by Roland Smith
The only thing Marty was worried about at the moment was not getting his face eaten off by the goat sucker. He was standing on the ladder with his head through the vent and flashlights pointing to his left and right so he could see it coming. The plan was to hoot and holler until he saw the chupacabra speeding down the duct like a bullet, jump off the ladder without breaking his leg, run to the door, and trap the slathering beast in the room. Luther (a.k.a. Mothman) was manning the door and the radio. His job was to keep tabs on Dylan’s progress via the two-way (Dylan was still crawling toward the light), and to slam the door closed, preferably with Marty in the corridor and the chupacabra locked in the room.
Marty had to admit that it wasn’t the greatest plan he’d ever had, but it was all he could think of. He had also discovered a flaw in Dylan’s original plan. It was true that by turning on the lights and opening the vents, someone would theoretically be able to get away from the chupacabra and trap it in the room. What was also true was that the chupacabra could use those same open hatches and open doors to get into the corridor. And that’s exactly what he thought the chupacabra had done.
He felt that if the monster was still in the ductwork, it would have answered his taunts by now.
He popped his head out of the vent. Luther stood in the doorway with a radio in one hand and the Gizmo in the other. They had parked the dragonspy across from the elevator, which as far as they knew was the only way to get to the second level. The elevator was on the opposite side of the circle from them. If Blackwood or any of his people arrived, all Marty and Luther had to do was run out into the corridor and move in the same direction they were walking to lose them. If by chance Blackwood’s people split up, there would be plenty of time to get into one of the rooms and hide. At least that was their theory.
“Any word from Dylan?” Marty asked.
“He’s just about there,” Luther said.
Marty stuck his head back into the vent and immediately started sneezing. This had happened every time he put his head back into the ceiling. He didn’t mind. It saved him from having to call out: Here, chupacabra! Come and get it! Nahna-nah-nah-na! Or whatever he thought would entice the chupacabra to try to kill him.
He was mid-sneeze when one of his flashlights caught the two orange eyes. They were two pinpoints at first, but getting larger very quickly. He had promised himself that as soon as he saw anything, he’d be out of there pronto, but he found himself staring at the eyes, unable to move. He’d always wondered why deer got frozen by car headlights. Now he knew.
“Fear!” he shouted.
He jumped off the ladder, ran down the bench, jumped to the floor, and ran for the door.
“What?” Luther shouted.
Marty risked a glance back at the vent. There was nothing there. He stopped and turned around.
“What?” Luther repeated, but a lot quieter this time.
“I saw …” Marty hesitated. Now he wasn’t exactly sure what he had seen, or if he had seen anything at all. “I thought I saw oranges eyes.”
“Orange?” Luther asked.
“Two of them.”
“Are you sure?”
“I was.”
They stared at the vent, which looked about as scary as … an open ceiling vent.
“Maybe your sneezing scared it off,” Luther said.
“Give me the radio.” Marty had left his radio out in the corridor with his backpack.
Luther stepped farther into the room and handed it to him. Marty pressed the talk button.
“How’s it going?” Marty asked.
“I got stuck,” Dylan said. “Now I’m unstuck. I’m about twenty feet away.” He sounded out of breath.
“Do you hear anything?”
“Just my heart pounding in my chest. It’s pretty narrow through here. Hard going.”
“Keep crawling,” Marty said. “When you get into the room, get out, and close the door behind you. We’re in Room 219. If you see any open doors on your way here, shut them. Hurry.”
“What’s going on?”
“Once you’re safe, we don’t want the chupacabra getting into the corridor where we are.”
“Hadn’t thought of that. Will do.”
Marty handed the radio back to Luther.
“What are you going to do?” Luther asked.
“Guess I’m going to stick my head back through the ceiling.”
Marty did not want to stick his head back through the ceiling, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t distract the chupacabra by staring at the vent.
“What about the orange eyes?” Luther asked.
“I hope I was hallucinating.”
