“Time to go,” said Andy, placing his hand on the door.
Then he opened it.
• • •
The hallway they entered was surprisingly quiet. There were no monsters and not even any bloodstains. The carnage of the facility had not reached this particular claustrophobic corridor.
“This is the restroom corridor for the Nucleus,” said Nessie. “If anybody needs the toilet…”
Everybody looked at one another, and then shrugged.
A quick bathroom break later and they were all assembled back in the corridor.
Nessie took a firm grip on her assault rifle. “Okay, at the end of this corridor is the Nucleus. It’s where a majority of the facility’s staff are located. Let’s just pray they were able to put up a last stand.”
Andy and Sun looked at each other. It was Lucas that said what they were all thinking. “I think any prayers we might have will be too late.”
“We need to move fast,” said Sun. “Before the cement reaches this level.”
Everyone nodded, minds refocused. They all jogged down the corridor, Andy and Nessie up front with their firearms. Nessie grabbed the door up ahead and wasted no time in opening it.
They all stepped through into the Nucleus.
“I think I’m gonna puke,” said Jerry.
The Nucleus was like a paddling pool of blood. Vast puddles of crimson lay inches thick with spongy gobbets of flesh poking out like chicken pieces in soup. Bodies lay slumped and dismembered over desks and work stations. Computers blinked and whirred despite their monitors being smashed to pieces and drenched in blood.
The elevator was at the other end of the room. Its doors were closed and dented.
The people in here were trying to get out. They were trapped.
“Come on,” said Andy.
The group stepped carefully through the gory debris and bloody swampland. Several times their feet slid out from under them and almost dropped them in the disgusting stew of human remains. It was only by treading carefully, and holding on to one another, that they managed to stay upright.
“The elevator is all beat up,” said Jerry. “How are we going to get to the top?”
Andy reached the elevator’s mangled doors and sighed. “I don’t know. But this is our only way.”
“Can we get something between the doors and wedge it open?”
Andy eyed a fist-sized gap in the centre of the doors where they failed to meet properly. He turned to Sun. “Give me that wrench you’re holding.”
Sun smiled, obviously understanding his plan. “Allow me,” she said, stepping over to the doors and shoving the wrench handle into the gap. She leaned her bodyweight against the other end, levering the doors open. The short length of the tool meant that she could only create a gap of about half a foot or so, but it was enough to allow the others in the group to get their hands inside and pull.
Andy, Nessie, Jerry, and Lucas all grabbed a hold of the elevator doors and pulled at them. They were thick and heavy, as well as twisted and bent, but they slowly began to creak and move.”
“Don’t you have super strength, Lucas?” Andy asked, heaving.
“I keep telling ya. You’d be surprised how ordinary I am. My pocket of tricks is fairly shallow.”
They got the doors open more than a foot, perhaps wide enough to squeeze through. Andy noticed there was a gaping hole in the floor of the vestibule.
“I guess trying to get the lift working is out,” said Jerry.
Andy looked up at the ceiling of the elevator. “We’re going to have to climb up. Let’s see if we can find a ceiling hatch.”
Everyone slide through the narrow gap between the doors and positioned themselves around the edges of the hole in the centre of the floor.
Andy reached up and prodded at the ceiling. Sun did the same, having to jump to make up for her lack of height. On her third leap, her hand pushed up against a metal panel and sent it flipping upwards on hinges.
Andy smiled at her. “Good going.”
The hole was narrow, but just big enough for a person to squeeze through. What was worrying was that the large panel was loose and unlocked, almost like it had been used recently.
Did some of the monsters already get out? Are we too late?
A rumbling sound.
“What the hell is that?” asked Nessie.
“Nothing good, lass,” said Lucas.
Andy looked down the hole in the floor and saw movement amongst the shadows. The myriad growls and snarls made what was happening obvious.
Nessie put her hands on her head. “They’re coming up from the lower floors. The monsters are coming this way to escape.”
“We have to stop them,” said Jerry. “We can’t let those things out of here.”
Andy swallowed. “For all we know, a dozen could already have escaped. Something killed everyone on this floor, but where are they now?”
“You think they got out?” Nessie said. “Oh no.”
