by Billie Jones
“I’m OK. Just a few scratches.” I gaze at her in wonder. Her hair is silky smooth and her big blue eyes are so vivid I feel like taking a swim in them.
“I’ve been so worried about you!” she says, and pulls me close.
“Where’s Jay?” I finally ask.
“He’s outside.”
“What! What about the snake typhoon?”
“Controlled, for now. Jay erected one of those plastic wraps, Under the DomeTM, you can buy from the shopping channel. He got two for the price of one, so he was happy to share. He also got a set of steak knives, but he’s going to sell those online.”
“Wait. Plastic wrap? That’s not going to hold them long.” The panic returns in a queasy lump.
“Yeah, I told him that, but you know Jay, a man who devotes his life to shopping.”
He does? Then I recall, the flat pack furniture obsession, the desperate online auction bidding... The shine’s beginning to wear off Jay in a big way. “Yeah,” I mumble as the building creaks. I look up at the ceiling; it’s bowed and bent and looks as though it’s going to fall any second.
“Kez,” Cindii says, stroking my cheek. “In case we don’t make it through, I want you to know I’m…in love with you…”
Hold the phone! She’s…wait… Timber buckles from the ceiling recess and sparks fly, igniting the wood. My eyes start to sting from the smoke. I need to get us out now.
“Cindii,” I say urgently, pulling her upwards from the floor, “We have to get out of here before the building burns down.”
She shakes the love-struck look off her face. “You’re right! We need to work out how to stop the Under the DomeTM from deflating too!”
My heart races and my mind is fuzzy. The building screeches, dragging me back to the moment.
“Let’s go!” I say, and throw her over my shoulder like some kind of fireman.
Chapter Four
The secret government department collapses in on itself like a house of cards. I turn briefly to watch it, before I pivot and sprint towards the exit. The fire crackles and shrieks as though it’s alive. Throwing open the door with one hand while holding Cindii’s calf with the other, I see my team assembled Under the DomeTM. Well, I see the whites of their eyes. It’s pitch black under the plastic bubble. A huge cluster of taipans are squirming and slithering atop. They knot together to form a massive black-brown, beady-eyed, yellow-bellied screamfest. I’m absolutely sure we’re all going to die.
“How is plastic wrap keeping them out?” I wonder aloud.
Jay pipes up. “It’s industrial strength…” he winks. “And we’ve got an air compressor here, blowing it up against their weight.” He brushes a perfectly manicured hand through his Ken doll hair. He’s not bloody Safari Ken, he’s online shopper Ken.
Gently, I lower Cindii down and give her a tight squeeze. Her breasts rub against mine and, for some unfathomable reason, I picture us kissing. It’s been a helluva a few hours and I can’t think straight. I gaze around the half circle before my eyes alight on a group of shabby-looking, extremely worn-out men. “Guys!” I holler.
Standing in a corner of the dome are the men from the secret government department.
Bluey walks over to me. “I’ve got some bad news.”
“What?” I say, frowning.
“The bloke you call Shadow Guy. He didn’t make it. But don’t be sad. He believes in the afterlife.”
I drop my bottom lip, truly miserable until I realise Shadow Guy is quite likely a vampire, and will come back in the sequel. My heart lifts at the thought.
The officers all lean in for a group hug. Even though they don’t seem to be very well trained, I do have a soft spot for them.
I break away and say, “This is really sweet and everything, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut the hugging short. We’re in a state of emergency here.”
Clapping my hands for attention, I say, “Bluey, you get working on those weather forecasts, see if you can detect a pattern.” He nods and jogs to the corner where a make-shift desk has been erected from old milk crates.
“OK,” I say to Jay and Cindii. “The only way for us to get to safety is to head to a salt-water source. Taipans don’t like salty water, and we can tread…”
Jay interrupts, “Great plan. But how do we know which way to go?”
I look up at the blanket of black above. Will the yellow-bellied snake corpus stop our GPS from receiving a signal? The dome sags under the weight of the taipans and it won’t be long before we suffocate under the plastic. We’re running out of time!
