With one leg he managed to find a foothold on the undercarriage of the car; with his other, he located the brake pad. Slowly, firmly, he applied pressure with his foot; the pad closed against the spinning disk.
“We’re going too fast,” noted Willie with a feverish grin. She was sweating; her hands were cramping, holding on to Indy for all of their dear lives.
Then she looked up, for one last laugh: the tunnel was ending; the tracks stopped dead at a not too distant stone wall.
Shorty saw it too. “We’re gonna crash!” he shouted. The ride was not supposed to end this way at all.
Indiana looked around behind him. No doubt about it: they were flying at top speed into a wall the size of a mountain, and the first thing to hit was going to be Indiana Jones.
He slammed his foot into the brake pad with every ounce of strength he could muster. The pad screamed against the angry iron. Sparks shot out in skyrockets. Indiana’s sole was getting hotter, but he closed his mind to the pain, concentrated only on the force his leg could exert, didn’t waste energy thinking about the wall.
The wall drew nearer.
But not quite as quickly. Indy groaned with pushing; the brake pad began to smoke. The car slowed even further. The wall approached. Indy jammed down with his whole body. The car slowed more. Indy pressed.
It slowed until it ran down the last few yards to the dead end; rolled gently to a stop, and just nudged Indy’s back against the wall.
He stood, limped a few steps away, his boot smoking. “Water,” he rasped.
The others got out of the cab, stood there shakily, smiling tentatively.
They could see that the tunnel continued on, somewhat to the left, without any more tracks. So they started to walk.
No one spoke. They were all too full of what had just happened.
Soon, a wind rose quickly to a stiff blow. Then a strange rumbling sound echoed down the tunnel from behind. The walls seemed to be reverberating.
It felt . . . worrisome.
They exchanged uncertain looks, shrugged, walked a little faster. The wind, in particular, disturbed Indy. There shouldn’t be so high a wind so low in the earth.
The noise grew louder. They glanced over their shoulders. Nothing. “Indy?” said Willie.
He wasn’t sure, but he grasped Willie by the hand; all three of them started jogging.
The rumbling increased. Small debris began to fall from the ceiling; the ground was almost quaking. It made Short Round remember a volcano movie he didn’t want to remember just now. He wondered if The Lord of Thunder was angry about something.
They ran. Ran fast, though they didn’t know why. Yet.
The noise was stunning now. Willie looked around again. Suddenly she slowed; stopped. Stopped dead in mid-stride, paralyzed with disbelief, awe. Doom.
It was a monster wall of water, crashing spectacularly into the opposite embankment of a cross tunnel far behind them.
But not far enough.
Willie whispered. “Oh, shit.”
Short Round and Indiana stopped to see what was keeping Willie. What they saw was a watery cataclysm spewing forward, soon to overtake them. For a long moment, they just stared.
Then Indy grabbed Willie, and they all ran like hell.
The tidal wave smashed furiously down, booming closer every second. At its foaming muzzle it carried the debris of a hundred cluttered tunnels: boulders, branches, animals.
They weren’t going to make it.
Except just maybe, at that small side tunnel in the bend ahead . . .
“There!” Indy screamed above the roar. “Dive!”
They sprang toward the hole. Short Round dove through first, just like stealing home. Indy shoved Willie in, then followed himself—just as the tsunami exploded past in the main shaft.
This narrow tunnel dropped precipitously. They slid at a tumble, showered by the small side current of water diverted from the central stream.
They rolled down the chute to a larger tunnel. Shorty looked particularly lighthearted. “That was fun. Wait a minute, I do it again.”
Indy collared him before he could take a step, however, pointing him in a more proper direction. Where did these kids learn this stuff? he wondered.
The growl of the tidal wave receded as they caught their breath.
Up ahead, Willie dared to believe she could actually see light, yes, at the end of the tunnel. She was about to mention it when a new explosion boomed behind them. They turned to see another arm of the same wave cascading down now this tunnel, with an alarming force.
They all hollered in unison, started running full tilt toward the daylight. The towering wall of water surged mirthlessly after them.
