by Jeff Strand
“Smooth move,” said Roger.
I could feel a large shard of glass pressed up against one of my bare feet. Now it was officially time to move very, very slowly, unless I wanted to leave large strips of my feet behind. I carefully slid my right foot forward, pushing away the glass in front of it. I did the same with my left.
The noise was much louder now, and this time I could identify it.
Rattling. And hissing.
I very much wanted to take off running across the room, screaming at the top of my lungs, but the presence of the broken glass made that a poor decision.
“Are those fucking snakes? ” asked Charlotte.
“Everyone stay calm,” I warned.
The hissing continued, and now I could hear slithering coming from at least four places around me.
“What is the problem with these people?” Roger demanded, his voice panicked. “Who keeps rattlesnakes in their basement in Alaska? Where the hell did they get them? When do they feed them? I’m having a really hard time with all of this!”
“Be quiet!” snapped Charlotte. “Just don’t make them mad!”
I moved my toe forward, past something sharp and into something soft and wet. The open mouth of a dead snake. Unable to control myself, I rapidly stepped back, crushing a small, scaly mass that had come up behind me, and then I lurched forward again.
I bit down on my knuckles to keep from shrieking. Of course, with my knuckles muffling my shriek, I could hear the rattling and hissing and slithering perfectly well.
Then Charlotte shrieked for me.
“What? What happened?” asked Roger.
“It went over my foot! The snake went over my foot!”
There were loud pounding sounds that were apparently Charlotte beating the ground around her feet with the spiked club.
“Everybody calm down!” I said, pulling my hand out of my mouth. “If we don’t get bit we’ll be fine! Just keep moving forward!”
There was definite writhing behind me, and I was starting to think there were well more than four active snakes on the floor. I slid my foot forward, hooking my toe underneath the dead snake whose mouth I’d explored and flipping the creature out of the way. Not toward Charlotte.
The snake behind me brushed across the back of my foot. I hadn’t killed it when I stepped on it, and it seemed to be freaking out, twisting back and forth wildly. Hopefully it would slice itself to death on the glass, or at least not dig its fangs into my heel.
I kept moving forward. There was a sudden stinging pain in my toe. I screamed.
“What? What?” demanded Roger.
“I got bit! One of the snakes bit me! I got me right-okay, no, that was a piece of glass.”
“Listen to me, both of you,” said Roger. “No more screaming. None!”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not barefoot.”
“I mean it!”
We continued walking. The glass on the floor thinned out quickly, but I still couldn’t see anything in front of me. After a few more steps I stopped worrying about the snakes, though I figured I’d have plenty of other things to worry about before too long.
“Ow!” said Roger.
“What happened?”
“I bumped into the wall.”
“Smooth move.”
“Shut up.”
I touched the wall as well. Now we had to figure out if we were in a completely sealed-off room, in which case we were totally screwed, or there was a way out, in which case we were only close to totally screwed.
“Hey, everyone, guess what I found?” asked Roger. “Let there be light!”
Nothing happened.
“I’m going to be really annoyed if you just released some wild animals into the room,” I said.
But then there was a low hum, and some fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling lit up with a dim glow. A second later, they switched to full power, completely lighting the room.
The walls, ceiling, and floor were cement. There was a camera mounted in each corner…naturally, Daniel and his good friends would want to watch what was going on below. There were two other carts with glass aquariums containing rattlesnakes that I hadn’t knocked over. I also observed that rattlesnakes hadn’t been the only occupants-in addition to the snakes slithering through the broken glass, there were several tarantulas.
In fact, Charlotte had one on the back of her leg.
I tensed up, and then forced myself to relax and act casual as I walked over to her. “I need you to stay very, very still and very, very calm,” I said. I held the machete out toward her leg, ready to scrape the spider off, hoping my spider-phobic hand wouldn’t be twitching so badly that I severed her limb.
Charlotte glanced down at her leg, picked the spider up between her fingers, and tossed it with the others. “They’re not venomous, you know.”
“I know,” I admitted. “But they’re…big.”
“The one on your leg isn’t all that big.”
I swear to God I almost chopped my leg off. I spun around a couple of times, searching for the dreaded arachnid. There was nothing, and I sighed with relief.
“Real funny,” I said.
“It crawled up to your waist,” Charlotte explained.
I came very close to ripping the boxer shorts right off my body in panic. But there was no tarantula there, either.
Charlotte shrugged and grinned. “Just in case I die now.”
“I don’t think that was very clever. But I’m glad we’re keeping our sense of humor instead of getting all mopey. Now we should probably get moving.”
There was a long tunnel ahead, with brick walls rather than the cement. It was about eight feet tall and six feet wide, but the light from this room didn’t illuminate far enough for me to tell how far the tunnel stretched.
Walking side by side, we moved into the tunnel. There were two more video cameras, and numerous quarter-sized holes in the walls, irregularly spaced, and a sprinkler on the ceiling just ahead. The floor had a slight downward angle as it extended forward, and was completely covered with a thin layer of dry leaves.
“What do you think?” I asked, pointing at the sprinkler. “Death trap or safety precaution?”
