Shrill Carnival celebrants raced across the trembling walkway, screaming. Ancient bricks flaked away and fell pattering into the water or, with louder clangs, on the submarine's hull.
Mina gazed up at the cracking arched bridge overhead. "We're too late. What can we do now?" She didn't sound panicked; she was simply getting down to business to solve the problem.
Everyone looked at Quatermain.
The old adventurer dashed to a corner where the canal widened and he could look toward the middle of the densely packed city. Staring forward, he saw the wave of destruction spreading spontaneously from the epicenter of the piazza. In crumbling slow motion, tall, ornate buildings tottered and sank, block by block. One structure toppled into another, and another, as the chain reaction proceeded inexorably toward a prominent avenue of buildings.
Behind them, a ratcheting sound came from the Nautilus, gears and chains clattering, metal segments extending and clicking into place. Nemo's marvelous vessel was full of surprises: A separate crows nest elevated, raising on hydraulics to lift a grizzled Ishmael above the connecting bridge and the tiled rooftops of the nearby villas so that he could see what was happening.
"I wish I knew where Mr. Skinner disappeared to," Sawyer grumbled, thinking of all the help they could get.
The first mate's face reflected his certainty of impending doom even before he shouted down to them. "The buildings are falling like dominos, Cap'n! Bang, bang, bang! The Calle del Luna is next!"
Keeping his balance on the crumbling towpath, Quatermain spun, eyes wide with an idea. "Nemo! What sort of weapons does that ship of yours carry? You must remove a domino!"
The dark captains brow furrowed as his mind raced through calculations and possibilities. He instantly reached the same conclusion. "Yes! Get ahead of the collapse and destroy the next building." He looked at the structures, calculating trajectories. His thin, dark lips narrowed in a grim smile. "My Nautilus can do it. I could launch a rocket."
"We'll interrupt the chain of destruction," Sawyer said. "That's it!" With that, the young American agent bolted back down the towpath, sprinted up the gangplank, and ducked into the ship's hold.
Quatermain looked after him, wondering if Sawyer had an actual plan, or if he was just moving frenetically in order to be doing something.
Though rubble and broken glass continued to rain down all around him, Dorian Gray looked unimpressed. "Ridiculous!" He frowned at a smear of brick dust on his fine jacket; a piece of rubble fell into the canal nearby and splashed water on his shoe.
Jekyll panicked. "What're you talking about, Nemo? Quatermain, are you mad? Grays right. It's too late to concoct a Plan B!" The shuddering buildings, the continued echoes of ever-increasing destruction, closed in on him. He looked like a cornered rabbit, trying to find a place to dash for shelter. But there was no bolt hole in sight. "We should get back aboard the Nautilus and escape. Its our only chance."
"And leave all these people?" Mina asked with a hint of scorn in her voice. "Rather an ineffective first mission for us, if we allow all of Venice to be destroyed."
"And allow a world-scale war to be triggered," Nemo said. "I refuse to simply surrender and flee." He glared at Jekyll, who cringed, more afraid of the dark captain than of the explosions and collapsing buildings.
The conversation had proceeded rapid-fire, in only a few seconds, but now amid all the destruction, Dorian Gray actually rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, M would be soooo disappointed in us. But what can we hope to achieve? This is more than any of us could imagine."
"Then it's time for swift action," Quatermain said. "Not more conversation. I'm not a bloody politician."
"And I'm an immortal, not a gazelle," Gray said. He coolly regarded the shaking city as if it held only minimal interest for him. "How can we outrun this devastation?"
At that moment, the door of the Nautilus hold slammed open with a metal bang. Prefaced by the roar of an engine, Nemo's amazing six-wheeled car burst out and hurded down the gangplank, pulled into a screeching skid, and fishtailed to a perfect halt on the widening walkway that led up into the Venetian streets.
Tom Sawyer poked his head out, grinning from behind the controls. "Care for a spin?"
TWENTY FIVE
Venice
Mina leaped into the back of the vehicle. "I'd love it!"
Quatermain jumped in the front, taking the seat next to Sawyer. He looked at the young American with an appreciative smile. "Good idea. Wish I'd thought of it."
