Chapter Fourteen: Fire, Knife, and Fang

"To ensure that sufficient power remains for core testing protocols, all safety devices have been disabled. The Enrichment Center respects your right to have questions or concerns about this policy."

-PA System Portal 2

            As she had instructed him, Hendricks woke Helen up after about an hour and took his own nap. In the meantime, he had raided the vending machines, so they both were finally able to eat something. Chips and candy bars weren’t exactly what they wanted after long hours of running, fighting, and swimming, but they were considerably better than nothing. While they ate, Helen told Hendricks about her latest dream.

            “Well,” said Hendricks, trying to find a silver lining. “At least we won’t run into Charles.”

            “Probably,” said Helen. “But ruthless drug-dealers with assault rifles aren’t much better.”

            “Yeah, but at least they can die,” Hendricks pointed out. “Or, probably; you never know here, do you?”

            “You’re not making things sound any better,” said Helen, though with a small laugh.

            “Sorry, I’m doing my best,” he said. “So, where is this smelting plant thing?”

             Helen told him what the Dog had told her.

            “Alright,” he said. “Uh, you know we probably shouldn’t stay here long, then.”

            “I know,” she said. “We should go now.”

            But they didn’t. They just sat there for a long time and didn’t move. Every now and then, one of them would say that they really must get going, but somehow it seemed very difficult. This little room was the first actually safe place they had been in for a long time and they were very reluctant to leave it. It wasn’t until Hendricks actually fell asleep again and slumped over the table that Helen sprang up and insisted they go. So they crammed their pockets with as many snacks and drinks as they could and abandoned their refuge. 

            Their journey to the smelting plant, as the Dog had instructed, was longer than they had hoped it would be, but uneventful. They didn’t encounter anything, human, animal or otherwise along the way.

            As they approached the plant, the corridor became darker and dirtier, and the walls changed from concrete to metal, then to very badly rusted metal, until finally it ended abruptly in a heavy iron door.

            When they reached that door they stopped. It was larger and seemed somehow more threatening than any they had yet seen. It was as though the door was frowning at them, daring them to enter within. Unconsciously, their hands met and clasped.

            They looked at each other.

            “Well…

            “Yeah…”

            They moved forward and pulled open the door.

             It was as though they had just walked into a furnace. The heat washed over them like water as they stepped over the threshold. The place they now found themselves in was very dim, save for the flashes of fire that went up from somewhere to their right and a soft, red glow coming from an enormous basin suspended high up above them. It was very loud; evidently the disaster and the subsequent power-failure hadn’t shut this place down. The rhythmic pounding of pistons, the hiss of sparks, and every few minutes a harsh, blaring klaxon, followed by a roaring noise like the incoming sea all smote upon their ears.

            From a purely physical standpoint, it was the most uncomfortable place that either of them had ever been in. It seemed to attack all their senses at once. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, they took in more of their surroundings. The plant seemed to be largely vertical; it wasn’t very far from where they stood to the opposite wall, but over their heads the room kept climbing higher and higher. Cranes were moving, though without their operators they were trapped in a cycle of simply moving up and down. Metal stairs and catwalks filled the air and looped back and forth against the walls like climbing plants.

            Helen and Hendricks stood just over the threshold, taking all of this in. They still gripped each other’s hands, and Hendricks had taken out his crowbar. After a few moments, as though reaching some silent agreement, they started forward into the plant. They moved quickly; neither had any desire to remain long in this place.

            Taking the first steps they found, they began to climb up onto the catwalks. First one flight, then along the wall, than another flight, then out into the middle of the room.

            It was when they arrived at the bottom of the third flight of steps that they ran into trouble.

            Hendricks had just set his foot on the bottommost stair and, as one does on steps, looked up. He froze. There was someone at the top of the stairs. Someone whose features he couldn’t see, but whose stocky, powerful outline was horribly familiar.

            “Go back!” Hendricks shouted. “Run for it!”

            Helen needed only one glance to see what Hendricks meant and the two of them raced back the way they had came while Hank Voyeur came stomping down the steps after them. As before, he never moved at more than a brisk walk, but this nevertheless allowed him to catch up with them on the middle of the lowest catwalk.

