by Sechin Tower
“If they were so advanced,” Dean asked, trying to maintain his skeptical tone. “Then where did they go? How come they aren’t running the world today and making us scrub their floors? If they had all this technological stuff so long ago, they could have dominated the earth.”
“And maybe they did,” Angela turned her back to them as she inspected the pillars. “Maybe they wiped themselves out with a war or an ecological disaster, or maybe they just couldn’t survive the changes in their climate. Perhaps they’re still around, hiding deep below Antarctica or sneaking around the Amazon jungle, spying on the upstart human species and waiting to make their big come-back. The possibilities are thrilling. We’ve learned a few things from their carvings, but this is only the third cavern we’ve uncovered. There is much, much more to be learned.”
“Wait, hold it right there,” Victor said. “The third cavern? There’s the reactor room and now this place. Did you miscount?”
“The other one was discovered by the Professor years ago,” Angela said. As she spoke, she slid her backpack off her shoulders and, her back still turned to them, unzipped a pocket.
“Wait a minute,” Dean said with a sinking feeling. “You never told us how you know all this.”
Angela turned to show what she had drawn from the pocket of her backpack. It was a bulky pistol with six shiny barrels. Dean had never seen a gun like that before, but it looked dangerous.
“I warned you two not to come here with me,” she said, flicking the wrist that held the gun to indicate they should step away from the elevator. “Still, it was nice to have you around to do all the heavy lifting.”
Dean took a step towards her, but she was ten paces away and she had a steady hand.
“I’ve got this rail gun set to super-sonic,” she said forcefully. “That means you’ll be dead before you hear the shot. Now, move back. Both of you.”
Her eyes burned, daring him to take another step. There was nothing Dean could do except put up his hands and allow Angela to march the two of them to the very back of the cavern.
“I really am grateful to you both,” she said as they marched. “You helped me figure out how to work that egg much more quickly than I could have on my own. It made my trip back to Topsy worthwhile.”
They descended the sloped floor and she indicated that they continue up into the temple area while she waited below.
“So now you’re going to kill us down here?” Dean asked, his hands still raised.
“You’re adorably stupid, but you’ve got a smokin’ hot body,” she said flippantly as she backed away, still covering them with the rail gun. “Vickey’s pretty cute, too, plus he’s as good as a doctor. I’m sure I can find a use for both of you.”
“I’ll never work for you,” Victor called.
“You might change your mind after tomorrow,” she said as she continued to back away. “You’re just not going to be able to make an informed decision until after you see what happens on doomsday. I’ll come back for you in a day or two. If you still don’t want to join us, I’ll be happy to kill you then. For now, though, I need you boys to stay right here.”
Angela aimed her rail gun at the wall. The multiple barrels whirred to life and spat out a short machinegun burst of metal slugs that carved blue streaks through the blackness. Inside the enclosed space, the noise was deafening, but she didn’t need to keep it up long. The first of the magnetic slugs thudded harmlessly into the stone wall, but the rest broke into the thin layer of granite, creating an opening through which oozed blazing magma. The hole widened until a section of the wall broke away, allowing a steady flow of the burning red rock to push its way out and spread along the lowered floor at the base of the temple. The temperature of the cavern immediately increased another ten degrees.
The entire cavern was now bathed in red light bright enough for Dean to see Angela’s devilish smile before she turned and strode away.
Chapter 36 ~ Soap
“Nikki, please,” I begged as the handcuffs dug into my wrist. It was now early evening and she had kept me locked up there all day, sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to keep my knees away from the puddle of slime leaking out of the big, quivering white membrane sack next to me. Whatever was inside that sack, it had been moving around more and more, thrashing and jabbing at its enclosure. I was beginning to feel like a sacrificial virgin set out to feed the hungry dragon.