They raced to the mouth of the tunnel; the first tongues of water were on their backs. Out into sunshine, they emerged . . .
And teetered on the brink. The tunnel exited midway up a cliff: they were looking at a three-hundred-foot sheer drop straight down to a rocky gorge.
Arms flailing to keep their balance, they hovered there a lifetime. Then Indy swung Willie to a narrow ledge on one side of the tunnel-mouth cliff-face, pushing Short Round after her; he jumped to the other side—just as the tidal wave crashed between them, out this gutterspout in the rock. At the forefront was the wreckage: rail ties shot out, and barrels, and all manner of detritus; even a mine car rocketed past. All surging in the water.
It was a massive gusher, spurting out of this and multiple other tunnels all around them in the cliffside. Short Round and Willie stayed balanced on their little ledge; Indy remained perched on his, on the opposite side of the erupting geyser.
Willie looked down for a second, but vertigo nearly overcame her. Water thundered into the gorge below; crocodiles slithered angrily in the shallow streambed there, disturbed out of their afternoon slumber.
Indy looked around. The gorge was maybe a hundred yards across; craggy bluffs rose on the other side to an expanse of flat plain that resembled the way home, as far as Indy could tell from this distance. Then he saw the bridge.
It was a thin rope bridge, swinging between the two plateaus. On this side it emerged about twenty feet above and another twenty beyond where Willie and Shorty were clutching the rocks. Indiana shouted to them across the blasting waterspout.
“Wllie, head for the bridge!” He pointed up.
She looked. She looked away. Would this never end?
“Nothing to it,” Short Round encouraged. “Follow me.”
He edged along the narrow precipice on which they were balanced, toward the outcropping that lay directly beneath the bridge. Reluctantly, Willie followed. Once under the bridge, they began climbing up the rocks.
Rockclimbing is an activity at which twelve-year-olds are known to excel; this instance was exemplary of that fact. Short Round scrabbled like a mountain goat, finding nooks and handholds that seemed to have been awaiting his arrival all these centuries. Willie was somewhat less agile in this endeavor. Still, she was a dancer; moreover, she was running for her life—and she hadn’t gotten as far as she had gotten without being light on her feet. So she wasn’t all that far behind Shorty.
Indiana was having a bit more difficulty. For one thing, his foot was still painfully numb from braking the runaway mine car. For another, he had to scale the cliff up, over, and around the several geysers between him and the bridge. The rockface here was wet, slippery, perilous.
He grabbed at the sparse scrubbrush for support; he inched along, crab-wise, slowly. With one unfeeling foot, his size was a distinct disadvantage.
Willie and Short Round pulled themselves up at the end of the bridge. Behind them in the cliff, a dark tunnel ran back into the mines. In front of them, the rope bridge looked more like taunt than hope.
It spanned the gorge like the last strands of a spiderweb at the end of the summer. It was at least a century old. It had not been built by the army corps of engineers.
It consisted of two thick lines at its base, connected by hundreds of worm-e
aten, moldy wooden slats—and hundreds of empty spaces where slats used to be. Along the length of this catwalk, vertical side ropes linked the foot-span to two thin upper ropes that crossed the gorge, constituting flimsy hand railings.
Willie balked.
Short Round, though, it should be remembered, had bad lots of experience running hell-bent along Shanghai rooftops, not to mention scatting across the clotheslines that connected tenement windows, to elude pursuit. So he was less deterred by the sight that confronted them now.
Tentatively, he stepped out onto the bridge. It held. He turned, smiling to Willie. “Easy like pie! Kid’s stuff!”
Suddenly the board under him broke. Disintegrated, actually. Had Willie not been expecting such an eventuality, the boy would have tumbled into the abyss. But she grabbed him by the scruff, yanked him back to safety.
He looked a little pale, less cocky now. Yet there was nowhere to go but onward. Once more, he stepped onto the risky footing, concentrating very hard on being much more yin than yang. This time, it held. After weighing the alternatives, Willie followed. She tried to imagine this was a solo performance for a big producer: there could be no wrong moves; there was no starting over.