            Hank took a swipe at Hendricks’s back, missed, and sliced through the railing. He swung again, a powerful overhead attack which again just barely missed, but which cut deep into the catwalk, rocking the whole structure. Hendricks and Helen stumbled and Hank swung a third time. This time, though he again missed his target, he cut straight through the walkway.     

            It collapsed inward like an upside-down drawbridge, dumping all three of them ten feet onto the hard floor below.

            Hendricks felt all the wind rush from his lungs as he struck the concrete. Blood filled his mouth from a cut lip, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Fighting for air, he tried to push himself up, but Hank was on his feet first. He lunged forward and stabbed straight down at Hendricks, who managed to roll aside just in time. Hank’s blade, as it had in the warehouse, sank deep into the concrete and stuck there.

            Seizing his chance, Hendricks hauled Helen to her feet and began to run; where they were going, he had no idea, he just wanted to put some distance between them and Hank. He even had a vague notion of fleeing back into the corridor and trying to find some other way upwards, but any notion of returning the way they had come were dashed the moment he turned his eyes to the door.

            The Bore Worm was hanging, like a monstrous earwig, on the wall right above the door, its hideous, pale head turned upward, as though trying to find its prey through the darkness and smoke. Its obscene groans added a new layer of agony to the endless pounding and hissing and roaring of that chamber.

            The worm slid down into the chamber, still turning its club-like head this way and that. Helen and Hendricks slowly backed away from it, forgetting, for a second, that it wasn’t the only threat in that room.

            Hank reminded them of his presence by aiming a blow at them that, by sheer good luck, struck against a thick support beam, giving them the chance to duck and run before he could extract it again.

            But now the Bore Worm was aware of their presence. Its mouth opened wide and its sticky tentacles came wriggling out towards the three of them.

            Helen and Hendricks retreated, but Hank, heedless of the danger, advanced, slashing at the tentacles. He cut off the end of one, but half-a-dozen more lashed forward and entwined him, pinning his arms and legs to his sides. Helen and Hendricks, crouching behind a big, empty concrete basin, watched in horror as he was dragged, struggling and helpless, towards the hideous maw. For a second, Hendricks even felt an urge to try to help him, but he remembered what Dr. Nelson had said: Hank wasn’t really human anymore. He had already died long ago.

            Hank was drawn into the Bore Worm’s mouth feet first. The petal-like jaws folded shut upon his legs, allowing, Hendricks imagined, the razor-sharp teeth to strip his flesh as they drew him further in. Even though he doubted whether Hank could actually feel pain, let alone fear, Hendricks found it horrific to watch.

            Hank’s helmeted head vanished into the worm’s mouth. A moment later, the monster opened its now-empty maw again, as though to demonstrate that he was really gone.

            Helen made a noise of horror and disgust that well mirrored Hendricks’s own feelings. But they didn’t have time to dwell on it; the worm, having finished off Hank, was now moving in their direction. They backed away, found the rear wall, and ran along it. The worm gave a particularly loud groan and slithered after them, its mouth opening wide, its tentacles writhing out after them…

Suddenly, the Bore Worm began to shriek and convulse violently, thrashing about as though in unbearable agony. Helen and Hendricks stopped and turned back in shock. They had about five seconds of bewildered horror before a long, curved blade burst from the worm’s side, unleashing a stream of thick, pale mucus. A moment later, Hank’s head, helmet and all, was forcing itself outward.

            They had thought that the Bore Worm had killed Hank. Instead, Hank was now killing the Bore Worm.

            When he had pulled himself about half-way out of the writhing, shrieking worm, Hank began to stab downward repeatedly. The worm continued to shriek and twitch, but in a much weaker form. And still Hank stabbed it. The worm’s mucus-like blood was now coating the floor, spreading outwards in an evil-smelling pool.

            Hank kept stabbing the worm until it had been clearly dead for several minutes. Then he paused to check his work, and having apparently satisfied himself that it wasn’t going to get up again he cut his way free from its body and stepped out into the mucus pool.

