Kumari Builders And Developers Recruitment Jobs - Naukri.com

Neil crouched low and examined the fittings. "We stripped one of the screws. Let's drill this one a tiny bit wider and try again."
One of the drillers headed over with his equipment, pulled out his ear plugs, and asked, "What?"
Neil repeated himself, and then left the man to his job. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he surveyed the distant valleys from his high vantage point at the top of the cliffs above the Waystation. The churned-up forested clay bowl in which he had once spent a night trapped now apparently spanned only the length of a single mighty leap; beyond, he could see the spot where he and Showman had stopped the truck. Doctor Wygant had taken it back to Concord weeks ago and returned on foot without it, but it was as if he could still feel his past self standing atop that rocky slope and studying the path ahead with wonder and trepidation. Now he knew the community intimately, and had a semblance of a home again. His past self stood looking back at him, but that man had only thought of this place as a finish line to reach his lost wife.
This was a strange Earth. It was at rather random times hot like a desert, humid like a jungle, and cold in that way that could normally only be felt on an autumn beach as chill sea breezes needled in. What season was it here? There was no way to know, really. He had only been faced with the weather more often when this project had forced him to be outside daily.
The system in question had been patched together with the hard work of dozens of clever builders, forgers, and metalworkers. It was rough around the edges, but he still regarded it with pride. He and the three other engineers had been given piles of junk and somehow turned them into mechanical gold. Made from random materials carried across the worlds by charitable families, the collection basins and crafted sluice system would serve as the Waystation’s first real form of active defense.
“Come on Neil,” Ellwood shouted, waving him toward the lower rock slope and the stairs that had been carefully carved into the cliff. “It’s dinner time. I'm having the team over.”
He clung to the cool cliff wall and followed her down the steep recently-carved staircase. Ahead of him, she bounded step to step with her usual peppy energy. He guessed that they were really about the same age, but she made him feel like an old man sometimes.
Once back on blessed level ground, he caught the greeting of the other two engineers and headed over. Besides redheaded and energetic Ellwood—who was in charge—there was also Susan, an engineer from the South Korea of the Earth numbered one higher than his, and Dave, a perpetually red-faced man who had somehow managed to remain obese and cheerful despite the strains of the exodus. Together, the four walked and talked; it was only here that Neil could finally speak with others on the same level about so many engineering and logistical issues that had built up in the back of his mind. They were all still in the initial phase of getting to know each other, but he was warming up to the idea of having friends that weren’t around purely out of circumstance or necessity. He even let himself smile at them sometimes without simultaneously secretly despairing about Rani. He was allowed to be happy, he often reminded himself. Being happy was not somehow a betrayal; she was lost, but he had done and would do everything in his power to find her.
On that front, too, he was hoping for progress. Around the crude table in Ellwood’s little hut, he placed crusts of multi-colored fungus and bits of greening meat on an imaginary map of the region. “So we place towers by each rift. The colored chalk marking system we have is decent, but these can contain information about what’s next for anyone traveling, and they can pass along radio signals. It’s ambitious, given our manpower and resources, but it’s time we stopped wandering in the dark. It's time we started talking again. Acting, rather than reacting. With the right system, we could communicate with Concord and the Zkirax in real time.”
Susan nodded enthusiastically. “I could talk to my husband. He’s in those tunnels with our sons.”
Neil froze with a smile still plastered on his face. She hadn’t mentioned a family in the last couple weeks; perhaps she’d been trying not to think about the distance, or perhaps they were closer as a group now. He realized that even though he couldn’t tell her what was going to happen when the insects ran out of food, he could request her husband and sons come to the Waystation if the radio network was finished in time.
Dave popped one of the bits of fungus into his mouth. While chewing, he said, “Good communication is an incredible tool. We’re working blind here. It would help to be able to coordinate designs and plans with engineers elsewhere. We might even get a generalized electrical grid up and running in a few years.”