“Let’s worry about that later,” said Sun. “We can do something about it then, but not if we’re dead.”
Jerry propped his broom handle in the corner and made a step by lacing his fingers together. “You first, Mr Dennison. You and your wife need to get out of here the most. You’ve been involved with the batlings from the beginning. You can stop them.”
Andy chewed at his lip and worried about what lay ahead. Even if they got out of there, things were not over.
Sun took Jerry’s assistance and stepped on his hands; thrust herself up into the ceiling hatch. She then turned and lay flat, dropping down an arm to help her husband. Andy grabbed her arm and leapt. He made it up through the gap and joined Sun in lending a hand to those still below.
Just as Jerry was about to help Nessie get a leg up, something startled them both.
An arm shot through the gap in the elevator’s doors and grabbed Jerry by the collar of his soccer shirt. He let out a scream and then managed to tug himself free. One of the suckers—an undead office worker from the Nucleus—was attempting to slide through the gap. Jerry grabbed the broom handle from the corner and jabbed at the sucker, striking it in its deadly jaws.
The sucker grabbed a hold of the broom handle and crunched on the end of it with its fangs, reducing it to splinters.
Jerry yanked back the length of wood, now sharp and pointed at its tip. A smile crossed his face. “Big mistake, panda tits.”
Jerry shoved the spike into the sucker’s chest, piercing its heart and making it shriek in agony. The beast fell away from the elevator’s doors and Jerry yanked back his makeshift spear, now covered in black blood.
Jerry looked over at Nessie and beamed. “You see that? I Buffy-the-Vampired that sonofabitch.”
Nessie giggled but then her eyes went horribly wide.
Andy cried out, tried to warn the kid.
Jerry’s mouth opened to speak, but nothing came out but a gob full of blood.
The sucker had recovered, the sucking wound in its chest leaking black fluids and already healing. It had reached through the gap in the doors and shoved a talon so forcefully into Jerry’s back that the front of his shirt was bulging as his organs fell out.
Jerry’s eyes were stuck open, his face contorted in a mixture of surprise and fear.
Andy’s yelled out, but he could form only grunts and mumbles, no words.
Nessie leapt towards Jerry, but Lucas grabbed her and held her back. “There’s nought to be done, lass. You have to go.”
Jerry reached out for Nessie, his fingertips quivering in the air. Nessie shoved free of Lucas’s grasp and reached out for Jerry. Her fingertips were less than an inch from his when he flew back through the gap in the elevator doors and disappeared.
“Jerry!”
Lucas grabbed Nessie around the waist and picked her up like she was a feather. “Get up there, girl. Before you end up the same way.”
Nessie fought against Lucas, but Andy was able to reach down and grab her shoulder. The additional contact seemed to snap her out of it. She grabbed hold of Andy’s arms and clambered her way through the ceiling hatch, sobbing all the way.
Something with tentacles tried to come up through the hole in the floor but Lucas stamped a foot down on it so hard that the elevator rocked. The creature screeched and retreated from the hole.
“Come on,” Andy shouted, offering his hand to Lucas.
Lucas looked up at Andy and smiled. “No, you folks go on without me. I think it’s about time I lent a hand. It might be against the rules, but I’m hoping God will forgive me.”
Something else came bursting through the hole in the floor and to Andy’s horror he saw that it was the batling.
“You are tooo late,” it bellowed at them. “My army is going to march on your cities and bring down your towers of Babylon.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself speak,” said Lucas, before promptly punching the batling right in the face. The batling plummeted to the floor of the elevator, but was quickly back up in the air. It swooped on Lucas and the two tangled together in a flurry of limbs. More creatures fought to climb up through the hole in the floor, but Lucas managed to kick out at them each time and keep them from entering. From the gap in the doors, another sucker appeared.
“Get your arses out of here,” Lucas shouted. “I can only keep them so long. I’m not Wonder Woman.”
Andy rose up onto his knees and closed the hatch. The sounds of the battle below became muffled, but it was clear that Lucas was fighting a losing battle.
Sun grabbed hold of the elevator cables that ran upwards and wrapped her leg around them. She shimmied upwards like a worm on a rope.
