“Dig those moves,” he said, hoping the sound of his voice might drive away the onrushing panic. “Liquid hips, baby, liquid hips.”
The tube reduced his voice to a hysterical warble. After a few feet, his arms were pinned to his sides. He could barely move them, other than to spider-crawl his fingers along the inside of the chute. How the hell was Al managing to do the same with her broken mitt? She was smaller than Luke, more nimble. The tube was coated in a thin layer of oil, but instead of making it easier to move—as it did in the crawl-through chute—it had the opposite effect: Luke felt like an insect gummed on a strip of flypaper.
“Al? Hey, Al?”
When the reply finally arrived, it held a funny echo:
“Luke… uke… uke…”
He wriggled forward, his breath coming in hot gasps. He adopted a peristaltic wave, the way a maggot gets around: toes, then calves, then thighs, then ass, then hips; this movement netted a few inches at a go. Al grunted in exertion somewhere ahead. The chute tightened as Luke forged deeper into it. His nose raked the metal, which was pebbled with rough bumps—Luke envisioned a huge greasy tongue covered with diseased nodules.
It’s okay, okayokayokay. Even the voice in his head sounded hysterical now. Al’s made it through; you can bet she’s already waiting in the purification room. You just need to get a few more feet and you’ll be there, too.
And then? Well damn, he’d just have to turn around and do it all over again.
Don’t think about that. Just take it inch by inch.
His shoulders jammed.
Pushing with his heels did nothing—he was stuck, his body pinned. He couldn’t budge; his heels drummed a helpless tat-a-tat. His lungs constricted as darkness poured into them.
Was the chute shrinking? It pressed on the back of his skull with an insistent, menacing weight—it would keep pressing, slowly and remorselessly, until the bones of his face collapsed.
It’s a bend, Luke. Just a little bend in the tube, for God’s sake.
Suddenly he felt it: the chute was pressing into his right-hand side, but there was a little space on the left. Luke torqued his elbows and bucked his hips, squirming onto his side. His spine followed the bend of the tube now. He could breathe shallowly again.
He pushed against the chute with his feet, which slipped on its greasy coating. Incrementally, fighting for inches, he propelled his torso around the bend.
The air before his eyes burst with puffs of cottony light. Those puffs were a manifestation of exertion, panic, and a lack of breathable air—he was gasping now, the onset of a claustrophobic attack.
He’d never been prone to that. Crowded elevators and windowless rooms had never bothered him. But now he was eight miles underwater—Eight miles! Eight miles! his mind parroted idiotically—in a chute that felt like it was being compressed in a vise. The sea was held back by nothing more than a fragile shell. He heard, or believed he could hear, the subtlest creaks as the water exerted its bone-smashing force… except it wouldn’t smash his bones, would it? No, it would do something else entirely. He’d be crushed into a cube, like a car at a wrecking yard. It was highly unlikely that his body would be compressed into anything so neatly geometric, but that was the image his mind settled around.
Dap-dap-dap-dap-dap—those nightmare children dashing overhead, the bloated pads of their feet only an inch from his face now.
He wriggled his shoulders, clenched his fists, and inched onward. He was bathed in sick sweat; his thighs chafed. He couldn’t hinge his knees more than a few inches. His lungs burned, packed with hot rivets.
Why had he done this? How could he have been such a fool?
It was torturous to breathe—were his sinuses constricting? What if the chute narrowed until he couldn’t move another millimeter—what if he caught up to Al, who’d gotten stuck herself, his head butting her heels? What if she told him the exit was grated? Could they get out? Luke didn’t think so. Moving forward was hard enough; moving backward would be impossible. They would die in the chute like rats trapped in a heating duct.
…whush, whush, whush…
The sound floated out of the darkness, dancing delicately up his calves, slipping around his skull and into his ears.
…whush, whush…
That insistent, unpleasantly familiar sound.
NonononononoNO—
He was nearly around the bend in the chute; he’d been progressing in centimeters, in millimeters, in
—millipedes—
the smallest increments, but he was making headway. His hips were clear; in a minute or so he’d be able to work around the bend and really boogie.
But something was inside the chute with him now.
Whush-tikatikatikatikatikatika-whush, whush…
He could picture it behind him… twenty feet long, thick and sinuous, its feelers dancing lightly along the mouth of the tube. Its exoskeleton throbbing with moody colors; under that armor its guts were as soft and featureless as mashed bananas. Its compound eyes pulsing with alien hunger.
The millipede was inside the chute with him, its million-skillion legs tapping as it advanced gradually but with complete ease—tubes were its natural habitat, weren’t they?
Luke tensed, every muscle quivering. His heart hammered at his rib cage. The fear paralyzed him—his body, his mind. Finally he began to move. Hips bucking, feet shoving. But his body just uselessly accordioned. He felt like a worm stuck in the barrel of a clear, cheap ballpoint pen. Panic chewed his brain into pulp, rendering him stupid with fear.
Bug! yelped a giddy voice from his lizard brain, obliterating every last vestige of calm. Bug! Bug! Bug! BUG! BUUUG!
Whusha-whusha-tikatikatikatika…
He felt it now. At his feet. Its antennae—long and thick as extension cords—picked along the exposed skin of his ankles. Its mandibles gnashed like scissors. Its proboscis (they had those, didn’t they?) was a thick needle dripping venom.
Would it punch through the soles of his shoes, injecting poison into the pads of his feet while he thrashed helplessly? Would that poison kill him, or only paralyze him—would he feel it chewing through his boots, snipping off his toes like Jujubes and funneling them into the clotted hole of its mouth?
The sound switched direction—it was coming from ahead of him now.
Whush-whush-WHUSH…
Oh Jesus. Oh God no.
His feet would be bad enough, but for it to devour his head—its legs twitching through his hair as it scuttled over his forehead, his face, carrying the insectile stink of a roach nest, noxious nectars drooling out of its mouth as its mandibles fastened around the fragile nut of his skull, its proboscis injected through one twitching eyeball—
Bug! Bug! BugbugbugbugBUG!
Luke shook all over, screeching now, gripped by out-of-body terror. A vein of white-hot fire ripped up his spine as his overtaxed synapses detonated in his brainpan—
Fingers. Feelers.
Something was gripping his shoulders and was hauling him into—
12.
“IT’S OKAY, DOC! DOC! You’re out! You’re out.”
Luke lay on the floor of what must be the purification room. Grainy light trickled down the walls, illuminating the canisters screwed into them.
He tried to sit up. His body wouldn’t comply, his muscles limp as wrung dishrags. A tidal wave of embarrassment crashed over him. Mindless terror had cracked him right open inside the chute. And over what? There wasn’t a goddamn thing inside it except for the cloying stench of his fear.