Jabberwock Jack (28 page)

I looked around for further danger. The shaman still had not attacked but instead continued chanting. His words had raised in crescendo. Jack had still not attacked. I took this moment to sheathe my katana and retrieve both the pistol and flare. Then I stared at the scene in front of me. I noticed that Jack's swaying matched the cadence of the shaman's chanting. Did he control Jack? Or was he merely placating Jack?

I knew that whichever the possibility, both were problems for our plan. I needed Jack's attention and if he was angry too, that might be a plus. Maybe. The shaman kept stealing glances at me, worried, but he kept his chanting, maybe knowing he couldn't break the spell he had over Jack. But that wasn't enough to deter me. Holding the pistol, I aimed at the shaman. I barely paused before I pulled the trigger and filled the room with noise again. With a croaking gasp the shaman fell. In the silence after the chanting and the gunshot, there was only the fizzing of the flare.

In that silence, Jack's swaying slowed. It took a few seconds, but then his long body was still. The red eye seemed to blink a few times, as if just coming to his senses. Then he looked down at the dead ghouls and at me. I'm not sure if he was angry that they were dead or that I was alive and holding a flare. He threw back his head in a massive roar. The room seemed to shake and fill with the noxious fumes of Jack's breath. I knew at once this was bad, really bad, and I didn't need one of my Bad Feelings to warn me. I turned and ran.

Jack's jaws snapped closed behind me. This put an extra spin in my step. As I passed through the exit onto the landing, I could hear Jack's body sliding across the pitted floor behind me. I had Jack's attention and all the danger that came with it.

I'll admit there was something I didn't account for in my plan. I hadn't remembered that the slime covered tunnel had been so steep. When I had gone up it, I had been in a daze, caring only about my brother's body. I must have had someone help me up the tunnel. Now as I tried to climb up it, the slickness of it and the sharp incline were against me. I couldn't run up it, as I found my boots slipping. I had to grasp the walls to move. And then Jack slid into the tunnel below me.

You know what's worse than being on a slimy slide where you can barely keep your footing, frantic to climb up? When the massive jaws of death open up below you on that slide. A quick look backward showed me that Jack had gotten his head into this tunnel, opening his mouth on the off chance I slipped and fell, giving him an easy meal. What was one saving grace is that this was a narrow tunnel and it seemed Jack hadn't used it before. He was having a tough time getting into it. That didn't mean he was stuck. What it meant was that he was forcing himself, breaking the rock of the tunnel, his white scales making an ugly noise where they scraped against the stone.

I admit that I panicked. I clutched at the walls strongly, willing myself to not trip. Jack's actions were causing bits of the ceiling to fall down, pebbles bouncing around me. The tunnel itself shook.

And then I slipped.

I caught myself. I am so fucking glad I caught myself. My fingernails clawed into the slimy rock near my feet with both hands. The flare slipped from my grasp, bouncing down the tunnel behind me. Jack opened his mouth wider to eat the flare, but it instead hit his snout and stuck. Jack didn't like the flickering light and closed his eye. I liked that this kept the tunnel lit since I had no free hands to light another flare or pull on my goggles.

Jack was stunned by the light that blinded him, but not for long. He soon began thrashing, something that further shook the tunnel. I pushed myself, working my slipping boots on the rock below me, pushing - practically sliding - myself up. And then in one final second, I was up on level ground again. I gave a prayer to what powers that were for this, getting a gasping breath into my lungs as I stood up.

I immediately lit the second flare and turned to see Jack. His thrashing had dislodged the other flare. I was of two minds here. One wanted to laugh at Jack's situation, still trying to push himself through the small tunnel but trapped at least for the moment. The other knew that I needed him to follow me and wondered if Jack needed my help.

I shouldn't have worried. As soon as Jack saw my new flare, he let out a deafening roar, the stench of his breath billowing up the tunnel to reach me even above him. Then his thrashing began with renewed effort. I heard a crunch of rock and then I was in danger again. Jack was suddenly rushing forward up the slimy tunnel.