As I took my next step, there was a sudden roar and I spun around to see the passage behind us closed off by a sliding cement door, casting us into complete darkness again.
Chapter 22
“LET’S LOOK at the bright side,” said Roger. “At least the rattlesnakes can’t get at us.”
We continued walking, the leaves crunching under our feet. Then a dart shot out of one of the holes in the wall, visible because of the unpleasant fact that its tip was on fire. The dart sailed across the tunnel, moving at a downward trajectory-it hadn’t been shot with much force. It hit the ground and the leaves underneath began to burn. We stepped over it and moved on.
Hey, I’d survived the other dart room with its cannon fire, I figured I could handle some flaming darts.
The sprinkler activated above us. It was a powerful one, shutting off after a couple of seconds but managing to do a fantastic job of soaking us in that time.
Unfortunately, the liquid we were soaked with wasn’t water, it was gasoline.
My nostrils burned and my various wounds (especially that damn shoulder) took on a searing new agony. Charlotte ’s sharp cry made it clear that the gasoline didn’t feel much better on her cut-up arm.
Now flaming darts seemed a bit more problematic.
One of them shot out in front of us. Fortunately, this situation had a fairly obvious plan of action to follow. Run like hell.
Roger and I seemed to understand this in unison, and took off down the tunnel. Darts continued to fly at us with every other step, but they weren’t firing quickly, and by running at top speed (or as fast as I could go in bare feet) we were able to avoid them. After a nice hundred-meter dash we reached the door at the end of the tunnel.
Unfortunately, Charlotte had elected for a slow and steady dart avoidance tactic, and
we’d left a good dozen or so fires burning in her path.
A dart came so close to her that for a split second I had a hallucination of her bursting into flames.
“Just run!” Roger shouted.
Now the darts were firing more frequently. And faster.
Hot ashes from the burning leaves were swirling up into the air. How could we have been so stupid as to leave her behind? How could she have been so stupid as not to follow us?
And then I noticed a small control panel in the corner. I couldn’t be sure it was for the darts, but there wasn’t time to debate. I slammed the tip of the machete into it, sending out a flurry of sparks and half-expecting to be electrocuted.
The darts stopped firing. I remained unelectrocuted, though the gasoline fumes were making me sick and a little lightheaded.
Charlotte still stood there, soaked with gasoline in a burning hallway. There was no way she could avoid all of those ashes, so she hurried back the way we came. She leapt over the area where the sprinkler had drenched us, and I waited for it to go off, touching one of the flames and engulfing Charlotte in an inferno.
The sprinkler went off.
It touched one of the flames.
And Charlotte vanished into a huge inferno.
Roger and I stood there, absolutely stunned.
The ball of fire disappeared as quickly as it had come. And we saw Charlotte pressed tightly against the closed entrance, looking utterly freaked but miraculously devoid of sizzling flesh.
“Fuck both of you!” she shouted.
This appeared to be a fair statement, so we didn’t argue. Charlotte got down on her hands and knees and began shoving away the leaf cover, creating a gap that would let the fires burn themselves out before they reached her.
“What next?” I called out.
“I’m not going anywhere for a few minutes,” Charlotte replied. “You guys might as well go on ahead.”
“You think that’s a good idea?” I asked.
“Obviously I have no clue what’s a good idea in this place. But if the two of you want to check out the next room, that’s sure fine by me. I’ll just hang out here.”
I looked at Roger and he shrugged. “All right,” I called out to Charlotte. “Follow as soon as it’s safe.”
My immediate concern was that another sliding door might seal her off, but that didn’t seem likely since there was a regular door at the end of this tunnel rather than another open entrance.
I opened it. More darkness beyond. Wonderful.
“Enjoy yourselves!” Charlotte said, waving.
With the machete out of front of me, I walked into the next room. Another sprinkler went off, drenching us again. But this time it was ordinary water. Kind of refreshing, actually.
“How considerate,” Roger remarked. “I guess they’re not such bad chaps after all.”
“Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be much fun if their victims passed out from gas fumes before the really nasty stuff could happen.”
While it would have been nice to take some water back to Charlotte, we certainly had some explosive residue left on us and the risk of running back down the tunnel was too great. So we opened the door and walked into the next room.
As we entered, some lights came on. Bright, colorful lights. Carnival music began to play. The room was huge, and the first thing we saw was a large, multi-colored banner: “Welcome to Deathworld!”
“All the effort he must’ve put into this place, and the guy can’t come up with anything better than Deathworld,” Roger muttered. “What a sad state of affairs.”
Two wooden poles held up the Deathworld banner. Each pole had an artificial corpse tied to it, the arms stretched out like scarecrows, the throats slit and the eye sockets hollow. There was a small yellow Post-It note attached to one of them.
I pulled it off and read it out loud to Roger: “ Replace with the real thing.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to make us beta test this place,” said Roger. “We should file a complaint and ask to be let go.”
“Hey, if we see them around, it’s worth a shot.”
We walked under the banner and into the main part of the carnival. It consisted of one sawdust path, with exhibits on each side of it. In the center of the path stood a life-sized plastic clown with oversized shoes, a purple and pink wig, and a big red nose. The clown was holding a wooden sign that said “Press My Nose!”