Randy—for Neil now thought of her as more of a friend and colleague than a boss—shook her head, sending her red ponytail bouncing. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Setting up a radio network is going to be dangerous work, and then it’ll need to be defended. This should be our next project, but it’s not going to be easy.”
Over on the bed in the corner, Pixley took a swig from a half-empty bottle of liquor and grunted. Interrupting their conversation for the first time that night, she muttered, “We’ll do it because we have to. We might not be under direct attack, but this is still a war.” She did not look at them; her dark gaze remained fixed on the wall.
Randy looked about to speak, but then she visibly thought better of it.
Neil stepped aside to let the group of four around the table see her more directly. “So we’ve got a go ahead?”
“Yeah.” She lifted the bottle for another sip. “For what good it’ll do.”
Now unleashing a glare, Randy sighed. “Don’t mind her. We’ve been through some pretty terrible stuff; seen some things that are way bigger than us. We’re all doing what we have to do because there’s nobody better than us left to do the jobs; we’ll persevere because we have to, and everything will turn out alright. She knows that. She’ll be more level-headed tomorrow—when she’s sober.”
The blonde made an irritated noise and sank lower in the bed.
In their introverted reaction to the spat, the other three engineers were united. Neil coughed and moved back into place at the table to block Pixley from view. Susan looked to Dave, and Dave—who was more red-faced than normal—took a deep breath. “Well then,” he said, breaking the tension. “Let’s start estimating the manpower we need.” He began ripping up the old meat into tiny strips and placing them near the bits of fungus that represent rips between realities. “And how we’re going to macgyver clay and bark into complex electronics.”
They built a plan and alternately agreed and argued well into the night; Neil took his leave and split from the others after a few minutes’ conversation outside Ellwood’s hut. Sighing as he walked through the cool darkness between rock wall and cliff, he tried to calm down and gain some perspective on his life. Every single day things changed; every single day, new people, new threats, and new information rolled in through the valleys and along the ridges of this primordial world. Through gaps between the rock above where the hinged native-wood hatches lay open, he saw flashes of the night sky—and the approaching white wall in space that would one day bring this particular Earth to an end.
It was all temporary; every single bit of it. The farm realities had been temporary. The Zkirax tunnels had been temporary. Concord had been temporary, and now this Waystation nestled in crevices and canyons—had the weeks he had already spent here been borrowed time? He almost couldn’t bring himself to accept that he and his daughter were finally safe, for in that acceptance there seemed to be vulnerability. He ducked into his shed and lay with exhaustion on his cot.
“Where have you been?” Rani whispered.
And then there was this. He knew their strange situation couldn’t last. He could already feel negativity lurking in the corners of every conversation. “Working.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yeah,” he replied, doing his best to keep calm and collected despite the irritation prodding his inner emotions. “I was with the other engineers planning a new system.”
“That’s good. They really like you.”
“I really like them,” he said, genuinely letting himself feel it now that it seemed the conversation had actually gone positive for once. “They’re good people.”
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then whispered, “You know, you can tell me if you’re seeing other people.”
God damnit—the irritation in his chest became a stronger fire, but still he kept his words restrained. “I’m not seeing anyone.”
“We’re not married,” she continued. “Hell, we don’t even really know each other. It would be fine if so.”
“I’m not seeing anyone. I’m married.”
In the dark, she shifted. “I’m just trying to be cool with a crazy situation, you know?”
His annoyance faded, and he just felt sad. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.”
“I’m just not sure what the morals are anymore,” she told him, moving an inch closer. “They’re so insistent about people pairing up and having babies—and I know it hurts, but your wife’s not here. “
He moved an inch back even though the gap between their beds would have kept them separated regardless. “I’m not entirely convinced we need to be having more babies, not when people can’t die. Overpopulation’s going to hit us hard.”
“But we don’t know anything about why people can’t die,” she countered with a rational tone. “You know they estimate forty percent of us out here are walking around dead?”
“Yeah.”
“What happens if it ends tomorrow? What happens if they just fall down dead for real and that’s it?”
