Jeff Jacobson - Growth

“Charlie?” Sandy asked.

“Yeah, it is. I oughta recognize the sound of my own truck.” Purcell used the railing to help him stand up.

The sound of the rotors grew louder. The helicopters were sweeping back around. The headlights of the truck turned south on Fifth Street, heading toward the high school. If anything, it seemed to be gathering speed.

“What’s he doing?” Purcell asked, mostly to himself.

The helicopters roared overhead. Gunfire crackled from underneath each chopper, splitting the night wide open with tracers. They swooped down and blew Purcell’s truck apart. It was like watching popcorn explode in the microwave. Momentum carried the burning truck along, where it eventually scraped along parked cars and smashed into a tree.

Purcell brought Edgar’s AA-12 up and fired at the helicopters, screaming in rage.

One of the helicopters veered away from the other two and banked toward them.

Sandy cringed. “I think you got his attention. Let’s get—”

Purcell yelled, “Gimme another fucking clip. Gonna light this son of a bitch—”

The helicopter opened fire. Tracers singed through the air a dozen yards away from the tank to the west, sweeping closer.

Lightning streaked up from the ground, back near the library, and jolted the chopper. It farted pale smoke and faltered, pitching and starting to spin. The tracers sailed over the top of the water tank. The helicopter kept spinning, faster and faster. Near the end, the pilot almost got it under control, pulling it out of the tailspin, but the tail rotors clipped the edge of the roof of the baseball stand and that was all it took.

The helicopter went sideways and exploded across the pitcher’s mound.

Purcell howled.

The massive spinning blades struck the grass and shattered, sending great shards of metal into the night. One six-foot piece whipped out and caught the northwestern leg of the tower, connecting with a deep, thrumming sound and shearing the strut in half.

The water tower swayed like a small boat going sideways in an approaching storm.

The other two helicopters split apart and shot away, disappearing in the night sky.

“Fight, cocksuckers!” Purcell shouted, shooting at them.

The tower started to dip and rock, easy at first, as if getting used to the idea.

Sandy took hold of the railing with both hands and squeezed as hard as she could. The water shifted and slammed into one side of the tank behind her, then the other. As it rocked back, she felt that same drop in her stomach that she felt on a roller coaster, when it slowed down at the first apex, right before plummeting at the ground.

When the tower reached the point of no return, and started to topple over in slow motion, she scrambled up the tilting catwalk, trying to balance on the tank itself as it tilted at the earth and went down. Axel braced himself and wrapped one arm around his brother. Purcell put his back to the tank and closed his eyes.

The tower hit one of center field’s light posts on the way down and spun.

Sandy went flying, flung fifteen feet into the air. She hit third base with an impact that made something snap inside her right shoulder and rolled, flopping and bouncing, down the concrete steps into the visitors’ dugout.

Four hundred thousand gallons of water burst from the ruptured tank, sending a three-foot wave across the infield, washing away the tendrils. It hit the low front wall of the dugout and exploded, most of it going straight up or to the sides. Still, the impact was enough to drive her into the concrete bench.

She tried to rise from the churning water. Her back had been wrenched, and it hurt to breathe. Moving her right arm sparked agony. She couldn’t see any tendrils right away. She raised herself up to sit on the concrete bench. After cautiously feeling around her right shoulder, she found a lump over her right clavicle.

She’d broken her collarbone.

She carefully put her right hand in her front pocket and tried to stand. She found she could only move if she kept her arm tight to her side. Her gun was still in its holster. She reached across her stomach with her left hand and fumbled with it a while before unsnapping the strap. The Glock felt alien and heavy in her left hand.

Tendrils twisted and flailed around the dugout, all those rotten limbs quivering in the muddy water.

The Fitzgimmons rose from the receding water near second base in various states of consciousness.

Axel helped his brother and father up and they went staggering back to the crumpled tower. Sandy didn’t understand why they would try for the tower again, until they passed the heap of metal and headed for the trees.

She looked up, wondering if she could climb onto the roof of the dugout with one arm. Water trickled into the dugout down the steps. She got one foot on the front wall, stood on it and got her chest and left arm over the edge, hung there for a moment, then managed to throw her left leg onto the roof. She pulled herself over from there, right shoulder jolting her with every movement.

Soon the water had washed away, leaving nothing but wet grass and muddy sand. It only took a few seconds for the first tendril to explore the dugout roof. The tip came up from the home base end, a dozen fingers open and grasping like a bristling flower. Gnarled arms clawed at the cement and hauled more of the tentacle onto the roof.

Sandy squeezed off four rounds at point-blank range, pumping bullets into the cluster of fingers. The tendril shuddered and curled to the side. Broken and torn fingers dropped off the tip like ejected shells.

Drawn by the gunfire, more tendrils appeared, crawling up over the edge. Sandy emptied her Glock at them and only attracted more. She didn’t bother trying to put the handgun back in its holster and dropped it, feeling around her belt.

She found the Taser, fired at a tentacle at her feet. The limbs twitched for a second, then shrugged it off and crawled closer. She realized she couldn’t reload a new cartridge with one hand and dropped the Taser. That left the Mace.

She pulled it out and spun, finger frozen just above the trigger. The dugout was now completely surrounded. Beyond the grasping, clawing tendrils wriggling onto the roof, she could see hundreds more, all swarming closer. Her hand shook. She didn’t want to turn around and look at the tree where Kevin waited. She hoped he couldn’t see what was about to happen.

She abruptly reversed the can of Mace and sprayed her legs, moved up to her stomach and back. It started to sputter and hiss air so she tried to get the remnants into her hair. She was grateful that she wore the gas mask.

The tendrils shrank back at first, but then hunger overcame the stench of the Mace and they crawled even closer. They came up from everywhere.

Sandy tried not to scream.

A pair of headlights burst upon her as a tow truck roared through the parking lot, towing an old tanker trailer. Holes the size of golf balls had been blown in its sides, and some kind of liquid was spilling out, spraying the outside of the truck and at least six feet into the air on each side. It smelled like bleach and dried kale. The truck whipped around and jerked to a stop near the dugout, splashing the chemical everywhere.

The tendrils shrank away.

“Run!” Charlie shouted from the driver’s seat of Axel’s garage tow truck. Sandy jumped off the dugout and went to her knees in the liquid. It seeped into her cuts and burned. She threw herself into the front seat and Charlie hit the gas, slipping and sliding through the mud. Once in the outfield, he did his best to run over the tendrils, crunching the arms and legs under the wheels.

The whole time, liquid continued to spray from the tanker trailer. If any part of the tendrils touched the liquid, they would immediately shed that part and pull away.