by Mark Wheaton
• • •
“How long have you been married?” Scott asked as Muhammad led the way to the fire stairs.
“Seven years.”
“My wife and I were married twenty-four years. We were going to try and do something for twenty-five next year, but the money wasn’t looking right. We weren’t sure it was going to work.”
Muhammad nodded, unsure what to say. The carpet in the lobby had been soaked through, and even the water that rose around his shoe with each step had made him nervous. Once they were in the stairwell, the steps were metal, but a faint black stripe a couple of feet up the wall indicated a recent high-water mark. Muhammad didn’t want to be in there if the water began to rise again.
“You guys have any kids?” Scott asked.
“No, thankfully,” Muhammad replied but then bit his tongue.
“Nah, that’s okay,” Scott said, coming up to the second-floor landing. “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. It’s the fatalist in me, but I think I’ve always known that my kids would go before me. Having been in the army, you get used to preparing for the worst. When we first had them, I knew losing them would be the worst. Every year they get older, you know they can take better care of themselves, but it doesn’t matter. You just never get to the point where you’re not thinking the world is just going to take them away for your sins.”
“So you think you’ll be okay?” Muhammad asked softly.
“I don’t know yet. Might be why I came with you. If I get killed up here, I’m some kind of hero, especially if I save you in the process. Then I never have to deal with it, right?”
Muhammad thought about this for a moment but then shook his head.
“That would put your death on me, though. I don’t want that.”
Scott burst out laughing.
“I’m just kidding with you, Muhammad. If I get killed up here, you’ll be killed, too, and you know it.”
• • •
Out in the dump truck, Big Time kept his eye peeled for sludge worms. The street that ran past Muhammad’s apartment building was parallel to Allen Parkway but elevated, the parkway having been carved through a hill that once stood on the west side of town. Though the elevated road was devoid of standing water, Allen Parkway was still flooded. Raging water clouded with dirt raced away from downtown, using the parkway as a culvert.
“There!” Tony shouted.
Sure enough, a thick tendril of pitch moving against the current snaked its way towards the central part of the city.
Big Time’s hand went to the gear shift, ready to pull the truck away, but the sludge worm seemed to take no notice of the people up on the frontage road.
“Me and Ed watched them for hours,” Tony said. “We didn’t see any tails either. We’d see one end going after a person, but the other end would just go and go and go. He joked there was some octopus down in the Gulf with a million arms.”
“Where the hell is it going?” Zakiyah asked.
“Joining up with the main mass, maybe,” Big Time offered. “Remember that thing reaching from the floor of the factory all the way to the ceiling? That wasn’t one of those little strings. More looked like a bunch of those pitch whips all pushed together into one. They pull together when they have to concentrate their efforts.”
The bang of the apartment building’s door startled everyone in the truck. Muhammad and Scott came tearing out the lobby like bats out of hell.
“Oh, shit,” muttered Big Time, gunning the engine.
“It’s all right!” Scott yelled, shaking his head. “They’re not in there.”
The pair, both out of breath, piled into the cab.
“Show him the note,” Scott said.
Muhammad handed Big Time a piece of paper. Scribbled across it was what he assumed must be Muhammad’s name in Arabic script but then the words “Brammeier Tower.”
“It’s that new building just on the other side of the 45,” Scott said. “Still under construction. The framing’s up, floors are there, but I doubt there’s a single water pipe in the whole place.”
“How’d your wife know all that?” Zakiyah asked.
“I don’t think she did,” Muhammad replied.
He pointed to the building in the distance. In one of the highest floors, a single light flashed off and on.
“We’re not the only survivors,” Scott said.
“But up in some sky rise?” Big Time asked.
“Why the hell not?” Scott asked. “You figure it, stay away water, stay off the pavement, take to the high ground, but as high as you possibly can where that shit can’t reach you. If you’re not in an airplane, where are you?”
“Brammeier Tower.”
Chapter 26
Something was wrong.
As Mia and Sineada, along with whatever help they could drag out of Alan, struggled through the hazardous floodwaters, the little girl sensed something new coming off the tendrils racing past. The tentacles of black oil hadn’t bothered them since Mia mentally rent them from her father. This seemed to lend credence to Sineada’s hive mind theory that they were being controlled as a collective. Once it had decided something, it was set in stone.
In this case, that decision seemed to be that the entire organism was retracting. She knew this because any “ends” or fingertips she saw were always pointed away from downtown, dragging back like tails.
As a particularly large section roped by, kicking up a hell of a wake as it went, Sineada glanced back to Mia.
Where are they going?
Mia shrugged. Though they were still in the eye of the hurricane, the haze of the rain at the rear eye wall filled the sky behind downtown. This only served to better clarify the steadily flashing beacon coming from near the top of one of the buildings on the west side..
“Do you see that?” Mia said, pointing to the light. “Right there!”
Alan turned around as best he could. The beacon was flashing. He recognized it as the only Morse code he knew.
“It’s an SOS. Means there are other survivors.”
