by Alex P. Berg
“Right.”
The elevator dinged. “So, uh… what about Bill?”
16
We stood outside the Harry Ransom Center again, only this time it was after dark and the museum was closed. That didn’t mean the streets outside were empty. Students walked back and forth along the sidewalks on West 21st, but thanks to Larry’s obfuscation magic, we mostly avoided a never-ending procession of dirty looks.
“Hey, watch the neck!” said Bill.
“Sorry,” said Larry. “I don’t want you to fall out.”
Larry had removed Bill from his jar and was fastening him into a contraption made of straps and cloth, basically a baby carrier for diseased zombie heads. He’d already cinched the strap around Bill’s forehead and was in the process of securing the strap underneath his chin.
“To be honest, I’m more concerned about stuff falling off than falling out.” Bill snickered at his own joke. I winced.
Larry tightened the chin strap, cutting Bill off in mid-squawk. “Alright. Everyone’s clear on the plan?”
Dawn sighed, hand resting on the sword hilts tied into her belt. “I’ll take care of the lock on the front door, seeing as I’m the only one with any manual dexterity. We’ll work our way to the secure door you located yesterday during our scouting mission. You’ll handle the security cameras and any electronic locks we might encounter. From there, we’ll follow Bill’s directions and hope we don’t encounter anything too out of the ordinary. Once we find the Librum de Virtute, we grab it and get the hell out as fast as we can, hopefully with enough time left over for a gin fizz nightcap before bed.”
Larry nodded. “Good. Tank?”
Tank knelt on the ground, working the action on one of his rifles with his duffel bag set beside him. He looked up at the sound of his name and blinked. “I, uh… shoot anything that moves?”
“No, Tank,” said Larry. “Come on, man. We’re trying to keep this mission as quiet as possible. Nobody needs to die. Got it?”
Tank nodded. “Right. So… shoot anything that doesn’t move?”
“What? No. Why the hell would you shoot inanimate objects? Look, unless specifically instructed to discharge a firearm by either myself, Dawn, or Lexie, keep your finger off the trigger, okay?”
“Hey, what about me?” said Bill. “I don’t get any say in when the big guy starts ripping off five-five-six NATOs?”
“Hell no,” said Larry. “I can’t even trust you with a firearm, and you don’t have hands. If I put you in charge of Tank, within five minutes we’d have a higher bodycount than a Quentin Tarantino movie.”
“Yet you’re okay trusting me?” I said.
“Of course,” said Larry. “You’re college educated, and based on your relentless screaming during last night’s chase, you actually value your own life. That puts you in an elite group around here. Plus as I’ve already mentioned, the spell I cast picked you. You’re here for a reason. So, Tank, just to review—when do you fire?”
I’d never seen a man his size look so glum. “When I’m told.”
“And you’re the lookout. Don’t forget it.”
“Speaking of your spell,” I said. “I still don’t understand why it would’ve chosen me. I don’t bring anything to this team. I mean, apart from being the last of three checks against Tank going on a violent murder spree.”
Larry pulled his ancient flintlock from his jacket and peered into the barrel, probably to make sure the ball hadn’t rolled out. “Just because you’re not aware of the reason for something happening doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I’m sure you have valuable skills you’re not aware of that the spell picked up on.”
“But that’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t. I’m not a wizard or an elite martial artist or a gun happy whatever-the-hell-it-is like Tank. Even Bill has superior navigational skills, supposedly. I’m just an average college student.”
Bill snorted. “Supposedly…”
“That’s not true,” said Larry. “You’re a good driver.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to help us inside a museum.”
“Fair point. You sure you don’t have any other hidden talents? Thaumaturgy? Alchemy? Necromancy?” Larry winced. “Ugh. I hope not. How about your heritage? You have any great aunts or uncles who never touched a cross or who delivered bizarre premonitions that ultimately came true?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
Larry scratched his chin. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. There are really only two ways this could shake out. Either you have a hidden talent only an exceptionally dangerous or stressful situation can activate, or for only the third time in my life I botched a spell and you really are a useless nobody. Only time will tell.”
