Periphery, page 35
“We all fall down,” he sang, because Katie, too, was swaying on her feet. In fact, most of the firefighters along the line appeared to be struggling to keep their balance. Something was rolling slowly through Little Billy’s legs, a battered tennis ball, a chew toy perhaps, from a neighboring yard. It appeared to move reluctantly, pausing after one or two rotations as some small protuberance in its gnawed surface was overcome. Each time the ball stopped, Little Billy expected it to remain still. It did not. It continued on its way across the street. This meant something, he knew, something obvious he should have realized by now, but his thoughts were syrupy. Two plus two. What did that add up to?
Florida orange juice, a glassful of sunshine.
No, that wasn’t it.
“Jesus Christ!”
The firefighter on his left was backpedaling to his pumper, lips curled in a snarl as he crouched and redirected the hose higher. Little Billy followed the jet and—god help him—his first reaction was a small huff of fascinated admiration.
The two nearest vetro had merged into one. The new creature reared above the treetops, its mouths yawning, its surviving eyes rolling in different directions. Little Billy couldn’t tell which features were from which individual, so thoroughly had they melded. As he watched, mesmerized, two neighboring vetro condensed into one another like globs of oil.
Brilliant.
“Will!”
Katie yanked him down as something enormous whooshed over their heads. There was a tremendous crash, shattering glass, the crunch and clang of metal. A fire engine siren began to warble. The blow had pivoted the nearest pumper 180 degrees and split the cab open. The siren seemed to infuriate the mega-vetro and it smashed its bulk down again and again until the vehicle was little more than a metal sheet. A firefighter’s helmet lay in the grass near the wreck. Little Billy saw no sign of the owner.
“Come on!”
Katie raced down the line without a backward glance, and Little Billy followed. An unmanned hose, attached directly to a corner hydrant, flailed across a front yard, swept a row of potted plants off the porch and blew out a living room window before she fell on it. Little Billy joined her and together they wrestled it into submission, turned off the flow at the nozzle and positioned themselves as Sid had shown, with Little Billy in front and Katie bracing him from behind.
“I don’t know how much of a kick this thing is going to have,” he warned.
“The bigger, the better.”
Little Billy pulled back on the bale and the water shot out in a white column. The pushback was strong. It pressed him against Katie, and he leaned forward until he found equilibrium. Katie anchored him from behind.
At least we have a bigger target, he thought as he pulled the nozzle up. The hose wanted to fight him, find its own direction. For a moment, the stream swept back and forth across the ruin of the fire engine as if he were attempting to extinguish its smoldering remains. He pulled the nozzle up and the jet rose, plowing through a wooden fence and the branches of the trees behind before striking the mega-vetro, the water pluming around its torso. Little Billy spiraled the jet up the length of its central trunk, hoping to find a vulnerable spot, a hidden seam that would split the beast back into two separate creatures.
“I guess poking their eyes out isn’t enough,” Katie sang. “If only we knew where their nut sacks are.”
“That’d learn 'em.” Little Billy agreed.
The vetro dodged and weaved, stretched out an appendage that flared into a sort of fleshy catcher’s mitt and brought it crashing down. A similar appendage emerged on the other side. It was not an attempt to swat them, Little Billy quickly realized, but the initial maneuverings for an advancement. The vetro was preparing to “step” forward. Already he could see it leaning toward them, shifting its weight onto its arms or legs or whatever those columns of flesh were. He directed the jet at one of them, hoping to sweep it out from under the creature, but it had little effect. The water simply angled off in a blinding spray. He tried the other. No effect.
Katie’s arm shot past his shoulder.
“Aim at that!” She pointed to the top of a telephone pole a dozen feet to the right of the vetro. “The transformer!”
Little Billy turned the nozzle and missed the gray drum with his first sweep. The hose wanted to keep going right. He had to struggle to counteract its momentum and reverse direction, but when he dragged the jet back across the pole he struck the transformer dead-center. The incandescent flare blinded him and the boom hit him like an airy fist. It wasn’t as loud as the final Trenchrite blast, but it felt sharper, narrower, more a quick jab than a roundhouse punch.
The world was a purple afterimage, but he could smell the ozone, hear the sharp crackle of electricity. And the scream of the vetro offalate, a squeal of agony that lifted Little Billy into a near ecstasy of bloodlust. Fry, fry, fry! he chanted, sweeping the hose blindly back and forth. Eat volts and die bastards!
Blows were raining down all around him. He felt the ground shuddering under the barrage. At the very least, they’d managed to piss the thing off. It was smashing the street to rubble in a temper tantrum. Through the explosion’s fading afterimage, he saw a latticework of cracks spreading away in either direction. The ground itself was sagging under the vetro’s fury. Even the trees were shuddering. The air was filled with a snow of leaves. Little Billy heard a new sound, a vast, deep rending as if an enormous garment was ripped in half.
He was no longer standing on the sidewalk. The ground had become the deck of a sinking ship and everything was sliding toward the bow. The last thing he saw clearly was the street fracturing into a series of tiers that canted and toppled away from each other.
