The River of No Return

by Jon Voelkel

The referee looked worried. “Might they not outplay our champions, One Death and Seven Death?”

  “Impossible, it is pure theater,” said Lord Kuy. “There is no chance of the Hero Twins winning. The game is fixed. But this twist would vastly increase gambling revenues.”

  “More beans in the coffer, eh?” Ah Pukuh drooled at the prospect of augmenting his fortune of cocoa beans.

  The crowd were roaring and chanting now with enthusiasm for the idea.

  Lola stood by Max. “Good thinking, Hoop.”

  “At least it will buy us more time,” he whispered.

  Ah Pukuh stood up to address the crowd. “Citizens of Xibalba, the decision is yours. Should we kill these wretches now? Or should we transform them into worthy opponents? Stand up to vote for sacrifice. Stay seated if you want the game to continue.”

  No one moved.

  “Very well,” said Ah Pukuh. “We start where we left off: the score is two–nil to Xibalba.”

  “That’s not fair—,” began Max.

  “Deal!” said Lola.

  It was straight out of a video game. Max watched himself on the video screen as his body transformed from an ordinary kid into a brawny athlete.

  Lola giggled. “Wow! You’re ripped! I’ll have to stop calling you Hoop—no one could say you look like a matchstick now!”

  “What about you? You look like Wonder Woman!”

  Lola stared—now with hawklike super vision and enhanced spatial awareness—at her bodybuilder muscles. “This is crazy. We’re the Superhero Twins!”

  “We’re like avatars. We have no feelings, we can’t get hurt … nothing is impossible. Maybe we can even win this game!”

  While Max and Lola adjusted to their physical transformations, minions swept up the trash that had rained onto the court, and the crowd worked themselves into a frenzy of gambling. The Death Lords were giving odds and placing bets on every aspect of the match.

  “One thousand cocoa beans on the home team to win!”

  “Two thousand beans on a dismemberment!”

  “Five thousand beans on One Death to score a hat trick!”

  Max couldn’t help noticing that no one was betting on a victory for the Hero Twins.

  When play resumed, excitement was at fever pitch.

  Ah Pukuh gave the signal.

  Once again the conch-shell trumpet sounded, the drummers beat on their drums, and the crowd took up the rhythm with their feet. The referee lifted a new ball above his head and lobbed it into play.

  They were off.

  Max and Lola were all over the court, leaping, diving, pivoting their new swivelmatic hips.

  The heavy ball shot back and forth across the court in intense volleys.

  Each point was fought over long and hard.

  Fortunes in cocoa beans changed hands with every twist and turn of the game. By match point, the teams had been playing solidly for two hours, with neither side able to gain a convincing lead.

  Now with one last play, it was winner take all.

  “We can do this,” said Max, still admiring his new muscles.

  “Stay focused!” yelled Lola. “The Death Lords are plotting something. Did you see that last cheat of theirs?”

  The drums pounded, the crowd chanted, and the ball was thrown into play on the home side.

  Seven Death took a flying leap and sent it spinning toward Max.

  “I’ve got this one,” he called to Lola.

  He aligned himself up for the smash of his life, a speed-of-sound midarc slam from his steel-hard hip that no one, not even a Death Lord, would be able to return.

  Piece of cake.

  He bounced into the air on superbendy knees.

  The ball came thundering toward him.

  And then it all went wrong.

  “Nooooooo,” he screamed.

  With a split second to go, he felt his special powers draining away until he was just an ordinary kid again—a kid suspended directly in the path of a rubber ball the size and weight of a cast-iron watermelon.

  The impact sent spasms of pain through his body.

  “I’ve got it!” Lola sprang halfway across the court with catlike agility and tried to take the shot before it hit the floor. She might have succeeded if the ball hadn’t changed course to avoid her and zoomed around in a wide arc.

  Max, Lola, and the ball landed with three ignominious thumps.

  As Max lay sprawled on the floor, wretched and in pain, the ball rolled along until it was in front of his eyes. Then it split open, like a hatching egg, to reveal its core. Underneath all the layers of rubber was a decomposing severed head.

  It winked at him. “Game over,” said its mouth.

  Victory to the Lords of Death.