In the quiet void of the night, his audible swallow was loud and awkward. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I’m just saying, your wife will understand. It’s one of your duties. If I’m not that woman, let me know, and I can switch to another shed like Showman did.”
He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was curled up with the careful bundle that contained Kumari. He turned over and lay awake in the dark staring at the slatted wall; his eyes were open, but he saw only the vast distance of his own mind and future fears. In those solitary hours, he could relate very strongly to their blonde commander sitting drunk in Ellwood’s hut. It was as if life was constantly finding new and very personal ways to attack each of them. He said nothing further—and neither did Rani.
Waking far earlier than he would have liked, he stumbled out of the shed and into chaos. Standard reaction protocol involved no shouting or loud noises, so the streams of men running in both directions were eerily hushed. After leaning back into the shed and telling his stunned bunkmate to protect Kumari, he dashed out to run alongside one that he knew. “Yao, what’s going on?”
The other man skipped his usual taciturn reaction and answered without slowing. “Scouts on the ridge saw some serious shit coming our way.” Above, one of the latch-men slipped from his carved ledge and nearly fell; another latch-man grabbed him at the last moment, swung him up, and then closed both nearby hinged hatches with determined haste. Neil stared up, but Yao pushed him along and said, “You’ve had training. We need every man on the walls. Where's your friend Showman?”
"At Concord on a run." Neil fell in line immediately, but his pulse began pounding in his head as he ran with the others toward threats unknown and likely horrifying. His role as an engineer had relegated him to positions away from many prior dangers, but he saw Dave huffing along up ahead—the situation had to be extremely serious if literally all the men were needed. Too, by Pixley’s order, no women were allowed to endanger themselves. Many of the female residents of the Waystation were pregnant, and nobody was sure what would happen to their babies if they died and resurrected.
Neil followed his training from those early drills as ear plugs and weapons were handed out. They wouldn’t be able to hear shouted commands, but the whole point was to be quiet, and most orders would be given with hand signals. Rushing up the walls of piled rocks and boulders alongside numerous men, he found a vantage point just under native-wood slats.
Complete silence fell.
The attention of so many was a nearly palpable force sweeping through the grey morning air. Neil stared out, too, watching the chill pre-dawn valley and the shadowed ridge with heart-pounding anticipation. He’d never been a fan of guns, but the shotgun he’d been given was now a source of reassurance and strength. Just what did these battle-hardened soldiers consider serious shit?
A slight vibration tickled his bent legs with barely perceptible static. He looked around—others had also felt it. Beside him, Dave huffed up and crouched against the rocks. Yao waved everyone to silence and pointed back out toward the valley. It was still early morning, and any refugees that had camped for the night would likely not be on the road. That was the only consolation.
A vertical glimmering sliver appeared first. Within the space of several heartbeats, the sliver crested the ridge, shot down the slope with force, and churned its way across the valley. Realizing that it was devices like this one that had created the strange path he himself had run along, Neil gaped in shock as the giant sawblade roared past at speed. The tiger eye gemstone in the central gap of the rotating saw paid them no heed. In as many heartbeats, it was over their ridge and down into the next valley, where the massive ruptured rift to the next base branch accepted it with a silent shimmer.
A wave of scattered slithery shadows followed. Neil narrowed his eyes as he recognized something exotic for once—he’d seen one of them on his own world while trying to drive toward escape. An entire tribe of living pools of blood slid across the base of the valley, up the slope, and past their piled walls. Some of the pools merged into a larger blob and twitched their way, but one man covered a cut he’d suffered from the rocks; the earth trembled again, and the viscous red liquids moved on with a scattered group jumpiness that could only be described as animal terror.
Multiple different strange creatures followed as the sun rose higher in the sky, and he began to instinctively understand: these living things were fleeing en masse as deer and birds might have from a forest fire. A massive four-tusked boar charged past, followed by a gaunt family of spectral humanoids with blue and purple eyes in strange colors that defied comparison; to these, he leapt up an inch and pressed his forehead against native-wood. It was the same family he had once shared a rain-drowned canyon with, and they were no threat as far as he knew, but there was nothing he could do to explain that to Yao or convince the others to let them in. Hoping they would catch that pursued four-tusked boar, he watched them go with the despair that only one parent could feel for another.