“Bluey, check the satellite navigation, does it work?”
Bluey fiddles with a bunch of buttons and shakes his head sadly. “Nothing.”
We are so close to a solution. Even a salt-water puddle would be enough at this juncture. There’s nothing left to do, except, “Guys, I’m going to give myself to the cause.” The group collectively gasp. “It’s OK,” I say, forcing a smile onto my face. “If I suit up in one of those parachute jumpsuits Jay uses for fieldwork, I can get close enough to a water source and let you know which way to move.”
Jay pipes up, “But how? We won’t be able to see you.”
Bluey points. “With this,” he hands me a didgeridoo. “I dragged it from the building, couldn’t let it burn. We won’t be able to see you, but we’ll hear you.” I nod my thanks.
The pilot ambles over, “Women are actually forbidden to play the didgeridoo.”
Shit, he’s right.
The pilot takes the instrument from my hands. “I’ll go.”
I shake my head vehemently. “But you’ll die!”
“I’m still a little woozy from the injection, I probably won’t feel a thing anyway.”
The group look from me to the pilot. Cindii purses her lips and gives me a small nod.
The dome sags again under the weight of the taipans, so we drop to our knees.
I shrug. “OK.” The wind picks up just as we’re about to lift the flap of the tent and it makes an eerie, ghost-like wooooo. The plastic wrap undulates, the thrashing, squirming snakes seem to change shape often, like a shoal of fish, pointing and darting their slick, slithery bodies like some kind of code.
I gather the pilot in my arms and make a whole bunch of promises I can’t keep. Before I can overthink it, I lift the delicate plastic wrap and push him out, prodding him with the didgeridoo, which he pulls through the gap with him. He doesn’t say a word, just stares into my eyes with a look that makes me sad.
That done, we stand together, hands over our mouths, knowing we’ll never see the pilot again.
The pulsating, haunting echo of the didgeridoo rings out.
Cindii’s eyes go wide with surprise. “But how? He couldn’t have found salt water that fast, surely?”
Chapter Five
“The typhoon has created huge pools of water, which must have merged with the ocean! The ocean is literally everywhere because the typhoon has dragged it in!” I say, realising there were no taipans at foot level when we lifted up the plastic wrap.
Everyone cheers.
I hold up a hand. “Wait, guys, what about the rest of Australia? The entire continent can’t be covered in salt-water! We can’t relax knowing that our mates might be about to die a horrible, painful, writhing, agonising death! Snake bites aren’t fun. Twenty thousand taipans fighting over your prone, slack, half-dead body is a terrible way to go. We need to find out what caused the snake typhoon and how we can stop it. I mean, we can’t live like this forever, can we?”
A hiccupping sob startles me. Jay. “Don’t cry,” I croon. He’s so sensitive. I think back to the manual on disaster aftershocks. I realise that I could easily lose everyone here to momentous bawling. Time to rein them in, and motivate them. “Now, what would cause a typhoon in Australia? And, even more pertinent, why would the typhoon be full of taipans?”
Cindii scratches her chin and puckers her lips. For some reason, a tingle of anticipation crawls up my spine when
I make eye contact with her. I quickly look away. I must focus on the mission.
“The Wifi’s working!” Bluey yells from the corner.
I resist the urge to fist-pump. “Cindii, quick, see what you can find out on the database about snake typhoons and taipans!”
“Yes, boss!”
Above us, the taipans seem to be growing in size, their yellow bellies taking on a neon glow like a warning. Light seems to shine from them, and their hissing and shrieking is growing louder and more urgent. They pummel each other trying to puncture the plastic wrap.
“Is it just me,” I ask, “or do the taipans look like they’re suffering from some kind of radiation?”
Everyone looks up and jointly trembles.
“Hasn’t that storyline been done?” Jay says.
Oh, shit, it does sound strangely familiar. “Yes, and the whole Under the DomeTM thing is ringing a bell.” Bloody hell.
My attention is diverted when I see a tiny gap in the gloom. I slosh closer and see the pilot outside, hacking at the snakes with a set of nunchucks and some ninja stars.