“Want me to stick my head up there?” Luther asked.
“We want to distract it, not have it die of fright.”
“Ha-ha.”
What happened next wasn’t so funny. The chupacabra dropped out of the ceiling and landed on the bench like an agile cat.
• • •
“Marty!” Noah said. “How’d he get down here?”
He and Yvonne were staring at Yvonne’s computer monitor. They had seen the flashlight beam and Nine barreling down the duct toward the light. They thought that was it; Luther was going to be mauled. Then Nine suddenly stopped. Yvonne frantically tapped in commands. Hunt! Kill! But the commands didn’t work. Nine resisted everything she threw at him. The camera showed him simply staring through a vent in the ceiling at a stainless steel laboratory bench. Then he jumped, turned, and there was the wide-eyed Marty O’Hara, and just behind him an equally shocked Luther Smyth looking like a bald dust bunny.
“Do something!” Noah shouted.
Yvonne was frantically hitting buttons on her controller. “I’m trying!”
Then the monitor went blank.
Noah got on the radio. “Where is it, Paul?”
“Level Two, but the GPS went out before I could pinpoint the room.”
“Keep trying,” Noah said.
His next call was to Butch, but Butch didn’t answer.
• • •
“Did it just die?” Luther asked.
“It’s still breathing,” Marty said. He was closer to the chupacabra than Luther and could see its dust-covered fur moving up and down with each breath.
Luther tiptoed up and peered over Marty’s shoulder. “It’s really cool-looking, in a horrible way.”
Marty took a few steps closer but made sure he had a clear path to the door just in case. Luther was right, the chupacabra was pretty cool-looking. “Check out those fangs and claws,” he said.
“You think it really eats goats?”
“I think it eats whatever it wants.”
“Vicious, but kind of cute,” Luther said. “I wonder if Blackwood designed it that way intentionally so people would pay to come and see it.”
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Marty said. “See that harness it’s wearing?”
“Yeah,” Luther said. “And the camera. Looks like a Ted Bronson special.”
“Sure does,” Marty said. “Must be one of the cameras he stole from the Coelacanth.” Marty leaned a little closer but kept his feet exactly where they were. “When it jumped down, the light on the box was blinking. It’s not blinking now.”
“Uh-oh. So you think they saw us?”
“They saw me anyway,” Marty said.
Dylan came on the radio. “I’m out. I’m closing doors.”
“Keep your eyes open for Noah, Butch, and Yvonne,” Marty said. “They’re onto us. I’ll explain when you get here.” He turned to Luther. “Watch the elevator. Let me know if they show up.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to blow their minds.” Marty walked up to the chupacabra and touched it.
“Are you insane!” Luther shouted.
“Probably,” Marty admitted, then touched the chupacabra again with a little more force. It didn’t wake up, to his great relief. “I’m going to take the harness off Sleeping Beauty.”
“You are nuts. Why?”
“Because without the elevator key card, we don’t have a way out of here. We’re going to have to play hide-and-seek until Grace shows up, which I hope is soon. The camera on the harness is just like the one on the dragonspy. It runs on solar. No light in the air ducts. It went dead, but it will charge back up now that it’s back under the lights. My bet is that it has GPS, too, running off the same solar battery. I don’t know how yet, but we might be able to use the harness to confuse them.”
Luther pointed at the chupacabra. “So what made the fur ball go dead?”
“Good question. I just hope he stays dead long enough for me to get the harness off.”
He started to undo the buckles, ready to run at the chupacabra’s first twitch.
“Confuse them how?” Luther asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Marty said. “I’m working on it.”
He got the last buckle undone. Very gently, he pulled the harness away from the chupacabra’s dusty fur and took a closer look at the little box and camera.
“We’ll need a screwdriver to get this open.”
“Plus or minus?” Luther asked, pulling a multi-tool that he’d picked up in one of the labs out of his pocket.
“Plus,” Marty said.
Luther opened the Phillips and handed it to him.