But the others did open the heavy swiveling gates for the next beings to pass. Starving, dirty, and weak to the point of collapse, eighteen yellow-skinned men, women, and children wearing strange robe-like clothing staggered in and fell to the ground. “We ran,” one murmured—and women emerged from deeper in hiding in the Waystation to take these very different refugees to huts where they could be taken care of and allowed to rest.
Neil looked to Yao and then to Dave, but neither spoke. It was too important to remain quiet. The earth trembled more heavily this time, and a dozen men climbed down and pushed against the main gates to close them while there was still space for the hinges to scream and whine without risk. Seconds after the horrible squealing finally stopped, flocks of large somethings flew overhead, but his vantage between rock and native-wood made it impossible to tell what was passing.
As tense as the situation was, clutching the rocks for so long began to take its toll. Neil shifted uncomfortably and then froze as a glowing woman in pale white passed through the flat rocky space between their wall and the opposite sheer slope of the pass; she turned, and it was Rani. Many of the men—himself included—started to rise, but those behind them gripped their shoulders and held them down. Dave’s hand on his back kept him in place, and Neil put a hand over his own mouth to keep from calling out. There was no way this was real.
You people again? You’re everywhere! The false Rani shouted in irritation without actually speaking. However she was communicating, it could be heard through their ear plugs. Get out of here! Are you insane?
Something slithered on, and the illusion went with it. Stunned, Neil stared after it in turmoil. Around him, many others were doing the same. Had it appeared as each of their lost loved ones? He dug a thumbnail into his arm to force himself to focus; a surreal weight on his senses slowly lifted.
A menagerie of other strange lifeforms surged through the shattered forest; the first third of the valley darkened as a mass of shadow roiled up over the ridge. It was nearly noon—and the impetus behind the desperate stampede had finally appeared. A chill beyond anything he had ever felt slunk around his heart. This was the second danger he recognized, and this one he had also seen on his own world. He suddenly recalled watching a video of this massive tentacled titan as it approached across a Chinese city; this was the sight that had sent him into flight with his family. If they hadn’t left that day, if Rani hadn’t bribed that cop, if they hadn’t found the rift in time—there were countless ifs and lucky chances that had brought them this far, and this titan had been the very first. In a way, it had saved his family then, a polar opposite to the mortal danger it posed now. Across the wilds of the multiverse, it had fled the cold along the same path, and it had finally caught up to him.
Three weeks in one place.
Completely and utterly paralyzed, he realized: it had always been coming.
Three weeks in one place.
It had always been behind him. This was the only route to safety. Her Glory on the left, Grey Riders on the right, lethal cold behind—all the threats of the region had fled through this chokepoint. It had only ever been a matter of time.
The beast reached a high point above the ridge and then crashed down into the valley, crushing what primordial trees had survived the other threats. The ground trembled again, and it was now clear that each shudder had been the result of this creature plunging into each valley as it approached. Out of determined courage or absolute terror, the men to either side of Neil remained dead silent. He knew: if this beast noticed them, the Waystation would be erased from existence.
Clutching the shaking rocks, he watched with wide eyes as the roughly spherical mass of tentacles rolled closer—and then over them. The bulk of the beast rested mainly on the bed of the pass itself, but the wood overhead creaked menacingly from the weight of random flailing and squirming tentacles. Both guns and men lowered; one to avoid the bulging wood, and the other because bullets would be useless against a monster that size.
One of the foot-thick hatches splintered and exploded downward; in complete silence, terrified men dragged their wounded comrades out of the way, and those who could move of their own accord scattered. A single scream would—
—a dark purple tentacle found a wounded man and immediately curled around his midsection. In an instant, the motion above changed and darkness descended. Lithe otherworldly limbs snaked down and began flailing about in search of more food as their owner let blast a bellow of hunger. Against the beast itself, nothing could be done, but guns were immediately lifted and employed against the unholy mass of searching flesh.