Cautiously, step by step, they made their way along the span, walking gingerly over the missing or obviously rotten slats. They had to cling to the rope hand rails, too, for the bridge swayed constantly in the wind, as well as bouncing up and down in synchronized resonance to their footfalls. Short Round begged Madame Wind, Feng-p’o, to go play somewhere else.
It was the longest, slowest promenade Willie had ever taken.
Behind them, Indy finally pulled himself up from under the bridge. Almost free. He paused for a moment, catching his breath. Willie and Short Round, he could see, were halfway across, wavering every step. Maybe he ought to wait until they were over so his additional weight didn’t rock the crossing too much.
Behind him, there were footsteps. He ducked to the side of the tunnel mouth, disengaging his whip from his belt as he did so. All at once, two Thuggee guards rushed out.
Indy cracked the whip, catching the first guard around the neck. He spilled forward, tripping the second guard. As the first Thug tried to stand, Indy kicked him in the head.
The second man stood, swinging his sword. Indy ducked and came up with his fist in the assailant’s belly. The guard doubled over as Indy dove for the unconscious man’s saber. Then Indy rolled to avoid a downthrust from the recovering guard’s blade. He stood quickly; the two men faced each other, ready to duel.
Indy suddenly realized he didn’t know a thing about this kind of sword. He hefted the flat, curved blade, held it out, up, over, trying to decide the best way to use it, when the enraged Thuggee guard shouted and charged.
Indy decided quickly that shouting was the way to go, so he made his own rather voluble, inarticulate noise and raised his scimitar to parry the attacker’s first slash.
The duel was on. Sparks erupted with each CLANG as the Thuggee swordsman lunged and feinted, and lunged again. Indy’s moves were more in the nature of blocks and flails, and then blocks and tackles: Indy took his opponent flying at the waist: the two of them rolled, corps à corps, along the rocky slope.
Indy came out on top when the tumble ended in some scrub. He punched the guard once with the iron knuckles of the sword-handle, and the fight was over.
He rose, ran back to the bridge, keeping the saber. Willie and Short Round were just about across. Indiana started out onto the rickety span.
He walked quickly, hanging on to the twine rails. Every few steps his boot would break through; he’d have to catch himself on these upper ropes. Consequently, he kept his eyes turned downward most of the way, looking to step over the weak boards. When he was nearing the middle, he heard shouting ahead. He looked up to see temple guards appear at the far end of the bridge.
Willie and Short Round were caught as soon as they stepped onto hard ground. They struggled with their captors, but it was futile. There were too many.
Indy paused, uncertain what to do next. Suddenly Willie called, “Indy, look out behind you!”
Indy turned. More guards rushed out of the tunnel behind him. He turned again. Two of the Thugs who’d captured Willie and Shorty were stepping onto the bridge ahead of him.
Indiana stood helpless in the center of the swaying bridge, with guards approaching from both sides, nothing but the crocodile-infested, rocky gorge far below, and the glorious heavens above.
Well, almost helpless. This was, after all, Indiana Jones.
The wind came up like an omen. Mola Ram, the High Priest, appeared on the far end of the bridge. He stood there in his priestly robes, smiling the smile of the man who holds all the cards. Beside him, Willie and Short Round were held fast by guards.
Indy staggered unsteadily in the buffeting wind. Bracing himself on the rope rails, he shouted to Ram. “Let my friends go!”
Mola Ram yelled to his men in Hindi. They started moving toward Indy from both sides of the bridge.
“That’s far enough!” Indiana commanded.
“You are in no position to give orders, Dr. Jones,” the High Priest remarked.
Indy pointed to the bag over his shoulder. “You want the stones, let them go and call off your guards! Or I’ll drop the stones!”
“Drop them, Dr. Jones,” said Mola Ram. “They will be easily found. But you won’t!” He called out to his henchmen: “Yanne!”—and made a short hand-motion. They moved farther along the swaying bridge, closer to the madman in the middle.
Why is nothing easy? Indy wondered. Without further warning, he swung the sword he still held, cutting halfway through one of the bottom rope spans. The bridge reeled violently under the assault; the partially severed rope frayed, fiber by fiber, under the tension. The guards all stopped in their tracks.