A couple of turns of the two screws and the panel came off.
“Yep,” Marty said. “GPS.” He turned the camera and the GPS off and screwed the panel back on. “Okay, I did the hard part getting that harness off. Your turn now.”
“Sure,” Luther said. “What do you need?”
“Pick up the chupacabra and put him in one of the cabinets,” Marty said.
“Huh?”
Dylan walked into the room looking like Mothman Two. “Whoa! Is that the chupacabra?”
“Yep,” Marty said.
Dylan hurried over for a closer look. “Is it dead?”
“Just taking a nap,” Luther said.
Dylan stepped a little nearer. “Glad I didn’t run into that thing up there.”
“You and me both,” Luther said. “By the way, thanks for crawling after me.” He clapped Dylan on the shoulder, sending up a plume of dust.
“No problem,” Dylan said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“Easier said than done,” Marty said. “And we have a couple of things to do before we leave.”
“Like what?”
“Like we have to wait for Grace to get back down here with the elevator key,” Marty answered.
“Yeah,” Luther said. “And we have to put the chupacabra away. ” He walked over to a cabinet and opened the door. “Grab him, Dylan.”
Dylan frowned. “Why don’t we just lock it in the room?”
“I guess we could,” Marty said. “But someone might open the door and let it out, and that could be a problem for them and us.”
“I don’t really care about them,” Dylan said. “But I get your point.” He reached out for the chupacabra.
Marty stopped him. “I’ll do it,” he said.
“I’m not going to argue,” Dylan said. “I’ll find something to secure the cabinet.”
Marty gingerly picked up the chupacabra, hoping it didn’t wake up in his arms and tear off his face. It was heavier than it looked. Dense. Powerful. It felt like it would be fast. Very fast. He wasn’t sure he could have beaten it to the door if it hadn’t passed out, or whatever had happened to it.
What had happened to it?
He put it into the cabinet. Dylan closed the door and wrapped the handles with a roll of copper wire he’d found.
“That’ll hold,” Luther stated.
“Now, where did Grace go?” Dylan asked. “When’s she coming back?”
“She went up top to Noah’s mansion,” Marty answered. “I’m not sure why, but I hope she gets back soon.”
“Securing the chupacabra is one thing, but you said we had a couple of things to do,” Dylan said. “What’s the other thing?”
“We still have to get the hatchlings out of here.”
Dylan grinned. “You’re kidding, right?”
Marty shook his head.
“I thought we bagged that part after Luther got kidnapped.”
“We did,” Marty said. “But now that he’s back, we at least have to try to get them out of here.”
“Do you even know where they are?”
“I do,” Luther said.
“How?” Marty asked.
Luther pointed at his nose. “You may have that photographic memory thing, but I have the magic schnozzle. I was sniffing them out when I dropped in here. Follow me.”
“We have one other stop to make on the way,” Marty said.
“Where?” Dylan asked.
“We have to catch a pig,” Marty answered.
“How much more time is this going to take?” Noah asked.
He and Yvonne were still in Yvonne’s office, where Noah’s mood had gone from glee at watching the hunt to absolute fury over the technological failure. Yvonne had plugged the control box into her computer and was desperately trying to reprogram it.
“It shouldn’t be too long now,” Yvonne said nervously.
Noah was glad she was nervous. He’d had people killed for a lot less than what she had done. To fail like this at the last moment was unforgivable. She was the only person who knew how to control the chupacabra. He would be taking care of that error in judgment at his earliest convenience. Right now was not the time. He still needed her.
But her time will come very soon. Perhaps I’ll have Butch toss her into the Atlantic on our way to Paris. Butch would enjoy that.
The thought calmed him, but only for a moment.