Thankful for the plugs protecting his ears from all the weapon noise, Neil crouched back between two large rocks with Dave and held his shotgun up in case any of the searching limbs came close. Flashes of light made it impossible to see, while gunsmoke made it impossible to breathe. Every ruptured limb was immediately replaced from the writhing mass above.
Dave grabbed his arm and pointed up past the nightmare. There was only one shot: the system they had built among the cliffs was perfectly positioned for use, but they hadn’t yet set up the proper shifts and personnel roles to employ the defenses. Susan had joked that afternoon, “What are the chances we’ll need it this very night?”
Neil grimaced. A hundred percent, Susan. A hundred goddamn percent.
Something flickered close. He gripped the shotgun hard and pulled. The spray sent him painfully back against stone, but the tentacle’s searching end exploded into goo. Dave used the opportunity to run forward and gesture frantically to Yao, who subsequently ordered three men up the steep staircase. Hand signals ordered covering fire, and weapons turned to the air to spit violence and clear the way.
The cost was dear. With lighter direct resistance, the scrambling limbs curled around defender after defender and plucked them away into the horrendous unseen stench-pouring maw above. More hatches buckled and exploded; a storm of aberrant flesh poured into their manmade canyon as the supremely angered beast screeched promises of death. Rather than be a hero, Neil pushed deeper between the rocks, even scraping himself rather horribly to buy another half body length. The way he figured it, this wasn't cowardice. He’d already done his part. He had a daughter to live for, and whatever waited above would take him away from her one way or another.
But the first climber was knocked away from the steps and fell horribly into a shed. The split effort of the shooters below weakened further, and the second man was pulled up and out of sight. The third made it nearly to the point where the steps dipped into a protective crevasse, but a stray bullet splattered red across his thigh and he tumbled backwards.
That was it. There was no time for a second try. The crowd of remaining able-bodied men pressed backwards together against the rocks and sent up a hailstorm of shots, but that would only last as long as their ammo. Some visibly considered turning their weapons on themselves, but the nightmare only intensified when they visibly realized they couldn’t even kill themselves. Behind their bleeding legs, Neil jammed his limbs further and further back. Dave tried to follow suit nearby, but he simply couldn't fit. He looked over with haunted eyes.
Ahead, the huge burn-scarred man that Neil had seen carrying rocks now stepped forward among the curtain of grasping limbs. Those that tried to curl around him were torn asunder for their efforts; those that got in his way, he ripped in twain. Yao spoke to him with his hands, and the man nodded, stepped toward the cliff, turned on something at his waist, and began climbing with his bare hands as a sphere of white light grew to surround him. His fingers crunched rock as he ascended, and Neil looked on in amazement only as long as it took for the defenders to rally their final shots to clear the way for the man’s climb. Could the belt he had brought help a second time? Until they could figure out how it worked, there was only residual naturally regenerating charge left in the thing, but a minute or two would be enough. The beacon of light marked the scarred man's ascent as a sign of rising hope.
Knives were brandished as the ammo ran out; black ichor and red blood sprayed copiously in every direction. One limb slid into Neil's hiding place to batter him in the face, and he hit the rock to his left with a painful thud. Dazed, he struggled to hold off the purple-skinned arm sliding around his midsection. He curled his feet against what corners he could find and resisted the pull. To his right, Dave slid forward as two curled muscles grabbed him by each shoulder.
A great roar rang out, and the tentacles reflexively retracted. Light streamed in from the noon sun, nearly blinding in its sudden intensity. Bashing back and forth into the cliffs above, the titan tried to somehow slough off the damage, but it was far too late—the rock basins above had naturally gathered large lakes of native acid rain, and the funnels and pipes that the engineers and laborers had built had sprayed thousands of gallons of it along the beast in mere seconds. The monstrous scream shook both the earth and the men below before fading into a cacophonous cry of pain—and then, finally, a dying whimper.
