that’s it for this sheet.”

  They compared the diagram to the control panel and all nodded in agreement. Xela let the sketch drop and held up the last one. Seven controls to adjust on the seventh page. “What if they come with us?” she asked. “What if we’re bringing a hundred of these things back to Los Angeles with us?”

  “They won’t have a chance,” said Veek. She shuffled over to the next section of the control panels. “They’ll either get movie deals or beg for us to bring them back.”

  “Remember the cockroaches?” said Nate. He counted through a grid of buttons. “Debbie tried to take them away from the building and they died. If they come with us, I bet it’ll be the same thing. Too much of our world kills them. They’re not as strong as the squales. They have to stay near whatever little rifts are around the building.”

  Breaking glass and a pair of gunshots echoed up from downstairs. When the noise faded they heard another sound. It was a rural sound, but they all recognized it.

  Wood was being chopped. Or hacked.

  “Awesome,” said Xela. “So they’ll be trapped in the building with us.”

  A switch snapped into place. A button clicked. Another switch. A dial ticked off degrees as Veek turned it a third of the way around.

  There was one lever left. It had a grip of crumbling rubber like an old bicycle handle. Nate set his hand on it and felt how stiff it was. He wrapped both hands around the black rubber. “We got everything, right?”

  Veek took another look at the diagram. “Think so.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Here we go.” He pushed the lever up and felt it click into position.

  Something shuddered inside the walls. They heard a faint hum of power. A few short sparks and an arc of electricity danced across the machinery.

  And then faded.

  The needles didn’t move.

  “Shit,” said Xela.

  Veek grabbed the sketches from the floor. “What did we miss? We must have missed something?”

  “We didn’t. I checked it all off as we went.”

  Nate looked around the apartment. It was still a shambles from the Great Squale’s passing. Debbie had tried to straighten out some of it, but it was still a mess. The loft and its staircase were wrecked. Two of the kitchen chairs were smashed into kindling. The table—

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  Veek followed his gaze. “What?”

  Nate ran to the far wall across from the window, his hip throbbing with each step. The kitchen table still leaned up on its side. He grabbed the top edge and pulled. The table leaned forward and dropped back down onto its legs.

  The bank of glass tubes was behind it. Ten high, six across. Nate’s eyes skimmed over the rows. Most of them sparked and glowed with electrical current.

  Five of them were broken.

  Seventy Eight

  “That’s it, then,” said Xela. She hobbled over to stare at the broken machinery. “Game over.”

  “No,” said Nate. “There’s got to be a way we can fix this or rig it for—”

  “Storeroom!” shouted Veek.

  Nate was a beat behind her. Xela was two. “Has to be,” he said. “There have to be replacements.”

  Veek studied the bank of tubes. Her eyes went back and forth over them for a moment and then she nodded. “It’s just like a fuse box. All the ones in this section are the same, all the ones down here—” her hand swiped at the bottom rows, “—are different. So we need five like this.”

  She pulled her shirt up and stretched it over her hand. Nate caught a glimpse of a huge bruise spreading across her stomach. She grabbed one of the tubes between her covered fingers. The tube shifted, wiggled, and popped out. It had brass caps on both ends. One of them had a trio of prongs like a grounded plug.

  “Is it hot?” asked Xela.

  Veek shook her head. “Tip from a hardware friend. Oil and sweat from your skin messes up glass components. Grab me a rag or something.”

  Nate found a banner of unrolled paper towels and tore off three of them. He met Veek at the door. “Let’s go.”

  She wrapped the tube as they dashed down the hall to the back stairwell.

  * * *

  Roger decided he could take his foot away from the door. The security door was gone and the overseer-things were gouging the door apart with their spears. A bone spear stabbed through the broken window and flailed in his direction.

  He took a breath and fired another two shots. One of the overseers shrieked and leaped away from the window. Roger bit down and resisted the urge to keep pulling the trigger.