“I don’t want to press its nose,” said Roger.
“I think we probably should press its nose,” I remarked. “It’s all part of the game. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get out.”
“Make you a deal,” said Roger. “You press the nose and I’ll tell you what a good job you did.”
There wasn’t time to argue. I pressed the nose.
“Good job,” said Roger, patting me on the back.
The clown’s eyes lit up, and it let out a loud giggle as its head began to turn back and forth. “Hi there, kids!” said the clown in an incredibly annoying, high-pitched voice. “Welcome to Deathworld! I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun if you follow a few simple rules. Rule number one: Don’t litter! If you lose an arm or a leg or a head, pick it up and take it with you…leave Deathworld as beautiful as you found it!”
“I hate clowns,” said Roger.
“Rule number two: No outside food or drink! You don’t want to pass up our brain burgers, esophagus dogs, or blood shakes, now in type A negative! Rule number three: Watch your step, because at any moment you could…” The clown’s head began to spin around three hundred and sixty degrees, and its voice transformed into a low demonic roar. “…DIE DIE DIE DIIIIIE!”
It laughed hysterically for about ten seconds, and then its head stopped spinning and its voice returned to normal. “If you ever want to leave, you’ll have to get the four keys! Win them! Find them! Sniff ‘em out! Have fun! Bleed well!”
The light in the clown’s eyes went out and it stopped moving. I almost chopped its head off with the machete, but gratuitous destruction just seemed wrong. We started down the sawdust path.
To the left, a mechanical skeleton fired at a shooting gallery consisting of mechanical puppies and kittens. If I saw a Post-It on that one, I was going to be seriously outraged.
Suddenly the skeleton swiveled 180 degrees and fired with machine-gun rapidity as Roger and I ducked out of the way. After a moment, the skeleton swiveled back around and resumed shooting at the gallery.
On the other side, there was another artificial-I think-corpse resting in the seat above a dunking booth. A sign read “ Dunk The Stiff And Win A Key! ” But it wasn’t really a dunking booth…rather than water, the aquarium under the corpse was filled with spikes.
I assumed that corpse would be replaced with the real thing, too. And then I had a horrible thought. What if the actual keys weren’t part of the exhibits yet?
Well, not worth worrying about until I found out for sure. Boards covered with needles to discourage cheating surrounded the area ten feet around the target. I picked up a baseball-sized squishy eyeball from the bucket next to the sign, leaving two more inside. “You want to try or should I?” I asked.
“You go first,” said Roger.
I took aim, and then threw the eyeball as hard as I could. It splattered against the aquarium, missing the target by a good three feet.
Roger picked up the second eyeball, spent a ridiculously long moment planning out the perfect angle at which to throw, and then hurled it. It hit almost exactly where mine had.
“Stop distracting me,” said Roger, taking the last one.
He threw the eyeball…and almost hit the target, but not quite. Appalling fake eyeball goo slid down the wooden display.
“Are we allowed to cheat?” asked Roger.
“I don’t see why not.”
He picked up the bucket and threw it, striking the target. The corpse fell onto the spikes and practically exploded into an outrageously disgusting display of reds and yellows that made me think it had been
filled with water balloons.
There was a sound like a cash register opening, and then a small golden key dropped into a slot where the bucket had been.
“Wasn’t so hard,” Roger said.
We walked past a slow-moving carousel with a black canopy. Mechanical children were on the fire-breathing horses, their bodies shriveled and covered with cobwebs, and their echoing laughter sounding through a pair of speakers.
Next up was a Test-Your-Strength game. At the top of the pole rested a severed head. Maybe fake. A strong enough hit upon the plate would send a dagger sailing upward into the head’s mouth. On the pole, the mallet hits were ranked as Goner, Dead Meat, Cooked Goose, Shit Out Of Luck, and Potential Survivor (But Probably Not).
“Time to cheat again,” I said. Roger nodded, and on the count of three we both jumped into the air as high as we could and came down upon the metal plate with both feet, sending the dagger all the way to the top and ringing a bell. Another golden key dropped into a slot down by the plate.
“Half done already,” I noted.
“We bad,” Roger agreed.
On the other side was a “Guess Their Weight” display. About nine or ten hugely obese fake corpses were lying in a giant pile. Next to them was a small booth with a four-digit readout in red numbers, currently 0000. A metal joystick apparently let you raise or lower your guess.
“Where in the world does he buy all these corpses?” Roger asked. “These things aren’t cheap, you know. I’ve priced them around Halloween.”
I turned the joystick to the right, increasing the number on the display. Ten corpses at, what, four hundred pounds each? Of course, they didn’t necessarily weigh as much as a real body, but I had to start somewhere. When the display read 4000 I pressed the button on the joystick.
And got an electric shock so severe I fell to the ground, gasping for breath.
After Roger helped me up, I saw that the display now showed an arrow pointing up. “Your turn,” I told Roger. “Guess higher.”
Roger took off his shirt, wrung it out, and wrapped it around the joystick. I nodded with approval. “Oh, sure, everybody knows electricity and water are a delightful combination.”