Not quite believing it had actually worked, Neil climbed up the rocks alongside Dave and fifty other survivors to survey the wide morass of half-melted flesh. He pulled out his ear plugs and breathed, “Holy crap.”
Dave’s cheeks bounced as he nodded rapidly. “We’re alive!”
“They are too,” someone else commented. “Let’s get them out of its stomach! They can’t die!”
Running down the piled walls and then up the curves of the monster's twitching corpse alongside the entire company of defenders, Neil avoided the acid-melted oozing flesh and started cutting with his knife near where the stomach might be. Ahead, a monstrous grinning skull and jaw appeared as the rest of the organic material around the beast's head seeped away; he ignored the omen of death and pulled at the very human limbs that now erupted through the fresh wounds. Each bursting forth into the open air and screaming happily with freedom, man after man was pulled from the beast's stomach and cleaned of the digestive acid that was, thankfully, much weaker than that which had liquefied its owner's face and brain.
"Head counts," Yao ordered. "We're not leaving anyone to rot in there."
A proud shout echoed from the cliffs above, where the scarred man stood gleaming white and glowing at the height of his savior ascent. The sphere flickered off, spent, but those below still watched in awe.
With the first positive emotion Neil had ever seen in the man, Yao called up, "Are you back?"
"I am," came the determined response. "Start cutting up the parts that are away from the acid. We'll eat like kings for months. You've earned it."
A great cheer went up from the gore-, sweat-, and ichor-covered three hundred odd men at their victory—and at the prospect of eating well for once. Neil did not join in; he was exhausted in every sense of the word, yes, but his logical mind remained fixated on logistical concerns as he stared at the abomination's grinning and black-dripping skull. All credit to the men involved, but how had the Chinese army not managed to stop this thing?
"That's Kendrick the Scarred!" Dave said excitedly, clapping his shoulder. "The Captain himself, he's back!"
Still half-absent, Neil turned his head to look at his colleague. "That's him? From the Week of Hell stories?" Now he understood why Yao, Pixley, Doctor Wygant, and Randy had all refused to answer questions about him; what little he knew, Edgar had mentioned in passing. Indeed, that squad had lost much. They had once numbered ten, but there were only five of them here. Had Kendrick the Scarred blamed his own decisions for the losses and been unable to lead? The self-flagellant punishment of building the walls all by himself now made sense. Still, the effort had not been in vain. They'd only survived because—
The shaking had already begun some minutes before, but he hadn't noticed it while standing on the massive deflating and squishy corpse. The three hundred odd cheers died on ashen lips as each man slowly turned to behold their own arrogance and hopelessness. The noon sun faded behind a propelled wake of dense clouds as the dark writhing horizon itself approached at speed. The planet-shaking roar brought its own foul hurricane winds, but, lacking yet a given order, the men held up their arms, gripped each other, and managed to remain standing despite their uneven footing.
Where others did not, Neil understood. The dead abomination on which they stood—the creature which they had shot up, melted with acid, and then defiled with knives—was not the one he had seen on video destroying an entire country. This creature was far too small for that. This creature was just a baby, and all the horrible things they had done to it had been performed directly in front of its mother.
The noxious hurricane roar faded, restoring the ability to breathe, smell, and hear; a squeal remained in Neil's ears, but it was not too loud to hear Kendrick the Scarred's dismayed and awed order. There had to be a backup plan. There had to be secret weapons. This was the famed Captain, and there had to be something.
"The Waystation is over," Kendrick shouted as he stood atop that cliff and gazed up at the gigabeast that had brought its own sky-spanning halo of clouds. "There's nothing we can do. Run and hide."
No. That couldn't be it, could it? The shock attempted to paralyze him, but Neil immediately thought of Kumari and took off running across the baby titan's hilly flesh; three hundred men broke in rapid clusters. Those that had someone inside to care about followed. Those that did not scattered down the pass and toward the massive rift to the next world. These, Neil lost track of as he clambered over the rock walls and into the debris-littered battlefield inside.
