The noise when he heard it was louder than the lamprey sounds he'd heard before previous attacks. It was as if both creatures were coming down the tunnel after him. From behind. Very quickly judging from the rapid buildup in vibration and sound.
Mike crawled faster, the flashlight in his teeth, his head banging stones and the tunnel roof as he hobbled along as fast as he could.
The burrowing sounds increased in intensity behind him. He could smell the things now . . . the rotted garbage and dead-flesh stench of them, and above that another smell . . . sharp and terrible. He glanced back and saw a fierce light approaching around the bend in the tunnel behind him.
Mike flung himself forward, losing one of the squirt guns and not noticing it. The flashlight flickered out and he threw it away; the widening tunnel was illuminated fully by the flare of the lamprey's passage behind him.
Something large and loud and bright filled the space behind him. He felt heat from it, as if the lamprey mouth and gut had become a furnace.
Suddenly the tunnel floor dropped out from underneath him and Mike tumbled downward, sliding and scrabbling on loose rock and cold, flat stone. It was some sort of wider cave here, dark as the tunnel but much wider, and Mike pawed out Memo's squirrel gun and cocked back the hammer even as he continued kicking himself sideways, finally slamming up against a vertical slab of stone.
The light from the tunnel opening grew brighter, the earth shook, and the lamprey suddenly appeared, tendrils and maw pulsing wildly. It rumbled past Mike like an express freight train not deigning to pause for such an unimportant stop, its glowing and blazing flesh passing not two feet from Mike's sneakers as he tried in vain to push himself into the solid wall behind him.
The thing had passed, crashing through more stone and continuing on into darkness, leaving a trail of slime and smoldering flesh, before Mike realized two things: the lamprey had been on fire and Mike was no longer in the tunnel.
He was in the Boy's restroom in the basement of Old Central.
Kevin went one direction and Cordie the other, each of them teetering on the slick curve of the steel tank. The lampreys smashed into the center where Cordie and Kevin had been, pounding against the stainless steel and sliding back to earth with a scraping of teeth on metal. One of the things brushed against the hose as it surged past, pulling it from the filler tube in the ground. Gasoline sloshed back downhill and splashed the grass.
"Shit," whispered Kevin. He teetered forward and glanced down into the open filler cap of the bulk tank: more than half full, not full enough.
The lamprey-things were both circling in the soft soil of the lawn, their gray-and-pink backs arching like some caricature of the Loch Ness Monster. Kevin heard a door slam and wondered if it were his father or mother, looking out the door at the southeast corner of the house, staring above the whipping treetops at the wall of storm. He hoped not. Two steps onto the lawn would show them the lamprey-things circling; another two steps and they would see the truck pulled onto the north drive.
"Stay here," he shouted and let himself slide down the curved side of the tank, bouncing off the metal ledge above the left rear fender with the longest leap he could manage.
He hit and rolled near the open end of the hose. It was sucking air now, the centrifugal pump still working. Kevin started to lower it back into the underground fuel tank.
"Look out!"
He swung to his right and saw both of the lampreys rushing toward him, tearing through the sod as fast as a man could run.
Kevin dodged behind the truck, sweeping the hose around instinctively. But the movement of his right hand on the switches was not instinctive, merely an act that seemed to precede the mental command.
The first lamprey was six feet from Kevin's feet when the pump reversed and the gasoline sprayed from the tanker onto the open maw of the thing. It dove into gravel. Kevin sprayed its back as it curled beneath the ground, pouring more gasoline into the hole when it had passed.
The second one had veered right and circled, and now it swept in. Cordie screamed just as Kevin raised the arc of
5OO uan oinuuuiia gas fifteen feet out onto the lawn, soaking the front of the thing.
A stench of gasoline warned him that the first lamprey had surfaced behind him. Kevin jumped to the rear fender as the thing swept blindly past, mouth chewing at the left rear tires. He soaked it down, poured more gas into the hole it left.
With gas fumes rising all around, Kevin swung himself onto the back compartment of the truck, reached down to reverse the suction again, and took the chance of running to the underground tank opening and dropping the hose into it again. Fuel began to feed. Another three or four minutes. Maybe less.
He jumped for the fender from five feet out, knowing it was too far away but seeing the hump of the lamprey's back rushing under the truck. His feet hit metal, slipped, his knees struck hard, and Kevin's fingers clawed on the almost friction-less curve of the tank. He was falling backward to the broiling mass of flesh beneath him.
Cordie leaned far over, her right hand still on the filler cap above, and grabbed him by the wrist. His weight almost pulled her off. She grunted. "Come on, Grumbelly, climb, goddamn you."
Kevin kicked, found a foothold on the chewed-up tire, and clambered up just as the lamprey-thing surged against the wheel again.
He lay gasping and wheezing on the top of the tank. If they rose and struck this high again, they'd have him. He was too tired and shaky to move for a moment. "They're soaked," he gasped. "All we've got to do is light them."
Cordie sat cross-legged, watching the things circle under the lawn. "Great," she said. "Y'all got a match?"
Kevin slapped his pockets for his father's gold lighter. He sagged, still clinging to the filler cap. "It's in my gym bag," he said, pointing to the small canvas satchel he'd carefully set on top of the gas pump ten feet away.
Harlen's flashlight beam joined Dale's.
Almost forty feet above them, perched on the railing of the third-floor level, Lawrence sat in a wooden chair that had two of its legs dangling over the long drop. Dale's brother looked tied into the chair, but the "ropes" appeared to be thick strands of the fleshlike material that hung like torn tendons everywhere. A strand of the material ran around Lawrence's mouth and disappeared behind his head.
Another strand, a thicker strand, formed a noose around his neck and ran up into the belfry . . . into the pulsing red egg-sac there.
The chair teetered on the overgrown railing. An adult figure was standing there, white arms holding the chair in place but none too steadily.
"Put your weapons down," ordered Dr. Roon, his voice as imperative as a whiplash. "Now."
"You'll kill us," Dale said through lips gone numb. He forced himself to lower the flashlight beam to Dr. Roon. There were other man-sized shadows moving in the cloakroom and dripping first-grade room behind the principal.
Dr. Roon smiled again. "Perhaps. But if you do not put the weapons down now, we will hang him this second. The Master would welcome another offering."
Dale glanced up. The third-floor landing seemed miles away. Lawrence was wiggling as if trying to free himself, his eyes wide. In the red-and-green glow from the belfry, Dale could see his brother's cowboy pajama tops. He wanted to shout at him not to move.
"Don't do it," whispered Harlen, leveling the .38 at Roon's long face. "Kill the motherfucker."
Dale's heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he barely heard his friend. "He'll kill him, Jim. He really will."
"He'll kill us," hissed Harlen. "No!"
But Dale had already laid the Savage on the floor.
Roon stepped closer, almost within arm's length. "Your weapon," he said to Harlen. "Now."
Harlen paused, cursed, glanced upward, and laid his pistol on the sticky floor.