Judas and the Vampires (18 page)

“Help me stand Ali up, so I can carry him over my shoulder!” I urged Amy. “We’ve got to move now!”

“Move
where?”
Her voice was shrill, and such distress could easily become another hindrance to Alistair’s rescue. “There’s nowhere to go!”

“There
is
someplace to go! Just trust me and follow my lead, damn it!!”

Suddenly, the serpent hissed loudly from behind the waterfall, as if it sensed my intent to shoo it out of its lair. It slithered closer to us, and I saw the brighter light again in the bottom right corner of the small cove it guarded.

“We need to reach the passageway behind the waterfall,” I said, assuming Amy could see it. The serpent eyed me intently. Perhaps it sought a weakness to exploit in the same manner as I did. “If you follow my directions precisely, we might still get out of here in time to save Ali!”

I’m not sure that she fully comprehended what I said. Her gaze was locked onto the hissing critter as it opened its mouth filled with needle-like sharp teeth and two prominent fangs. It wasn’t until I nudged her shoulder that she even looked over at me, nervously. Meanwhile, Alistair’s pained groans grew more plaintive. Motivated by that, she lifted his left shoulder while I raised his right side. It was almost impossible to ignore the much smaller worms wiggling across the ledge surface beneath our feet. I prayed she didn’t become squeamish, and lose her grip on him when the little critters exploded into slimy green goo with each labored footstep toward the waterfall.

The serpent prepared for our advance, its tail producing a barbed tip that throbbed like an angry rattle.

“Keep moving, Amy, no matter what happens!”

She simply nodded. Her wide-eyed expression announced she was too damned scared to say anything. The ornery critter slithered back and forth while it awaited our arrival. Its orange eyes were ignited, as if the sucker received a sudden boost from the very fires of Hell.

I often experience some apprehension when encountering a new menace. Despite my unique healing abilities, facing unknown sensations brought on by a novel combination of bite and venom injection is something I dread. If this serpent, which I could tell was more of a hefty snake than a lizard, hit an artery with a powerful injection of neurotoxins, I might black out. I’d lose the race to save my son.

A delicate operation at best, it was made worse by the pile of human remains I had just noticed near one corner of the bastard’s lair. At least the pile was on the opposite side of where I wanted Amy to focus. It looked like a handful of skulls and femurs along with a broken ribcage.

Little shithead likes the way we taste...this keeps getting better and better!

I made a sudden lunge at the waterfall to draw the menace out, loosening my grip on Alistair long enough to throw a misdirection juke at the serpent, snake, or whatever term would correctly describe this glowing monster. As I hoped, it attacked empty air where my right leg had been for an instant. I grabbed its throat with my left hand, just below the fangs and high enough to keep it from jabbing them into my wrist and arm.

“Oh my God—be careful William!!!”
Amy cried out, as she struggled to keep my son from falling to the ground while I sought to subdue the angered reptile.

Another loud splash drew her frightened eyes back to the pool behind us. The eel had leapt onto the ledge, its tail thrashing in the water behind it. Obviously, it intended to come after us. My own distraction from this allowed the slippery critter I battled to slip slightly from my grasp. I fell down on top of it, praying mightily that it couldn’t somehow bite me or pierce my midsection with its barbed tail.

The eel’s eerie screeches were followed by another bigger splash. Along with Amy’s panicked shriek, I knew it had managed to climb onto the ledge and heard its initial movements. I had only a few seconds to resolve my current battle before these two predators created a formidable team.

I relied solely on my instincts. I secured my grip on the ornery bastard beneath me and tossed him at the eel. I didn’t bother to see if I scored a direct hit or not, since all hoped for was a slight head start. No doubt the malicious pair would pursue us together—as ridiculous as that mental image seemed to me.

Adding to our woes, the tunnel’s opening was much smaller than I had assumed
originally. We’d be damned lucky if any
one
of us squeezed through without a hitch—much less all three.

“Come on, Amy!! You need to go first!”

I grabbed her arm to pull her up to the passageway’s entrance. Her initial response was surprise at being jerked so harshly by me. But, the hostile noises behind us got her moving...at least for a moment. Then she noticed a myriad of the
shimmering
critters covering the walls just inside the narrow tunnel.

“I-I can’t go in there!” She anxiously looked back and forth from the passageway to the serpent-snake thing and eel creeping toward us. “I can’t go—”

“Yes you can, and you
must!
Otherwise, we
all
will die here!!”

Out of the corner of my eye, the predatory pair had slithered to within ten feet of us. Still, she didn’t move.

“You’ve got to go first, so I can push Ali through the passageway behind you. Then, I’ll bring up the rear,” I told her, lowering my voice and changing my tone to that of a trusted confidante. “But, if you don’t get your gorgeous ass in gear, little lady, I’m going to drag him through there myself! You can fend for yourself against our latest friends any way you can. So, which do you prefer?”

She didn’t answer, and remained frozen by fear. I couldn’t wait any longer. My son was on the verge of losing consciousness, and I grabbed his shirt by the neck as I prepared to drag him through the tunnel.

“No, wait—
wait!
William, I’ll do it!” She stopped me, scooting as close as she could while the snakelike monster weaved its way toward her...less than three feet away. “I’ll go first. Just get out of the way!”