I also didn’t know why Nikki hadn’t turned me over to the Blitzkriegers, who were tearing up the park looking for me. My best guess was that she wanted to give me directly to the Professor to get a bigger reward. In the meantime, all I could do was try to annoy Nikki with my pleading until she let me go, but so far her ability to ignore me exceeded my ability to whine. She had spent her day working at the table to which I was handcuffed, swirling a green, bubbling liquid around in her flasks and filtering it through some kind of fermentation apparatus. Once or twice she filled a syringe with the liquid and then injected it into one of the veins that protruded from the membrane sack. The thing inside got really twitchy for a while after she made those injections.
“At least tell me what’s going on,” I begged. “You got so mad at me when I accidentally gave the Topsy key frequency to the Professor. It only seems fair that you at least tell me when you started betraying us.”
She sighed as she worked and spoke without looking at me. “He contacted me after his Blitzkriegers tried to raid us.” It wasn’t much, but it was the most she had said to me since I crawled out of the airshaft that morning.
“Then why are you working for him?” I asked, trying to keep up the conversation’s momentum. “A lot of people are going to die because of this scheme, you know.”
“My conscience is clear,” she said. From where I was on the floor, I had to strain my neck to see her face. She frowned as she skimmed some white gunk out of the green goo.
“People in hospitals are going to die,” I said. “Just like what happened to Professor McKenzie. Also, anyone flying in an airplane is going to die. Lots of animals also need the Earth’s magnetic grid to travel and live, like sparrows and pigeons and hammer-head sharks. Haven’t you thought about the sharks?”
“Shut up!” she slammed the flask down onto the table so that some of the goo slopped out onto her gloved fingers and the pink sleeve of her lab coat. She took a deep breath and then wiped it away. Her voice sounded strained when she added: “I said my conscience is clear.”
I was quiet for a little bit because I didn’t know what to say. This time, Nikki was the one to speak first.
“You say it isn’t fair to ruin the world,” she said. “But some of us think it’s already ruined. Until somebody makes an invention that will fill the bellies of hungry children and guarantee all of them a decent education, this here world is going to stay ruined.” Suddenly, she laughed and was back to the smiling Nikki I had met on the first day of school. “Soap, darlin’, this world is a vale of tears, and the people in it are nothin’ but greedy and hurtful. They need to know you can hurt them, too, or they’ll never leave you alone. Did I tell you about the girl in junior high who called me fat?”
I shook my head.
“I put a pressurized dye capsule in her locker,” she said. “When she opened it—boom! Her face was as blue as a Smurf for a week. No more name-callin’ from her.”
She made a low ringing sound by tapping a steel cylinder she carried in her outer pocket. I gathered that this was one of her dye capsules and that the story was her way of telling me to be quiet before she painted me some color I didn’t want to be.
If Nikki had more to add, she didn’t have a chance because there was a loud knock on the door. She looked like she was thinking of not answering, but the knock came again, more insistent this time.
“Remember what I told you,” Nikki said as she went to answer the door. “I might be workin’ towards a degree in chemistry, but I’m majorin’ in revenge.”
Opening the door a crack, she peered throu
gh to speak to whoever was out there. Judging from the shadows cast by the hallway lights, there were several people at the door. The smell of grease and body odor coming from that direction told me it was the Blitzkriegers.
“What do you want?” Nikki demanded.
“We still ain’t found her yet,” said a raspy voice that I recognized as belonging to Shirtless.
“Not my problem,” Nikki said.
“Was you talkin’ to someone in here?”
Evidently, Nikki didn’t answer fast enough, because Shirtless shoved his way into the room, leading the way with that big swastika tattoo on his chest. He was followed by the pot-bellied, weasel-faced guy and two more of their friends. When they saw me, their faces lit up.
“She been in here this whole damn time?” Shirtless demanded. “We been scourin’ the park all day.” He reached out and grabbed Nikki’s wrist. “You been holding out on us, you dirty skank?”
Nikki stepped back and yanked her arm free of his grasp. “What’d you call me?” she demanded. Her voice was hard, her eyes spitting venom.