  Clive and Debbie joined him in the lobby. They didn’t have any weapons, but it was better than facing the monsters alone.

  Roger raised the pistol again. He wasn’t sure how many bullets it had left. Then he forced himself to take another breath.

  There were less of them out there. He tried to focus harder, to make sure he wasn’t imagining it, but it was true. Half of the overseers were gone. He could see the railing for the outside steps and one of the small trees from the front lawn.

  While he watched, a few of the ones who were left stepped back away from the door. He straightened up and saw two of them down at the base of the stairs. They leaped off the cracked slab and back onto the sand.

  He shot a glance to Clive. “Think I scared ‘em off?”

  * * *

  The overseers had smashed the window of the back door, but it was too small for them to get though. Their pounding shook the door but it seemed to be holding. Bulging eyes focused on Nate and Veek, and there were more grunts and snarls. A spear reached through the door and jabbed at the air in front of them. A pair of arms—a pair of right arms—reached through the window and flailed in their direction.

  “Come on,” said Nate. He took a few more steps down the staircase, staying against the wall. Clive’s rope stretched wire-tight across the landing. Going under forced them into a defenseless position. Over put them in an awkward, exposed position.

  “I vote for under,” said Veek, reading his mind.

  “Good,” he said.

  He crouched low and duck-walked under the rope. Something swiped across his back in mid-waddle and he threw himself onto his knees, then over onto his ass. His hip burned, his fists came up, and he realized he’d grazed the rope.

  Veek spent a moment figuring out what to do with the paper-wrapped tube, then shoved it down her shirt. She crawled on her hands and knees.

  Halfway there one of the overseers crammed its head through the window and looked down. It howled and a wiry arm shot through and flailed for her. The claw-like nails passed through her hair and swung down to grab again. Nate reached out, hooked his hands in her armpits, and dragged her away. They slid-shuffle-crawled until they were off the landing. The overseers outside withdrew, as if they knew it was a waste of effort to go after the two humans now.

  “You okay?”

  “Just peachy,” she said. Her arm wrapped around her gut again. She reached into her shirt and pulled out the tube. “Still in one piece.”

  They pushed themselves to their feet and skittered down the last few steps to the storeroom. The padlock hung on its hasp. The doorknob was locked.

  Nate frisked himself, and hit something big near his throbbing hip. He glanced down and his eyes fell on the pistol Tim had given him. I
t was still clipped to Nate’s waist.

  “Stand back,” Veek said.

  She was one step ahead of him. She aimed her own pistol at the padlock, clutching it with both hands in a clumsy grip. Her first shot went off to the side and punched a hole in the door. It was deafening in the basement’s concrete hallway. The second shot was high.

  “Careful,” he yelled. “You’re shooting into a room full of fuses and light bulbs, remember?”

  She squeezed the trigger again.

  The padlock twisted. Her next shot shredded it apart.

  Nate reached in and knocked the remains off the hasp. Veek lowered her aim and fired. There was a spark and the wood erupted next to the doorknob. She fired three more shots and the door around the knob turned into splinters. She glanced over at Nate and he nodded. He leaned back and kicked. The storeroom door twisted apart and swung open.

  “Guys,” Debbie called down the stairwell. “They’re all leaving. The crab-bug-people are all going away.”

  They glanced at each other. “Why?” yelled Nate.

  “We don’t know.”

  “That can’t be good,” Veek muttered.

  “Agreed,” Nate said. “Let’s find the fuses and get out of here.”

  She shoved the pistol back into its holster and led them into the storeroom.

  They each pulled a box down and yanked it open. Nate had plastic pipe fittings. Veek’s was a dusty collection of old videotapes. They both shoved them aside, glanced at labels, and grabbed again. This time Nate had a case of spiral light bulbs, still in packaging that declared them energy-efficient. Veek shoved her carton aside and reached for the next one. Nate dropped to one knee and slid a box from one of the bottom shelves.

  A minute later Veek cried, “Here!”