Wait a minute! “How is he alive?” I ask. The snakes are launching themselves at his athletic frame and sticking their fangs into him, but he still walks towards them, seemingly not feeling any pain. Blood oozes from the bites that riddle him, yet he still stands.
“He’s immune to their venom!” I screech. “But how?”
Think.
Think.
The vials!
“Where’s the medi-bag? I must have injected him with anti-venom!”
Everyone scrambles through the torrent of water to look for the bag.
“Hang on,” I say, my shoulders slumping as I lift a seaweed-covered hand from the water. It’s rising fast, and at this rate we’ll drown. “I injected Shadow Guy too, but he died. It can’t be anti-venom.”
I feel cold breath on my neck and shiver. “I’m right here,” an eerie voice says.
I slosh around to see Shadow Guy staring vacantly at me. “You’re alive!”
“D…d…dar…darl.”
Suddenly a plan formulates and my mind spins back into gear like it’s on nitrous oxide. The anti-venom, it does work!
“Let’s all inject ourselves!” We might just make it out alive! Save the world, almost, check!
“Found something!” Cindii splashes over, holding my laptop and I hope to God she doesn’t drop it in the water. I have a lot of ebooks saved on it.
“From what I can see here,” she says, pointing to Wikipedia, “Every two thousand and fourteen years, when the sun hits mercury in retrograde, and the planets align, taipans have the unique ability to fly. It’s allegedly what wiped out dinosaurs…”
Holy fucking shitballs. “How long does this ability last?”
Cindii consults the screen. “I’m not sure, since the Wiki-leaks scandal half the information is missing. Julian Assange would be the best person to ask.”
“No time. OK. We know this isn’t going to last for ever. If we can ride this out, we’ll be OK. We need to contact the department and let them know. Then we all need to plunge a needle into our hearts!”
Jay gasps. “I hate needles.”
Cindii sees me nod and, reading my thoughts using the telepathic powers we seemed to have just gained, she spins Jay towards me as I bring the hand hidden behind my back forward and stab the needle into his heart before he can react. He lets out a high-pitched squeal as the anti-venom rockets through his arteries. Bubbles burst out of his mouth and foam coats his chin.
“Right, he’s done, push him out!” Cindii says.
I inject the rest of the group before saving the last vial for me. My hands shake as I aim as close to my heart as I can. One…two…three… BAM! Pain rushes through me. I try to focus, but my mind is a foggy, fluffy white cloud of numbness. The urge to close my eyes and sleep is so powerful. I must… get… out…
My tongue feels swollen and I can barely move, but I can’t let my team fight this battle without their leader. With one last expulsion of energy, I lift the flap of the Under the DomeTM and fall out. Instantly, I’m covered with taipans who lash me with their tails, thrashing forward to bite me. “Arghhhhh!” It fucking hurts, like the time I got my tongue pierced, but much, much worse.
After each bite, they recoil and flop, slack and useless, limp like Jay after a shopping expedition, I would imagine. I prise them from my body as they try to suffocate me with their squirming, tough-muscled bodies. They’re so strong, my lungs burn as my arms are pinned, making it impossible to wrench them off. I’m going to die. My heartbeat slows, and my vision blurs from lack of oxygen. So much for the anti-venom. Doesn’t help when they strangle you.
A ffft ffft ffft sound registers in my semi-conscious state. Snakes drop in bundles at my feet. Glorious air fills my lungs and I rub my swollen neck. I look at the lifeless taipans, their scaly bodies are perforated with silver ninja stars.
“You owe me.”
The pilot!
“I managed to find a shed full of weapons.” He hands me a samurai sword, and continues to spin the multitude of little silver stars he has in a bum bag at the beasts. Before we know it, Bluey is standing beside us, brandishing a can of fly spray and a lighter. “Die, you scum-sucking whores!” his chipmunk voice rings out as he lets rip with the fly spray, sending a wave of blue-white flames into the throng of serpents. Their skins burn, popping and shrinking like pork crackling. The sound of thousands of butchered taipans, burning, gushing, bleeding and shrivelling to death makes my skin crawl, until I realise my skin is crawling. With taipans.
