by Hopkin, Ben
The lady would be mad at her. The thing she had done was bad. She wasn’t supposed to run away like that. But even though the lady would be mad, the lady wouldn’t be mean. The lady would hug her and hold her and tell her that everything would be okay.
That sounded really good.
But she knew why she was here. She was supposed to help. Helping meant making things better. Going back to the lady wouldn’t make things better for anybody but her. Mommy always said she should think of other people and share her toys. It wasn’t the same thing, but it was close.
She held up Popeye to see what he was thinking. He just stared at her. She knew what that meant. It meant she wasn’t going to like his answer.
But it was okay. She was scared, but she knew that the tall man would keep her safe. And the tall man would be where he could help people, too. She knew where she had to go.
She moved down the shaft, the echoes of the moaning bouncing around her as she crawled.
* * *
Trey had this courage thing figured out. You didn’t really have to do anything more than just put one foot in front of the other. Oh, and make sure you were pointed in the right direction first.
They had made it about a quarter of the way down the chute, so far as Trey could tell. The curving lines of the chutes made it almost impossible to know for sure.
From behind him, Officer Benti barked, “Ouch!”
Both Trey and Darc whirled around to see what was going on, only to see Benti rubbing his calf briskly. Darc turned back and continued making his way down the chute. Trey moved closer to the cop.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Something stung me, maybe?” The officer still had a hold of his lower leg, apparently trying to rub the pain out of it.
“Dude,” Trey counseled, “you have got to buck up.” He made sure Benti was ready to start moving again, then turned to catch up with Darc. He spoke over his shoulder. “Trust me. With this guy we’re chasing, it could have been so much—”
From the side of the chute, strands of curled wire sprang out, the pointed ends piercing Benti’s clothes. There was a microsecond pause for Trey to identify the automated stun guns mounted on the walls before the officer began to thrash from the voltage flowing through the line. His eyes rolled back in his head, only the whites showing.
“Oh, man. Oh…Darc!” Trey called out. He moved toward Benti, only to see the remaining stun guns swivel to target him. “What the—?” Trey danced back out of range, but the writhing of the cop dragged him back almost against his will.
And then there was a hand grabbing his arm and pulling him away, hard. Darc gripped him with hands that seemed made of iron.
“He’s gone,” Darc said.
“No!” But looking back, Trey could see Benti dancing and jumping like a marionette on curled wires instead of strings. With that amount of voltage coursing through him, if Benti came out of it, he would no longer be Benti.
And then he couldn’t think about it any longer. Trey was too busy running for his life.
* * *
Darc observed that there was an interval of 1.3 seconds between the moment when a red light flashed on the stun guns and the moment when they turned and fired. That 1.3 seconds was the only thing keeping them both alive right now.
Darc broke into a run, Trey matching him step for step. Well, almost step for step.
As Darc lunged forward, one of the chute gates closed right in front of Trey. His partner tried to make it through before it shut entirely, but he couldn’t. He was forced to run down the chute parallel to Darc.
The patterns of the chutes and the stun guns were trails of light, prompting him left or right, up or down. But now Darc had to stretch the web of light to include his partner. It strained, but held.
The chutes down which they were running were getting more and more narrow as they progressed. Darc knew this was to gradually acclimate the cattle to the walls at their sides while making it impossible for them to escape the bolt that lay ahead.
This also made it far more difficult for Darc and Trey to dodge the ever-increasing attacks from the snaking lines of the stun guns.
Lines and symbols flowed and changed in Darc’s vision, the constantly shifting landscape of their dance with death.
“Down!” Darc yelled at Trey.
“What?” Clearly, Trey didn’t understand the invective, but his momentary lapse of attention caused him to stumble. The stun gun wire snapped over his head, missing him by centimeters.
“Jump!” Darc snapped.
This time, Trey needed no prompting. He leapt into the air, the wires slashing harmlessly below him. They had the system worked out now. They would be able to successfully navigate the chutes.
“Right!”
But Trey dodged left, and one of the wires grazed his leg, giving him what sounded like a nasty jolt.
“Right,” Trey growled through teeth that seemed fully clenched together. “My other freakin’ right.”
Darc continued to issue imperatives as they traversed the remainder of their respective chutes. The back half-wall of the corral loomed before them, a row of stun guns coming to life right in front of them. The barrier appeared to be approximately five and a half feet tall.
“Darc, dude…?” Trey asked, his tone panicked.
“Faster!” Darc shot back.
They both sped up, but Trey was clearly uncertain about what was going on.
“Faster? There’s a wall.”
But Darc continued increasing his speed, taking them right up to the back wall. He then barked out orders in rapid order. “Jump right!” They both sprang up, planting each of their right feet on the wall of the chute to their right. “Up left!” They then ricocheted to the left, springing farther up. “Right! Left!” And then finally, “Over!”
They flipped over the top of the back wall, having scaled the sides of the chute. It was parkour at its finest. They landed with a solid thunk on the other side.
“Okay, this guy is really starting to piss me off,” Trey groaned.
