Keepers of the Lost City

by Preston William Child

  “I’m here!” her voice suddenly came back, but it sounded subdued. “I-I…oh, Christ, please…she’s got me!” Nina stammered through a choking throat. The two men abandoned the threatening piece of art that overlooked the Lost City below.

  “Who has you?” Purdue bellowed, lunging forward into the pitch-blackness with Sam’s lens right next to him. “Keep filming, Sam.”

  “Don’t you think helping you save Nina is a bit more important than filming?” Sam retorted. Deadly serious, Purdue’s head swung to face Sam. His eyes glimmered with controlled lunacy. “What am I paying you for, Sam? Keep filming. This is what you and I almost died for in Spain.”

  “Unbe-fucking-lievable,” Sam cursed as he pointed the camera to where a violent scuffle directed him. “Go get her, Purdue. I’m right behind you.”

  They could hear Nina’s throat rattle as she gasped for air. Over the wet floor, something enormous was shifting. Sam whispered to Purdue, “It has been a while since I have been this petrified.”

  “I am with you on that one,” Purdue replied softly, his flaring light exploring the marked walls that glinted in the illumination. “Whatever it is, it must weigh a ton. Do you hear that?”

  “Aye,” Sam panted, setting his camera down on the floor to aim down the corridor. He pulled his gun and proceeded with Purdue. He did not care of he got the shot or not. He cared about rescuing Nina.

  “Holy shit!” Purdue bellowed at the sight of the thing they were pursuing. “Oh my God, Sam, are you getting this?”

  Before them reared the rubbery muscle of a giant snake, coiled around the small frame of Nina Gould and choking the life from her. Unable to make a sound, she was trying to reach the Taser-like device Purdue had given her, but the snake wrapped around her arm to keep it away from her body.

  From behind Purdue, he heard Sam say, “Cover your ears!” As he did so, a thunderous shot tore through the tunnel, drowning Nina’s scream. Sam’s bullets ripped through the snake’s mouth and eyes, forcing it to drop Nina. Struggling for air, she stumbled toward Purdue, who kept the place lit up for Sam’s assault. The snake had vanished into the darkness after Sam stopped shooting, but as Nina reached Purdue’s outstretched hand, the inevitable happened.

  Appearing from the shadows, the massive grey serpent darted out, seizing Nina’s shoulder between its jaws. She let out a screeching wail of pain and terror as the thing planted its fangs into her flesh and injected her with venom.

  “Oh my God!” Sally Cockran exclaimed from the crevice in which she had been cowering in since she came after Nina. “Ken left one of them in here?”

  Nina fell to her knees and Sam quickly scooped her up in his arms. “S-s-am,” Nina stuttered. “Sally is going to kill us. Sally is…tell Purdue. She is bad news.”

  “Sally?” Sam asked, unable to believe it. He heard a loud altercation just ahead, and another deafening gunshot rang. “Purdue?” Sam shouted. “Jesus, Purdue, Nina has been bitten!”

  Nothing came from the darkness apart from Purdue’s groans. Shuffling ensued between where Sam was cradling a dying Nina and the vicinity of the snake. “Sally?” Sam called, still not too clear if Nina really meant what she said.

  “Yes, dear Sam,” Sally answered reluctantly, sounding terrified.

  “Keep still, alright?” he advised. “That thing seems to react to movement.”

  “Sam. S-am,” Purdue whimpered.

  “Aye?” Sam answered his friend. “Where is the light, Purdue?”

  Again, Sam heard a shuffling in the hollow belly of the cavernous maze. Thinking it was the serpent, he pulled himself into a fold of rock to keep Nina out of harm’s way.

  “Sa—,” Purdue cried one more time before another shot rang out, silencing him.

  “Purdue? Did you get him?” Sam screamed.

  Nina whispered in his ear, “I think that was Sally…shooting Purdue. Not Purdue shooting the snake. Jesus, Sam, I am in agony.”

  “Hold on, love,” Sam consoled her, trying to sniff quietly to prevent her from hearing him weep. Purdue was silent, and, as long as Sam kept quiet, Sally would not locate him and Nina. Unfortunately, their stealth was costing both Sam’s friends their lives, each of their breaths like another grain of sand, falling through an hourglass.

  35 Feasting & Fire

  Louisa’s yelps disappeared deeper into the mouth of the mine as the Harding brothers, Olden, and Sgt. Anaru rushed after her. Olden found her baton in the fork of the tunnel and picked it up.

  “Take the right hole, Eddie…and you, Gary!” Sgt. Anaru delegated. “I’ll take the left with Cecil! Let’s go before she is dead!”

  Both parties could hear the conservationist squealing, begging and crying. For all their calls and shouts, Louisa did not answer. From her bag, she kept dropping glass sample flasks to alert the men, but she could not make a sound. With two strong flashlights, Eddie Olden and Gary Harding followed the sound of broken glass. As they rounded the second protrusion of rock, they ran right into the slimy scoots of a giant anaconda that screamed like a banshee.

  “Crikey Moses! That is the screaming we heard?” Olden gasped.

