But then a miraculous thing happened that survivors of the Hurricane Eliza disaster would remember forever. A stopped-clock moment like none other. At precisely 5:24 in the late afternoon, the attacks ceased.
All across Texas, the hundreds of thousands of sludge worms began to retract. A thousand slowly became a hundred, a hundred became ten, ten became five, and five became one until there was only a single mass returning to the Gulf.
For the survivors, it was a moment filled with horror. No one could believe it was really over. The living ran for their lives. Some clambered into vehicles, but most were on foot. The injured, the maimed, and the dying were left behind to face whatever might come next.
In this case, it was nightfall, which meant coyotes, rats, and a deadly drop in temperature. By morning, the list of dead had increased by the thousands.
• • •
Zakiyah hadn’t been able to see when her daughter was consumed by the sludge worm, but she’d heard its movement and the cracking of her daughter’s bones. The sound echoed through the pipe like gunshots.
“No!” Zakiyah wailed as if wounded. “No, please God! Just, no!”
But she didn’t try to descend the ladder even as Big Time clambered back up. The fight had drained out of her. She put her fists on top of the hatch and lowered her head between them.
“I’m sorry,” Tony said, slipping his arm around her shoulders.
She nodded but was done talking. She felt lost, with no reason to keep on living. It was almost completely dark now. The sun was just a smudge of orange in the western sky, and the moon was obscured by clouds.
“Holy shit!”
Tony was pointing down to the floodwaters alongside the pipe. A thick rope of black sludge had bent the access hatch to the tank away and was now pouring inside. More was coming from the north but because of the relatively small size of the hatch, it was creating a pile up in and amongst the pipes. It was as if someone had taken a massive tube of toothpaste and, holding it over the refinery, began to squeeze. It wove in on itself as it pushed into the pipes, gradually bending more of the metal back but never enough to allow the whole thing in at once.
Whatever the case, Zakiyah could tell that whatever her daughter was doing was working.
Her daughter.
It was crazy to try to rationalize the two thoughts. Her daughter was dead, but she was still able to be battling against this thing on the other side. There was a small part of her, very small, that took comfort in this. Here was evidence that her daughter wasn’t really dead. Maybe then, no one ever really was.
• • •
The sludge worm was changing shape. Big Time didn’t know how Mia was doing it, but she’d gotten the creature to flatten itself out completely as if she was rolling over it with a rolling pin. It slowly spread itself up the sides of the pipe, looking less like a worm now and more like someone had covered the interior in black paint.
As it neared the ladder, Big Time looked up and could just make out the silhouettes of Tony and Zakiyah. Realizing what had to be done, Big Time hurried the rest of the way up the ladder and grabbed the hatch.
“Dad! Are you okay?”
“Getting there. You’re going to have to take care of yourself, son. I love you.”
Before Tony could even register that this was the last thing his father would ever say to him, Big Time had closed the hatch and locked it from the inside.
“Dad! DAD!” Tony screamed. “DAD!”
But Big Time was already hurrying back down the ladder. Tony would have to be okay. He flicked on Scott’s lighter and saw that the forward border of the sludge tide had made a perfect circle around the circumference of the pipe and was slowly pulsing forward. Mia had somehow been able to arrest the poltergeist effect, but it was still coming towards him, hungry as it had ever been.
Big Time turned. The rest of the pipe was dark as oblivion. He knew it didn’t go much further before taking a sharp downward turn, but he’d seen already scoped out the service ladder that he’d take as far as it went.
Resisting the urge to glance back up towards the hatch one last time, he turned and began to run.
• • •
Tony’s face was hot with tears as he pounded on the hatch, screaming for his father as it became Zakiyah’s turn to hold him back.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Zakiyah whispered. “He wouldn’t have gone down there if he didn’t.”
“I can’t accept that. Why would he do this?”
“He must’ve believed there was no other way.”
Tony grabbed the hatch and tried to open it, but it held fast.
“Dammit!”
But suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he turned. Oozing up the side of the pipe was a thick tendril of sludge. They hadn’t even noticed it. They were lulled into the belief that the creature was completely under the sway of Mia and Sineada.
“Zakiyah,” Tony whispered.
“Back down the ladder. Hurry!”
Tony nodded and scurried away from the hatch. In his terror, he missed the third rung down and slipped. He fell the rest of the way down, about fifteen feet, striking his head on the wooden pallet and falling into unconsciousness as he sank into the floodwaters.
Chapter 37
Mia was suspended in the same miasma as Sineada. She hadn’t been able to find her great-grandmother yet, but that was only because she was focused on one thing only: moving the collective down the pipe towards the frigid temperatures of the lower depths.
Mia…
She heard her name, but was afraid of losing her concentration and ignored it.
Mia…
MIA…
She finally reacted, allowing the voice into her mind. She had expected Sineada. She was shocked when it turned out to be her father.
Daddy?
Zakiyah. Baby,