Holy fucking shitballs. They’re going to strangle me again. A big, fat, radiant yellow-bellied taipan points his tongue at me like he’s lining me up for dinner. His huge raindrop-shaped head stands up, his beady killer eyes shining as he bares his eggshell-coloured fangs at me. He lunges forward just as Cindii slashes the malevolent look off his face with one quick strike of a sword.
“Thank you!” She’s saved my life, again.
A thought stumps me. I try to speak while holding a taipan at bay, which squirms and rollicks in my grasp. “Guys, where is the water? I thought we were safe here because they don’t like swimming? There was more water Under the DomeTM.”
The group halts their frantic slaying.
Ding! My brain unscrambles. “We’re on top of Uluru!”
The big red rock!
Cindii pulls the iPad from her pants. “Wait! Uluru is a sacred spot! There was something about appealing to retrograde while earthing on a sacred spot that stops the taipans being able to create a typhoon!”
“What’s earthing?” It doesn’t sound very scientific.
She consults the iPad. “We all need to take our shoes off and feel the earth beneath our feet. Really feel it, like down to the marrow of your bones.”
We hunch down to take our shoes off, then stand staring at one another. “Hold up,” I say. “What exactly is retrograde?”
“It’s that song, by that guy. If we all sing it, maybe it’ll stop the typhoon!” Jay roars.
Bluey cries out, “But I don’t know the words!”
The pilot rushes over. “I’ll Google them!”
Thank God for technology.
“While you do that, let’s have one last go at them, hey? For old times’ sake?” Cindii says, with a B-list movie star look in her eye.
“OK,” we all chorus. No one pulls out a chainsaw and for that I am grateful. It’s just not believable.
The taipans group together like Mel Gibson’s army in Braveheart. We nod at them, respectful that they’re giving it a red-hot go. Head back to the bush where you belong, you yellow-bellied pussyfoots!” I bellow.
With bloodlust in my eyes, I signal to my team to let the bloodshed begin, again.
Ninja stars flick through the air making a ffft, ffft, ffft every time they hit their mark. I hack and swipe with my razor-edged sword, sending snake guts flying into the air. Bluey uses his flame-thrower and wipes out hund
reds at a time. Jay uses recycled shopping bags, lulling them in with the promise of a bargain, then does the bags up and watches them thrash about, airless and unhappy. They’ll never trust a Red Spot sale again. Cindii throws rocket fuel over them, which makes them shrink into nothingness like the Wicked Witch of the West, screaming for mercy.
Spent, I hold a hand up. “It’s time, guys. You got the song?” I say to the pilot.
He fiddles with the screen and says, “Yep.”
We huddle close and I try my hardest to ignore the smell of body odour coming from the group. Don’t these guys know how to shower?
The pilot hits play and, karaoke-like, we sing ‘Retrograde’ as loud as we can. Like some kind of magic, the wind slows down and the waves shrink back. The grey sky becomes blue again.
The water that covered the land dries instantly, leaving red, dehydrated dirt.
The fucking taipans blink twice and retreat. They scatter like marbles, travelling so quickly they look like dots on the horizon.
The song ends. “Play it again,” I say. I’m heaving, my body pumping with triumph.
My team-mates’ eyes crinkle with smiles and we sing again, just to be sure. Plus, I really like the song; the lyrics fit perfectly into our movie monster disaster. Cindii snuggles up to me and I kiss the top of her head without thinking. It just feels right. Maybe that’s our telepathy coming into play, again. Who knows, but I’m finding it hard to wipe the huge cheesy grin that’s plastered across my face. And all I can focus on is her shimmery plump lips. I’m so close that I can smell her strawberry lip gloss. I have an overwhelming urge to kiss her properly and taste the fruity goodness that coats her mouth. I guess disaster makes you realise what’s important in life. And, right now, all I want to do is be with Cindii. We whisper sweet promises to each other, and I restrain myself from jumping up and down on account of how happy she’s made me.