  Louisa was crawling away behind it; having lured the men in to distract the snake from her while, she collected one of its offspring as a specimen. Eddie Olden did not stand a chance against the lightning fast lunge of the snake, which coiled itself around his body in seconds. Gary screamed in horror as he watched the Australian’s bones snap and spear through his skin, killing him instantly. Using the feeding time of the snake, Gary ran screaming to the entrance of the cave, diving out over the ledge and rolling down the cold, black mud.

  Gunshots clapped incessantly from up in the mine as Gary dared look back up. He could see Herman and Sully run in with the bag they brought with them. “Don’t go in there!” he shouted, but they ignored him. Gary cried like a child, relishing the cold rain and the fresh air. “I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I am not like Bill Best, but I will not let that happen to me. I will not!”

  Moments later, Sgt. Anaru, Cecil, and the elders came racing out, falling and rolling over one another down the hillside. “Heads down! Cover your ears!” the elders bellowed before the mountain erupted in a splitting explosion that sent dangerous debris and rock flying. The car alarms wailed sharply under the rumble of thunder and the aftermath of the blast. Muffled cries of pain came from the sand and weeds as the men were pelted with matter, but nobody suffered serious injuries.

  Gradually they sat up, looking at the destruction around them. The mouth of the mine had collapsed, leaving its support poles like skew teeth in the rubble. “My God,” Gary sobbed. “Now we’ll never find Dad.”

  His brother leaned in and embraced him. “We both know he would not have survived those screaming monsters, Gary,” Cecil admitted. “I think we did our duty, but I don’t think either of us ever really believed that Dad is alive.”

  “Louisa?” Sgt. Anaru asked no one in particular.

  “She was trying to get a baby snake to take back to Oz, the crazy bitch,” Gary hissed. “And used her own colleague as a diversion.”

  Cecil shook his head. “That is insane, to let those mutants loose on the Outback, or anywhere else.”

  “Well, that problem is taken care of, right?” Sully wheezed, slapping his wet hat on his hand.

  “In essence, we killed a woman,” Cecil tried to shed some morality, but his words were not supported by any of the men present.

  “In essence, she killed Eddie Olden,” Sgt. Anaru reevaluated the statement. “God knows how many people would have died if Herman and Sully did not put a lid on this mine for good.”

  A moment of silence ad relief fell over the group, bringing immense and well-deserved respite. Herman looked around suddenly, and asked, “Wonder if they got to Dr. Gould in time.”

  Sam took Nina’s advice and decided that Sally was bad news. Time was running out and he had no light. As quietly as he could, he propped Nina’s quivering body against the inside of the niche in
the wall. Sam dared not flick a lighter or light his way, as it would surely betray his location to all the females trying to kill him down here.

  Slowly, his hands searched the soaking wet tunnel floor for his camera. Through his desperate fumbling, the tough journalist cried softly. If he was unsuccessful, he would lose both his best friends from this accursed episode in their careers. In his mind he condemned his involvement in the Spanish diving expedition that uncovered all this hell.

  Sam jolted in fright as his fingers found something in the dark, but he realized that it was the soft material of his camera microphone. Lying on his belly in the shallow mud and water, Sam closed his eyes to better explore his camera’s buttons with his fingertips, looking for the infrared function. Listening intently for any movement, Sam flicked on his infrared screen to better navigate their way around deadly obstacles, but what he saw as he flicked the switch, was a sight he would never get over.

  Purdue was unconscious from his gunshot wound, slowly being swallowed by the grotesque scaled monster. “Oh, Jesus! No! Oh my God! No!” Sam screamed inadvertently. Sally began to shoot blindly in his direction, but he did not care. He clenched the compact camera between his jaw and his shoulder and used his right hand to draw his weapon. Even if he could just interrupt the serpent’s feast, he would be helping. Sam tried to aim through his tears, but in the end, he just aimed lower than the bumps Purdue’s legs made in the snake’s skin, and fired.

  In his viewfinder he could see clumps of flesh explode where the bullets hit, tearing through the perfect pattern of scales.

  “Don’t you dare shoot at Ken’s creations, you son of a bitch!” Sally screeched in the dark, shooting at Sam, but he kept shooting off round after round, taking care not to hit Purdue. He had had enough of the Black Sun’s disciples. He was fed-up with Williams and his crooked sense of science. “We will never be as brilliant as he was!” she growled in the darkness.

  Sam swung around, his night vision perfectly revealing Sally’s frame.

  “Oh, don’t fret, Sally. You’ll be as dead as he is,” Sam shouted. With one well-placed bullet through her eye, he ended her. Using the running camera, he navigated his way to Purdue. The gunshots did nothing to the armor of the snake’s scales, so Sam had to find a way to cut Purdue out.

  “Sam!” Purdue suddenly hollered in horror. “Sam, get me out!”

  “Listen, you have to relax!” Sam told him. “The more you wiggle, the sooner she will crush you. I have a plan. Just try to be quiet. Just Zen, alright?”

  “Zen? Jesus, Sam!” Purdue shrieked.