* * *
Prodding every muscle he could find, Trey tried to assess the level of bruising he would encounter next time he found himself without clothes. He came up with something between “a whole freakin’ lot” and “dude, you don’t even want to know.”
Trey stood up, his movements ginger. He brushed himself off and looked around the room as best he could. He had no idea where his flashlight had gone, and he was not about to go back into the fun room of death behind them.
They stood on the other side of the chute system, an area that was less than six feet wide. On the wall facing them, a door awaited them. From the next room, low moans could be heard.
“Any idea what’s on the other side?” Trey asked his partner.
Darc gave a sharp shake of his head. Well, that answered that.
“Great. Just great.” Trey lifted his gun and nodded at Darc to push the door open. One foot in front of the other, right? And if Darc was headed in, Trey had to assume they were going in the right direction.
The room they entered was even darker than the one they had left. They both took a step in toward the moaning. Then another. It was coming from just up ahead of their current position. The moaning got louder, the tone more desperate. Another step.
Trey felt Darc stumble at his side, almost losing his footing. Probing his foot ahead of him, Trey felt it come into contact with something. Something that yielded to the pressure from his foot. The moaning ratcheted up another notch.
“Darc?”
“I know,” his partner answered. “Something is there. A hand or an ankle.”
Trey was doing everything he could not to lose it. “No…not that. Listen.”
Underneath the sound of the moaning, there was something else. A sound of leaves rustling in the wind? A rattling? A slithering…
No. No. This was not happening. Trey pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open, using the light to see what su
rrounded them.
Snakes.
They were everywhere, sliding and slithering over each other, over the form of the person who lay at their feet, over Trey’s shoes…
Darc hissed, “Don’t move!”
Trey was too busy trying not to scream like a baby to even take offense at how stupid Darc must think he was. He’d stopped moving first. “What. The. Freak. Are. Snakes. Doing. Here.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Trey watched as his partner pulled out his own phone and shone it over where the mass of snakes was the largest. It was from there that the moans were coming.
It was a pile of bodies. Bodies in cop uniforms. From the number of limbs Trey could count, it looked like it was both of the groups that had split off from them.
As he watched, one of the figures twitched and a viper turned toward the movement, fangs flashing in the dim light from the phones. The snake latched on to the officer’s arm, sinking its teeth into his flesh, causing a fresh moan to issue from his mouth.
Darc spoke, his voice inflectionless. “Bolgia sexta.”
“Snakes, dude. Explain the freakin’ snakes. In English.”
“We passed from the fifth circle into the sixth.”
“Oh. That.” Now Trey was wishing that he had paid more attention to the rest of the paintings. Well, from what he could see, he probably wouldn’t have much time to regret it.
Death by snakes. Yep. Trey definitely hadn’t seen that one coming.
CHAPTER 13
From the moment she had heard the screaming from Roberts’s radio, Mala had been waging an internal war of head versus heart. She should stay here. Safe. Her interfering could make things worse. But the idea of sitting here and doing nothing while Trey, Darc, and Janey were in mortal danger? Galling. Excruciating.
Yes, her brain agreed with Officer Roberts. Let the professionals handle it. The problem was, it didn’t sound like they were handling anything right now. And she knew from his frantic calls that any form of backup was over five minutes away. From the sounds over the radio, they didn’t have two minutes.
For better or for worse, Mala was going to do what she could to help those she cared about. And she was going to do it now.
This was the tricky part. She needed to explain her absence without triggering suspicion. Considering how adamant she had been about going after Janey earlier, that might not be so simple. Mala watched as Officer Roberts alternated between speaking into his radio and his cell phone. He was doing his best to manage an unmanageable situation. There was no attention left for Mala.
Maybe it didn’t have to be difficult. Mala pulled a play out of Janey’s handbook.
She waved her hand in front of the officer’s face, getting at least a portion of his attention for a moment. “I can’t take this anymore. I’m going to stay in the cruiser.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.” He waved at her in dismissal, seeming not to care what she did. Just as well. Mala did her best to act nonchalant as she walked toward the police car, but once there, she hurried to the end of the block and hung a right, circling around to the back of the slaughterhouse.
Mala was on her way to do whatever she could. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.
* * *
Under different circumstances, Trey might have thought this whole thing was pretty cool. There were more kinds of snakes here than he had ever seen before. Even that last time he had gone to the zoo and managed to work his way up to visiting the Reptile Retreat.
He had always had kind of a sick fascination with reptiles. They had creepy eyes. Their bodies were covered with scales. They were cold blooded.
Oh, and they made Trey want to bed-wet. That too.
Trey figured it was like people that loved horror movies. You wanted to get that vicarious thrill and rush of adrenaline that came from having the crap scared out of you. There was one major difference. Usually when you went to a horror movie, there wasn’t much chance of the killer’s leaping off the screen and chasing you down.
Another snake slithered across Trey’s foot, poking its head up his pant leg. Trey had to bite down on his lip until he tasted blood just to keep from leaping five feet into the air. Probably wasn’t a good idea to make sudden moves with this amount of poisonous venom poised for dispersal around him.
The snake nosed about a bit before changing its mind and sliding off into the writhing mass of reptilian flesh that surrounded Trey and his partner.
