Just as Zakiyah was about to call out to her, black liquid began pouring over the woman’s face from behind. Alongside her, Amber shrieked and launched herself forward, but the sludge worm had sluiced out of the air conditioner as a two-headed snake and had a hold of her hair.
“What the fuck?!” Scott cried.
The two women were yanked back sharply until the backs of their heads were crushed up against the air conditioner. The galvanized steel vents bent as the fingers of black thickened and wrapped themselves around the two women like a spider spinning a web around its latest victim. The tendrils were then pulled tight and both Ro-Ro and Amber became to disintegrate. Ro-Ro’s mouth flopped open in a silent gasp as Amber’s skull collapsed, as if the bones inside had the tensile strength of twigs.
“Where’s it coming from?” Zakiyah yelled.
“It must’ve gotten into the air conditioning ducts,” Big Time replied over the noise of rain and tearing metal. “Everybody keep back!”
Muhammad, however, suspected something different. He walked briskly to one of the frosted skylights and bent down next to it. Angling as best he could, he could make out a wavering black line extending straight up from the flooded factory floor to approximately where the air conditioning unit stood above the roof. Angered, he sat down and cracked the heel of his shoe through the skylight, showering the line below with broken glass. Leaning back down, he got confirmation on what he didn’t want to believe possible.
All of the various tendrils of the sludge worm had gathered together to form itself into a single tower that rose from the factory floor. It was like a frozen black waterfall, the base of which was a large bulb resting just below the water line. Thin black roots extended away from the bulb in multiple directions. The water that had flooded the building was now a good seven or eight feet deep, having risen above almost all of the stations.
“Oh, my God,” whispered Zakiyah, who had come to see.
Muhammad wasn’t sure if she was reacting to the towering sludge worm or the fact that the floodwaters were a rich crimson, as if the factory had been turned into a gigantic wine vat.
“It can get up here,” Zakiyah said.
At the air conditioner, Big Time and Scott had tried to pull Ro-Ro’s body free of the black tendrils, though they were far too strong. It was obvious the woman was dead, but both men were united in a grim fascination with the creature that had decimated so many of their number already.
Scott finally dropped the legs and shook his head.
“If it was you under there, it’d be different. But it’s not.”
“Same,” Big Time nodded, horrible as it was to make the distinction.
“Whatever it is, it’s a lot stronger than we are,” Scott continued. “Can’t fight it. Just have to get away from it.”
Big Time nodded. Muhammad waved them over to the skylight and the pair headed over. When they saw the finger of sludge rising up to the ceiling, Scott’s eyes went wide.
“Shit, if it can get up through there, it can get to us,” Scott said. “Fuck, it probably already is.”
“What do you mean?” Big Time asked.
“Give me a hand.”
Big Time grabbed one arm as Muhammad took hold of the other. They lowered Scott over the side of the skylight, dangling him over the flooded factory floor, though his feet were still firmly on the roof.
Muhammad and Zakiyah had been able to see most of the tower of sludge but hadn’t leaned far enough to glimpse where it met the ceiling. If they had, they would’ve seen what Scott was looking at now: multiple black strands slowly snaking out towards the skylight, having detected the remaining survivors. Without the ability to move through water, their progress was slow and halting. Even then, Scott knew it would be less than a minute before it reached the opening to the roof.
“Pull me up!”
Big Time and Muhammad hauled Scott back up onto his feet. He leaned down a moment as the blood that had rushed to his head funneled back down.
“It’s already on its way to the skylight. But we could spot-weld this thing shut, and it would still find something we missed. We can’t stay here.”
“But why?” Zakiyah asked. “What the fuck is it? Why is it coming after us instead of moving on?”
“I don’t know,” Scott replied. “It’s hunting us and everybody else and doesn’t seem to have the ability to let up. That said, just because it’s not acting intelligent doesn’t mean it’s not.”
“Where can we go?” Muhammad asked. “If we go down into the water, it’ll just make things easier on it.”
Big Time thought Scott might unleash some kind of tongue-lashing on Muhammad, but he surprised him by simply nodding.
“I’d say we could try and get in a vehicle, but I don’t know what would keep it from getting in there, too. On top of that, I don’t think we can get to the garage.”
Big Time thought about this problem for a moment. Several things occurred to him at once. He turned to Scott, his jaw set in grim determination.
“I know what we can do. It’s gonna be a bitch, but it might be the only way.”
Chapter 17
It was mid-morning when Sineada realized that the pounding had stopped. The sound had become so repetitive that despite its initial menace, Sineada had blocked it out with the rest of the day’s background noise. The torrential rain, the banshee-like wind, and waves of floodwater breaking against the side of the house had simply incorporated the rhythmic beating of the force below into their clockwork tattoo. When one instrument in the orchestra had fallen out, it made little difference to the cacophony.
Mia was huddled in a corner