“Hey now,” I said. “There’s a big gap between ‘can’t summon hell beasts to fight alongside her’ and ‘useless nobody.’”
Larry smiled. “Relax. It was a joke. I’ve never botched a spell. Look, are we ready to go or not?”
Dawn nodded, Tank gave a thumbs up, and Bill barked out a yes.
“Good. Let’s move.”
Larry, Dawn, and Tank hustled toward the Harry Ransom Center’s entrance, Bill bouncing against Larry’s chest as he moved. I followed the lot of them, feeling like a criminal, a fool, and a third wheel all at the same time. Dawn didn’t slow as she reached the front doors, pulling a set of lock picks from her back pocket and going to work. Within fifteen seconds, she’d cracked the lock and pushed open the door. From there, we made our way along the darkened corridors, following Larry past the Mexican folk art exhibit to an oppressive-looking metal door. Cameras pointed at us from shadowed corners, but I trusted that Larry had somehow goosed the security systems with magic.
Larry played his part perfectly, too. As we reached the door, Larry pressed his hand against the fingerprint scanner to the side of it. The system sparked and smoked. A red light at the top of the scanner went dark, but somehow, instead of remaining locked, the door creaked and opened. Seemed like a design flaw, but who was I to complain?
Tank pulled the heavy door open and we shuffled through only to stop dead in our tracks.
“Well, shit,” said Larry.
A series of fifty red lasers shot across the corridor before us in as many different directions. At the far end of the hallway sat another hefty metal door with what appeared to be a retina scanner beside it.
“Well,” I said. “What’s the problem? Can’t you obfuscate your way past these and blow up the eyeball scanner like you did the fingerprint one?”
“Blow up the scanner? No problem,” said Larry. “But the lasers are a no go. Obfuscation is a magic of the mind. The spell I cast out front won’t affect the security cameras, only the guards who watch the footage. This is different. I can’t bend light. If we step into those lasers, we’ll set off an alarm, simple as that.”
“Can’t you make the guards ignore the alarm?”
“Alarms are loud, Lexie. They’ll attract more than the night watch.”
Dawn started to undo the swords at her waist. “Relax. There’s a path through. There always is with laser mazes like this. I can already see the route.”
“And then what?” said Larry. “You can’t blow up the scanner like I can.”
Tank’s duffel bag thumped against the floor. “She could stab it.”
“Don’t be silly, Tank,” said Larry. “Stabbing it wouldn’t do anything. Only blowing it up will work.”
“Maybe you could channel your energies through me,” said Dawn. “Form a power conduit.”
“A power conduit?” Larry snorted. “Yeah, right. Maybe if I was still standing at Stevie Ray Vaughn’s burial site, but not here.”
I heard a zipper.
“No,” continued Larry. “There’s only one option. I’ll have to weave my way through the lasers. Don’t try to dissuade me, Dawn. If you can do it, I can, too. Lexie? If you could hold Bill.” He started to undo the strap over his shoulders. “Now let’s see. If I go up and over
the first one, then below the second—”
An earsplitting whistle tore the air as a missile flew down the corridor, followed by an equally deafening explosion as it detonated against the retina scanner. The lasers flickered and faded, and the door at the end of the hallway creaked as it swung open. Tank stood beside us, a smoking rocket launcher in his hands.
“God damn it, Tank!” said Larry. “I told you no firearms unless under explicit instruction from one of the rest of us.”
“This isn’t a firearm,” he said. “It’s an RPG.”
“It did work though,” I said, pointing at the open door. “And through another fortuitous coincidence, it also deactivated the lasers.”
“Fine,” said Larry, reattaching his shoulder strap. “But from now on, no firearms, explosives, chemical weapons, bayonets, or miniature howitzers unless specifically instructed, am I clear?”
Tank grumbled and shook his head as he gathered his duffel bag and headed down the corridor. Dawn clapped him on the shoulder and walked with him.
