Chupacabra

by Roland Smith

  Odd. Why doesn’t it go all the way around to the bedrooms on the other side?

  She reversed course, walking back past her bedroom and rounding two more turns, where she found a ladder built into the wall, leading to the first floor. She climbed down and found a secret door that opened into the library. She looked through the peephole and didn’t see anyone wandering around. A little farther on she found a door to the outside. This door she did crack open. It led to the swimming pool behind the mansion, and beyond it was the helipad, which was empty. Noah’s helicopter was kept at a nearby private airport, with pilots standing by 24/7 to whisk him away at a moment’s notice.

  Grace was tempted to slip outside but decided to finish searching the passage first. She found another secret door in a bathroom near the kitchen and yet another leading outside, hidden inside a closet near the front door. Then she ran into the same dead end as she had above. She was about to turn around when she heard a humming noise. She had heard it before in bed at night and assumed it was the furnace or air-conditioning. But here it was louder … a lot louder. She put her hands on the wall in front of her and felt it vibrating. Overhead was a large vent. She looked up at it just in time to see a shadow pass by on the other side, going down.

  • • •

  There were only two buttons on the elevator. up and DOWN. Noah Blackwood pushed the DOWN button. The car dropped a hundred feet beneath the Ark. The doors slid open onto Level Four. Butch was waiting for him in an electric cart.

  “Well?” Noah asked, climbing into the cart.

  Butch shook his head. “Nothing. I was just about to check in with Paul.”

  “Let’s go,” Noah said.

  Butch put the electric cart into gear and headed down the circular corridor. There were several rooms, but only three of them were occupied. They passed the taxidermy workshop where Noah’s mounts were lovingly crafted by Henrico.

  “How’s Mitch Merton doing?” Noah asked.

  “Mitch the Snitch?”

  Noah nodded.

  “According to Henrico, not too well,” Butch said. “He’s found him wandering around the corridor trying to escape.”

  “Fruitless,” Noah said.

  “We know that, but Mitch hasn’t figured it out yet. Henrico’s about ready to stuff him.”

  Noah smiled. “He’ll adjust. Henrico was the same when he got here twenty years ago. Eventually, he gave up and got to work because there was absolutely nothing else for him to do.”

  “Kind of like Paul Ivy,” Butch said.

  “Paul is totally different,” Noah said. “He never wanted to leave. He was a wanted man when he first came down here, but the statute of limitations expired long ago on that charge, yet he stayed.”

  “Probably because he can’t fit through the door anymore,” Butch said.

  Noah nodded. “I am a little worried about his health. But if something happens to him, we always have Mitch. He might like staring at the monitors better than stuffing animals.”

  “I doubt it,” Butch said.

  “You’re probably right,” Noah agreed. “I have something else in mind for our friend Mitch, something that should keep him under control. I was talking to Strand about it just this afternoon.”

  “What is it?” Butch asked.

  “Never mind,” Noah said. “We have other things to take care of first.”

  Butch stopped outside Paul Ivy’s domain, pulled his key card out of his coat pocket, and swiped through the lock. The door hissed open. Paul was scanning the monitors as he ate a hamburger. There were four more hamburgers lined up on his desk. Noah wondered how many he had already eaten. At the end of the day, the concession staff sent the leftover food down a dumbwaiter, thinking it was going off-grounds to Noah’s homeless shelter.

  Paul glanced at them when they walked in, then refocused on the monitors. “It’s like a graveyard out there,” he said, unwrapping another burger. “I told you we should have invested in thermal imaging cameras. A mouse wouldn’t get past us. If your intruder stays out of the light, we won’t see him at all. And the fog’s making it worse.”

  Noah ignored the complaint. “What about Luther?”

  Paul pointed at a black screen. “He came to a few minutes ago and it sounded like he puked. Then the lights came on for about five minutes. He stumbled around, then it looked like the lights were bothering him and he turned them off again. I haven’t heard anything since. I figure maybe he passed out again. What did you give him?”

  “Concession food,” Butch said.

  “Very funny,” Paul said. “You should do stand-up.”

  Noah stared at the black screen. He didn’t like it. “Did we get those remote lights installed yet?”

  Paul shook his head. “Nope. We’re still waiting for parts.”

  Noah cursed.

  • • •

  After peering through the peephole into the kitchen to make sure no one was there, Grace popped open the secret door. The kitchen was bright compared to the passage, and it took a second or two for her eyes to adjust.

  She searched the drawers for a screwdriver but didn’t find one. She did find a butter knife, though, that she thought might work.

  In the center of the kitchen was a small table with four chairs. She picked up one, took it back through the secret doorway, and carried it down the passage. She had to stand on her toes with the flashlight in her mouth to reach the vent. The butter knife was not the ideal tool for loosening the screws, but she managed to get them out after several tries. She lowered the vent plate to the ground, then peered through the opening. As she suspected, it was an elevator shaft. High above her was another door that must have opened onto the third floor. Oddly, there didn’t appear to be a stop on the first or second floors.

  She shined her light around the shaft. There was a ladder built into the wall that reached all the way up to the third floor. She pushed herself through the opening and grabbed the nearest rung.