The hose slipped through his hands and Little Billy began to roll. He couldn’t stop himself. He picked up speed, tumbled off the edge of a precipice and landed with a grunt several feet below. The ground tilted and he slid, fell, slid some more. He turned his head and saw a wall of sand and soil. It crumbled over him and the world went dark. He opened his mouth to scream and dirt poured in. The shelf he was lying on was tipping and he was about to plunge into whatever abyss had opened around him.
Blind and suffocating, Little Billy flailed out in a convulsion of white panic. His fingers brushed something like a long, fabric sleeve and he grasped it as everything below disintegrated into nothingness.
The votasin weren’t all that hard to kill. Struck with a bullet, they deflated with a whoopee cushion release of gas that sent them spiraling off in random directions. The first time Andrew hit one, he had to suppress a giggle. It was almost cartoonish. But while they were vulnerable and slow moving, they were not defenseless. Fifty feet. That was how far the things could fire their quills. If the projectiles were venomous, both he and Dr. Cho were dead. He’d taken two in the chest, and she one in the arm. The quills had lost most of their velocity by the time they struck, barely breaking the skin and easily swatted out. Of course, the depth of penetration would be irrelevant if the toxin was deadly, but venomous or not, Andrew had little doubt a barb fired within ten feet would do significant damage.
“How you holding up?” he asked Cho.
“Arm’s getting tired.”
“You’re doing great.”
“They just keep coming.”
Andrew reloaded, taking a moment to remind Grace and Anna to keep their eyes closed. The tower swayed minutely in the quickening breeze, a sensation not unlike the bob and drift of his bed after a night of drinking. To the southwest, the sky was cinematic. Branching tributaries of pink lightning leaped from cloud top to cloud top while further out in the Gulf an approaching curtain of rain undulated gracefully. A new gust swept the votasin swarm to the east. The creatures reoriented and started closing in once again, but they were fighting the wind and their progress was slower than before, a reprieve that gave Andrew enough time to take careful aim before pulling the trigger. When he did the closest burst open and disappeared below the rim of the tower, shooting quills in every direction as it fell.
They kept coming. Wave after wave. Was something similar happening below, bilantu pouring into the tower through newly created openings, scaling the outer walls? Were he and his family only seconds from being overrun from all sides? He shot another votasin. It deflated with a satisfying poof.
“I hear it!” Anna squirmed out of her mother’s grip. “The helicopter’s coming! It’s coming!”
Grace rose to her knees, struggling to keep their daughter under control. “Anna, stay down!”
“But it’s right there! It’s white with a blue tail!”
The thumping whir of copter blades swelled to an auditory assault. Andrew managed to empty the .45 with four quick, off-target shots before the rotor wash swept over them in a hurricane blast and he sank into a crouch, an instinctive maneuver intended to keep his head as far from the blades as possible.
“Hold on to Anna!” he hollered into Grace’s ear. The downdraft was a cascade of air trying to pound them flat. The copter eased closer. Andrew could see the pilot through the windshield and raised his hand in an absurd gesture of welcome before the rotors’ gale forced his head down once again.
The aircraft appeared to be a typical commercial model, something a television station would own, although he saw no logo. It pivoted slightly as it approached to allow passenger access, the sliding cabin door already open. A man in a DOF uniform was perched on the threshold, his feet on the skid. Twenty feet. Ten. Five. The man in the cabin gestured for them to approach. There was no safety gear, no harnesses or tethers. The skid bobbed and swayed a few feet from the roof’s edge. It would be a big step up.
“You and Anna first!”
Grace didn’t argue, although he could see her scrutinizing the gap between roof and salvation. She grasped Anna’s hand and edged to the rim, turning at the last instant back toward him, but in the rotor wash, all he could see of her face was a wild flurry of hair. The DOF man, one hand grasping a straphanger, leaned forward and stretched out the other. Grace said something in their daughter’s ear. She reached up. Not close enough.
The firefighter barked something to the pilot and the copter inched closer until the skid touched the crenellations. When Anna reached up Grace grasped her under the arms and nearly hurled her into the cabin. Only after Grace followed did it occur to him to scan for votasin. There was nothing in the immediate vicinity. He imagined the entire swarm being sucked in and puréed by the spinning rotors.
“Your turn,” he shouted to Dr. Cho.
“What about your father?”
“He’s next.”
She nodded and stepped to the edge. When she leaped into the cabin, it was as if the tower were a diving board rebounding after a jump. The roof tipped backward. Andrew was tossed onto his back, arms and legs splayed wide. The inclination increased. The duffel bags slid past his head and he suddenly found himself passing over the ladder opening. Twisting onto his belly, he grasped the edges to stop his plunge through the hole.
“Dad!”
The first of the rain hit him, large, cold droplets that felt like a handful of thrown gravel. The tower continued to pitch and he slid from one side of the opening to the other.
“Dad, if you can hear me get to the ladder!”
The tower dipped like a plane hitting turbulence and Andrew’s stomach lifted into his throat. Before he could scream, the descent stopped and the tower began to teeter-totter in the opposite direction.
“Dad! For Christ’s sake, we have to go!” He’d carry his father to the roof if he had to. Or maybe they could make their way out to the balcony and board the copter from there.