As I watched them go, I felt bad for the big guy—but I was also starting to have an inkling of why Larry’s spell might’ve picked me after all. “Larry, can I talk to you while we walk?”
He was staring at Dawn and Tank’s shrinking forms same as I was. “Huh? Sure.”
“You asked me last night if I had experience with your sort of work. I don’t, obviously, but I do have experience getting the most out of a team. Don’t you think Tank deserves a little more—”
“Autonomy?” said Larry.
“I was going to say respect.”
“Look, Lexie, Tank means well, but he can be a little reckless. Sometimes a lot reckless. He needs to be reined in periodically.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but that’s not what you did there. We had a problem. He solved it. Instead of praising him for a job well done, you castigated him. What do you think that does to his morale?”
Larry frowned. “Are you saying I should encourage his recklessness?”
“I’m saying that if you don’t want your teammates to ignore you while you try to hang up a phone with a stick then maybe you should start building them up instead of tearing them down.”
Larry snorted. “Fair enough. I’ll try to keep an open mind.”
We passed through the open door and started down a circular stairway. Larry tapped Bill on the top of the head. “We heading the right direction, pal?”
“This corridor only goes one way. What do you think, Larry?”
“Hey, you don’t have to be an ass about it.”
“Hard to be an ass when you don’t even have one.” Bill brayed with laughter again.
We caught up with Dawn and Tank and took the lead, just in case we hit a turnoff and needed Bill’s guidance. The ceiling lights dimmed as we descended the steps, fading from a bright white to a dim, barely discernible glow.
“So is that it?” I said. “Are we in the vault? Adric made it seem like it would be a lot harder to break in.”
“Something tells me we’re not out of the woods yet,” said Bill.
Around and around the stairwell we went, dropping further and further into the earth. I lost track of time, but eventually I heard a faint hiss followed by a roar. Not that of an animal—more like wind playing over rocks. The darkened stairwell transitioned to a Texan burnt orange before eventually brightening to the color of flame. The steps ended, and the lot of us exited through the archway at the bottom.
Everyone looked about with varying expressions of shock. I was the first one to find my voice. “Uh… where are we?”
17
A narrow walkway extended across a stone arch before us, the rock weathered and scuffed and dangerously thin. A hot wind whirled up from below. I peered over the edge of the platform on which we stood and spotted a slow moving river of lava, bubbling with anger as it oozed between the pillars of stone. Above, glistening stalactites hung from the roof of the cavern. Occasional droplets of water dripped from their tips and turned into steam as they fell into the superheated gas below.
“I don’t know a way to ask this without sounding insane,” I said, “but, ah… are we in hell?”
Bill struggled against the straps, and I realized he was trying to shake his head. “Nah. These catacombs are part of the Harry Ransom Center, believe it or not. Fun fact, that’s why the Gutenberg bible was sent here in the first place. To secure the catacombs against the demonic forces below.”
“Really?” said Larry. “How did you know that?”
“Don’t look so surprised, Larry. I read.”
“You page forward on your Kindle with what? Your nose?”
“They put everything on audio nowadays. I ask Dawn to help me with the earbuds.”
“So, you’re saying we’re not in hell,” I said. “Merely atop a portal that leads there.”
“So it would appear,” said Dawn with a sigh. “Bill, you want to do the job we brought you here to do?”
“Don’t get testy,” he said. “Go straight. And be careful, will you Larry? I may be a zombie, but I’m not immune to lava.”
We headed over the natural stone walkway, and I thanked God—who must’ve existed if Hell did—that I wasn’t afraid of heights. Larry led the way. When we reached the end of the arch, Bill instructed us to take the rightmost of four walkways that branched from there. We followed his instructions, going down steps hewn into the stone, over more natural bridges, back up other sets of steps, and through passageways into adjoining caverns. We followed that pattern several times, to the point where my feet ached and the pathways all started to look the same.