“You heard me,” he turned away from her and gestured to his friends. “Grab the kid and let’s go have our fun before we slit her throat.”
The weasel-faced guy moved to my side, but then he saw the handcuffs.
“Can’t,” he lifted my wrist to show the rest of them. “Need a key.”
Nikki rushed to my side. “Don’t touch her,” she said.
“The P’fessor said we can have her.”
“Don’t—touch—her!” Nikki repeated, stronger this time.
“Or what?” Shirtless stepped closer to her. “How you gonna stop us?”
I didn’t see Nikki’s hand move, but suddenly she held a box cutter, and she jabbed its razor tip into the skin of the membrane sack. She didn’t quite press hard enough to cut it open, but it made a visible dimple in the stretchy thing.
The Blitzkriegers froze in place, their eyes locked onto that knife. They looked more scared than if she had the knife to their own throats. Thirty seconds of tense silence pressed down on us, but neither side backed down.
“Yer bluffing,” Shirtless finally said.
“Try me,” Nikki answered, and she pressed the knife just a bit deeper, until the thing inside sloshed around as if it was already looking for the opening.
I looked from Nikki to Shirtless and back again, not even daring to breathe. I wanted to do or say something, but I couldn’t see how to get out of the situation.
Outside the door, the elevator dinged. Footsteps approached. Certain it would be more Blitzkriegers come to tip the scales in favor of murder, terror crushed down on me so hard that I thought my heart might stop. I had been clinging to the hope that Nikki could save me, but all she had was one tiny knife pointed at a strange science experiment. More Blitzkriegers meant I had no chance.
To my amazement, in strode a tall, blond woman with a black jacket, a blood-red shirt, and some kind of shining chrome device strapped to her back. Her hair was frizzed out and wind-blown, and she had a pair of aviator goggles pushed up on her forehead.
“I just flew in from Ellensville, and boy is my flight-pack tired!” she announced the moment she walked into the room. “And I found more teslanium than I had imagined possible. Isn’t everyone happy for me?”
I heard Nikki whisper the name “Angela,” but nobody else said anything. The blond woman strode right past the bikers as if nothing was going on, opened the fermentation vat on the workbench, and leaned her head inside.
“Look like we’re almost done with this batch,” she said, her eyes wild and bright. “Our baby’s about to be born. Did the other lizard come back yet? I let him out of his cage, but I guess he’s not that smart. Oh, and who do we have here?” She faked a surprise expression as if she’d just noticed me for the first time. “Why, you must be Sophia. I hear you’re smart—maybe even smarter than me. But I guarantee you’re not as much fun.”
She strode back over towards the door, where she opened a closet, slid the silver rocket-thing off her back and set it on the floor, and hung up her leather jacket and goggles. Then she took down a long, black garment, and slid it over her shoulders.
“Black… black lab coat,” I said in shock. Even sitting in a den of murderers, I was gripped by pure envy. “I didn’t know they came in black.”
“They don’t,” she twirled like a fashion model to show it off. It looked like it was made of fire-resistant fabric and had a long slit up the back of the hem to allow full mobility.
“You have to earn a black coat,” she said proudly as she hunkered down in front of me and brushed my hair behind my ears with her fingers. “Oh, I was just like you when I started off. I was sweet and innocent with a white coat and a white soul. Angelic Angela. But I got better. I ate the fruit of knowledge and now look at how much more I’ve become,” she turned and pointed at her back where the radiation hazard symbol had been emblazoned her back in hornet-yellow. Above the symbol were the words FALLEN ANGELA.
“But don’t worry,” she said, kneeling down again and patting my cheek. “Your innocence won’t burden you much longer, I can tell. Soon you’ll have earned a black coat just like mine.”
“Hey, ‘scuze me,” Shirtless rasped. “We still got us a problem here. The P’fessor wants that little girl taken care of.”
Angela turned on him, her face suddenly angry as she jabbed her fingers into his chest. He flinched back from her and I realized that these big, mean bikers were actually scared of her.
