by Ike Hamill
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She had been making great progress. Harper was pulling the rope hand over hand, assuming that the person attached to it must have been climbing.
When it came up over the edge, she realized that she was wrong—not about the climbing, but by assuming that what was attached to her rope was a person.
A scaly black arm with a curved claw emerged from the floor. The tip of the claw sunk in to the floor and then scraped as it pulled. Harper tried to yell for help, but what came out was just a noise. Her hands still held the rope. She had stopped pulling. Second arm sprouted from the floor. Its claws clicked in the air before it reached in Harper’s direction.
The claw found the rope and pulled.
Harper watched in horror as the slack was jerked from the rope. She began to slide forward. The strength went out of her legs and the rope pulled her around the pole.
Jacob slid into her side and frantically pulled at her fingers, getting her to release her grip on the rope. She had coiled it behind the pole and one of the loops caught her foot. As it started to pull her again, she came to her senses and began to kick at it.
The monster lifted a claw from the floor and clacked it at her again. It was beckoning them to come to its grip.
The thing took the slack out of the rope. It was still anchored to the pole. The monster didn’t have great traction on the floor, but it could use the rope to free itself from the chasm. Jacob turned and began to work the knot on the pole. He wanted the thing to fall back into whatever hell it was trying to escape.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
Jacob looked back at him and then pointed at the creature. The head had appeared, rising from the floor one centimeter at a time. Its eyes were on black stalks that curled over until its stare was fixed on Jacob. He gave up on the rope and reached for the rifle that Harper had left on the floor.
“No!” Sam yelled.
Jacob rolled to his side and pointed the weapon at the monster’s shiny black head. The thing had a dozen little arms dedicated to pushing food into its dripping jaws. Jacob aimed right above that hole, where he hoped the thing’s brains were.
On his hands and feet, Sam scrambled across the floor and slid to a stop between Jacob and the monster.
“Get out of the way,” Jacob said. He lifted the rifle so it wasn’t pointing at Sam’s chest. Jacob rose to his feet and aimed again. He could see even more of the monster. It had a segmented body with oily black scales down its back. Sam turned and embraced the thing.
Jacob aimed at the monster’s head and put his finger on the trigger. He moved forward to assure himself a clean shot. He saw something strange over the sights of the rifle—the eyes at the end of the stalks looked like human eyes.
Jacob blinked and took another step. He intended to shove the end of the rifle directly into that horrible mouth before he blew the back of its head off. He saw something even stranger. Instead of little helper claws, the thing had human teeth in its mouth.
Jacob lowered the rifle.
“Shoot it!” Logan yelled.
Jacob dropped the gun and moved to help Sam. As he drew closer, she saw that man wasn’t embracing a monster. It was Cleo who was pulling herself from the floor. Jacob and Sam grabbed her by her arms and dragged her backwards.
Harper yelled with disgust. The noise died in her throat. Once they had the woman back from the edge, Harper recognized her too. Sam went back to the edge to play the rope back out and swing it to another person stuck down there. Jacob saw that Brook and Nora were pulling easily. He moved towards the gap as the green arm of a giant insect appeared from the floor.
Jacob hesitated, but then moved forward until he could see that it wasn’t an insect arm at all. He grabbed the human hand and pulled the person up over the edge. Once he had the man safely back, he helped him take the rope off so Jacob could throw it down to the next person.
The man pulled himself across the floor to the wall and collapsed there, panting.
Jacob saw a woman down in the chasm, struggling to hold on to a tiny ledge. When he got the rope to her, she managed to grab it about a meter above the noose. She held it tight and put her foot in the loop. After the noose tightened down, Jacob waved back to Brook and Nora, who began to pull again. The strain of a fresh person to lift showed on their faces. Jacob moved to help them.
# # # # #
They rescued several people before their strength began to wane. By that time, they had plenty of people manning each rope. More than one person on the face of the cliff lost their grip before it was their turn to be rescued. Jacob watched one man try to grab the rope and then lose his footing before he could get the noose secured. He tumbled down, picking up speed fast as he bounced off the face of the cliff. There was no time to mourn the man. Jacob had to swing the rope to the next person, in hopes that he could save him before he fell.
Some of the folks were too far down the face. Isaac and Amelia reeled their rope back in so it could be joined with Harper’s rope. Using the two lengths together, they were able to bring a woman up. Seen from the edge, she was little more than a black dot. The increased gravity of the chasm seemed to affect the light as well. As the rope descended, it stretched out to a crazy length.
Pulling up that woman took forever. When she crested the edge, she was a purple crab to the people collecting the rope. As soon as she was away from the edge, someone embraced her and called her Iris.
Jacob glanced at his aching hands. The flesh was red and beginning to erupt in blisters. His shoulders had almost no strength left. He pulled himself back to the edge of the chasm and saw that the other group was working on the last refugee.
Jacob turned and looked at the survivors. Some were helping to pull. Others were limp, pressed with their backs against the wall. They wanted to be as far away from the invisible chasm as they could get, but nobody left the room. Perhaps the unknown of what might be in the dark was even more frightening.