Mia nodded, focusing on the tower.
“There are a lot of people in there.”
“What? You know that?” Alan asked.
“No, I can see them from here,” Mia said. “The building’s not finished, so people are just moving around on a bunch of the upper floors.”
Alan was shocked. He tried to look that far, but his eyes wouldn’t let him.
“Think there’s a doctor up there?” he asked.
“Could be,” replied Sineada warily. “But there’s no telling what else. If there are people, that thing’s going to be looking.”
“Well, you know what my vote is. I’m looking to stay alive. If that means a detour, I’d like to take it.”
“I’m trying to sound pragmatic here. If there are people up there, then that’s probably where all these pitch worms are going. We might only get one shot at this thing. I don’t want to waste it.”
“Oh, so those people over there can die? How many are in there, Mia?”
Mia concentrated on the tower for a moment and then shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Hundreds, maybe a couple thousand.”
“So, Sineada,” Alan continued. “I understand why you’re okay with me dying so we can get down to Galveston to put your little plan in action. But how about those people? You know Mia might just be able to save them, too. Or is that still not the ‘greater good’ you’re doing this for?”
Sineada steamed.
“I’m sorry that you don’t what’s going on, Alan, but this is bigger than all of us.”
Alan thrust his oar back in the water.
“Oh, okay, then. I guess we have no choice. Let’s get down to the bayou while I’m still alive to help you paddle. C’mon! What’re you waiting for?”
“Stop it,” scowled Mia.
“No, no, baby. This is the plan. Everything’s got to be pushed aside because this is major.”
“Stop paddling. Now!”
Sineada recognized something in Mia’s voice that Alan had not.
“What is it, Mia?”
“She just doesn’t understand,” Alan spat. “Sacrifices must be made!”
“STOP IT!”
Pain flooded through Alan’s body as whatever blunting of his nerves Mia had done was pulled back.
“Fuck!”
“Mia!” screamed Sineada. “Stop it!”
“But Mom’s over there!” Mia cried. “We have to rescue her!”
Sineada stopped cold. Alan’s pain ebbed, and he stared at Mia in surprise.
“How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know. I tried calling out to her, same as you, but there wasn’t anything. Now there is. She’s just on the other side of that building. And she’s heading right for the monster. We have to get over there before it’s too late!”
• • •
Within minutes, the calm of the hurricane’s eye was all but a distant memory. The torrential rain and pounding winds of the storm lashed at the city anew. Streets that were beginning to drain moments before were now flooded. Buffalo Bayou was restored to its previous rage.
In the dump truck, Big Time raced across Fourth Ward, trying to stay on the high streets. He knew that when they went under the I-45 overpass and entered downtown, they’d be in water up to the wheel wells. As they drew close to Brammeier Tower, not only could they see the beacon more clearly but also the great number of people occupying the upper floors.
“If they’ve been calling out to survivors for long, we could be looking at barricades of abandoned cars around the base of the building,” Big Time surmised. “We need to have a plan of action. Is this a rescue? A reunion? An escape? What?”
“I think that all depends, don’t you?” Scott asked. “They could be in worse shape than us. Still, if there’s even a chance your wife is up there, we’re going to get you there.”
Muhammad hid his surprise behind a shake of his head.
“That’s too much. After all we’ve been through, to jeopardize your lives? I’ll go in there myself. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Yeah, but sludge worms aside, that might be the safest place to be as the storm comes back full-steam,” Big Time said. “We were inside when it hit, but you saw how it tore up the factory. The rear rain wall is going to be just as bad, if not worse. The inside of a building is always going to be better than a truck. Might be our best bet.”
As the high-rises of downtown now loomed directly in front of them, Big Time drove the truck down West Gray under the I-45 overpass into the central part of Houston proper. As he’d predicted, the floodwaters were already high. He turned a corner to angle closer to the tower, and what he saw through the windshield then not only answered any questions lingering in the cab, it also chilled the Deltech survivors to their very core.
“Oh, my God,” Zakiyah whispered.
“No way,” Tony added. “No friggin’ way.”
Muhammad, the man most profoundly affected by the implications of what he was now looking at, had no words.
Though Brammeier Tower had been in view for much of the drive, the lower half of the building was mostly out of sight, obscured by other buildings, trees, or even the overpass. Now, in clear view, it made the silent, pleading SOS. coming from the upper floors feel that much more futile.
Extending up from the floodwaters in great towering columns were the sludge worms now massed into four snake-like bodies that rose alongside the building. They reached up to the highest floors as if drawn by magnetic force. Encircling the tower’s base was a solid mass of the black sludge that clung to the building, immersing it in black across the first four stories. Like invisible static electricity bouncing off a child’s fingertips, the poltergeist effect tore through each new floor of the building like a gale-force wind, blasting construction equipment and supplies over the edge. Slowly but surely, the entire contents of the skyscraper were being tossed into the flooded streets below.
“My God,” muttered Big Time, echoing Zakiyah. “How big is this thing?”