"I was watching you all in the car back at the London museum," Sawyer said, revving the engine. "Made up my mind back then that I wanted to take 'er for a drive."
As Dorian Gray climbed in beside Mina, she primly shifted her skirts away from him. Quatermain shouted at the cringing, uncertain doctor still on the towpath. "Jekyll, hurry man! Get in!" But the man froze, as if every alternative were equally miserable.
Captain Nemo stepped up to the drivers compartment and spoke to Quatermain as Tom Sawyer impatiently shifted the controls, anxious to be off. "I will need specific coordinates to launch my rocket. Our targeting must be absolutely precise, or we will cause even more damage than we hope to prevent."
"Can you track this thing?" said Quatermain, rapping on the side of the unusual car.
"Of course. I planned for all contingencies when I drew up my designs."
Quatermain pulled his flare gun. "Then launch when you see the flare! We'll lead you right to the bull's-eye."
With each passing minute, more Venetian buildings groaned and collapsed, continuing the devastating ripple of the chain reaction. The captain hurried off to the gangplank into the Nautilus. "Ishmael and I will make the preparations immediately."
Quatermain turned to Sawyer, slapping his palm on the control board. "Full power!"
The young man floored the gas — and the engine prompdy died, causing a moment of stunned shock. From the rear, Gray let out a quiet, disbelieving snort. Sawyer desperately tried to restart the engine, blushing and hiding his sheepish expression. "I, uh, think I killed it."
At the rear of the car, two of Nemo's uniformed crewmen tried to push the car forward, hoping the engine would turn over. Sawyer struggled with the controls, and the car's flooded engine coughed but refused to catch.
Quatermain realized that the last member of their team had not yet climbed into the car. "Jekyll! What are you doing? Come on!"
But the mousy doctor stood immobile, terrified of setting free his brutish alter ego. "I–I…"
With a new, violent blast, another building collapsed, this one nearer. Overhead, the stone bridge spanning the canal wrenched and cracked, but still clung together. Debris fell all around, pelting the hull of the Nautilus.
"We'll need Hyde!" Quatermain insisted. "Look around you."
Finally, the cars engine roared to life again, and Sawyer beamed in triumph, ready to go. But Jekyll remained helplessly frozen on the towpath. "No! Hyde will never use me again. I swear—"
"But without him, my dear doctor, what use are you?" Gray said with a taunting lilt in his voice. "Do you plan to apply bandages and iodine to our scrapes once we're all finished?"
"Just go," Quatermain said in disgust to Sawyer. "A damned inconvenient time for the man to have second thoughts about his purpose here."
The young American put Nemo's car into gear and they raced away, leaving Henry Jekyll alone with his fear, and Skinner — literally — nowhere in sight…
The car raced along up the narrow street, inches from the crumbling walls on one side and the canal edge on the other. Its six wheels held their traction, in spite of the rubble that continued to fall onto the roadway.
"All right!" Sawyer said, then whooped as they careened over a particularly large bump. "So… where am I going?"
Quatermain pulled out the map of Venice that Nemo had provided before dispatching the team. He squinted in the dim light as the car lurched and bounced, then he drew out his eyeglasses again. After adjusting them, the old adventurer could finally read the fine l
ines and letters on the map. "Right ahead, then a left turn."
"No, go right after the canal forks." Mina leaned forward from the back.
"— a left turn that will lead us into the Calle del Luna—" Quatermain continued, ignoring her.
"It's not the best way," Mina insisted. "I've spent some time in this city. That counts for more than any map."
"Good thing we're all on the same team," Sawyer muttered, then decided to listen to Mina after all. He hauled the car hard right at the fork, missing the center divider by a hairbreadth.
"Caution, boy!" Quatermain yelled.
Suddenly, bullets spanged off the car's hood, leaving silver starbursts of impact. Sawyer wrestled with the steering, screeched the car to a halt.
On the villa roof's edge overhead, a sniper sprinted away, grasping a long rifle. The silhouettes of other snipers rose up, materializing from behind nearby statues in the streets. They fired a hailstorm of bullets at the car.