Penny—the first person who had been rescued—was taking a break. She was leaning on a column near Harper. Jacob made his way over there.
“You weren’t a monster,” Harper said to Penny.
“No?” she asked.
“Maybe because you were so close to the top,” Jacob said. “That’s all I can think.”
“How did you guys all get in there?” Harper asked.
Penny sighed and looked at her hands.
“We came to spread the word. We wanted everyone to get to a safe location and group together because of the murders.”
She glanced up at Jacob with sad eyes and then looked away.
“It started as a crack in the floor. Everyone moved away from it, of course. As it opened up, it created a vacuum or something. People were dragged in, one by one. I held onto this column for as long as I could. By the end, I was horizontal over the floor. The force was way stronger than gravity and my muscles let go. When I went over the edge, the crack seemed to close up above me. When you lowered that strap down, it seemed to come right through the rock above me. It appeared from nowhere.”
“Pull!” Logan shouted. A dozen people were working the last rope. They were struggling to lift the person. Jacob understood. The lower the victim was, the heavier they were on the line.
Logan backed up as the hairy leg emerged from the floor.
It was as thick as a person’s thigh and it had a razor-sharp set of pincers at the end. Jacob wondered what Logan saw—probably a perfectly normal hand and arm. But Logan was still crawling away.
The people pulled the rope and another hairy leg appeared.
Jacob stood up straight and turned as a third leg came up out of the floor. Based on the length of the segments, he tried to gauge how big the spider would be. His brain refused to picture it. A fourth leg came out and Logan pulled at the floor, swimming backwards from the creature.
“Who is it?” Harper asked.
Jacob saw the thing’s head, topped with enormous eyes, begin to breach the floor. The
eyes locked onto Logan and the big man yelled his disgust. One of the hairy legs darted out. The pincer closed on Logan’s ankle and his yell turned into a scream.
The enormous spider lifted Logan in the air. Its mouth emerged from the floor. Its segmented body followed.
Jacob looked down at Harper. She was pulling the rifle up to her shoulder.
“Wait!” Jacob yelled. “Are you…”
He didn’t finish his question. The spider flexed its hairy leg, pulling Logan towards its huge fangs. They glistened with venom. Harper fired her first shot. One of the spider’s eyes exploded in a burst of gray goo.
Despite the injury, the spider moved with blinding speed. It clamped its fangs into Logan’s thigh. The man screamed in agony and bent himself forward to beat his fists against the spider’s head. Harper shot again. The second bullet tore away a slab of its exoskeleton and sprayed the ceiling with spider guts. She chambered another round.
The spider dropped Logan. He got his hand on the rope and several people had the presence of mind to pull. He slid out of the way as the spider began to collapse to the floor. Its claws clicked shut as its legs flailed and twitched.
The bulk of the spider was still over the chasm that it had emerged from. As it fell, its weight dragged it backwards.
“Let go!” someone screamed to Logan.
The spider picked up momentum as it slipped backwards. Someone’s knife cut through the rope where it was attached to the pole. A second later, the rope was running back across the floor as the enormous spider fell out of sight.
The last leg disappeared with the pincer still trying to grip at nothing. The rope chased it into oblivion. There was nothing left but the illusion of a solid floor.
Logan moaned.
People rushed to his side.
“We have one left,” Amelia said. She unfolded the wrap as someone pulled Logan’s pants down. The fang holes were too far apart.
“Doesn’t anyone have another wrap?” Brook yelled. Someone pointed across the room to where the supplies were stacked. Jacob took one step in that direction and then stopped. He pointed to Isaac and then to the boxes. Together, they ran for the door.
Amelia didn’t wait. A woman held out a knife and Amelia used that to cut the wrap in half. People had to hold Logan down as she applied the pieces of wrap. Foaming pus leaked from the wounds. The stuff was eating away his flesh like acid. Logan kicked and writhed from the pain.
The wrap did little to ease his suffering.
On the other side of the room, Isaac dropped through the window. He began to open the crates of supplies, looking for anything medical.
“We have to get him to a healer,” Amelia said. “Find something to make a stretcher.”
“The healers should be here,” Penny said. “We expected to find them at this rally point. They never showed up.”
“How is it looking for wraps over there?” Brook called to Isaac.
He shook his head.
“Stretcher?” Brook called.
He nodded. The thing was folded into a backpack. Isaac put it on and began climbing one of the crates so he could reach Jacob’s hand.
“So you’re saying that there are no healers?” Amelia asked Penny.
“No, I’m saying that we don’t know where they went. They should have come here. We know they received the notice of the special assembly. Maybe they didn’t get the rally signal.”
“Isaac said that the rally signal was never called,” Brook said.
Penny looked to Cleo. The old woman was still slumped against the wall. She still didn’t have her strength back.
“Okay,” Brook said, turning to Amelia. “We try Flower Street. If nobody is there, we go to the eyeball woman.”
Amelia nodded.