“Now, what would the Professor want with this darling little girl?”
“She’s got information on a gizmo-thing,” he said uncertainly. “She’s got a, uh, a USD.”
“It’s called a ‘USB drive,’ you moron. Well, let’s just have a look, shall we?”
Angela grabbed my free arm and yanked me forward. She raised her other hand high over her head and I thought she was going to spank me, but she brought her hand down softly onto the seat of my pants. Before I knew what she was doing, she slipped her fingers into my back pocket and removed my Hello Kitty USB drive.
“Darn,” she said. “I was hoping for more probing, but I got it on my first guess.”
She dropped the drive onto the floor and crushed it with the heel of her black running shoe. When she removed her foot, there was nothing left of my evidence but a tiny mound of plastic rubble.
Shirtless blinked at the broken drive. “But,” he said. “But the P’fessor said—”
Quick as a snake, Angela put her index finger across his lips to silence him. “We’re going to be forging a new society tomorrow,” she said. “So let me ask you this: do you know the difference between people and dogs?”
Shirtless looked at her in confusion, and so did the other Blitzkriegers. I could see why they were afraid of her: she was as unpredictable as a wildfire.
“I said: do you know the difference between people and dogs?” she pressed him back. “No? Well, the answer is simple. Dogs are afraid of the vacuum cleaner.”
Everyone in the room (including me) looked bewildered.
“Okay, so you guys don’t get it,” she sighed. “Let me see if I can illustrate my point.”
She held out her hand to Nikki, indicating that she wanted the box knife. Reluctantly, Nikki handed it over.
“You see, a vacuum cleaner is a tool,” Angela said, tossing the box knife up and down in her hand. “People—human beings—they understand what a tool is and they know how to use it. They don’t have to be afraid of the vacuum cleaner because they have the power of knowledge on their side. Understand? Really? Well, then, let’s run a little test, shall we?”
Angela turned slowly towards the membrane sack, keeping her eyes on us as she pressed the tip of the knife into the sack. The thing inside thrashed once, and then it held very, very still. A single drop of green fluid slipped out past the box cutter and trickled down the veined sack towards the floor.
“The Professor himself found the formula for
making these little beasties,” Angela said. “It took him years, but he finally deciphered the instructions from the walls of that cavern deep under Argentina. And now, tonight, it is my pleasure to introduce to you… Progenitor Replication 2.0!”
With those words, she slit the membrane clear down to the floor. It made a ripping sound like scissors tearing through newspaper, and it opened a gaping hole through which spilled a tidal wave of green fluid and clear, gelatinous gunk that smelled like the worst wet dog imaginable. I scrambled back under the table, but I couldn’t avoid getting it all over my pants as the pool spread out everywhere. In the midst of this cascade, a huge, gray, slimy body tumbled out onto the floor. Like with Choop, flexible barbs ran down this creature’s back, but this creature was much brawnier and had longer, sharper teeth. Its sledgehammer fists ended in bony spikes, its legs were bigger around than my torso, and its fat dinosaur tail smacked into the wall when it uncurled.
The monster rose up out of the muck of its afterbirth, its legs a little wobbly at first. It stabilized itself, flicked its tongue twice, and then it pulled in a deep breath before letting out a deafening roar. That roar was incredible. It was overwhelming. I bent down to cover my ears, but the noise still shook my guts and made me feel like my head was about to explode. It sounded like lighting, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes all rolled into one and played back through a megaphone.
The Blitzkriegers were out the door and down the hall before the monster finished its roar. It probably would have chased them if Angela hadn’t spoken up.
“See?” she called after them. “This thing is a big vacuum cleaner and you’re as scared as little puppies!”
I’m not sure Angela’s vacuum cleaner analogy was very accurate, because I’ve never seen a Hoover try to backhand someone’s head off. That’s what this creature did, though, and that spike on the end of its fist ripped the tiles off the wall right where Angela had been standing a second before.