Butch! Where is he? Why isn’t he answering his radio? Maybe I should have him tossed into the Atlantic tied to Yvonne. He’d hate that. Up on top looking for Marty? I’ve got news for you, Butch. Marty is somewhere on Level Two with Luther, where we just
were! He’s opened doors. Somehow he’s managed to get a key card and …
Noah stepped out into the corridor before he lost control. He didn’t want Yvonne to see it if it happened. He didn’t let anyone see him like that. This was his private mood, reserved for when he was by himself in his private quarters on the top of the mansion. He walked down the corridor to the restroom. He washed his face in cold water. He combed his hair and beard. He looked in the mirror at the ruggedly handsome Dr. Noah Blackwood, who was in remarkable shape for his age. He felt better. He thought of his options.
There was a good chance that the chupacabra had already taken care of the two boys. Marty had been standing close to Nine, and the chupacabra was lightning fast. That would be the best outcome. But he couldn’t rely on that. Another possibility was that Butch had ended up on Level Two after discovering that Marty was not on top. If that was the case, and the boys had somehow gotten away from Nine, they would have to deal with Butch, and he was much worse than any chupacabra. This would be unfortunate for Nine as well, because Butch wouldn’t hesitate to kill the chupacabra if he saw it on the loose and uncontrolled.
Unfortunate, but not the end of the world. We have more on the way. Two brood jaguars were carrying versions Ten and Eleven.
It would delay his Release and Catch program, which he had been dreaming about for years, but he had the hatchlings, which were going to make his fortune for decades to come.
This is just a glitch; it’s only to be expected when you try to achieve great things.
He felt his blood pressure lowering, his heart slowing, his calculating calm returning. He reminded himself that there was no hurry. Even if Luther and Marty had managed by some miracle to get back up top, there was no place for them to go. He and Butch had the only key cards that opened the front gate. Without the card, there was no escape.
He had an office on every level beneath the Ark. This way he could meet with his people on that level without having them on levels where they were not wante
d. The offices were unpretentious. Noah Blackwood did not like frills. A desk, a conference table, a computer with absolutely no compromising data on it, and a safe cleverly hidden behind a bookcase. The contents of the safes were identical. He found what he was looking for, then joined Yvonne back in her office and sat down across from her.
“How long?” he asked.
“A half an hour,” Yvonne said. “Maybe a little longer. I’m really sorry about this, Dr. Blackwood. The camera and GPS are solar powered. I think in the dark ventilation system they simply ran out of juice. It’s my fault. I should have anticipated that.”
“And the electrodes inside Nine?” Noah asked mildly, knowing these had nothing to do with solar power.
“It’s a software problem. This is all new technology. And all of the concrete and metal between us and Nine didn’t help. The system works fine out in the open. We’ve never tested it inside what is essentially a bunker. It got overloaded.”
“A glitch, then,” Noah said.
“Several glitches.”
“And this reboot will fix it?”
“Absolutely,” Yvonne said. “As long as we’re on the same level, we shouldn’t have a problem. I wouldn’t go up there if I didn’t believe that. We don’t know if Nine is contained in that room or not. If he’s in the corridor, we’ll need the box.”
“I have complete confidence,” Noah said.
Yvonne gave him a grateful smile. She had completely missed the fact that he had not said in you. People always filled in the words they wanted to hear, the words they were desperate to hear. Noah had no confidence in Yvonne Zloblinavech. Not anymore. But he did have confidence in himself and in the pistol he had retrieved from the safe, just in case the box didn’t work. If he had to use the pistol on Nine, he would use it on Yvonne as well. He had realized that, as much as he would like to see Yvonne’s terrified expression as she plummeted down to the Atlantic Ocean, it would be difficult to accomplish with Grace on board. Someday Grace might understand, but that wouldn’t be for a long time, if ever. Grace’s mother had never understood, which was why she ran away with Travis Wolfe. But he had hopes for Grace. She looked like her mother, but there was an edge to her that Rose never had. He was going to try to hone this edge beginning tomorrow. He was going to put Grace in charge of the hatchlings when they got to Paris. She would get a great deal of attention when the news of his discovery broke. The media would love her.