Turning on my heels, I began my own run. These next tunnels might be damp, but they were solid. I ran past the intersection with the argument and headed down a long tunnel. I was halfway down it when I heard the loud noise of Jack forcing his body through the intersection, breaking off part of the wall. Jack was on a rampage. He wasn't sliding through these tunnels with anything resembling grace, he was trying his damnedest to catch me and he was not about to be deterred by rock or cement.

I burst through an access hatch, the metal door swinging back behind me to slam against its frame. This was the huge chamber that we had camped in. Up above and to my left was the shack on its cement platform. Below me the water was flowing in as strong a current as it had when we camped here. There was a maze of catwalks above me and in front of me. I could get lost if I didn't know which one to take. But we had mapped this out. I knew the way.

I ran up some metal stairs, my boots banging out a frantic rhythm. Two quick turns and I was now on a metal grate bridge that went straight across the room toward another access door on the other side. Jack hadn't entered the chamber yet, so I heard only my feet banging on the metal, the hiss of the flare, the rushing water, and the beat of my pulse. I held the flare high above my head so that I had enough light for the speed I was going. It was like the Olympic torch in a sporting event that involved running away from a sea serpent.

Then there was the next complication: ghouls.

Two ghouls were in front of me on the long bridge. Both held spears. There was some surprise in their faces as they saw me rushing toward them. Why hadn't Jericho taken care of them? I had both the gun and the katana, but did I have time to stop and deal with them?

Behind me, there was a loud bang and a screeching tearing as the metal door I entered through was torn off its hinges and thrown aside as Jack forced himself through the opening. Seeing me now suspended over water, his natural element, Jack let out a piercing screech. His long snake-like form shot forward, rising many feet above the catwalks. I noticed in a quick look over my shoulder that his head had raised twenty or thirty feet above me. Then his head darted downward, straight down at me.

I was just coming to the ghouls when this happened. Their eyes had slipped from me and instead they stared in horror at Jack's massive body coming down at them. I used their confusion to my benefit. Without even pausing I pushed past them, slamming into their shoulders hard. Jack was coming down fast.

Frantically I leaped forward, coming down hard on the catwalk. Behind me, Jack's body collapsed down on the catwalk where I had just been. The metal tore and broke. Jack, one of the ghouls, and half of the catwalk fell into the water with a gigantic splash. The section of the metal bridge I was on was still attached to the fallen piece, so I felt the catwalk below me being pulled downward. I held onto the metal walkway with my fingers in the holes of the grate as it changed from a horizontal surface to a vertical one. Below me I noticed that one of the ghouls had held onto the bridge as well. He had lost his spear. He looked down in fear at the water below me and then up at me and the flare I held above him. He began to furiously climb the bridge toward me.

It was a sound idea. I began pulling myself up the catwalk by the holes in the grate, the lit flare between some of my fingers and the sparks burning my hand. I didn't know what happened to Jack. He had disappeared into the water. But I doubted that was the end of him. While the part of my brain high on fear adrenaline wanted him to have been swept away by the current, the part of my brain which could still think of the plan needed him following me. Preferably once I was no longer hanging off a half broken piece of metal.

I had just reached the broken spot where the bridge resumed its normal horizontal orientation where there was suddenly a disturbance in the water. I was crouched just past the break in the bridge, switching the flare to one hand and shaking the other to relieve some of the pain. The ghoul below me was trying damn hard to reach me, not to attack me but to get away from Jack. I looked past him. I could barely see the water in the flickering flare light, but I heard it. Over the rush of the current I heard the water being splashed. Then the bridge started to shake, moved by the part of it that was underwater. It writhed almost rhythmically and I lost my balance. I slipped on the bridge, falling flat, grabbing at the holes in the grate again. But the flare slipped out of my hand and fell over the edge.

I watched the flare spinning as it fell. It bounced off the ghoul's face almost comically, his head turning and his eyes closing in pain. His grip faltered and then he fell. I watch as the flare spun as it fell and after it went the ghoul. Then out of the dark water erupted a gigantic white mouth, shooting upward. I panicked, pulling myself forward away from the edge of the bridge. That gargantuan maw swallowed the flare and then the ghoul. As Jack's head swept straight up past me, all the light disappeared. I pulled myself to my feet. Before I was fully standing, I ran forward, trying to get my balance amidst forward momentum. I moved through the darkness toward the entrance to the next room. My hands fumbled for my goggles to help me see, but after that experience I was unwilling to stop moving. Jack had missed but he was still after me. It wasn't until I blindly stumbled through the access door into the next tunnel that my goggles were over my eyes.