“It’s just up the building but all over the cars out front,” Scott said. “There’s probably even more of it under water, maybe a good quarter-mile in every direction. What in the name of hell on earth is that thing?”
Big Time was about to reply when two more of the black tendrils went racing past the dump truck to join the main mass. Realizing how the creature worked now, he wondered just how far afield those strings must’ve been. A hundred miles north? Maybe the same distance west or east? How far had this plague of death spread? He tried to follow them as they became part of the main body, but they simply disappeared. The effect their return had on the black columns, however, was evident as they rose a few more feet, bolstered by the new edition. The tops of the worms were only about eight floors down from the first group of people.
“What do we do?” asked Zakiyah.
“I don’t know,” said Big Time. “This is well out of my purview.”
“But all those people,” exclaimed Tony, unable to turn away. “They’re all going to die. I know how they’re feeling right now. That was me not too long ago. We’ve got to do something.”
“Like what?” Big Time asked blankly, staring at the tower.
“They keep climbing higher, thinking they can get out of its way,” Scott said. “But the rate that thing’s climbing, they’re about to run out of stories. Now, if we go up there and tell them there’s a way out, I’m not saying they’ll believe us, but I am saying that we’d be right.”
“You’re going to tell us your brilliant plan or make us beg?” Big Time asked.
“When they started putting up Brammeier Tower, the only thing I remember was that it was going to be a big hassle for Vicki because it was supposed to share its parking garage with One Shell Plaza across the street where she worked,” Scott explained. “So far, that thing is just on the outside of Brammeier. I’d be willing to bet it needs every square inch of itself to make the climb. If we can get into the parking garage of the Shell building, I’ll bet it won’t even notice we’re there. Then, we drive over to the south side of the garage that’s directly under Brammeier Tower, climb up thirty goddamn flights of steps, tell everybody that there’s a way out, and run like hell. Whoever makes it to the garage and out the other side survives. Anyone too slow, well, they’ve sacrificed themselves to the sludge beast so the others can live.”
Big Time shook his head immediately.
“You’re crazy. There’s no way that would work. That thing has been able to be a thousand places at once. We wouldn’t get two floors.”
“The building’s not flooded. It’s using all its energy to ascend, and we’d be locked in a stairwell in the heart of the structure. We’d tunnel up right through it.”
“And when we get to the top?”
“We do what we’ve been doing since we left Deltech. Burn the fucker.”
Scott pointed up at the four rising columns of sludge worm.
“It’s exposed. We set it on fire, we might just roast the thing before it’s able to get back to the water. Also, with much oil, who’s to say it won’t keep boiling in its own juices even if it does hit the street? We could kill it.”
Big Time processed this for a second. Even if the things did catch fire, he envisioned them flailing wildly at the building as they tumbled down, collapsing the tower in the process. Still, it might buy them just enough time.
“This might be our only chance,” Scott added. “Who knows when it’s going to expose itself like this again.”
“How you planning to light this super-fire of yours?”
“That place is under construction, right? Gotta be about three or four dozen different things we can use as accelerant in there.”
Big Time glanced to the others. They looked convinced. The fire wouldn’t have to last more than a couple of minutes, right? It
was the mother of all Hail Marys, but maybe, just maybe…
Chapter 27
The closer Mia got to downtown, the worse her headache became. She’d come to a good understanding of why, too. If the sludge was gathering together as one, the concentration of dead souls was getting higher by the second. This meant their voices, their very presence, was beginning to produce a feeling of sensory overload in Mia.
What kept pulling her in that direction, however, was the echo of her mother. Different from the dead spirit—she could tell that Zakiyah was still very much alive. Mia had no idea how she’d gotten down to Houston but worried that her mother was risking her life looking for her. If she was down near where the collective was massing, she was probably in grave danger.
As the raft entered downtown, the water calmed despite the downpour that began as the eye passed to the north. The current had picked up over Buffalo Bayou, threatening to drag them under. They’d made it to a bridge, which acted like a breakwater and managed the crossing.
For Alan, it was a difficult return. He was reliving his escape from only a few hours before. In every direction, he saw dozens being slaughtered all over again. Those hanging in mid-air, those being dragged under, those being torn apart directly in front of him. It sent chills through his body.
Why was he bringing his daughter here?
They heard it first. What sounded like a chain reaction of car crashes echoed above the clamor of wind and rain. There was broken glass and the impact of metal on metal, followed by a hollow boom. Then the sequence of sounds repeated itself.
“Dear Lord,” Sineada gasped. “Will you look at that.”
Five blocks down, they saw the gigantic creature slowly making its way up the unfinished Brammeier Tower. They could see two of the worms as well, the other pair coming in and out of sight on the other side of the building. It throbbed and undulated as it rose, each tendril as wide around as a 747 and as long as a freight train. The noise was caused by the smashing of its body into the side of the building, over and over again.
“That’s where they’ve all been going,” Alan exclaimed. “It must’ve seen the beacon.”
