by Sechin Tower
The monster was fast, but she was faster, and she rolled under its swing and came up neatly to her feet, where she dipped her hand inside her coat to grab something from an inner pocket. Nikki wasn’t quite so graceful, because she lost her footing on the slimy floor and went down hard on her backside. She had to crab-walk backwards on her hands and heels to avoid the huge, three-toed foot that broke the tile as it stomped the floor.
That left the other two all the way across the room and me chained to a table right next to the monster. I tried to scoot myself back farther under cover, but there’s only so far you can go when your arm is shackled to a steel table leg.
Suddenly, that huge face appeared right by my feet. It had red eyes and a big, squared jaw that looked powerful enough to snap me in half with its huge, pointed teeth. Its tongue flicked out again and I could feel the air currents on my fingers. The monster lifted the table, tearing the bolted legs right out of the ground with no more effort than it would have taken to lift a coffee mug. Because my arm was still shackled to the table, I went up into the air with it, sliding directly towards the beast’s mouth. I closed my eyes and prayed.
There was a quick hiss and a thump, and a distinct lack of me being chewed into hamburger. The table dropped to the floor and I went with it. I opened my eyes to see the monster slump forward and close its eyes. In its back was the little red bloom of fletching that indicated a tranquilizer dart. When I looked over at Angela, she was spinning a dart pistol around her finger like she was a sheriff from the Old West.
“Get that monster into a cage and get it up to the parade ground,” she commanded Nikki. “Then open a video link to the Professor and tell the troops to be ready for a midnight rally. I’m going to need seven or eight hours to get the reactor working.” She paused to look at her wristwatch. “Perfect timing. Doomsday starts first thing tomorrow.”
September 17th
(Doomsday)
Chapter 37 ~ Dean
Dean and Victor had been sitting for hours, drooped against the wall farthest from the flow of magma. Only a trickle of molten rock now oozed through the gap, creeping like a red snake into the pits and through the gullies that formed as the surface of the burning moat cooled. At some point it would solidify enough that they could cross it safely, so Dean tested it by tossing a dime onto the darkest spot he could see. The coin rested for only a moment before being devoured in bright red flames.
“This place literally stinks,” Dean said as he rubbed his temples. The fumes were so bad they were giving him a stinging headache. “It smells like farts down here. Really nasty, just-ate-a-gallon-of-chili farts.”
“That’s the sulfur from the magma,” Victor said. “It used to be called brimstone, as in ‘fire and brimstone.’ This is supposed to be what hell smells like.”
The two of them settled back into silence. Victor sat with his legs bent, his arms resting on knees, and his head hanging between his arms, coughing occasionally from the fumes. Dean leaned back against the wall, but the inward curve of the dome-shaped room did not make for a comfortable backrest. He flipped open his new phone. Of course he didn’t get a signal this deep underground, but at least he could check the time. Just after midnight. They had been trapped for hours and Dean had tried everything he could think of to get out. He had searched the walls for handholds to climb across (there were none), tested various items around him to see if anything could work as a boat (everything sunk and burned), and measured off how far he could jump (he didn’t come close). Now he was down to sitting and thinking, and it wasn’t getting him any closer to freedom.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” Victor said without looking up. “But are we just going to sit here until Angela comes back for us? Is that the best plan we have?”
“That’s it,” Dean said. “And when she gets here, I’ll punch her a good one right in the nose. If you’ve got a better plan, I’d love to hear how to get across this lava.”
“Magma,” Victor corrected. “It’s magma while it’s underground and lava after it’s forced to the surface by volcanic action.”
Rather than snap at Victor to keep his Wikipedia edits to himself, Dean got up and walked to the edge of the temple area to watch the bubbles swelling and popping in the pool of fiery rock. He felt like he, as the nominal head of the Institute, had an obligation at least to be civil to his students. Even so, Victor did not rate high on his list of people he wanted to be trapped in an underground cavern with. The kid had kept the Topsy underground lab a secret, after all. It also didn’t help that the first time Dean had laid eyes on him, the young man was happily strolling out of a shower with his young cousin. Sure, the shower had turned out to be an elevator, but who knows what the two of them could have been up to.
“When you came up to see me,” Dean said after a long pause. “You were going to tell me something about my cousin. What was it you wanted to say?”
“Never mind,” Victor coughed. “It’s not important now.”
Dean took a long breath of the foul air before he spoke again.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “Tell me honestly. Do you like my cousin? I mean, romantically? I’m asking in my capacity as an overprotective family member.”
Victor raised his head and looked at Dean in surprise and confusion. He must have been considering several different answers while he drew out the awkward silence.
“What difference does it make?” he finally said.
“That’s not a ‘no,’” Dean observed.
“Would it be a problem if the answer were ‘yes?’”
Dean grimaced. Of course, he knew that Sophia’s love life was her own affair, but if it had been up to him, Victor was not the one he would have picked for her. The kid was too self-absorbed and secretive. Too brainy. Maybe Dean didn’t know her all that well, but he wanted the best for her, and for him that meant someone closer to her own age, more fun-loving, and maybe with a varsity letter or two.
“You don’t like me, do you?” Victor looked up at him.