They turned as Isaac and Jacob came back through the door with the stretcher.
Chapter 31
{Anger}
MADELYN MOVED UP THE dark staircase to the top floor and then spotted the roof access. She pushed open the hatch and climbed out into the night. Above her, the night sky was obscured by low clouds. She had seen them before. The clouds barely hid the darting objects.
As she moved to the edge of the roof, Madelyn thought about the first time she had seen those hummingbirds. She had been out searching for her old beau, David. He had been a strong man until that night. She wondered what he might have seen. She wondered what had taken away all his confident strength, and left him a weeping child.
It didn’t matter. He was long dead. If she couldn’t forgive herself after all this time, then there was no point in trying to continue. She might as well throw herself off the roof. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything, and she knew it. It might bring her pain, but her immortal body would simply heal itself.
Madelyn sat on the edge of the roof and dangled her feet over the side. They had looked at her like she was a monster. Her own nephew had recoiled from the sight.
Below her, the young people were moving. She heard them gathering. It was like listening to mice in the walls. Madelyn turned her attention back out to the night. She sensed some people moving around out there as well. One of the nearby trails led to the safe harbor.
But there was something apart from those regular people, and apart from the darting hummingbirds in the night sky. There was the presence she had felt earlier. Madelyn meditated on that presence until she identified him.
He was watching her. This was his way of giving her space. He was letting her come to her own truth. Madelyn stood up as she made her decision—she had found enough truth on her own. It was time to hear what he had to say.
# # # # #
Madelyn waited for the person to turn, taking their attention south. She darted across the open area and jumped, grabbing the lowest branch of the tree. She pulled herself up as the person turned back around. Perhaps they had heard something, but they hadn’t seen her.
When the person moved on, Madelyn jumped to the roof and strolled across to the chimney.
Elijah was sitting there, looking out across the field.
“You’re a fast learner,” Elijah said.
Madelyn sat next to him.
“I’ll find a way to kill you,” she said.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he said, turning to look at her.
“You made me into a monster.”
“No,” he said. She heard him shake his head. Elijah looked up to the sky. “I gave you the tools to survive. The Roamers converted you. Do you remember when we first met?”
“Of course. You brought me the welding equipment.”
“You were already dying,” he said. “It was slow, and I had seen it before.”
“What are you talking about?” Madelyn asked.
“My first wife’s name was Robin. She was the one who found me when I first came to Fairbanks. She was the one who taught me how to be human again. After my brother died…”
Elijah stopped and reconsidered his words.
“After I killed my brother, I went through a dark time. I wandered north, away from the ice, and found a place just south of here where the sun had melted the edge of the glacier and made a pool of crystal clear water. I camped on the edge of that water and vowed to stay there, alone, until the world ended,” Elijah said.
“How could you stay alive in a place like that?” Madelyn asked. “That’s the most dangerous part of the world.”
Elijah turned up his palms and shrugged. “If you let it happen, anything is possible. When something came to kill me, I ate it. If I couldn’t kill it, then I would simply sink down into the frigid water and wait. One giant cat watched me through the water for weeks. I don’t think it ever slept. It just stared at me. I was barely conscious. My body took in just enough oxygen through my skin to keep me alive. Eventually, an even bigger cat came and drove the first one away. The new predator hadn’t tasted my blood, and hadn’t felt the sting of my blade. It didn’t stick around as long.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Madelyn asked
.
“Because it was while I was under the water that they set up the remote station,” Elijah said. “If I had been aboveground, I would have seen them do it. If I hadn’t been starving when I came out from the water, I would have noticed the change.”
“What remote station?”
“At one point, they set up in a perimeter around Fairbanks. It was supposed to be their early-warning system for potential threats. It was Robin’s idea. Her camera saw me emerge from the water and she studied me as I waited for my miserable life to end. Eventually, her curiosity got the best of her. The equipment couldn’t track me all the time. She went out one day to set up another station, thinking she was far enough away that I wouldn’t notice her.
“Of course, I did notice. And once I knew that she had set up a second station, I recognized the first one as well. I packed up my things in the night and moved out of range. I had no interest in being studied or observed.”
“She followed you,” Madelyn said.
Elijah nodded. “She followed me, and it nearly killed her. As soon as she left the relative safety of the forest, she was stalked. I knew her life was in danger, but I didn’t do anything to help her. Robin turned out to be more resourceful than I imagined. When she killed that big cat, she won my respect. But the commotion brought the Roamers. She didn’t stand a chance against those. I moved in to draw them away.”
Elijah paused in the memory. When he started again, he spoke slower. “She just barely escaped, and was in no condition to continue. I took her to the edge of town to a place where there were lots of tracks. I hoped she would be picked up by her people. I waited to make sure. Sure enough, they picked her up and took her back into town. Still, I stayed on the periphery of the settlement, hoping to catch sight of her again. I wanted to know that she survived.”
“You have a soft spot for injured women?” Madelyn asked.
“She put herself in danger so she could find out about me. She knew that I was in trouble, and she wanted to help.”