I was at the home stretch. There was a single tunnel that led to where we had setup the trap. If I could just get through here, then this plan might actually work. This was for the most part an unremarkable tunnel. I just needed to run straight down it, ignoring all the side tunnels. The main concern here was making sure it was clear of other monsters so nothing stopped me like the ghouls almost did.

That had been Jericho's duty. He should have handled those other two ghouls. He also should have been in this tunnel to give me an okay or at least give a cheer as I ran past, but he was missing. At this point I couldn't hear much more than the sound of Jack behind me and the rasp of my own breathing, so if Jericho was fighting or dying on a side tunnel, I had no way of knowing.

Going with the assumption that the tunnel was clear, I kept running. Everything was in night vision green, the dirty tunnel and pipes looking particularly green and strange in that filter. I heard the grinding noise of Jack pulling himself into this tunnel. His bulk filled up almost all of it and I could hear his dirty white scales scraping against the tunnel behind me. I couldn't tell if he was gaining or not. I was just running for my life either way.

When I finally hit the tunnel opening, I crossed the finish line. It was like all my hopes fulfilled. I went from a relatively narrow tunnel to a huge chamber. Lights shined in this room, but it was not yet overpowering to my goggled vision. This was the massive room in which the bridge had fallen and I had dangled from my brother's boot over a yawning abyss. This was always where we had set the trap.

There was a narrow catwalk that circled the room which I could use to get across it. Technically that was the only way to get across the room anymore, but I ignored it. Instead, I ran across the much wider catwalk that went across the center of the room. The broken bridge.

I had barely started across the bridge when Jack barreled through the opening, forcing the entry way larger. I'm not sure if he paused at the opening to survey the room or if his predator instinct simply had him continue pursuing me, his prey. He started pulling his body across the wide bridge. Though Jack was gigantic, in this massive room, even his size was dwarfed. As Jack pulled himself after me, we saw his length tapering to an end, a small tail that just barely came into the room. It would have been sobering if I wasn't barely evading his gargantuan jaws.

On the catwalk, Jack was somehow gaining on me and I was running out of bridge. In another second I was going to be at the broken section. In any other circumstance, this would be a sign of panic. Luckily, that was part of the plan. Reaching the last foot of the bridge, I jumped. Jaws closed shut right behind me as I launched myself into space.

I once again sailed through the void in this room. This time I had jumped rather than fallen. I had leaped with a sprinter's momentum, at this moment moving faster horizontally than vertically. I felt a whooshing weightlessness and some of the lack of orientation I had felt previously. There was a very vague tug on my heart from below and the slight sounds of whispering. Maybe. I could have just been imagining that.

And then my hand came into contact with the rope and I grabbed onto it for dear life. My other hand clawed at it and pulled it close to me. The world snapped back into tight focus as I swung across the space now, right on target for the other side of the bridge. I felt like the baddest badass action hero swinging on a rope. In my mind, I was the most dashing swashbuckler or daring pirate. Maybe some sort of commando. I leapt off the rope onto the other end of the bridge, hitting the metal and stumbling forward. I caught myself in a crouch, then looked up to Meat and Delilah.

"I'm clear, blow it!" I said.

Pulling myself to my feet, I pulled off my goggles and looked over to Meat and Delilah. They were both staring across the chasm at Jack, who was wrapped around the other end of the catwalk, his body coiling in the smaller space, his head raised to look at where I had escaped. Delilah held the detonator which would set off the explosive charges set on the other end of the bridge near where I entered. It would rip apart the bridge and the supports anchoring it to the side of the chamber, causing it and Jack to fall into the dark abyss. The main problem in the plan had been making sure Jack was on the bridge and stayed there. My lure brought him to the center, but we couldn't guarantee he stayed. We needed to blow the charges as quick as possible.