The storm had muted the morning light. Peering down into the now-dim observation room, Andrew could make out slowly rotating colored lights playing across the walls, swelling from sharp circles to fuzzy balls of illumination and back again as they roved the room. Bathed in the colored lights, his father moved into frame and shook his head, a tiny motion that said everything. He raised a hand, closed it into a fist and tapped his chest twice.
Andrew raised his own fist, but he was still on his belly and couldn’t complete the gesture. Then he was sliding again, back toward the edge of the roof. He rolled onto his back as his feet struck the crenellations. Here was the helicopter. The tower was falling and the aircraft was following it down. Andrew stood, crouched, jumped. He was in the air. He was reaching out. Dad, he thought.
The last thing he heard before sinking into the gloom was the copters’ cabin door slamming shut.
John Tate returned to his place in the center of the room just in time to catch the aluminum tree as it topped over. He cradled it in his arms like a dance partner, listening to the music box in its rotating base chime “Silent Night.” The hatch gave way with a final shriek. What emerged into the room and kept emerging, roaring in triumph, wasn’t “Brutrelli times ten.” It was Brutrelli ad infinitum, a conga line of fused bilantu that, as far as John knew, extended all the way to the base of the tower and beyond. He recognized Theodore Hillsdale’s face nestled egg-like in the nest of seeping contours. Another man’s face as well. There was nothing human left behind their staring eyes.
Outside, the sound of the helicopter grew faint. In the relative quiet it left behind he realized the voices were gone. Not just diminished. Not just muted. Gone. Entirely. The vetro offalate were no longer in his head.
“You’re alone again,” he told the thing in the room. “Castaways, just like before.”
The creature shook its many heads, either in negation or in preparation to strike, and John held his son’s tree out as if in offering. Lindsay had tsk-tsked him for buying a battery-powered model, predicting the display would run down by the end of the week. But the four D-cells, refreshed annually, lasted all season and now, as he started sliding away from the hatch, his view was filled with the lights of a dozen Christmases past.
“This is what you came for. If you want it, come and get it.”
The creature swayed from the now canted opening for an instant and then they were weightless, floating together as the tower plummeted. John Tate let go of the tree and wondered if things would have turned out differently had they all joined together and sung “Kumbaya” when Hector had suggested it.
“Silent Night” played on. His companion opened its many mouths. And in the air between them, the colored lights went round and round.
Little Billy’s descent continued as his grip slid down the fire hose. He could breathe again, but there was too much grit in his eyes to see anything other than a watery smear of gray. Debris was raining down, bouncing off his head and arms and shoulders. A slab of concrete tumbled past. He sensed it as a change of pressure in his right ear. It landed a second later with a thick splash and Little Billy kicked out, searching for a foothold along the wall of the precipice he now dangled over. Every kick dislodged more soil. He couldn’t find anything solid enough to support his weight. He gave up and decided he would hang there for as long as his strength allowed.
Where was Katie? Had she tumbled into this void with him or had she managed to save herself? There was sand between his teeth, dirt coating the inner lining of his mouth. He tried to call out to her, but couldn’t draw a deep enough breath.
His grip began slipping again. In a few seconds, he would fall into whatever awaited below. Hopefully, his death would be as quick as Jason’s had been. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it? They had done what they could, fought the good fight. It was finally time to let it all go. His arms quivered with exhaustion. Let go.
He willed his hands to relax. They would not. He willed his fingers to unclench. No deal. The process of unbending the digits was beyond the limits of his coordination. Just relax and it will all be over, he reasoned. The muscles of his forearms were jumping. He could not hold on and he could not let go. Little Billy tilted his head back and whimpered.
More dirt began falling around him. He bounced against the wall and cried out. The wall was sliding down. No! He was ascending. Someone was pulling him up. He bumped against the side and kicked his feet into the loose soil, trying to climb the near-vertical slope. He ascended slowly, and with a final heave crested the lip. A hand reached out and grabbed the collar of his jacket. A second hand grabbed his belt. Little Billy shimmied his hips until he felt pavement under his legs. A firefighter and Katie—Katie!—dragged him up a shallow inclination before all three collapsed next to the front wheel of a ladder truck.
“What,” Little Billy choked out after a moment.
“What happened?” Katie finished for him.
Little Billy nodded.
“Half the city just collapsed.”
“What?”
“A sinkhole. Biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s still growing. You must be half cat 'cause you’ve used up about eight lives in the last fifteen minutes.” She bent and kissed him hard, then had to spit the grit from her mouth. “Now the bay’s pouring in, flooding the whole thing. There’s going to be a new lagoon when this is all over.”
“The vetro?”
“Haven’t you noticed?” She pointed to her temple. “No more voices.”
The realization sifted slowly into Little Billy’s awareness, settling in the dusty folds of his brain. Neither he nor Katie was singing.
“They’re gone?”
“Either back to wherever they came from or down to the bottom of the hole. Will, the breach is closed. It’s closed!” She threw her head back and raised her hands up to a slate sky. “Thank you, Jesus! At least one xalantracoil went into the drink. I saw it. When it did, everything just sort of turned off, there one second, gone the next. See for yourself.”