  The crowd went wild as One Death and Seven Death pumped the air and strutted round the ball court.

  A squad of security guards marched over, and pulled Max and Lola roughly to their feet, binding their hands behind their backs.

  “Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice!” chanted the crowd.

  Ah Pukuh heaved himself to his feet and held out his arms to the crowd. They clapped and cheered. The F.A.T.S.O. contingent threw their caps into the air, while the Xibalba side threw body parts. The guards dragged Max and Lola over to Ah Pukuh and prodded them with spears to make them kneel.

  “Speech time,” said Lord Kuy to Ah Pukuh, passing him a folded bark-paper scroll.

  The cameras zoomed in as Ah Pukuh unfolded the paper, cleared his throat, and addressed the crowd. “Citizens of Xibalba and esteemed guests, at this moment, history begins again! For over twelve baktuns in the Maya calendar and five thousand years by the reckoning of Middleworld, we have waited for this glorious day. What better way to mark the beginning of my dominion over Middleworld than by sacrificing these meddling mortals?”

  The crowd roared their approval.

  “Prepare the victims,” commanded Ah Pukuh, summoning the jaguar priest to daub them with blue body paint.

  “Here we go again,” muttered Lola. “Sacrificial sapphire, my least-favorite color.”

  The guards forced them to lie down, flat on their backs, their wrists and ankles bound with leather ropes to iron rings embedded in the end zone floor.

  “Remember this day, citizens of Xibalba! Today we sacrifice the Hero Twins! Not with the usual obsidian blade, which is disappointingly painless in its speed, but with a weapon far more terrible. In homage to the creative geniuses of ancient Rome, the Hero Twins will be mauled and eaten by wild animals.”

  The atmosphere in the arena was electric as everyone waited for more details of the gruesome spectacle to come. (Except for the terrified poncho family, who had their hands over their ears.)

  “First to the feast will be a noble cat,” continued Ah Pukuh, “the king of the jungle.”

  Max’s guts unclenched. Bahlam was the only cat in the menagerie and if he was to be their nemesis, Max was fairly sure he would refuse to eat them. Thanks to Lola’s bonding with the jaguar, they were safe. He almost smiled to imagine Ah Pukuh’s reaction.

  “Even as I speak,” continued Ah Pukuh, “we are taking delivery of a ravenously hungry African lion. Let loose the beast!”

  Max’s insides knotted themselves into a ball, and rolled into the farthest corner of his stomach to hide.

  “Fanfare!” commanded Ah Pukuh.

  There was a blast of conch shells and a fierce beating of drums, and the floor shook beneath their heads. Max turned enough to see a trapdoor opening at the opposite end of the ball court. He could hear the gears grinding as a platform juddered upward through the floor, conveying the hungry lion to its dinner date.

  He closed his eyes.

  He heard the audience gasp.

  He heard a spine-chilling roar followed by a squealing of brakes.

  He knew these sounds.

  He opened his eyes.

  Whatever nightmare creature the audience was expecting to rise up out of the trapdoor, it certainly was not a howler monk
ey riding on a tapir.

  “Lord 6-Dog!” cried Lola.

  For it was he—mounted on the hotel tapir and attempting to make it rear up on its hind legs, like a simian Lone Ranger on a stunted hippo.

  With Lord 6-Dog urging him on, the tapir leapt off the platform and galloped down the court toward Ah Pukuh. The death god’s face was a mask of terror but, wedged as his enormous bulk was in his chair, he had no time to get out of the firing line as the tapir turned around, aimed its hindquarters with care, and let fly a super soaker with all the volume and pressure of a fire hose.

  The platform under the trapdoor had made another trip and was now rising with a new cargo. This time, Bahlam the jaguar sprang out, as well a horde of monkeys.

  Drenched to the skin and smelling even worse than usual, the god of violent and unnatural death rose in rage. “Catch them!” he bellowed, but his voice was lost in the chaos as the hall was rocked with explosions. The shock wave from the blasts caused him to lose his balance and, when Ah Pukuh fell, his blubbery mass took down the Demons of Jaundice, Pus, and Filth with him.

  What followed was total mayhem.