Mola Ram nodded appreciatively. “Impressive, Dr. Jones,” he congratulated his adversary. “But I don’t believe you would kill yourself.” He motioned again. Somewhat more reluctant now, his guards stepped farther onto the bridge, moving closer to Indy from both ends.
Indy slashed his blade again, this time into the opposing lower rope span. It, too, partly severed, continued fraying slowly: slow, like an alarm clock.
The bridge jolted; again, the guards stopped, swaying, with Indy, in the jostling wind.
Mola Ram lost his smile. He shoved Willie and Short Round out onto the bridge, then followed with his dagger drawn. He put the knife to Willie’s back. “Your friends will die with you!” he bellowed.
Indiana looked at the guards in front and behind. He looked at Willie and Short Round ten feet out on the bridge, and at Mola Ram standing determined, at their backs. He looked at the land; he looked at the sky. And he shouted to all, in a voice meant to leave no doubt: “Then I guess we’re all going to take a big dive!”
Indy’s eyes met Short Round’s. Much transpired in that meeting: memories, regrets, promises, graces; and a real clear message: this ain’t no joke.
Willie saw it too. She looked wistfully at Indy: it might have been different, chum. She looked anxiously at Short Round . . . and noticed he was surreptitiously wrapping his foot around a loose rope support. Petrified—but also excited—Willie secretly did the same, twining an arm around one of the ropes as well.
Mola Ram roared like an angry priest: “Give me the stones!”
“Mola Ram,” called Indiana, “you’re about to meet Kali—in Hell!”
He swung the sword defiantly down. It swooshed through the air, then cut cleanly through top and bottom ropes on one side of the bridge.
Two guards fell off immediately, screaming all the way to their deaths. The rest began to flee in panic. Not quickly enough, though, for Indy slashed his sword down the other side, cleaving the span completely in two. The two halves separated, seemed to hang suspended in midair for a long, strange moment . . . and then fell apart.
Guards wailed horribly as they plunged three hundred feet to the valley. A
ll tried desperately to cling to the remnants of rope bridge that were falling back to the cliffs; only some made it.
On the side that Indy was holding on to, three guards fell away in the first lurch. By the time the bridge finally crashed into the side of the cliff wall from which it now continued to dangle, only six people remained, grasping the fragile rope and slats: Mola Ram at the top, just several feet below the cliff-edge to which the bridge was attached; below him a guard; Willie; Short Round; another guard; and, at the very bottom, swinging precariously in space beyond an outswelling of rock, Indiana.
Willie and Shorty clung to their established footholds in the now vertical bridge. Everyone was motionless for a few seconds, realizing they were still among the living, swaying slightly, waiting to see if the ropes would hold, or settle.
Then Mola Ram began to climb. He reached very near the moorings of the rope ladder, when he grabbed a dry-rotted rung, which splintered in two. He skittered down ten feet, coming to rest finally between Willie and Short Round. In the process, he knocked off one of the guards, who fell past them all to the depth of the gully.
The ladder swung. Nobody moved.
Then Indy began to climb. He climbed past the guard, whose eyes and hands were tightly closed; he grabbed at Mola Ram’s legs, to try to throw the fanatic to his death. Ram kicked him in the face, though, and resumed his own ascent.
Indy went up after him, got his foot again. He jerked hard. Mola Ram lost his grip, crashing down to Indy’s level. They clutched each other and the ropes, nearly deranged with hatred. There they did battle.
Indy butted Ram in the chin with his head. Ram kneed Indy, then elbowed his neck back, then reached for his chest.
From above, Willie screamed, “Oh, my God! Indy, cover your heart!”
With sudden cold terror, Indy looked down to see Mola Ram’s hand starting to enter his chest—as he’d watched the priest once do to the sacrificial victim.
He grappled with Ram’s wrist, desperately holding the probing hand at bay. But slowly, fiendishly, the sorcerer’s fingers began to inch through Indy’s skin—into his body.
The Adventures Of Indiana Jones Page 34