            Helen and Hendricks had been so transfixed by the grotesque scene that they hadn’t thought to run. Now, as Hank came slipping and sliding towards them, they realized their mistake.

            They blundered through the gloom, Hank stomping after them. Neither had any idea where they could run to, or even where they were in the plant at that point. Hank was gaining on them; not only was he still inexplicably faster than they were, but he was maneuvering through obstacles so easily that Hendricks was beginning to suspect he could see in the dark.

            Finally they came to what seemed to be an open space and had a chance to increase their lead. Just as they were about to break into a run, the klaxon they had heard when they first entered (which had been sounding periodically all this time) suddenly blared out, louder than ever, so that they had to cover their ears. A second later, an immense column of fire shot across their path barely ten feet in front of them. The heat and the force of the thing was so great that their faces and hands stung as though from a physical blow. In the flash of light it brought, they saw that it was running down an enormous pipe, a section of which was missing its top half, creating a kind of trench running between two huge tunnels.

            The fire took maybe five seconds to pass. Helen and Hendricks turned and tried to run parallel to the pipe, but they hit a wall almost immediately. Hank was almost on them, and now they were trapped with the wall behind them, the flame-pipe to their right, and a kind of fence or gateway to their left which they couldn’t see well enough to make out.

            Hank was bearing down on them, and Hendricks saw that there was only one way out. He went right, pulling Helen after him. Praying that the pipe was insulated enough to touch, he pushed Helen up the side. Apparently it was, because she was able to scramble up it with little difficulty. At the top she turned and gave Hendricks her hands, and as she walked down the other side pulled him up after her.

            Hank took a swipe at Hendricks’s legs that missed by inches. He seemed to consider the pipe, then decided against it and strode around to attack them through the trench.

            Hendricks looked around him. It was too dark to be sure, but he couldn’t see any obvious ways to escape; the flame-pipe was set close to the right-hand wall, and there were no doors.

            He tried to think; if they climbed back over the pipe, Hank would simply follow them and they’d be in the same position, and they could keep it up forever; sooner or later one of them would trip and Hank would get them.

All this flashed through his mind as Hank strode toward them, his eyes glaring furiously out of his mask, his blade rising…

            Then, just as he reached the middle of the trench, the klaxon blared again and they heard the roar of the approaching fire. Hank heard it too. He paused and looked down the tunnel, and the next second he vanished in the wall of flame.

            Whether he had been incinerated or merely blasted further down the tunnel, they neither knew nor wanted to find out. Quickly, they climbed back over the pipe and headed back to where they had started.

            The dead Bore-Worm still lay in a pool of its own fluids, and the catwalk hung uselessly.

            “Okay,” Helen gasped as they paused for breath. “Now what?”

            “I…I don’t know,” Hendricks admitted. “I don’t think that one staircase was the only way up, though. There’s…there’s gotta be another somewhere.

            “I wish we had some light,” she said.

            As a matter of fact, without either Hank or the Bore-Worm to distract them, it didn’t take them very long to find another flight of steps leading up into the winding catwalks. Thinking that this time, at least, they might escape without being attacked, they followed it upwards, always keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of danger.

            But they met nothing more troublesome than a wrong turn all their way up. The room rose three stories high, and when they finally reached the top they were winded. At least here there was some more light, mostly coming from the huge vat of molten steel that hung level with them over against the far wall.

            “There it is!” Hendricks gasped.

            The way out; the entrance to a corridor leading off of the balcony, was right in front of them across a straight walkway

            But as they towards it, Helen happened to glance down.

            “STOP!” she shrieked, seizing Hendricks’s hand and pulling him back a second before a stream of acid shot straight up and through the section of catwalk that he had just been about to step onto.

            Below them Python, coiled up on the lower balcony, hissed in frustration and took aim again, but Helen and Hendricks had already turned and were fleeing back down the way they came.

            “Where the hell did he come from?!” Hendricks yelled.

            “Doesn’t matter; he’s here now!” Helen shouted back.

            Python fired again, this time hitting the supports below them. The next thing Hendricks knew was a terrible sound of grinding metal, Helen screaming, and both of them falling straight down as the catwalk collapsed.   