“It isn’t about whether I like you,” Dean said. “I know I don’t have a say in the matter, so you kids will have to work it out for yourselves, but Sophia’s young and impressionable. She needs someone to look out for her and protect her from the world.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Lazarchek, I think it might be the rest of the world that needs to be protected from her. Someday she’s going to turn this planet upside down—if that’s what she wants.”
“You don’t know her,” Dean said.
“Neither do you,” Victor shot back.
The young man tried to glare, but a violent fit of coughing broke his eye contact. The harsh environment and the day’s exertions had obviously taken their toll on him.
“The world is a tough place,” Dean said to him when the coughing stopped. “You need more than brains to survive. All I’m saying is, if it were up to me, I’d like to make sure Sophia has a little more brawn to carry her through.”
“Brains beat brawn every time,” Victor spoke quietly to preserve his raw throat.
“Maybe in the world of books and computers,” Dean said. “But let me tell you: if there’s one thing I learned in the fire department, it’s that all the fancy gizmos only get you so far. In the end, it’s the people who use them that count.”
Victor shook his head. “People don’t last. People grow old and they die, and all their brawn goes away. Only their knowledge endures as it is handed down to others. Knowledge is the only thing that doesn’t ever have to die.”
“That’s a nifty argument,” Dean snorted. “When we get out of here, we’ll have a fifty yard dash and see which is better, brains or brawn.”
“Can I ask you something?” Victor said. “Why are you here? I don’t mean here in this cave. I mean, why did you become the Dean of Students? It definitely doesn’t seem like you’re passionate about it.”
Dean sat down heavily. It was a fair question. He might obscure the truth from President Hart
and Agent Nash, but there was no reason to conceal it from Victor, especially here amidst the fire and brimstone.
“I made a promise to McKenzie,” Dean said slowly. “Even though she wasn’t around to hear me, I’m going to stick to that promise to find justice for her.” He took a moment to touch the rings that hung around his head. His headache was getting worse, but pressing the hard gold loops against his chest felt strangely reassuring.
“Maybe the Institute isn’t my thing,” Dean said. “But coming here was my only chance of connecting with her again, because… because without her, I’m empty. I can’t really explain it, but when she died, everything inside of me went with her. You probably wouldn’t understand.”
Victor studied Dean for a long while, his ice blue eyes cutting through the dim red light.
“When I was six, my parents died in a car wreck,” Victor said, his voice strangely distant even as his eyes loomed large and unblinking. “I was in the back seat, in a child seat that probably saved my life. I remember watching my father breathing. From where I was, I could see his chest moving in and out slightly. And then, just before I heard the ambulance sirens, his chest stopped moving. Just like that. He was with me one moment and then gone the next.”
“Damn,” Dean whispered sympathetically. “I’m sorry. That must have been rough.”
“After that,” Victor went on. “I went to live with my grandmother. A year later, she had a fatal heart attack while we were eating dinner. My only other relative, my grandfather on my mother’s side, had been battling cancer, which meant it was only a few months more before I was sitting at his bedside in the hospital, listening to his final breaths. I was orphaned three times in two years.”
Dean placed his hand on Victor’s shoulder, but Victor pushed it off. He seemed angry now, and his words came faster.
“You say you want justice for McKenzie, and I get that,” Victor wheezed with each breath he took in, but he pressed ahead. “Nikki wants justice for the wrongs of society, and I get that, too. But everybody seems to take for granted that nature has inflicted the greatest injustice of all. How could the universe, or God, or whoever, have given us so little time on this Earth? Why is it possible to lose everything in an instant?”
Victor gasped for breath between words. He tried to stand, but dropped back to the floor.
“Take it easy,” Dean said, getting worried. “I think you’re making yourself sick.”
Victor tried to push himself to his feet, but failed.
“Death,” he croaked. “Everyone takes death as a given. Doesn’t it make you want to scream?”
Dean could see that something was wrong with Victor. He pulled himself to his feet and looked out at the moat of magma. All those bubbles in its surface were releasing gasses, and who knew what was in those fumes. When houses burn, the biggest danger often isn’t the flames, it’s the smoke and fumes, and the same principle was holding true here. The foul-smelling vapors were having a greater affect on Victor, but it was only a matter of time before they both succumbed. Angela may have intended only to trap them there for a while, but if they didn’t get out soon, she would return to find that her two prisoners had become two corpses.
The magma pool was blackening and solidifying around its borders, but it was still too far to jump. He needed another way. He went back to where Victor lay in hopes of finding something in his satchel that would work to span the gap. All he had was a pocket knife, a phone, a flashlight, and a pair of earthquake grenades. He considered making a rope out of his clothes, but there was nothing to attach it to.
Victor made an attempt to speak. Then he tried to stand again but seemed unable to find his balance.
“Save your strength, buddy,” Dean knelt down to place a comforting hand on his shoulder to keep him from trying to stand up.
“It’s Soap,” Victor wheezed. “I’m really worried about Soap.”
“Seriously?” Dean looked around at the magma oozing into the subterranean cavern and the hot vapors rising out of it. “I think you should worry about yourself for a bit.”