Several of the women and one yellow-skinned man in a white robe stood watching in surprise. They'd felt the ground continue to shake, but, from between cliff and wall, they couldn't yet see what was coming. Overhead, a loud crack shot up through natural stone simply from the vibrations, and those below moved to action.
Running up to Randy, Neil asked desperately, "Where's Rani?!"
The redhead didn't waste time. Dragging him further down into the narrow canyon of the Waystation, she led him toward the shelter areas. "What's happening? What is it?"
"It's huge!" he shouted, unable to elaborate for lack of breath. "This is it!"
"It?" She knew what he meant, but she didn't seem to want to believe it.
"Wait," he panted, darting into his shed briefly. Under the cot, he had hidden one pair of the small devices that had been inside the other crate Edgar had given him. They were two curious amethyst gemstones contained in strange rainbow crystalline matrices his friend had described as Yngtakian, whatever that meant. What mattered was that these were an untested fusion of two very different technologies, and thus a last resort. He rolled them around in his hand, thinking quickly; he couldn't close his fist around both, as they were slightly too large. He decided to shove one in each pocket. Leaving the shed, he saw Yao and Doctor Wygant now joining Randy as the forefront of the flood of men surged past. Pushing through the crowd, he joined his boss even as darkness blotted out the sun.
Where the previous attack had come as a storm of small tentacles, this one began with a single purple-mottled limb pushing down to completely knock away an entire section of the rock wall as if it was nothing more than a pile of pebbles.
There was no longer any rational thought. He ran among a sea of screams; terrified faces alternately looked ahead as their owners ran and back up as slender limbs reached down to lift away their neighbors. The crowd thinned one by one as they fled down the last slope toward the caves at the end of the Waystation canyon. Here, others were still stepping out of sheds in confusion only to be plucked away. Of the yellow-skinned refugees, none were targeted, and Neil followed Randy and ducked among them as they ran.
"It's just after us!" Randy screamed.
Beside her, Yao carried a crying yellow-skinned child. "For what we did."
The hurricane roar came again, battering their clothes and shaking the world itself. The cliffs overhead cracked and sent down debris, but the focused blast of air down the canyon flung them all along far faster than they could have ever run. Sailing into the caves proper and cracking his left arm horribly against the wall among a storm of similar impacts, Neil staggered through the rushing gale and mind-numbing noise in search of one single thing. He saw them ahead, where dozens of terrified women and children waited with wide eyes and bodies braced against the wind. He called out her name, but he couldn't even hear himself.
Still, she saw him. With Kumari in her arms, she beckoned, and he finally reached them as the second roar of titanic rage finally faded. An impact shook everything around them, but this was no motion pain of the earth as the beast moved—this was a direct strike. Another followed. Running deeper into the caves with so many others at their heels, he realized that the beast was attacking the cliffs themselves. It would tear the bedrock away above to expose the caves and those horrible little creatures that had killed its child. In a way, he understood that rage. He himself had been consumed by it in that single eternal moment in which he had rushed Grayson and stabbed him with Showman's knife.
As a unified tide, they came to the end of the caves and stopped. More people flooded in behind them, but there was nowhere to go—the tiny stream of water that had carved these tunnels over the ages now exited through a tiny hole into depths unknown. "There!" Yao said, pointing back the way they had come.
A small passage shot back at an angle impossible for the tentacles to curl into. Children ran through, most of the women squeezed by with some pain, and the men took turns trying to fit.
Neil touched Kumari's cheek. His daughter had still been smiling until that moment; she scrunched her face and began crying quietly. Did she have some idea what was about to happen?
"I'll take care of her," Rani promised.
He nodded with acceptance. She was not his Rani, but it didn't matter anymore—not in these moments. He grabbed her and kissed her very hard. "Thank you."
"If this was all it took—" she said with a tearful laugh as a tremendous hit audibly ripped off another layer of the ridge overhead.
"Go!" Yao ordered, and she slipped through the crack with Kumari, who began crying louder as she was carried away.