  The guards who’d been watching Max and Lola leapt forward to tackle the interlopers. As his tapir charged toward them, Lord 6-Dog pulled a stick of dynamite out of a saddlebag lashed to his trusty mount’s back.

  He jabbed at the timer, and threw the dynamite.

  Kaboom!

  The bad guys were falling like flies.

  On one side of the court, Bahlam was terrorizing the security guards, while on the other side, the monkeys lobbed missiles at the Death Lords as fast as automatic artillery launchers.

  Another load through the trapdoor had disgorged a cargo of snakes.

  Immediately, Lord Kuy was attacked by a huge boa constrictor with a taste for owl, while the smaller snakes got to work on the F.A.T.S.O. delegation.

  The Xibalba crowd roared and stomped their feet, thinking this was a new twist to the evening’s entertainment.

  Although they were still tied to the floor, Max and Lola began to take hope.

  While a couple of Death Lords heaved the battered Ah Pukuh back onto his feet, he issued a steady stream of orders: “Protect the Jaguar Stones! Shoot the howler! Kill the Hero Twins!”

  Hearing this last command, the jaguar priest ran toward Max and Lola, brandishing a razor-sharp obsidian knife. He knelt down at Lola’s side and raised the blade.

  Max screamed.

  “Keep screaming,” said the priest. “That is good.”

  “Eusebio!” cried Lola. “What are you doing here?”

  “Explanations later,” he said, sawing through the ropes. “Keep screaming, so no one notices that I am setting you free. We need to get out of here.”

  Max lay there, screaming obediently and looking around to take stock of the situation. Across the arena stood Ah Pukuh, surrounded by his bodyguards. His face was purple with rage. He was foaming at the mouth and shrieking an incoherent mixture of commands, curses, and animal howls. The shrunken heads were wailing like a Greek chorus, and the eyeballs in his necklace were popping like corks under pressure.

  Lord 6-Dog was standing on the back of his tapir, fending off guards and hurling dynamite. Explosions were going off all around the arena. A platoon of spider monkeys had scampered up the cables to the central video pod and were disconnecting all the cameras.

  Half the crowd—the half that realized what was happening—was on its feet screaming and panicking. The other half, who thought everything was scripted, was on its feet hooting and cheering.

  It was pandemonium.

  “Let’s go!” yelled Eusebio.

  The eyeballs on his necklace were popping like corks under pressure.

  Lola looked longingly at the Five-Headed Jaguar, still surrounded by a ring of security guards.

  “Thou hast thirty seconds to effect thine exit, and that’s an order!” Lord 6-Dog shouted to her as he rode by. He charged across the court, lighting another stick of dynamite to intercept reinforcements of security guards entering from the other end.

  Max pulled her away and, dodging skeletal arms and flying missiles, Eusebio steered them both back to the trapdoor. The platform was now resting five feet below the level of the ball court, and it was the same distance again down to the floor of the staging area underneath.

  At Eusebio’s whistle, the spider monkeys came running, and sprang through the trapdoor. The boatman whistled again, and the sleek form of Bahlam followed noiselessly. Lola and Eusebio jumped down.

  “Come on, Hoop!” called Lola.

  Standing on the platform, the top of his head just sticking out above floor level, Max took a last look around the arena.

  “Lord 6-Dog!” he called.

  “Go, young lord! Look after Ix Sak Lol!”

  Brandishing a fistful of dynamite in each hand, Lord 6-Dog was attempting to hold back the guard while the rest of them made their getaway.

  It reminded Max of that terrible night in Spain when the brave monkey-king had taken a bullet trying to protect him. On that occasion, Max had been forced to abandon his lifeless monkey body in the gutter.

  He ran to Lord 6-Dog’s side. “Lola’s fine!” he yelled. “She’s with Eusebio. I’m not leaving you!”

  “But young lord—”

  “I’m not leaving you,” repeated Max.

  Lord 6-Dog nodded. “Then let us make mayhem!”

  Max helped Lord 6-Dog light the explosives and hurl them into every corner. His last thought before fireworks, smoke, and chaos rocked the room was that the sizzling dynamite he held in his hand was imprinted with the F.A.T.S.O. logo. He would have raised his eyebrow at the irony if he hadn’t been blown off his feet.