  • • •

  Noah and Butch left Paul to his burgers and monitors and got back into the cart. Noah glanced to his right and smiled as they passed the door marked 400.

  Butch glanced at the door, too. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

  “I suspect he’s a little bored, but he’s used to that. If all goes well tonight, I’ll activate him tomorrow and he’ll have plenty to do over the next few days.”

  Butch stopped the cart outside another elevator. They climbed out and Noah swiped his card through the electronic lock. They stepped in and went up to Level Two.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Butch asked as they walked toward the room where Luther was locked up.

  “How about you opening the door, turning on the light, and putting him into a choke hold until he tells us who he came here with,” Noah answered impatiently.

  “I get that part,” Butch said. “I meant after I get the information out of him.”

  “What do you think we should do with him?” Noah asked.

  “How about pushing him out of an airplane over Lake Télé in the Congo and letting him try to thrash his way out of the jungle like we had to?”

  Noah smiled. “I like how you think, but the Atlantic Ocean somewhere over the Bermuda Triangle would be better.”

  Butch opened the door marked 222. The light was on.

  “I thought Paul said Luther turned off the light,” Butch said.

  “Where is Luther?” Noah asked.

  • • •

  Grace was one kick away from the third floor, but opening elevator doors from the inside while dangling from a ladder was proving impossible. Her legs weren’t long enough to kick the emergency latch open. Frustrated and angry, she climbed back down to the vent and managed to drop her flashlight as she was trying to squeeze back through the opening. She watched it spin like a baton, its light growing smaller by the second, as it fell. At last it landed on what she imagined had to be the top of the elevator, with a bang loud enough to be heard all over the Ark. She he
ld her breath, waiting for the sound of the lower elevator door opening and watching to see if the cables started to move. But everything remained quiet and perfectly normal except for the flashlight beam pointing accusingly up the shaft at her.

  She thought about leaving the flashlight where it lay, then decided she should climb down and retrieve it. If it was caught in a cable or a gear, Noah would investigate and know she had been there.

  The climb down the shaft in the dark was terrifying. She thought that at any moment the motor would fire up and the car would start to rise. She’d be scraped off the wall. If she jumped on top of the car to save herself, Noah would hear her.

  If he didn’t hear me land, he would certainly hear my screams as I was being crushed against the ceiling when the car reached the third floor. Of course, then it wouldn’t matter. I’d be dead.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she reached the top of the car and grabbed the flashlight, which was not anywhere near a cable or a gear. She was about ready to start the long climb back up when she noticed a thin line of light leaking from the top. She knelt down for a closer look. There was a trapdoor built into the elevator’s roof, outlined by the fluorescent light of the car beneath it.

  Why climb when I can ride? All I have to do is jump down inside and push the up button.

  But there were risks. The elevator could be under camera surveillance, of course. And how long would Noah be gone? What if he came back while she was on the third floor? He’d certainly notice the delay if the car wasn’t waiting for him on whatever level this was. Which was the other strange thing about the shaft. There were only two elevator openings: one on the third floor, and one where the car had stopped.

  She opened the trapdoor. The floor was at least a ten-foot drop below. If she decided to lower herself down, she’d have no choice but to use the elevator to get back up. She wasn’t tall enough to pull herself back through the trapdoor.

  But if I ever want to see what’s inside Noah’s third -floor “facade” …

  She dropped her pack through the opening, then followed it into the waiting elevator.

  Butch had torn open every cabinet door in Lab 222. Luther was not there.

  “Are you sure this is the right room?” Noah asked.

  Butch pointed to the puddle on the floor. “Unless somebody else came in here and puked, yeah.”

  Noah walked over to the keypad next to the door. He hit a series of numbers that only he knew and looked at the readout. It told him exactly when and how many times the door had been opened in the past month. It had been opened three times: when Butch walked in carrying Luther slung over his shoulder; fourteen seconds later, when Butch left without Luther slung over his shoulder; and a few minutes earlier, when they walked in expecting to find Luther.

  Noah looked around the room. He had designed and built thousands of animal exhibits. The laboratory was not an exhibit, but it was a cage of sorts. The human occupants didn’t know it, but he controlled everything inside of it, including the humans to a large extent. One thing he had learned is that you design an exhibit as best as you can, but when you put the animal inside, it tells you what you did wrong.

  “Sometimes it takes years,” he said aloud.

  “What?” Butch asked.

  Noah pointed to the surveillance camera. The cable had been pulled out. He then pointed at the air duct. The cover was loose.

  “Luther didn’t turn the light off,” Noah said. “He disabled the camera.”

  There were sneaker tracks on the counter. The Ark was honeycombed with air ducts. Luther Smyth had access to every room in the complex, and there were no cameras where he was crawling.

  • • •

  Marty showed Dylan the kidnapping video on the Gizmo.

  “This is serious,” Dylan said.

  “You think?”

  They were still standing next to the Dumpster, trying to figure out what they should do.

  “Does that dragonspy thing see at night?” Dylan asked.