            They landed painfully onto the walkway below, the bits of the one they had just been on crashing about them and tumbling passed. Hendricks took a second to contemplate their good fortune and clambered to his feet, feeling a set of bruises rising on his back.

            “Helen,” he gasped. “Are you alright?”

            “Ask me again in a minute,” she groaned, starting to rise to her feet. But then she suddenly seized him and pulled him down instead as Python took a third shot at them.

            The acid flew passed over their heads in a shallow arch and, as they watched in slow, horrified comprehension, struck the bottom of the basin. For a moment it hissed and ate its way through the thick metal, and then, all at once, the molten steel poured out as though from a faucet that had been turned all the way up. It tore through the lower catwalks, struck the floor below them with an evil hiss, and spread out into a pool.  

            “Come on!” Helen shouted, pulled Hendricks up. Python, apparently, was momentarily distracted by the surging pool of molten metal only thirty feet below him. He hissed angrily and began to climb.

            “He’ll be on us again in a minute,” Hendricks gasped.

            “How’re we going to get up there?” Helen said, pointing to the balcony ten feet above them. 

            Hendricks looked around. They had reached the far end of this walkway, almost directly below the balcony. Hanging about six feet away was a chain-link crane, which kept rising and falling in journeys of about twenty feet. 

            “Here!” said Hendricks, pointing to the crane. “Do you think you can catch that?”

            “No!” said Helen. “Do you?”

            Hendricks didn’t answer. He really didn’t think he could, but what choice did they have?

            He set his foot onto the railing, watched as the crane descended slowly, and then leapt out, clawing madly to find something to grab hold of. His hand found the chain and seized it, and he tried to contract his entire body onto that one spot.

            “Okay!” he said as soon as he felt sure he wasn’t going to slip off. “Now your turn!”

            “Hendricks, I can’t!” she replied.

            Behind them, Python was climbing upwards. In a second, he’d have a clear shot. The crane, meanwhile, was beginning to ascend again.

            Hendricks took a firmer grip on the chain and began to swing it back and forth.

            “Helen,” he called as he did so. “On the next swing, when it’s closest to you, jump, understand?”

            “Hendricks…”

            “Just do it!” he shouted. He had nearly reached her now.

            “Now!”

            Helen took a deep breath and jumped. She clawed madly, just as he had done…and missed.

            As she flew passed him, screaming at the top of her voice, Hendricks threw out a hand and grabbed her by her upper arm (which was the first thing he could reach). He would never have been able to hold her up, but he was able to stop her from going right passed the chain. She swung down, dropped out of his grip, and seized the chain with all four limbs at once.

            “Are you alright?” he called.

            She didn’t answer.

            The chain rose higher and higher, finally pausing near the ceiling. Hendricks saw the balcony they were aiming for approach, swung a few times to build up momentum, and jumped. He landed squarely on the solid concrete and turned around to seize the chain before Helen (who hadn’t moved an inch since catching the chain) was lowered back down to Python.

             “Helen!” he called. “Let go! It’s alright; we’re here!”

            She opened his eyes, staring at him with a wide, terrified expression. He didn’t think she had even understood.

            The chain was getting heavier as it descended, creating an ever-deepening dip. Hendricks pulled Helen over the balcony.

            “See?” he said. “Solid ground! Now let go!”

            She shut her eyes again and, as though it cost immense effort, unclenched one hand and threw it around his shoulders.

            “That’s it,” he said. “Now the rest…”

            She released the chain and instead clung to him as tightly as she had to it.

            Now Python was heading straight for them. Hendricks decided he didn’t have time to coax Helen off of himself. He took a deep breath and, carrying her as best as he could, he staggered to the doorway, threw it open, and rushed out through the narrow metal passage.

            The air felt wonderfully cool and soothing, but his muscles ached. He wasn’t an especially strong man. But he couldn’t stop. Any second Python would be at the door and after them.

            He turned a corner, and as he did so he heard a clang and a scream of rage, followed by an evil hiss. And he realized; the corridor he was running through was far too narrow for Python to fit through. They were safe.

Next Week:
Chapter Fifteen: The Fighting Escalates