Letting his breath out in a big whoosh of air, Trey sighed, “Yeah, this isn’t cool. This isn’t cool at all.”
Darc opened his mouth to speak, probably to tell Trey not to move for the fifteenth time, when Trey’s cell phone went off. “Milkshake,” by Kelis. Maggie’s ringtone.
Trey fumbled with the phone, trying to send the call to voicemail, but slipped and hit “answer” instead. Great. This was not what he wanted right now. On so many different levels.
“Suck,” he spat out, lifting the phone up to his ear.
“What? Trey, are you okay?” Maggie asked, her tone concerned.
Oops. The last thing in the world Trey wanted to do was get Maggie’s radar up and functioning. Once it was on, it was like she had ESP or something. “Totally, babe. Everything’s…cool. We’re totally cool.” Okay. Too much. Time to shut his mouth.
“You sound nervous. You staking out a strip joint again? Look, I told you…”
“No, no, no.” Trey let out a laugh that he hoped didn’t sound as tense as he actually was. “Nothing like that. I just”—he groped for an explanation—”might be home a little late.”
“Aw, really? How late? I’m making stew for us. Got some red wine…”
From the sounds of it, Maggie was feeling bad that she had left him to sleep on the chair last night. Another snake slipped over and around Trey’s ankle. Trey tried to turn his yelp into a word. “Aaaah. Man. You know how much I love your stew.”
“Yes, I do, lover boy. Just get home as fast as you can. Don’t want the stew to get cold, now do you?”
“No, no. I definitely don’t.” Really? They had to be having this conversation now, right this minute? When there was absolutely no chance that he could actually enjoy it? God truly did have a perverse sense of humor. And Trey’s not being able to cuss about it? The icing on the cake.
“Love you, Trey,” Maggie murmured.
“Yeah. Right back at ya. Ditto. Catch you on the flip side.” Trey did everything he could not to look over at Darc.
“Seriously, Trey? That’s all you’ve got for me? Did I mention what I was wearing? Nothing.”
Wow. She did not fight fair. “Okay, fine.” Trey could feel his face heating up. He was sure Darc would be able to see it, dim light or no. “Love you too.”
Disconnecting the call, Trey held the cell up over his head to see what the snakes were up to now. Still squirming around, looking for someone to bite. Okay, nothing new there.
“Um. Next move?” he asked Darc.
Before his partner could answer, a loud bang came from above. It was followed by a metallic squeaking noise. Trey glanced up at the ceiling.
“Oh, what the freak now? Attacking birds?”
Darc shone his cell phone light up toward the direction of the sound. There, perched in an opening in the ventilation shaft, was Janey. The grate swung below where she must have kicked it open, accounting for the bang and the squeaking. She squinted against the sudden light, her face pale. She clutched her ratty teddy bear close to her chest.
Trey blinked. That could not be what he was seeing. How had the kid gotten in here? Did she not understand a pile of snakes was bad—really, really, really, bad? She was young, but come on.
Darc spoke to her, his tone without inflection. “Listen carefully. I need you to back up to the last junction, then take—”
Janey had started moving back into the shaft as soon as Darc began his directions, but the metal underneath her gave a huge pop. A bulge formed a few feet to the right of Trey’s head.
“
Oh, no. Oh, man.” Trey tried to lean toward the bulge without moving his feet. He was several feet off. There was no way to get any closer without disturbing the vipers below.
Slowly, almost as if the metal relished ripping open, rivets burst and ricocheted off the walls of the room. Janey slid toward the opening, despite her scrambling to climb the vent. Her feet dangled directly over one of the largest piles of snakes.
Without thinking, Trey lunged forward, catching Janey right as she fell. Her weight dragged him down to his knees, her body blocking his vision. But his ears? His ears weren’t blocked at all. Perhaps that was why he could hear the hissing of the snake so well. The one that sounded like it was right in front of them both.
Trey spoke in what he felt was a remarkably controlled tone of voice. “Please tell me there isn’t a snake reared up, flicking his tongue at me.”
Darc drew in a breath to reply, but Trey rushed in. “Just lie. Just tell me there isn’t one there.”
But really, Trey should have known better. He could see Darc assessing the situation, his phone held high, casting harsh shadows across his face. His partner’s cheekbones turned to razor blades in that light, his mouth a grim slash as he spoke the words that made Trey’s heart sink into his feet.
“I think you have enough time to throw her to me,” his partner stated flatly.
Okay. Okay. He could do this. He hadn’t really believed he was getting out of this alive anyway. Trey nodded once, to let Darc know he understood. He didn’t quite trust his voice right at this moment.
Darc began counting down. “On the count of three. Three…Two…”
Trey tensed every muscle, trying to prepare for the most important throw he had ever made in his life. This was not one he could afford to screw up. Humiliation on the playground was nothing. He held a life in his hands.
The hissing on the other side of Janey intensified.
“Now!” Darc yelled.
Heaving, Trey felt the girl’s body leave his hands and watched as she sailed across the empty space separating her from Darc’s waiting hands. Snakes snapped their fangs, closing on the empty air left in Janey’s wake.