  “Anacondas’ teeth point backwards toward their throats, Purdue,” Sam explained hastily. “I cannot pull you out, because its teeth are designed to act like hooks to avoid you from falling out.”

  Sam ran back through the slippery blood and water to where Nina was shaking uncontrollably. “Will be just a second, love,” he panted heavily as he retrieved some of the old barbwire. With the snake busy, it did not care for Sam’s movement. The journalist tied the barbwire around a protruding rock formation on the other side of the snake and jumped over the huge body to the other side. Like a two man crosscut saw, Sam used the wire to cut through the gigantic serpent’s flesh. It worked. The thing began to screech and keen as Sam’s force and movement split its body open. “Hang on, Purdue!” he shouted, feeling victorious while sobbing like a little boy. Sam’s roughshod efforts played havoc on his already calloused hands and his own skin suffered the cuts of the wire, but if he did not finish the task he would lose the only people still precious to him.

  “Nina!” he screamed. “Nina! Are you still with me?”

  He heard nothing from her, exacerbating his despair tenfold, but it only spurred Sam on to use his loss as rage against the oversized demoness from the Lost City. Evading the lashes of the serpent’s tail thrashing about, Sam severed the spine. It was dead, but its kept writhing and screaming in a defiant reflex, until its contractions finally decreased.

  “Hold on, Nina!” Sam kept roaring, hoping that Nina was still alive to hear him.

  “Sam, listen,” Purdue said. “It is going to take me a while to wedge free my hands, and Nina does not have much time. “Reach into my pocket here,” he motioned with his head, “there is a platinum vial in there containing antivenin. Take the small med kit. It has hypodermics for each of us, just in case. Hurry up!”

  Sam winced as he got hold of the canteen. “How did you get this?”

  Purdue smiled a little. “Heike gave us her heart. That is why she was on the Nazi ship, you see? When I melted the gold down, the platinum flask survived the heat. It contains a compound that neutralizes PLA2 and its neurotoxic potency.”

  Sam could not believe it. “This…this is why you are the boss!” Sam shouted cheerfully. He leaned forward and planted a smack of a kiss on Purdue’s brow before racing to give Nina the antidote, hoping that she was still alive. Her heartbeat was faint, but he managed to plunge the needle into her vein and feel her weak pulse grow a little stronger.

  “You’ll be better in no time, love,” Sam whispered and kissed Nina’s temple.

  36 Kaitiaki

  A cracking sound echoed through the infinite lanes of the corpse-laden city, frightening Sam and Purdue into silence. They froze, suspended in terror, waiting.

  “Anybody down here still alive?” Sully shouted, followed by the voices of the search party clumping along behind him.

  “Sully! Help us! Oh, thank God you are here!” Purdue hollered.

  The men of the Harding search party came to their aid, but not before they cracked some of Sgt. Anaru’s flares.

  “Good God, look at this place!” Cecil gasped.

  The others were in similar awe at the ancient necropolis of lost miners, travelers and soldiers, all fallen victim to the primitive maze built by some unknown civilization before the natives began to pass down their legends.

  “Nobody must ever find this place,” Gary declared. “No ways, mate. No ways.”

  “It is too precious to destroy,” Herman said, “but the young man is right. Nobody can come down here. Louisa Palumbo found offspring up at the pit. Who knows how many have been born down here since Williams brought them here and experimented on them?”

  “Too right,” Sgt. Anaru agreed. “And that atrocity must be washed off.” He pointed at the Dire Serpent. “It is Nazi shit desecrating this sacred place just for their sick means to subdue the world.”

  “Then we’ll do that ourselves, all of us here,” Cecil Harding suggested. “And none of us present ever tell a soul about this place. Let it stay a legend, hey?”

  “I’ll buy it from you,” the injured and exhausted Purdue offered.

  “We’ll talk,” Gary chuckled with his brother at the billionaire’s resilience.

  “You’re actually going to buy this place?” Sam reprimanded Purdue quietly. “You are incorrigible!”

  Purdue smiled. “I have no use for uranium, and it is better away from the world, Sam. I am purchasing Nekenhalle and donating it to Herman, for the Maori Council to use the land. Know what I am saying?”

  “Ah! I get it,” Sam replied. “I like that idea.”

  “Sam, did you get all the footage of the Dire Serpent? Even if they wash it off, I would like to have that footage, please,” Purdue beseeched.

  “Of course, old boy,” Sam winked. “It is, after all, what you pay me for.”

  Purdue tried to laugh, but his wounds prevented him from doing it properly. Knowing that his beloved Nina was going to be alright was a great solace, but what cheered him the most was what he saw on the wall in the Lost City. The Dire Serpent was not a picture, but an intricate sequence of numbers and symbols, put together by some German physics giant to look like a snake. It was a cleverly hidden equation he could not wait to scrutinize as soon as he arrived back home.

  David Purdue’s genius once more urged him to know more. Without realizing it, he had played right into the hand of the late Mrs. Gloria Williams, who
se ashes were smoldering in the newly gutted debris of Grange House.

  END