octopus, although stranger and more evil than anything that had ever
lived in the seas of Farth, a tangle of wriggling ropy arms. Instead
of trying to reach for her and Toby, it was struggling with the
disconnected bones, attempting to pull the moldering corpse together
and lever itself erect on the damaged skeleton.
She wrenched the doorknob, yanked.
The stairhead door didn't open.
Locked.
On the shelf behind the alcove bed, Toby's clock radio came on all by
itself, and rap music hammered them at full volume for a second or
two.
Then that other music. Tuneless, strange, but hypnotic.
'No!' she told Toby as she struggled with the dead bolt turn. It was
maddeningly stiff. 'No! Tell it no!' The lock hadn't been stiff
before, damn it.
At the other door, the first Giver lurched out of the burning hall and
through the smoke, into the room. It was still wrapped around and
through what was left of Eduardo's charred corpse. Still afire. Its
dark bulk was diminished.
Fire had consumed part of it.
The thumb-turn twisted slowly, as if the lock mechanism was rusted.
Slowly.
Slowly. Then: clack.
But the bolt snapped into the jamb again before she could pull open the
door.
Toby was murmuring something. Talking. But not to her.
'No!' she shouted. 'No, no! Tell it no!'
Grunting with the effort, Heather twisted the bolt open again and held
tightly to the thumb-turn. But she felt the lock being reengaged
against her will, the shiny brass slipping inexorably between her thumb
and forefinger. The Giver.
This was the same power that could switch on the radio. Or animate a
corpse.
She tried to turn the knob with her other hand, before the bolt slammed
into the striker plate again, but now the knob was frozen. She gave
up.
Pushing Toby behind her, putting her back to the door, she faced the
two creatures. Weaponless.
The road grader was painted yellow from end to end. Most of the
massive steel frame was exposed, with only the powerful diesel engine
and the operator's cab enclosed. This no-frills worker drone looked
like a big exotic insect.
The grader slowed when the driver realized that a man was standing in
the middle of the road, but Jack figured the guy might speed up again
at first sight of the shotgun. He was prepared to run alongside the
machine and board it while it was on the move.
But the driver brought it to a full stop in spite of the gun. Jack ran
around to the side where he could see a door on the cab about ten feet
off the ground.
