Luckily for the fleeing mortals, the creature retreated back into the pit after its failed attempt to breach the net. Brody was impressed by the size of the cage, admiring the foresight and ingenuity of the engineers who had designed and implemented the ambitious safety measure. The creature’s bellicose howl faded away. It appeared the cage had worked.
Thank God, Joe thought. He wanted desperately to lay eyes on the creature, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see it run amok. That monster’s caused enough havoc already.
Then a giant black appendage rose up through a gap in the cables. Joe’s eyes bulged at the sight. At first he thought it was a limb of some sort, but then he realized that it was actually just a single hooked claw. His mind reeled at the sheer scale that implied. For the love of God, how big was this thing?
The crooked talon hooked onto the taut steel cables, gripping them. It began pulling downward on the net, exerting tremendous force. The heavy cables stretched and strained at their moorings. The catwalks overlooking the pit started to tip precariously as they were wrenched loose, so that they dangled at alarming angles above the sinkhole and the creature below. All six cranes, each over 150 feet tall, began to tip toward the pit like fishing poles being dragged down by an over-sized catch. Twisting metal squealed as if in agony.
Joe gasped as the gantry quaked beneath him. He stumbled backwards, away from the railing. Suddenly the ingenious steel “cage” didn’t seem quite as impressive — or reassuring — as it had been only moments ago. Hearing metal shriek, he spun around and saw the groaning cranes begin to buckle and bend catastrophically. The veteran engineer foresaw the collapse only seconds before it unfolded. One by one, each crane gave way in sequence, crashing down like a row of towering dominoes. More workers raced in terror from the falling cranes, each of which had to weigh at least two hundred tons. The screams of the trapped crane operators were drowned out by the din of warping steel and one earth-shaking impact after another.
Jesus Christ, Joe thought. It’s tearing this whole place down!
One of the cranes toppled over, falling straight toward Joe. Adrenalin and reflexes kicked in and he dived for safety only a heartbeat before the top of the crane crashed onto the gantry right where he had been standing moments before. It felt like another tremor had struck, rolling Joe across the walkway. Amazed to find himself still alive, he staggered to his feet and looked around.
Several fleeing workers had not been so lucky. They lay crushed beneath the fallen crane. Heads, limbs, and torsos had vanished, buried beneath the heavy piece of construction equipment. Spreading pools of dark arterial blood, looking almost black in the night, seeped out from beneath the mangled steel. Joe could tell at a glance that most of the victims had been killed instantly.
He wondered if they were the lucky ones.
This is insane, Ford thought. I can’t die like this!
He fought the handcuffs with all his might. His wrist was raw and bleeding, but the cuffs still refused to yield. The perverse absurdity of his situation was enough to drive him nuts. He could disarm a bomb in the middle of a battlefield, but he couldn’t get out of a damn van when this entire place was coming down on top of him?
He stopped tugging on cuffs, recognizing the futility of his exertions.
I’m sorry, Elle, Sam, I tried my best. His heart broke at the prospect of never seeing his family again. I always meant to come home to you.
A falling crane hit the rear of the van like a giant hammer, shearing off the rear doors and sending the parked vehicle into a spin. Ford cried out, but had no time to react to this heart-stopping shock. Held in place by the cuffs, which yanked viciously on his wrist and arm, he tumbled violently inside the spinning van. His body slammed into the interior wall, knocking the breath from him. Whiplash twisted his back. For an endless moment, his world turned into a bruising carnival ride.
Then, finally, the van came to rest several yards away from its starting point. Dazed, his heart racing, Ford found himself staring out the missing back half of the van, which now faced the heart of the mysterious complex. The facility was apparently constructed around an enormous pit where Ford guessed the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant had once stood. Compared to the crashing din of moments ago, there was a sudden silence — until he heard what sounded like sturdy steel cables straining against some inconceivable force.
The animal, he realized. The one Dad tried to tell me about.
That chilling, mind-boggling realization was enough to snap him out of daze and take stock. It occurred to him that the crashing steel crane might have been a blessing in disguise. Hurriedly checking the security rail, he felt a surge of excitement as he saw that the sturdy steel had been cracked by the accident. It took him a few anxious moments, but he managed to slide the cuffs of the rail, setting him free at last.
Yes! he thought. That’s more like it!
Wasting no time, he clambered out of the wrecked van by way of its missing back half. His radiation suit was still clumsy and uncomfortable, but, this close to the old reactors, he wasn’t about to take it off — even if none of the guards had been wearing them before. He kept the helmet and gas mask in place.
He glanced around the darkened base, trying to get his bearings. The fallen crane lay between him and a steep ridge beyond. Steel catwalks and scaffolding spread across the ridge like overgrown foliage, but he could still dimly glimpse the pit beyond. Metal cables continued to creak and groan. He started toward the scaffolding, wondering how on Earth he was going to find his father in this chaos, when frantic pounding seized his attention. He quickly spotted where it was coming from.
A Japanese crane operator was trapped inside the control booth of the capsized crane. The compartment was partially caved-in, so that there was barely enough room for the man inside, and the exit door was a twisted mass of crumpled metal. It was going to take a blowtorch, or maybe the “Jaws of Life,” to extricate the operator from the crushed compartment. The man’s face was bloodied and contorted with fear. His fists hammered against the cracked window of the booth. From the looks of things, his legs were probably broken. Frankly, it was a miracle he was still alive.
He locked eyes with Ford, who hesitated, uncertain what to do.
I need to find my father, but…
Ford!
Joe spotted his son from his elevated vantage point atop the quaking gantry. Ford was down below, still wearing the same secondhand radiation suit, and staring at the crushed operator booth of one of the fallen cranes. Joe watched with growing concern as Ford stepped over a tangle of steel cables stretching between the crane and the net above the pit. The cables went taut as the creature tugged again at the bars of its cage, dragging the cables toward the pit. Distracted by some drama below, Ford didn’t seem to realize that he was standing in the path of the cables, which were shifting toward him.
“Ford!”
Ford was too far away to hear Joe’s shouting over all the other commotion. Frantic, Joe rushed along the wobbling gantry, forcing his way past a stampede of terrified workers. He had to fight not to get carried backwards by the crush of bodies fleeing. Joe waved his hands in the air, yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Ford!”
But Ford still couldn’t hear him. Unaware of the danger posed by the moving cables, he appeared intent on rescuing somebody trapped in the crane’s demolished control booth. The cables jerked again with another powerful tug from below, which also jolted the gantry beneath Joe. The elevated steel walkway creaked and teetered, tossing Joe from side to side. His elbow smacked painfully into a guardrail, but Joe barely noticed. He sprinted further across the unsteady gantry, even as everyone else scrambled in the opposite direction. The fear-maddened crowd thinned out, clearing his way, as he raced to get within earshot of his son. His eyes widened in horror as the taut cables began to drag the entire crane toward the pit.