  “Not as well as it does during the day, and the fog is not its friend, but yeah, it’s pretty good in the dark. It helped me get to your Dumpster hideout.”

  “Then you should launch it and see what kind of security they have at night.”

  “I didn’t see anybody on my way here.”

  “You could have missed them. It wouldn’t hurt to double check. We’re no good to Luther if someone sticks a needle in our arms, too.”

  Staying still was not Marty’s best skill. He wanted to get underground and find Luther. But Dylan had a good point. Running around and risking a run-in with one of Noah Blackwood’s goons didn’t make sense.

  He relaunched the dragonspy.

  • • •

  The second after Grace pushed the up button inside the elevator, she realized she had made a mistake. The passenger who had last taken the elevator down might not have been Noah Blackwood after all. It could have been Butch, or Yvonne, or someone else. Which meant that Noah Blackwood might be up on the third floor waiting for her. She hit the DOWN button over and over, trying to stop the car, but nothing happened. Her stomach dropped as the elevator continued to rise, until it came to a gentle stop.

  The door slid open. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get back down to the mansion’s second or first floor, but there had to be another way aside from the elevator.

  What if the power went out? What if there was a fire?

  The third floor was nothing like the mansion’s other floors. It actually looked like someone lived there. It drew her in like a magnet. The elevator door slid closed behind her before she could turn around and stop it.

  How many stupid things can I do in a row? I should have jammed it open!

  Every door in the Ark, including the elevator doors, was accessed via a magnetic key card. But not every key card opened every door. Not even Butch’s and Yvonne’s cards opened every door. There had been a couple of times when they had swiped their cards and a door that had previously opened without a problem didn’t anymore. Grace assumed that Noah controlled all of the cards, which was another way of controlling his staff, even those closest to him.

  She swiped her card through the elevator slot and got exactly what she expected. Nothing. The door didn’t move. Unless she found another way down, she would be trapped on the third floor until Noah Blackwood showed up.

  Unless he’s already here.

  Grace held her breath and listened.

  • • •

  Luther was listening, too, because there wasn’t much to see where he was. He felt like a sardine trying to escape from a very long tin can. Butch had taken Luther’s backpack and emptied his pockets, but hadn’t found the cell phone in his sock. There was no signal, but at least it worked reasonably well as a flashlight as he pulled himself forward one foot at a time.

  Lucky I’m not claustrophobic.

  He immediately regretted thinking this because instantly he did feel claustrophobic and began to wonder how long it would take them to start smelling his decomposing body after he died in the ductwork. He shook off the thought, pulled himself forward, and hit his head on something sharp.

  “Ouch!”

  He touched his head and felt something warm and wet.

  What’s another nick? I have a thousand of them. But what nicked me?

  He twisted around with his cell phone and found a square box with sharp corners sticking out from the top side of the duct. Video cable wires were running in from one side of the box and coming out the other.

  “Good night, Butch McCall,” Luther whispered, then plucked the cables out one at a time.

  It looked like one gigantic room with a large black cube in the middle. The elevator had opened up into a large office area. Grace decided to forgo the office for now and circle the cube to get her bearings. Her first stop was her grandfather’s sleeping area, and one thing was clear to her. There were no secret passages on the third floor. The perimeter walls had floor-to-ceiling windows covered with hea
vy blackout curtains. No hollow walls. No passages.

  But there has to be another way out of here!

  She looked around the bedroom. There was a king-sized bed, perfectly made, with red silk bedding. Next to it was a simple night table with a lamp made out of a large rhinoceros horn.

  She had watched the Wildlife First episode at the Ark’s Africa exhibit that showed Noah Blackwood tearing across the savannah in pursuit of rhino poachers. Poachers slaughtered the animals, then sawed off their horns and left the carcasses to rot in the hot African sun. The horns were ground up and sold on the black market for so-called medicinal purposes. A single horn could sell for as much as eighty thousand dollars.

  Yet my grandfather uses one to read by.

  The headboard was against the window curtains. When her grandfather woke up in the morning, he would be able to see his reflection in the wall of the black cube. On one side of the bed was a huge freestanding wardrobe and two dressers. She hesitated to open them, then thought about what Marty would do in the same circumstances. She laughed. By now he’d have been through absolutely everything. And it’s not as if Noah hasn’t been invading my privacy and spying on me.

  She opened the wardrobe. A long row of safari shirts and pants in different colors were hanging with the plastic still on them from the dry cleaner’s. She wondered if he sent them out, or if the Ark laundry did dry cleaning as well as the wash. Lined up neatly beneath the clothes were five pairs of perfectly polished shoes, identical — three brown pairs and two black. There was a space in the row of black shoes.

  Which means he’s wearing a black pair tonight.

  She went over to the dresser and started opening drawers, discovering nothing except that Noah liked his socks, T-shirts, and briefs perfectly folded and stacked.

  On the other side of the bed was a bathroom without walls. A glass shower stall, a freestanding vanity with a huge mirror, a clothes hamper, and a heated toilet. Noah Blackwood liked his reflection and his comforts, but Grace already knew that. What the wall-less bathroom told her was that Noah Blackwood never had guests up on the third floor.