I guess I wasn’t the only one. Larry called everyone to a halt at the next overlook. “Hold on, guys. Bill, are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“Of course, I do. I have a sixth sense about these sorts of things.”
I whispered to Dawn. “Speaking of, how does he know where we’re going?”
“Didn’t Larry tell you?” said Dawn. “Before he became a zombie, he was a navigator on an English barque.”
As if that answered my question…
“I know, Bill, but are you really sure?” said Larry. “I feel like I’ve seen this same stone arch three times already.”
Bill glanced to his right, then his left. It took him a while to respond. “Come to think of it, maybe we have been this way before.”
Larry threw his hands up. “Come on, Bill! You’ve gotta tell me when things aren’t working. Now what are we going to do?”
“Don’t give up on me,” said Bill. “I think the flowing lava is messing with my innate sense of magnetism, but trust me, I’ve got this. I just need to focus. So don’t talk to me. Don’t interact with me at all. I’m going to get in a zone and give it my best. Instead of calling out a route, I’m merely going to look in the direction we should go. Ready to give it a shot?”
“Hold on,” I said. “Are you absolutely sure you’ve never played The Secret of Monkey Island?”
“I still don’t know what that is,” said Larry. “Is that like a tabletop game or what?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Do your thing. As crazy as it sounds, I have a feeling it’ll work.”
With renewed vigor, we set out behind Larry. So as to not interrupt Bill’s concentration, not a man or woman among us made a sound. I guess it paid off, because within fifteen minutes, after passing through another passageway hewn through the rock, we arrived upon a fresh vista. A hemispherical cavern stretched before us, one with numerous rock arches buttressing from openings in the walls toward an enormous pillar of rock rising from the churning lava in the center. There a pyramid stood, more Mayan in style than Egyptian, with big blocky steps and a flat top.
“There it is,” said Bill, breaking the silence. “The Librum de Virtute. It’s at the top of that pyramid, I can feel it.”
Larry ruffled his hair. “Good work, buddy. Let’s go snag it. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”
We headed across
the stone walkway in single file. It could’ve been my imagination, but as we set foot on the central pillar, I thought I felt a rumble underfoot. Then I heard a roar, this time more animal than wind-like, and I knew I hadn’t imagined it.
I wanted to tell myself it was something innocuous, like an earthquake that would send me plummeting to my death in the lava below, but I had no such luck. I heard the roar again, and from the side of the pyramid I caught motion.
I spotted the horns first, gleaming white with tips like spears. The head appeared over the stone blocks of the pyramid’s base, that of a massive bull, with black eyes, mangy fur, and a thick gold hoop set through its wide nose. Viscous ropes of saliva trailed from the edges of its mouth. Over its shoulder, it carried a gleaming axe with a blade broad enough to chop down a redwood. The beast stepped around the edge of the structure, revealing itself as a ten foot tall minotaur, its top half bovine, its lower half human—and completely bare for the world to see.
I grimaced at the sight of the thing’s massive, dangling genitals. “Ugh. Why does it have to be naked?”
“Trust me,” said Larry. “They’re always naked.”
“Really? You have a lot of experience with minotaurs?”
“Not minotaurs per se. Supernatural hell beasts in general. There was this one time when Dawn, Tank, and I were in Louisiana—”
The minotaur lifted its axe, roared again, and charged. Suddenly the thing’s nudity wasn’t close to the most alarming part about it. Larry leapt forward and brandished his arms before him, crackles of blue lightning dancing from his fingertips. Dawn swept her swords from their sheaths and twirled them before coiling like a tiger. Amazingly enough, Tank just stood there with a scowl upon his face, his tree trunk arms crossed over his chest.
As the minotaur’s pounding feet shook the earth, fear lanced down my spine. I wanted to run, to hide, to scream, but there wasn’t anywhere to go, nothing to cower behind, and Bill was taking care of the screaming part for me.
“Are we really doing this?” he yelled from the confines of his makeshift baby carrier. “Christ, you’ve gotta be kidding me. Ohhhh SHHHHIIIIITTTTT!”