“I don’t want to worry you,” Victor said. “But she went to…” he paused to cough. “She went to Happy Fun Land.”
“You’re worried about that? You’re delirious.”
“Happy Fun Land,” Victor looked up at him urgently. “It’s home base for the Blitzkriegers.”
Dean couldn’t move as his brain processed the information. According to what Victor had just told him, Sophia had marched off to a den of thugs and thieves all by herself, and was probably about to get herself in serious trouble if she hadn’t already. The thought made him go cold. It meant Dean had failed yet again to protect the people who needed it. If he had known, he might have been able to find his cousin, send her back home, and cut out all this trouble with the egg by going straight after the Blitzkriegers.
“Victor, why—why—didn’t you tell me this before?”
It was no good: Victor was fading in and out of consciousness. They would have to settle that score later.
The urgency to escape that cavern had now doubled, yet Dean’s resources remained the same useless odds and ends in the earthquake-grenade satchel. If only he could use the earthquake grenade on the pillars next to him, he could knock one off its base and roll it down the ramp to use as a bridge across the magma. But if he broke the pillars, thousands of tons of rock would come crashing down on his head in short order. The obelisks on the far side of the magma were not load bearing and would work just as well to bridge the fiery pool, but those were out of reach.
Unless he threw a grenade.
He peeled back the flap on the gooey adhesive and tested it with his pinky. His finger stuck to it and he had to struggle to get free. With adhesive like that, even a grazing hit would be enough to attach the grenade to the obelisk and let it do its work. Once the obelisk broke, the slope of the floor would ensure it would fall towards him and maybe, just maybe, give him a route to freedom. It was far from foolproof, but it seemed like the best chance they had.
He wound up like a major league pitcher with the first grenade and ignored the pain in his ribs as he launched it over the magma moat. It struck the nearest obelisk with its rim—the one surface that had no adhesive. Murphy’s Law was being strictly enforced. The grenade bounced off the obelisk and fell into the magma, where it disappeared with nothing more than a slight hiss to mark its passage.
One grenade left. Dean flicked the “on” button and took a deep breath, eyeing the target obelisk. Then he flung it backhanded, across his body like a Frisbee. The length, cylindrical shape, and moderate weight of the grenade seemed to work better with that type of throw than with the overhand baseball-style pitch, although the sting in Dean’s rib was twice as bad this time around.
The grenade floated up and then down as it traced an arc away from him, revolving through the air in what seemed like slow motion. It sailed over the magma and slapped into the dead center of the obelisk, right at its base. There was an audible humming-bird buzz as the stone structure jittered loose from the floor, then a roar of wind as it fell down towards the magma, just as Dean had planned. The part that didn’t go as hoped, however, was that it failed to fall in a straight line, instead twisting and cracking into one of the structural pillars.
The obelisk ricocheted off the pillar in a spray of fragments that sizzled when they landed in the magma flow. Dean threw himself down on top of Victor as the debris splashed burning gobbets of molten rock into the air. A red-hot drop the size of a golf ball thudded two inches away from Dean’s head, where he watched as it warped the stone floor beneath it. Then there was a tremendous crash, and Dean turned his head just in time to see the tip of the obelisk hammering down onto the floor of the temple. The far end rested at the edge of the other side of the magma, and the body of the obelisk formed a slanted walkway. Behind it, the damaged pillar groaned and twisted in its place as several large chunks of granite fell from the ceiling above it to crash into the floor. Whatev
er the progenitors had used to construct this cavern must have been tremendously strong to survive millions of years, but its ability to hold the ceiling up was about to come to a very violent end.
Dean pulled Victor up and onto his shoulders into a fireman’s carry.
“What’re you doing?” Victor asked in disbelief, too exhausted to struggle.
“You’re in no condition to walk,” Dean said. “Looks like brawn wins out over brains today.”
“The day’s just getting started,” Victor said weakly.
Dean hopped as best he could from one chunk of rubble to the next until he stood atop the fallen obelisk. The moment he got his second foot on the makeshift bridge, the damaged pillar on the far side of the burning lake collapsed completely in a torrent of boulders, and the next three pillars bent visibly as gaping cracks radiated out along the ceiling.
Dean positioned one foot on each side of the slope to stabilize himself. With each step, the obelisk rocked under him as detritus rained from the ceiling.
“What’s happening?” Victor groaned, his head hanging next to Dean’s arm.
“Just hold on,” Dean said as he inched down the back of the obelisk. He knew that one misstep and they would be roasted in the magma, but if he took too long they would end up crushed by the falling ceiling. The raining debris splashed below his feet as he went, and the tiniest droplet landed on the back of Dean’s calf. He exhaled in pain as it burned through his jeans and into his skin, but he didn’t let it slow him down.
When he reached the far side, he dropped onto the sloping ground and set Victor down. The cracks in the ceiling were opening as the two men watched larger debris start breaking away. Dean flung his arm over his head protectively, and then grabbed Victor by the collar. The two rushed through the collapsing chamber as it crashed down around them, Dean almost dragging Victor along. They dove onto the elevator disc as a sheet of rock cut off the opening behind them with a thunderous crash and a choking cloud of dust.