“We’ve got to get to the harbor, find a boat. It’s the only way we’ll get out of here. It’s down the waterfront, to the end.”
“What is that?” panted Carla. “Like three hundred yards?”
“Something like that. Can you make it?”
“Yeah. Can you?”
“They’re gonna see us and chase us, so it’s got to be a sprint. You ready? Come on.”
They sprinted out onto the waterfront. For a few seconds, Carla thought they might actually make it without being spotted, but a shout and an angry roaring behind them made it clear that they had been. She could hear vehicles turning, the engines being over-revved, doors slamming. ‘Treat it like a race’ she told herself. ‘Catch up with Gary. Don’t let him win.’
The strength of the wind made it hard to catch breaths and she found herself gulping at the air. She daren’t take the time to look over her shoulder, but she could hear a big, heavy vehicle gaining on them, grinding its way up through the gears. Powerful headlights brought the road before her into sharp relief, the shearing raindrops gleaming silver, interfering with the picture. Her shadow, stretched out in front of her, began to shrink as their pursuers drew closer.
Gary had stopped – was waving at her – had grabbed her arm and pulled her off the road. A giant red pickup mounted the pavement right where she had been a split second before. Carla saw a flashgun image of its howling occupants, madness written in their features, like details from a Dore engraving. The truck careened off the harbour wall, its front crumple zone disintegrating, and skidded on the saturated tarmac spilling passengers as it went.
Gary had dragged her onto a small flight of steep, stone steps that led down to one of the piers. It was dark down there, away from the streetlamps and the headlights of the stalled truck, but Carla could hear the water lapping greedily at the pilings. Holding tightly to Gary’s hand, she clambered unsteadily down and immediately fell over on the greasy, wet wood.
Gary hissed at her. “We’ll take the Lexy, it’s the fastest boat here. End of the jetty. Come on!”
Bent double, he scampered away into the darkness. Carla pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and hobbled after him, gasping for breath.
Above and behind, she could hear the shouts and whooping of the mob as it hurried down the road towards the harbour. A gunshot startled her, and she reflexively threw herself flat against the slimy wood of the jetty – but it had just been an exuberant shot into the air. It was too dark for them to be seen down at water level. By normal eyes, at least.
She found Gary busily untying the lines that were mooring a derelict-looking launch, barely big enough for two. The windscreen had a large hole in it and approximately half the paint had flaked off the hull, which sat suspiciously low in the water.
“Get in. Get her started” gasped Gary, throwing the first line down and setting to work on the second.
The tiny vessel wobbled alarmingly as Carla stepped into it and she instinctively sat down, hard. Torch beams were scanning the piers like searchlights, looking for any sign of the escapees. She could see silhouettes loping down the steps from the street.
The launch had an outboard motor that at least looked newer than the rest of the craft. Carla ran her hands over it in the darkness, looking for the starter. Was that it? She pulled the little tab, experimentally, slowly drawing the ripcord a little way out. She could hear bare feet slapping against the pier now. ‘Please let it start first time’ she prayed. ‘Please let it have petrol.’
Screwing her eyes shut, she yanked the ripcord as hard as she could. The motor rattled, but did nothing. ‘Damn it!’
She tried again, with the same result. The searching torches zeroed in on the sound, suddenly bathing them in startlingly bright light, and a raucous ululation went up from the street. The boat rocked sickeningly as Gary dove in and began to wrestle with something under the seat behind her. “For fuck’s sake, get her going!” he shouted as scuttling shadows advanced on them down the pier.
“I’m – trying!” Carla cried, giving the motor another futile yank. “It won’t – start!” A sinister, animal growl made her look up as a figure lunged at them out of the night. She recoiled and prepared to defend herself as it set one foot on the boat. A dull thump and a blast of fire drove it straight back to the pier as Gary discharged the flare pistol into its chest.
The man’s bodywarmer caught fire spectacularly, wreathing him in flames as the two thousand-degree fireball lodged against his skin. The other worshippers halted in their tracks as he flailed around helplessly, his agonised, inhuman keening filling the night. Staggering to the edge of the pier he threw himself into the water, the still-burning flare glowing below the surface as he sank.
Small caliber bullets fired from the street began to fizz into the water near the launch as Carla seized hold of the ripcord again. She tugged it in a blind frenzy, again and again while Gary hunted for another flare cartridge. Suddenly, with a fine rattle, the recalcitrant engine coughed into life. “Give it here” barked Gary immediately, pressing the flare pistol into Carla’s hands and crowding into the stern. “Shoot this at anyone who comes close.”
Their pursuers swarmed up the last few feet of the pier as the boat accelerated, jumping into the water without hesitation. Gary kept the outboard level, maximizing their speed and steering for the open sea. Some of the pursuing swimmers were moving astonishingly fast, but the twenty horsepower motor soon had the Lexy flying over the harbour swell, leaving them to fight through its wake. Cars were racing back down the seafront, seeking to cut them off at the harbour entrance but Carla could already tell that they wouldn’t be fast enough.
“Can we make it?” She had to shout to be heard above the buzzing of the outboard and the rush of water under the hull. Gary just grimaced at her. He did not look hopeful.
The transition to open water as they passed through the harbour entrance was sudden, and jarring. Roused to fury by the storm, the ocean drove implacably at the shoreline, and the Lexy was caught by an endless procession of relentlessly advancing waves.
Carla wedged herself in the nose of the boat as best she could, clinging on for dear life as the tiny launch crested each new roller and scudded down each retreating slope. Gary wrestled with the outboard, fighting cavitation, trying to keep the blades submerged and the nose of the boat pointed out to sea.
A loud, unearthly squeal reverberated across the water from the seafront, accompanied by the shattering of wood, glass and brick as the windows and doors of the Evangelical Order of David burst open from within. Carla gasped in dismay as half a dozen colossal, oily, black tentacles grew from the apertures and lunged into the air, each one shimmering with ghostly, green light. Neon eyes and mouths coalesced along them as they swayed, a hundred feet above the town, before plunging down into the sea.
The cultists gathered along the shore cheered and fired into the air. “Gary!” screamed Carla, above the roaring wind.
“I know, I know!”
“Faster! Come on, faster!”
“I know!”
The shoggoth’s arms pulsed as the creature extended itself through the water, looking for them. How big was it? They were some two hundred yards from the shore already, and travelling quickly despite the surge. Would it just free itself and swim after them?
Away to her left, one of the luciferous tentacles broke the surface, contorting itself and forming an eye, the size of a fist, that scanned the water like a periscope before fixing itself on the Lexy. It fell back into the water. Carla could visualise it, squirming towards them through the murk beneath the hull, dragging the Lexy down to her doom. Terrified, she scoured the water around them for any sign of its approach.