Just like that, he was left bereft and alone with a hundred other men. For them, there was nowhere to go. They stared around and at each other as the battering above continued.
"What if we cut off our limbs and throw each other through the crack?" one man offered. "We'll regenerate eventually, right?"
With a distant gaze, Yao shook his head. "It's not going to stop until it finds us." He looked over at what yellow-skinned men remained; their women and children had already gone deeper. "I think you guys are safe. It wants us."
Neil felt a sliver of relief as his colleague came forward through the crowd, but Dave said what many were thinking. "We have to go out there. We have to make it think it got us all. It didn't see them," he explained, referring to those that had been deeper in the Waystation during the attack.
Was this what it meant to be a man? Before the era of rampant civilization and cushy desk jobs, back when tribes of survivors fought nature itself to perpetuate the species, was this what manhood had been about? Neil followed, dazed, as the group began slowly walking back up through the tunnels. By himself, he might not have had the courage, but there was something about the group willpower that made it impossible to chicken out; nay, that made it an honorable and determined thing. If he broke, they would break. If they broke, he would break. Despite pale faces, fearful sweat, and shivering anticipation, the hundred men remained solid.
Again, he wondered what would happen if nothing remained for his soul to return to. In the depths of that beast, there was no doubt every tiny piece of him would be destroyed. The two gemstones in his pockets remained as the only shred of hope that there might be some last-minute shot at survival.
They emerged into the pure night of a canyon completely overshadowed by a beast whose proportions were beyond comprehension. To the credit of these men—perhaps a victory in itself, Neil thought—the titan actually hesitated at the sight of them. Was it wondering at a trick? Perhaps momentarily scared of some sort of attack? Or was it a slight moment of respect for their choice?
"This is gonna suck," Dave breathed, his face beet red from fear.
Neil nodded and spoke with quiet resignation. "Yeah."
Just leave, he willed it. Just go away. Just turn and go. Killing us won't bring back your child. Just go.
But it didn't. A purplish cloud of roiling flesh surged at them, and the snap nearly winded him. Grasped around the midsection by thick muscle, he pushed hard in resistance as it lifted him up at speed. Around him, the others soared at various speeds, as if they were all part of some horrific carnival ride. Lifted through dense fog and into searing brightness, he saw a forest of tentacles arching above the clouds, each with a person in hand. His heart sank as he realized that not all of the women and children had escaped; those that had been grabbed on the run to the caves were here, too. It had kept them here in the sky until it had everyone—perhaps as a way to make sure it had all those that had harmed its child, or perhaps as a form of emotional vengeance. Fighting for breath and struggling to see despite the blinding sun, he confirmed that it was true: none of the hundreds up here were yellow-skinned.
But what was it waiting for? His terror flared not for himself, but for that beautiful little girl who knew no evil in the world. In all their flight, she had only cried twice—both times for the coming death of her father. He wanted that innocence to remain. He hoped desperately that she would not end up cynical and depressed like so many others out here. He hoped desperately that she would survive this. What was it waiting for?
"It's all of us, you bitch!" he screamed, hitting the thick limb around his midsection. "That's all of us! You have us all!"
It either couldn't hear him, or didn't listen. His brain punctured his fear with the machinations of logic, and he bent his arm painfully around the purple flesh to reach one of the gemstones in his pocket. Lifting it and waiting for a high point in the randomly moving tentacle's motion, he hurled it as hard as he could. It would never have cleared the beast if not for the height and position advantage he had near the edge; as it was, the rainbow-encased amethyst glinted brightly as it sailed off into the unknown distance.
But it was not time yet. If he tried anything now, the creature would keep looking. It wanted all of them.
The thin air and freezing cold that high threatened to knock him unconscious, but he pushed against the curled weight and breathed in what he could. He could hear distant screams from those hundreds out there in the sky with him, but real communication was impossible. There was nothing to do but wait and suffer, until, at long last, the forest of raised limbs closed together like a sinking flower and dumped them all down into that waiting central maw in the murky clouds below.
(continued below)