The
Chapter 1
Terra Lane Montgomery did not
notice the first drop landing by his left ear.
He sat at his computer screen in an enormous bull pen with dozens of
others at their computer terminals doing the routine business of maintaining
and running a huge online food delivery service, the biggest. There was so much commotion that anyone would
develop the habit of over concentrating.
This morning, more than usually, he had shut everything else out but the
information on his screen; the pipes seemed to have been running all morning
making a cheerful but distracting singing sound.
The second drop got his
attention. He reached up to wipe away
the wet and glanced at it to see if it was just water or an overrun toilet at
fault. It was blood. Terra Lane looked up and saw the patch of
widening red on the ceiling tile as the gooey liquid changed from isolated
drops to a thin stream. Then somebody
screamed.
As if summoned by a witch, a
number of patches of blood appeared on the ceiling and grew. There was a general panic as people rushed to
the doors only to find them locked from the outside. A few smashed windows and looked desperately
down at the pavement far below.
Acoustical tiles began to disintegrate, and the whole ceiling started to
bulge. Terra
As he worked, the ceiling
descended farther with a profound groan.
Tiles fell. Ventilation ducts
twisted out of their mounts. Lights and a
speaker broke lose and dangled. In
moments, the message was complete. He
glanced it over out of habit and then made a few more stabs. Text cheerfully announced that the message
had been sent on its way. Then the
electricity failed as the entire unthinkable weight above crashed down, driving
the room through the floor and the floor below that.
Like a huge satanic piston,
the down-rush burst floor after floor, accelerating with the unleashed energy
of uncounted tons of matter dropping hundreds of feet. At last the avalanche buried the whole mass
in the basement and continued to press the blood and juices from the bodies of
a thousand innocent people.
There have been 1,825
visitors so far.