Hayden half-nodded, shrugging at the same time.
“Don't do that!” Jack shouted. “Don't give me any doubts! I might have to kill people, now. These things, they're still people. Just as much as the poor sods you bastards have been cutting up are people.”
“I haven't cut any—”
“So tell me you can stop the bomb!”
Hayden nodded. “Given time.”
“How much time?” Jack asked.
“I'll need an hour with the bomb. And peace and quiet. And the right tools.”
“And how would you like your fucking steak cooked?” Sparky asked.
Jack laughed, high and loud, and felt his own sense of control wavering. He almost puked.
“Everyone in that one,” Sparky said, nodding at a Mazda estate car.
“Plan?” Jack asked.
“If there's any battery left I can hot-wire it, and it's down to them to get out of the way.” He slapped Jack's shoulder, and the gesture proved he knew so much about his friend.
“Good plan,” Jack said. “And if everything goes wrong…”
“Then we've got you,” Sparky said. “Superman. Our secret weapon. Hulk, smash!”
“I'll smash you in a minute. Get the bloody car started!”
Sparky saluted, grinned, and they all ran to the car. The door was open. The wheels weren't completely deflated. And there wasn't even a mummified corpse in the driver's seat.
Bonus! Jack thought. Maybe things are turning our way.
Then he froze as, on the next level down, he heard the sharp, rapid scraping of chitinous limbs.
Andrew drifted away, and when Lucy-Anne started after him Jack held her arm.
“I don't think they can hurt him,” he said. Andrew glanced back and seemed to nod, and then he passed between two parked cars and disappeared from view.
“Come on, come on!” Sparky said. He'd opened his pocket knife and forced the covering beneath the steering column, and now he was hunkered down, bent almost double in the driver's seat as he spread a knot of wires, stripped some, then sat back. “Send a prayer to the god of car thieves,” he said, and he touched two wires.
The engine growled…and then wound down with a tired yawn.
“Battery's flat!” Jenna said.
“You. In the car.” Sparky grabbed Jenna and shoved her towards the driver's seat. Jack winced even before Jenna shoved back against her boyfriend—she wouldn't be told anything.
“Don't you treat me like a—”
“We push, you bump start the car!” Sparky said, exasperated. He looked across the split level, down at where those creatures were now sprinting for the ramp up to their level. “Maybe thirty seconds. Go! Second gear, clutch down, lift the clutch when I say, the car'll jerk a bit, then when it bites ease on the gas. But don't go without us.”
“Rhali and Hayden, in the back,” Jack said. “Keep the doors open for us.”
Jack, Sparky and Lucy-Anne went to the back of the car and started pushing. They strained and groaned, propping their feet against the wall behind them and pushing harder, and then Sparky shouted, “Take the bastard hand brake off!” Jenna did so, and with a squeal of frozen brakes the car eased forward.
“Now,” Sparky said, “push as hard and fast as you can.”
They pushed. The car rolled. Jack glanced up and saw Rhali's concerned face watching them through the back window, and he tried to smile. Then through the car and out the front windscreen he saw the movement of things reaching the top parking level.
“They're here,” he said.
“Then push harder! We need to get close to the ramp. That way if the engine doesn't start we can coast that far at least.”