Looking uncharacteristically furious, Gray kicked open the door to the car and leaped out. "Damn Skinner! He must've told them we were coming." Heroically, he pulled his cane-sword, slashing the thin silver blade in a menacing arc, and launched himself into the fray as the air filled with projectiles. "Just go!"
"Dorian, it's no use —" Mina shouted.
"Keep driving, lad!" Quatermain said.
Sawyer gunned the engine and swerved under the partial cover of a narrow colonnade, smashed through a column, bounced off a wall, and kept going. He let out another whoop, as if he was actually enjoying this.
Glancing back through the rear car window, Mina caught a last fleeting image of Dorian Gray savagely fighting the snipers man-to-man. His cane-sword was already slick and red with blood.
Quatermain tried to aim the modified Winchester that Sawyer had given him, but the passing stone columns broke his line of sight. "I can't get a clear shot."
Sawyer, wild with the moment, pulled two pistols of his own. "Then take the wheel!" He stood up, leaned out the door, and fired wildly as the unguided vehicle lurched along.
Quatermain grabbed the wheel, but with far less than his usual confidence. "Sit down, you buffoon! I don't know how to drive this thing." The car swerved, barely under control. Up ahead, though the end of the colonnade was approaching too swiftly, Sawyer hadn't slowed at all.
"Save your bullets, both of you — these men are mine!" Mina said with vengeance in her voice.
As Nemo's fabulous car emerged from the colonnade, bouncing and scraping, Mina sprang from the racing vehicle with superhuman agility. She flew briefly through the air and landed on a nearby wall, where she clung like a bat.
Setting his hot pistols beside him, Sawyer sat back down behind the wheel, looking even more enamored with the mysterious pale woman. "Did you see that? Did you see what she did?"
Left behind, Mina scrambled up the wall, finding tiny finger- and toeholds, moving with creepy agility. It was unbelievable.
"Keep your eyes on the bloody road," Quatermain said. "We've got our own part to do."
TWENTY SIX
Venice
Inside the Nautilus's brightly lit rocket room, huge machinery moved a rocket from its pallet to a firing tube. Diligent crewmen did their work without panic, accustomed to drills and having had plenty of experience in previous adventures.
Nemo barked orders at Ishmael. "Tune the tracer to the car's frequency. The rocket must be ready to fire as soon as we see their flare."
The first mate activated the tracer unit on the rocket rooms wall, adjusting it until a sequence of lights shone green. The tracing device began to plot the car's position as an ink trail on a cylindrical map roll. "There he is, Cap'n."
The fresh line zigzagged and jittered, showing Tom Sawyers weaving path through the streets of Venice.
Impacts rang on the hull in an echoing sequence of booms, as if an army was trying to batter its way into the floating Nautilus. Two of Nemo's crewmen dashed out, ready to fight against the Fantom's minions — but there was no enemy other than the surrounding structures, breaking apart and raining chunks of masonry onto the vessel. The crewmen ducked, shielding their heads.
More debris pelted the exterior of the submarine vessel. The polished gold trim and white ceramic plates were scraped, scuffed, stained. The arched bridge overhead groaned and splintered, ready to fall entirely at any moment.
"The buildings are coming down! We must away!" shouted a terrified crewman.
Nemo scrambled into the crows nest, rising high to where he could view the city through a complicated binocular instrument. He watched as the sinking of Venice progressed. "No, we will stay, and we will do our job."
Yet he still saw no sign of Quatermain's flare.
A ceiling had collapsed, and fresh rubble blocked the door of the secret conference room. Three of the guards had already been killed, and the world leaders clung together like frightened children beneath the heavy table.
When the floor cracked and greenish-brown water began oozing up from between the tiles, they realized they were trapped.
"The Building! She is sinking!" the Italian said.
Leaving their empty bottles of wine on the floor, the representatives scrambled out and sloshed through the deepening pools toward the exit. The German climbed onto the heavy table and stood there like the commander of a navy ship.
"We can't get out." The British ambassador stood with water rising past his ankles. "Bloody hell."
The bearlike Russian joined the German on the table. Since it was the only dry and sturdy place, the other representatives joined them. "We are lucky this table is well built and strong, like Mother Russia!"
