was probably in the same shape.
“Help me find a thin cable, or a piece of chain in here no bigger around than a finger.”
Anne wrinkled her nose as she began pawing through the dirty, oily mess on the bench. “What for?”
“Just find me some cable. And hurry. I’ll be checking out that crane engine outside.”
I grabbed a couple of wood-handled screwdrivers off of the bench and stepped outside, turning sideways to squeeze through the door so as to avoid moving the rusted hinges any more than I had to.
I knelt down next to the small motor and tugged gently on the T-handle. It came off in my hand as I had expected. The metal shroud that covered the starter pulley was attached with screws that were rusted in place, so of course I ended up stripping the heads out instead of budging them.
“Here, I found this.” Anne crouched down next to me and passed over a length of thin metal cable that looked pretty good under the thick coat of grime. The grease on it had probably kept the worst of the rust away.
“Perfect. The only problem I have now is that in order to use it, I have to get this cover off, and the screws are stripped. That means tearing the thing off, and the instant I do that, our friends in the parking lot are going to know that we’re up here.”
Chuck tapped me on the shoulder. “Too late.” He pointed over the edge.
The Mother was still swaying high over the crowd below, but now the tips of her mouth-tentacles were all pointed directly at us. And so were a couple hundred pairs of glassy, fevered eyes.
44
As if released by a starter pistol that only they could hear, the entire mass of bags began surging towards us. The stairway up the side of the quarry was one continuous jointed ramp with no switchbacks that cut deep into the granite face. It was made up of three sections, the top and bottom at a fairly shallow angle, and the middle section at a steeper, forty-five-degree slope.
The steps themselves were stone with metal faces, and if there had ever been a handrail, it was long gone. We had less than a minute before the fastest sprinters in the mob reached us.
Chuck eyed the approaching crowd and patted his gun. “Wish I had more bullets. What now?”
I ripped the cover off of the crane engine with a loud crack. “We do what we came to do. Kill the Mother. If I’m right, all of her offspring will go down when she dies. Hand me that cable.”
He passed it to me without comment and I struggled for a moment getting it wrapped it around the starter pulley. I held my breath and hoped that there was still fuel in the tank and spark in the plugs, and then I opened the choke and yanked.
The engine growled and sputtered, releasing a puff of black smoke before dying. Sparing a glance at the stairwell, I could see that the leading edge of the mob had made it onto the bottom segment of the ramp. I used up more precious seconds re-winding the cable and yanked again. This time there was a longer sputter and more smoke, but it died out just the same.
A group of three bags had pulled away from the pack and were already nearing the top of the stairs. Gunfire echoed off of the quarry walls as Chuck and Anne took them out. Bodies tumbled from the stairs and into the lake far below. Satisfyingly tall geysers erupted from the surface when they hit.
There were plenty more on the bottom third of the staircase, but their charge faltered as heads swiveled down towards the water to see what happened. I dropped the cable and ran to the crushed pallets full of chain spools, grabbed a large one, and duck-walked it over to the top of the stairs.
I dropped it on the edge of the top step, leaving the spool perched vertically like a round-topped table, then ran back and did it again four more times, until there was stack of two-hundred-pound spools taller than my head.
Then I took three more spools and stacked them next to the shed, a single one next to two stacked ones, making a little two-step staircase next to the tin wall.
“Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to deal with the Mother. Your job, the both of you, is to survive longer than she does. Wait until the crowd gets about halfway up the last flight, and then push this stack over onto them. That should clear a good part of the stairway and buy you some time. If I’m still not done, run up those spools over there and get on the roof of the shack. It’s a good ten feet off the ground, so you can probably hold them off for a couple of minutes as they try to climb up after you.”
“And if you’re still fighting, or more likely, being digested?” asked Chuck.
Anne shot him a look. “Then we finish what Abe started.”
“It won’t come to that. One more thing. Chuck, which way lets out the chain on this thing?”
“Pull towards you to reel it in, push it forward to let it out.”
“When I yell, somebody needs to haul ass to the crane and pull that lever to reel in the chain. Now keep an eye on the stairs and wish me luck.”
Turning my back on those stairs was like turning my back on friends who were standing in front of an oncoming train. I knew in my head that they’d get out of the way, but my gut screamed that I was leaving them to die. I bit down on the urge to stand with them and focused on the crane engine.
The cable was stiff and greasy and kept wanting to jump off the starter pulley, so I had to jam my knee against the pulley to keep it from turning, and use both hands to keep pressure on the cable as I wound it. My hands trembled as I raced against the clock.
After an eternity I got it wound, slapped open the choke on the engine and yanked it again. This time it caught with a stuttering growl that quickly built into a solid roar.
I could feel the vibration through the soles of my feet as it settled into a steady idle. I closed the choke and then slowly pushed the handle away from me. The roar pitched down to a rumble as it began to work.
The spool started turning with a squeal and a shower of black dust and grit. The chain dangling from the tip of the crane lengthened, slowly reaching for the surface of the water far below. When the hook broke the surface, I tried to keep track of how much chain was under water as I watched the links slide out of sight. When I thought I had what I needed, I pulled the lever back to neutral and the spool stopped turning.
Done with the first part of my plan, I stepped away from the control panel.
Just in time for one of the Mother’s tentacle’s to whip down and yank me into the sky. In a split-second I was fifty feet up in the air and moving fast.
45
Inch long teeth sawed into my leg as I dangled over a deep well of wetly rippling purple flesh. I’m going to blame panic for what I did next, because that sounds better than stupidity.
I hunched upward and grabbed the end of the tentacle holding me with both hands and yanked. The closed loop of muscle came open and I dropped straight down towards the gulping orifice below me.
The Mother snatched at me in the air and managed to knock me enough to the side that I hit the edge of her mouth between the bases of two of her five pillar-like tentacles, instead of dropping straight into her maw. I heaved off even as I slammed into the ridged muscle, narrowly avoiding being pinned as the tentacles closed like two huge fingers gripping a cigarette.
I tumbled through the air for five stories and slammed into the frigid black water. The impact was like being hit by a car, stunning me. By the time I was able to focus I was much farther down than I expected. The rippling glass ceiling of the surface glowed far above me. Unseen things in the water bumped into me with blunt noses before sliding over and around me.
I pulled hard for the surface with my arms, since my booted feet slipped through the water with little resistance as I kicked. I should have pulled them off, but I didn’t like the idea of having bare feet while hungry things swam up from below.
It was hard to tell if the surface was getting closer. Something much larger than before shoved me in the leg,
