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“No way!”
“Way, or I’m not taking the cable. Because when I say ‘now’ I’m going to light this wacky improvised wick and we’re going to see what happens—and it’s going to be loud, and it’s going to be messy, and you don’t want to be on top of it. ”
“Okay, okay—just do it. Just, come on!”
I pulled myself forward on my elbows to peek over the edge, and I wished I hadn’t. The halo of light permitted by the edges of the pit was populated. They were coming. So slow, but so steady. Winning the race.
And in the center, at the end of our makeshift rescue rope, there was Nick with the paint thinner and the scrap of towel. He’d stacked the shells one on top of each other. Probably only needed to blow one to set the other. Good plan. Smart man.
“Nick?”
He looked up at me and I saw his face white against the mud at his feet. “You can do this. I can do this. ” Then he pulled the lighter out of his pocket—a nice Zippo. Did everybody have one of those things but me?
“Ready?”
Nick wrapped his wrist up in the cable, and I scooted back away from the edge to give him room. I looked over my shoulder at Malachi, who nodded that he was ready, so I told Nick that I was ready too.
“Three, two . . . ” I heard the wheel snap and spark below.
A new, warmer glow came rising up out of the pit, and a puff of warmth came with it.
“Now!”
Malachi heard it too and locked himself around my feet, and together we pulled, yanked, and heaved.
“Hurryhurryhurrryhurryfaster!”
Beneath me, I could feel the floor objecting. I ignored it, because I had to, except to try, even as I hauled for all I was worth, to distribute my weight more broadly. It didn’t work, or maybe it did—but Malachi was having trouble behind us, and I could see that glow rising, climbing up before I could see Nick’s hands on the other end of the line.
When I did see them, blackened, muddied, and white around the knuckles, I pulled one arm back and sent the other one forward, grabbing him and giving him a wrist to hold. “Take it,” I commanded, and he did. “Take it, I can hold you. Come on. ”
He climbed my arms like he climbed the cable and in a few seconds we had him out, and he had Malachi to help steady him too, and we needed to leave. Needed to stand on something firmer, needed to put our feet on something that wouldn’t fall.
But Nick looked back, down into the pit.
“Shit,” he said, and the urgency had drained from him. “Shit, it went out. Fuck, it went out!”
“What?” Malachi came closer then, even though I tried to hold him back with my forearm.
“Don’t,” I told him. “Don’t—it won’t hold. ”
The floor answered me, believing me. Something too old and too eaten by termites and damp made a crunching sound.
“What’s down there? Oh God,” he said, and I only then realized he hadn’t seen them yet. But he looked over the edge, as near to it as he could come, and there they were—all charred, reaching arms and raspy, struggling throats, shambling into the halo of light where the pit let in the leftovers of sun that could make it through the window.
“Malachi, move away from the edge. Come on. It didn’t work, but okay. It didn’t work. But we can’t stay here—and we had such a hard time getting up, surely it’ll take them some time. Forget it, this was—shit, Nick. You were right, it was a stupid idea. ”
“I never said it was a stupid idea. ”
“You didn’t? You definitely implied it. Let’s just go get the cops; we’ll find some of the nice SWAT boys with all the Kevlar. ”
“What are they? We can’t just—they’re going to come up through that, aren’t they? You were going to—oh God. Oh God. ”
The floor was warning us and I didn’t want to wait for another collapse. “Come on, out now. ”
Nick was way ahead of us, already at the hole in the window with the pried-apart plywood. “People!” he said like he couldn’t believe this was taking so long. “Let’s move it, shall we?”
But by then I was as transfixed as Malachi was. We could see them, just over the edge. They weren’t looking up at us. They weren’t paying attention to us. But they were coming for us, and they were assembling together, kneeling and bracing. They were making their own ladder, out of their own bodies.