The wood groaned in protest and wobbled as the last of the world leaders pulled themselves onto it.
While the water deepened on the floor, empty wine bottles floated like defective glass fishing boats; they slowly filled, then sank with a gurgle.
"Perhaps this would be a good time to resolve our differences," the Spanish ambassador suggested.
Leaving the colonnade and the tangled canals behind, the six-wheeled car screeched onto a wide street.
"There, ahead," Quatermain said, gesturing out his side of the car. "It's a straight shot from here."
On villa rooftops on both sides of the cobblestoned street, a swarm of the Fantom's snipers rose ominously, took their positions, readied their deadly rifles.
"Straight shot for them, maybe," Sawyer said, "a gauntlet for us."
But the snipers weren't the only figures visible. A liquid shadow, Mina Harker raced along in eerie silence above their heads, finding impossible perches, clinging to the walls like a nimble spider as she moved.
Quatermain pointed, nodding with unexpected admiration. "Not at all. The vampire has us covered."
Sawyer set his jaw, grasped the controls, then roared forward into the deadly targeting zone. Nemos amazing car entered the gauntlet just as Mina attacked the snipers.
She took them completely by surprise, a blurry wraith of dark, jittery motion. Gunshots rang out, most of them fired in desperation and terror. The vampire woman pounced from man to man along the roofs edge, slashing and ripping. One moment she was air-borne, the next skittering to another victim. Her claws and teeth flashed in the moonlight and the growing fires of explosions and destruction. For all her beauty and grace, she no longer looked remotely human.
At breakneck speed, Sawyer lurched the car along the exposed street, picking up speed past the deadly snipers. The vehicle would have been a clear target for a rain of gunfire — if one set of the Fantom's killers hadn't been so suddenly preoccupied with their own survival.
But the snipers on the opposite side of the street took aim and opened fire on the racing car, shattering cobblestones, puncturing the metal sidewalk and roof.
From the villas high rooftop, Mina lifted her delicate chin, opened her bloodied mouth, and keened a bone-chilling note. Her piercing cry shot through the night sky, audible even above the loud explosions and roars
of collapsing buildings.
From the darkness, a shadowy swarm answered her summons.
A huge flock of black-winged bats swooped through the night like a cloud of angry hornets. In a squeaking storm, hundreds and hundreds of bats descended in a flurry to engulf the snipers on the opposite roofline.
Mina continued the slaughter on her side of the street, while her winged pets savaged the overconfident snipers on the other side. It all happened so shockingly fast that the Fantom's men were not even aware of their danger until each screamed and wheeled around in turn, their throats torn open, eyes slashed, faces cut.
Three frantic men screamed and flailed, trying to drive away the flood of ravenous bats. They stumbled and fell from their high perches to strike the street far below with a wet, cracking sound…
Holding on for dear life in the shuddering car, Quatermain peered through the bullet-pocked front windscreen to a wide canal at his right — and was astonished to spy the Fantom himself.
Helmeted henchmen were escorting the masked man toward a creaking dock. An armored gunboat floated in the canal beneath the walkway. The Fantom turned his silver-covered face to take in a last glance of the fires and continuing destruction he had brought about, then with a swirl of his black cape, he stepped onto the pier.
The old adventurer meaningfully placed his flare gun on the dashboard. "Sawyer, remember the flare! You know when to launch it." He snapped open the door of the racing vehicle. "I'm counting on you."
"Wha—?" the young agent said, taking his eyes from the obstacle course he was driving.
"I cant protect you this time, boy. I'm off." Quatermain clenched his jaw and braced himself. "This enemy's mine."
Then he was out of the car, taking the landing with a roll, while Sawyer careened onward at full speed. Before he could feel the pain of bruises and torn skin, Quatermain climbed to his feet and set off at a run toward the canal and the Fantom's gunboat.
Sawyer cursed and looked ahead. In just a matter of moments, Dorian Gray, Mina Harker, and now Allan Quatermain had all deserted him. running off to their own adventures. He glanced at the thick-barreled flare gun. "Heck, I wasn't even supposed to be part of this group."
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Page 12