“Go on,” Andy said to Nessie. “Snap out of it and get your bloody arse up there.”
Andy’s attempt to speak in Jerry’s colourful English seemed to fill Nessie with resolve. She leapt onto the cables and started climbing. Andy waited for her to get ten feet or so up and then grabbed a hold of the cable himself. The three of them started upwards, heading for the surface.
But progress was slow and tiring.
The inhuman growls and snarls increased beneath them. The shaft above stretched for at least a hundred metres.
“The top of this shaft should take us to the staircase entrance,” said Nessie. “We’re nearly there.”
“Still looks like a long way to me,” said Andy. The burning in his lungs made his voice raspy.
“Just quit complaining, hubby, and concentrate on climbing,” said Sun.
“Yes, my darling ball and chain.”
“You’ll pay for that once we get out of here.”
“Looking forward to it. I think a spanking might be in order.”
“Seriously guys?” said Nessie. “You’re going to do this now?”
“Sorry,” said Andy.
“Me too,” said Sun.
Something seized Andy’s ankle. He looked down to see a tentacled creature much like a squid. It wrapped around Andy’s leg and starting climbing up his body. In the centre of the beast was a wide open maw, full of pointy teeth.
Andy gripped his revolver, inserted the muzzle into the thing’s mouth, and pulled the trigger.
The creature exploded and fell away. The recoil of the gun left Andy swinging precariously by one hand. He just about managed to wrap his legs around the cables when he was sure he was about to fall.
“What was that?” Sun shouted down.
“Oh nothing, just Cthulu’s ugly niece. Keep going.”
The three of them continued shuffling up the cables, swinging back and forth with every inch.
The shaft began to lighten, the shadows parting. They were nearing the top. Andy squinted as his eyes adjusted to the gradual increase of light.
“We’re almost there,” said Nessie. “I can see the level 1 elevator doors. They…they’re open.”
Andy sighed.
Not good.
If the doors were open then something had forced its way through. There was a chance that some of the Spiral’s prisoners had already escaped.
There was a bellowing roar from several feet below. It sounded like the pits of hell.
“It’s the cement,” said Nessie. “It’s catching up with us.”
“Good,” said Andy. “That means its catching all of the creatures beneath us. Lucas must have held them off long enough for them to get caught in the shaft.”
“What does that mean for Lucas?” Nessie asked.
“It means that if he really is the Devil, he’s one misunderstood fella.”
“He should sue the Bible for libel,” said Nessie.
“You will not leave here, Denisssonsss.”
Andy glanced down, just in time to see the batling rushing up from beneath them like a cruise missile.
“Shit! Keep going. Faster, faster!”
The batling swooped up around Andy’s head. He swatted and flailed, fought to keep hold of the cable.
Sun threw her wrench from above. It missed the batling and glanced off Andy’s shoulder, making him howl.
“Andy, I’m sorry.”
The batling slashed at Andy, drawing blood from his arm. Andy kicked out with his leg, connected with the batling’s body and sent it flying back several feet.
Nessie tried to aim her rifle, but it was useless from above. She would only hit Andy if she fired.
The batling came at Andy again. “You won’t live this time.”
“Neither will you,” said Andy swiping out with his revolver but missing.
“You cannot kill us. We are forever. We are the end of days.”
“You’re just a bunch of blowhards with a hard-on for speeches.”
The batling hissed and came at Andy again. Andy ducked.
The cement was rising quickly beneath them.
“Keep climbing,” Andy shouted. “The cement is rising.”
Sun and Nessie hurried up the cables, puffing and panting.
Andy shimmied up less than a foot when the batling came for him again. The cement was only a few feet away and rising.
Andy snatched at the batling and caught it against his chest. He clung onto the beast even as it slashed at his arms and chest.
Andy raised his revolver.
The batling cackled. “Your pea shooter will not harm me. I will heal in seconds.”
“That’s all I need,” said Andy. He aimed the revolver at the batling’s wing and fired off a shot.
The batling flew backwards, spinning in the air as it fought to stay airborne with an injured wing. It plummeted out of the air and hit the cement below.
“You will die,” screeched the batling as it thrashed and struggling against the clinging soup.