  A series of explosions took out the supports of the central video installation, and the entire unit plummeted to the floor. The enormous pod of lights, speakers, and scaffolding was next to come crashing down.

  Max was caught in a tangle of electrical cables, and the more he struggled, the more entangled he became. He was a sitting duck.

  A thick stingray spine embedded itself in the wood floor beside him. He looked to see who had aimed it and met the eyes of Koo from the beauty salon. She waved to him from her front-row seat. “Cut yourself free,” she called, “and fly on the wings of love.”

  In the event, he flew on the wings of a tapir.

  Just as he’d sliced through the cable, Lord 6-Dog’s strong tail had wrapped around him and pulled him out of the chaos and onto the tapir’s back. Then they were racing through a shower of debris and throwing themselves, somehow, through the trapdoor.

  As soon as they landed in the staging area, Eusebio sent the platform jerkily sparking and fizzing back to ground level.

  “Follow me,” he said, and led them to a huge freight elevator, which was being held for them by the sloth man. Besides him and his sloth, it was filled with snorting mammals, squeaking reptiles, and squawking birds. Plus Lola and Bahlam.

  Eusebio slid the steel mesh door closed and pressed the up button.

  They held their breath, unsure if it would work.

  They let out a collective breath when the elevator lurched into motion.

  “I must warn you,” said Eusebio, “that we are about to make our daring escape in the slowest elevator known to humankind.”

  “At least it’s moving,” said Lola, “and Bahlam is with us.” She knelt down by the jaguar and stroked his pelt.

  Max leaned against the wall to take stock. “Thank you, Lord 6-Dog,” he said. “You saved my life.”

  “Back at thee,” said the king. “Tonight thou didst act like a brave Maya warrior.”

  Max could feel himself blushing. It was probably the best compliment he had ever been paid. “Well, you know, I owed you one, after that night in Spain,” he mumbled.

  But Lord 6-Dog wasn’t listening. He was gazing with admiration at the tapir. “Of course, it is my steadfast steed that we should both be thanking.”

  The tapir gav
e a snuffle, and raised its tail slightly. Everyone panicked and tried to get out of the line of fire, but it was a false alarm.

  “I think he’s just happy,” said Lola.

  “It’s a she,” Lord 6-Dog corrected her.

  Lola smiled. “How did you two meet, anyway?”

  “When I arrived at this place, Eusebio was unloading boom sticks from a conveyance—”

  “Wait; boom sticks?” queried Lola.

  “It’s what he calls the dynamite,” explained Max.

  Lord 6-Dog continued. “My host monkey, Chulo, recognized Eusebio and gave me the sense I could trust him. So I went over and introduced myself.”

  “Way to go, Chulo!” cried Lola and Max, waving to Lord 6-Dog’s inner monkey.

  Eusebio laughed. “I have to admit that I was surprised to see Chulo talking, but I had only to look into his eyes for Lord 6-Dog to convince me of his true identity.” He bowed in Lord 6-Dog’s direction. “Middleworld is honored to have a new champion.”

  Lord 6-Dog returned the bow with a flourish. “The honor is mine.”

  “So that’s when the two of you worked out how to sabotage the ballgame?” asked Max.

  “Exactly, young lord. My new friend Eusebio briefed me on the situation and showed me the boom sticks.”

  “So where did the boom sticks, I mean dynamite, come from?” asked Lola.

  “Thank F.A.T.S.O.,” said Eusebio. “I ordered it for their blast-fishing trip.”

  “Ha! So we used their weapons of mass destruction against them,” said Lola.

  “It is a most exciting innovation,” enthused Lord 6-Dog. “With one case of boom sticks, I could have rewritten Maya history.”

  “You rewrote our history tonight,” said Max. “There’s no way we could have got out of there alive.”

  “Here.” Eusebio passed Max a cloth. “Clean off your sacrificial paint.”

  Max ripped the cloth and passed half to Lola. “Are you going to say it?”

  She wiped her face. “Say what?”

  “I told you so. You were right about the hotel and the Death Lords and everything.”

  “But I was wrong about Eusebio.”

  Hearing his name, the boatman smiled at her across the tapir. “It sounds like we are finally reaching ground level. I hope no ghouls are waiting for us.”