Kevin jumped onto the high fender of the bulk tanker, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and clicked the transmit button five times. There was no answering click.
"Hey, Dale . . .hey, something's coming here!" he shouted into the radio. The speaker returned only static and a crackling that echoed the lightning overhead.
Something was indeed coming. The twin wakes of fresh soil being plowed across the schoolyard disappeared beneath the asphalt of Depot Street.
Like sharks diving deep, thought Kevin. He had his father's Colt Government Model .45 in both hands now and he racked a round into the chamber, holding the semiautomatic's grip steady in his left hand, finger on the trigger guard, while he pulled the slide back. The first round chambered, the automatic "cocked and locked" as his father called it, Kevin set his thumb on the hammer as he waited for the lamprey-things to emerge on this side of the street.
Nothing happened for a minute or more. There was no noise-or at least no noise audible over the crash of storm and continuing gurgle of the centrifugal pump. Kevin held the automatic in both hands and gently lowered the hammer before he shot his foot off. He looked down at the pump and hose, decided that it was still feeding properly, and stayed on the truck rather than jump down.
One of the lamprey-worms surfaced six feet to the right of the truck, the other threw gravel into the air as it arched out of the driveway. Their bodies were long and segmented. Kevin saw the working mouth as the first one passed, saw the quivering tendrils and pulsating gut lined with teeth.
He raised the pistol as the thing surfaced and dove again, but he did not fire. Mein Gott! His arms were shaking.
The one in the driveway dove to the right as it submerged again, displacing more gravel and passing under the hose as its endless back disappeared. What if it hits the underground tank?
Kevin climbed higher onto the truck, looking down into the open filler cap on top now, calling desperately into the walkie-talkie. "Dale . . . Harlen! Anybody! Help. Come in, over!"
Static-lashed silence.
Kevin clambered forward to the cab, leaned down and swung the passenger-side door open, thinking of getting in out of the wind.
The lamprey-thing surfaced five feet to the right of the cab and lunged, the mouth opening wider than the width of the body itself, flaps and tendrils pulsing as it smashed into the door with a thud that rocked the three-and-a-half-ton vehicle.
Kevin had released the door and rolled across the roof of the cab, away from the thing, his mouth open and ready to scream but with no sound emerging but rapid gasps. He teetered on the driver's side of the cab, fingernails clawing at the smooth metal of the roof. He went over but managed to grab the upper frame of the open window and land heavily, his feet clanging on the running board, the radio flying out onto the grass of the yard.
The second lamprey surfaced fifteen feet out and cut through the grass in an arching rush that left sod flying ten feet into the air. Kevin saw it coming, saw the radio knocked farther away by the thing's wake, and then he swung himself up onto the hood of the truck, his long legs scrabbling for purchase there.
The second lamprey-thing smashed into the driver's door with the same blind fury that the first had shown. It backed away, arching its quivering feeding-mouth six feet into the air, like a cobra weaving before striking. Kevin spread-eagled himself on the rocking hood and looked to his left; the first thing had backed off, had dived into the gravel again, and now rose in full force to crash into the right door again. Glass broke and the heavy door warped inward.
The instant the first lamprey backed off, before the second one attacked again, Kevin scrambled over the hood and roof of the cab, leaping onto the higher steel tank, feet sliding out from under him, but not before he threw himself forward and grasped the cylindrical filler cap in the center of the tank, his legs sliding off to the right.
Nine feet of lamprey unwound from the soil and went for his legs, tendrils quivering. Kevin got the full benefit of the death-stench rising from the thing's pulsing interior, and then he swung his legs up like a trick horse-rider, hanging completely by the force of his arms, his blue jeans skidding against the curved steel tank.
"Go git 'em!" came a voice over the wind.
Kevin looked over the tank to see Cordie Cooke standing by the truck shed. The wind plastered her shapeless dress against her and flapped it like a manic brown flag behind her. Her short, crudely chopped hair stood straight back from her face.
Cordie released the large dog she was holding back by a leather thong. It threw itself across the ten yards to the worm-thing on the far side of the truck. Kevin swung his legs up and over as the segmented thing rose and struck again on the lawn side.
It fell back, leaving a trail of slime on the side of his father's steel tanker. There was a dent in the steel not ten inches from Kevin's raised sneaker.
The dog growled and leapt on the first lamprey, its massive forelegs spread as it landed on the thing's segmented back. The lamprey arched and then dove, the dog chewing and growling, leaping from its back to run six paces before leaping on it again as the lamprey surfaced farther down the driveway.
"Come on!" screamed Kevin.
Cordie ran down the hill and jumped for the fender. She would have fallen back if Kevin's hand hadn't caught her wrist and pulled her up. The first lamprey surfaced and slammed its mouth into the tank a foot below her bare legs; it slid off the rear fender and began circling again, the growling and chewing dog going crazy on its back. The second lamprey was circling on the lawn as if it were building up speed.
"Up here," gasped Kevin, pulling her to the top of the tank. They stood, balancing in the high wind with their arms out, legs straddling the raised filler cap.
The first lamprey suddenly arched back on itself, its open end coming around faster than a snake could strike. The dog had time to howl once before most of it disappeared into the wide feeding orifice. The body pulsed, the mouth widened, the dog became a lump near the front of the giant worm, and it dove again, disappearing beyond the gravel into the yard near the street.
"Lucifer!" said Cordie. She was sobbing without noise.
"Look out!" cried Kevin. They swung off the right side of the truck as the second lamprey charged in from the yard again, its pulsing mouth rising eight feet into the air and slamming into the top of the tank near the filler cap this time.
Kevin and Cordie looked over their shoulders as the first thing circled and came back.
The centrifugal pump continued to chug and the gasoline continued to pump into the bulk tank as both lamprey creatures rose and converged.
THIRTY-NINE
Dale led the way up the stairs to the first floor, pausing at the landing to shine his light around the corner. More dark fluid trickled down the steps. The banisters, railings, and the lower section of the green walls were streaked with the waxy, chitinous material he had seen in the basement. The two boys stayed near the center of the steps, weapons raised.
There had been swinging doors at the top of the north stairwell, but both had been broken off their hinges. Dale paused there, watched the thick fluid seeping under the smashed wood, and then he leaned forward and shone his flashlight into the main hall of Old Central.
The light bounced off a confusing mass of dripping pillars and walls that Dale did not remember being there. Harlen had whispered something. Dale turned his head back. "What?"
"I said," repeated the smaller boy with careful enunciation, "that there's something moving in the basement."
"Maybe it's Mike."
"I don't think so," whispered Harlen. He swung the flashlight beam behind him. "Listen."
Dale listened. It was a scraping, sliding, rasping noise, as if something large and soft had filled the entire hallway below them and was pushing desks, chalkboards, and all the other detritus down there ahead of itself.