The Big Thing chuckled, enjoying the touching family moment.
“We can accommodate two,” it said.
“You will have to take her,” Micah pleaded with Ebenezer and Minny. “Please.”
They grabbed his daughter’s arms. Her screams intensified as they dragged her away, legs kicking wildly. Ebenezer whispered something into her ear. At that, Petty stopped kicking. Her eyes shone in the dim, the brightest spots in the chamber.
“I love you, Daddy” was all she said.
“Blow me a kiss, darling.”
She did. He watched it float through the dark air, then reached out and snatched it. Micah put his daughter’s last kiss in his pocket. “Thank you, baby. I will need it.” They left him, Petty trembling, still disbelieving, her body limp as a wrung dishrag. Minerva followed her, stunned and softly weeping. Ebenezer was last; he departed with a terse but compassionate nod. The three of them crawled into the tunnel. The Big Thing followed them out, leaving Micah with its daddy.
Micah exhaled. He pulled himself together. He unbuttoned his shirt in the flickering glow of the lantern. The baby made gluttonous sucking sounds. His hand trembled as he stretched the skin of his stomach taut. Old flesh, wasn’t it? It had felt a lot, carried him through so much. It bore the nicks and scrapes of its service.
It is not an easy thing, stabbing oneself. Micah had scarcely considered how it ought to be done, never having harbored those thoughts. Fast and declarative seemed best. Cut fast, cut deep.
Micah heard the rope ladder banging against the rock as Petty and the other two climbed up it. Go on, baby. Keep going. Never look back.
He hissed through his teeth as the knife slid into his belly. He jerked the blade across in a straight and bitter line; his flesh readily opened up. He dropped to his knees, swooning as blood soaked into his waistband. Deep enough? He sensed the thing would have its own methods of opening him up.
A delicate touch on his shoulder. A red rope had descended from the ceiling to alight upon him. It wasn’t painful. The warmest kiss. He batted it away. That couldn’t happen yet. He had one final task to complete.
He dragged his bleeding body over to his backpack and rooted inside. His hands closed around the bricklike object he’d carried many miles. He pulled it out. The baby issued a quizzical burble.
Micah had purchased it from an acquaintance from his sad old, bad old days. He had purchased it before heading off to find Ebenezer, meeting the man in a parking garage and paying in cash. Such transactions should carry no trace. The man he had bought it from asked no questions regarding its usage—men like the seller made it their business to proffer product without moral consequence. He only told Micah that it was enough to do the trick, which had sounded about right to Micah.
He turned to the baby. Showed it what he was holding.
“I hope,” he said laboredly, “you are not afraid of enclosed spaces.”
“DADDY!” the Long Walker shrieked.
Petty—who was up the ladder by then, although her progress had been slowed by her tears—looked down at the thing, which stood at the bottom of the basin watching as they ascended. Pet was startled by the childish pitch of its voice. Its huge moonface was split in a rictus of rage—the expression of something that had been tricked most awfully.
It turned and fled back into the tunnel, its huge legs sawing through the dark air.
“Move,” Minny said to Petty. “As fast as you can, little girl.”
SEVEN STICKS OF TNT wired together in a bundle.
“How many seconds do you want me to rig the timer?”
This was the question the man Micah had bought it from had asked. A cheap plastic egg timer, the kind you’d find in kitchens all across America, was wired to the fuses and strapped to the dynamite with duct tape.
“Three seconds,” Micah told him.
“Three? Jesus, man. That’s not nearly enough time to run clear of the explosion. That’s barely enough time to blow your nose.”
“Three,” Micah said again.
Micah twisted the knob on the egg timer as the baby-thing watched him. He could sense its worry—though perhaps it was faking again? It began to hiss menacingly as it crawled toward him. In the lantern’s glow, Micah at last got a sense of its true shape: the light shone through its fatty covering to display a network of brachial and spiny limbs. It moved quickly, its nails clickety-clacking on the rock. Its voice filled his skull.
Oh no no don’t you dare do not DARE—
Micah could hear the other thing coming now, too. He pictured its mouth opened in a tortured leer as it raced through the tunnel to protect its precious father. It was getting closer, steaming toward him—
You had to be calm in the cut. That was the key. You had to hold your mud for that extra half second, even with the hammers of hell pounding down on you. Everything hubbed on that. It really did. If you acted too soon, you could lose it all.
The Big Thing tore into the chamber, its body billowing up and out to blot the lantern’s light. Micah waited until it was fully inside; then he hurled the TNT down the tunnel it had just vacated. He turned to face them. The baby’s fleshy face twisted in rage. The Big Thing stood rooted, momentarily perplexed. Micah opened his hands to them as blood sheeted down his stomach.
Sorry, fellas, but it had to be done.
Micah wore a blissful smile. He looked less threatening when he smiled. So much less the badass. Ellen always said he ought to smile more often. And right now he did. For her.
THE EXPLOSION ROARED out of the cavern. A hail of black dust and rock splinters shotgunned from the cleft to spray the sand in a wide radius.
Minerva and Eb and Petty were clear of the blast zone by then. They stood three abreast, staring gape-jawed as more dust and rubble sifted from the cavern. They could hear the rock giving way as the interior began to cave in.
“No,” Minerva whispered. “Micah, oh, Micah, what did you do?”
MICAH CAME TO some time later. He was still alive. It came as a shock. Not an entirely welcome one, under the circumstances.
The lantern continued to burn. Squinting, he could see it was partially covered in a coating of black, coal-like dust. Someone had scraped some of the dust off and relit it.
He saw chunks of stone on the floor, their jagged contours swimming in the light of the lantern. A fine haze of soot hung in the air. He looked down at himself. The edges of his gaping stomach wound were crusted with the same black soot. The ragged, bumpy edges looked like a dog’s gums. The smell of explosives was sharp in his nose.
But he was still alive. The chamber was still here. It had not caved in.
Naughty boy.
The voice sent a spike of panic through him.
You must be punished.
He rolled onto his side. The tunnel was gone—in its place a solid fall of rock, a few chunks of which had rolled across the chamber’s floor. So it had worked. He was dimly amazed that the cavern hadn’t collapsed around him. But this thing had immense power, so it was not absurd to think it had found a way to protect its lair from the blast. At least Micah had sealed them all inside.
He stood dazedly. He couldn’t see anything past the apathetic light shed by the lantern. He flinched as something touched his shoulder. A red rope had descended from the ceiling to lick at his flesh. He did not fight it this time. It felt too good. The ropes spooled down in great multitudes, all with shining inner cores. They attached to his flesh and gently lifted him up. He almost laughed—even as the blood sheeted down him. Such a delightful sensation. They held him in a loving embrace. He could not move. In that moment, he didn’t want to.