Like it was my fault that her luscious legs were about to make a meal for one of our two pursuers! Before I could send a snide remark back at her, she grabbed my son’s shirt collar from me and crawled into the tunnel. I moved quickly to lift Alistair’s near-limp body and pushed him into the passageway, praying to God Almighty for forgiveness and protection if this turned out
not
to be such a brilliant idea. I heard Amy gag and wretch just beyond my view, cursing about the stench when the glowworms exploded against her hands, body, and head. But at least she kept moving.

I glanced behind me as I dropped to my knees, noticing that the eel had caught up with the other critter. They both bore down on me and soon were within inches of my left foot. I shoved Alistair’s feet forcefully enough to send him several feet into the glowing shaft. The gruesome bug popping continued. But, at least the glowing slime served as a lubricant to help his body move through the tight squeeze.

That left me just a second or two to get my ass in there with them. I scampered into the tunnel, pulling up my legs in a fetal position to try and avoid the pair of angry snapping jaws barely missing my feet. I prepared for the excruciating discomfort of having my toes or an entire foot severed. But, miraculously, the pair remained outside the tunnel’s mouth, writhing in anger as if forbidden to follow us inside. I took full advantage of their limited vigil, pushing on my son’s ass and urging Amy to keep moving.

“Can you see anything yet?” I called to her, once we got far enough from the tunnel’s entrance to be reasonably safe from an unprotected attack from the rear.

“Oh, my God...Oh My GOD!!”
she cried out. Unlike earlier, her shrill voice bore the distinct sound of awe and wonder.

“What?!
What do you see up there?” I tried focusing all of my senses on her and what she was experiencing.

“Oh, my God...William,
hurry!
I just reached the end of the tunnel, and this is
so
incredible! You’ll never believe what I’m looking at unless you see it with your own eyes!!”

What in the hell?

Suddenly, I heard slithering noises behind me...coming up fast! I had seriously underestimated the ill-will I had caused the two apparent guardians of the pond and this passageway. If anything, the smeared guts from the destroyed glowworms would speed their arrival.

Thankfully, it sounded as if Amy had crawled out of the tunnel. With one last powerful shove, Alistair soon joined her. I uttered another quick prayer for his safety since I realized he fell out of the damned tunnel with no way to protect himself. I started to call out to them, but my words dissolved before they left my throat. It started with an extremely bright light entering the tunnel from where Amy and Alistair had exited. That alone would’ve supported Amy’s excited reaction moments earlier. But, what I saw next with my own eyes far exceeded that wonder.

As my slime covered head and torso peered out through the tunnel’s end, I beheld a world that until that moment I believed was pure fantasy. It didn’t seem real...how could it
be
real?

What sat before us—what
surrounded
us—was a garden of sorts. A magical garden....

The
Garden of Eden.

Chapter 18

I fell out of the tunnel, not caring where I landed. The ground was laden with soft grass. Grass, I should say, that gathered onto itself where I needed a cushion and then evened out again after I landed safely upon it. Amy and Alistair were lying on the grass nearby. Amy sat up with a look of complete contentment upon her face while Alistair slept soundly next to her. His breathing steady, it gave me hope that I had a little more time to find a way to care for his injuries. More importantly, there were no more slithering noises coming from inside the tunnel. We were no longer in immediate danger.

Where we landed, was at the edge of an incredibly beautiful meadow. I imagine some folks out there are ready for me to say that we stepped out of one reality and entered into a spectacular realm that stretched for miles and miles. Like ‘Harry Potter’, or something Aesop and the Brothers Grimm might concoct.

Not so. Yes it was truly amazing, and altogether unlike anything I’d ever seen. But the entire area extended no more than half a mile in any direction. We were in another room that belonged to the cave system...albeit an enormous room wider than several football fields. That’s considering the width of the room. The height was a whole other beast to consider. I couldn’t see the room’s ceiling, and where the apex should be was a swirling combination of orange, blue and purple lights beyond wispy white clouds. It was as if a beautiful sunrise, or sunset, from the world outside had been sucked into the very top of the mountain we were presently within.

And how do I know it was a mountain? Well, that was more from what I learned later on, though it made some logical sense at that moment. The inward tapering walls of this enormous cave room bore the same groove striations and slick surfaces that I’ve often seen when spelunking through the hundreds of mountain cave systems I’ve visited during my long stay on earth. The same trickling water that dripped down the walls was present, as well. Only in this strange environment the walls were covered with bright green moss and algae.

A gentle stream coursed through the meadow of unique green and purple grasses, colorful flowers, and other plant life. Everything was in some ways similar to, and yet, different from anything I’d ever seen before.

In addition to the soft lights above that reminded me of an evening and morning sky, an extremely bright ball of light emanated from near the very center of the cave. Like a miniature sun or virgin star, it swirled slowly above the cave floor a quarter of a mile ahead of us. The terrain sloped down to this light from where we were, giving us all a clear view of everything else that had elicited Amy’s amazed and reverent response earlier.

Two tall waterfalls emptied into a large pond to the right of where this light hovered, and what looked like a small forest of tall, thick green trees formed an arc on the other side of the light, to our left. It looked as if we might encounter some of this wooded area if we were to wade through the meadow toward the light. In front of the light sat an incredible garden filled with exotic-looking flowers, the likes of which I’d never seen anywhere on earth before. The flowers’ rich cinnamon and honeysuckle-like scents filled the warm air around us...air that was clean, fresh and entirely free of pollutants. Like one might find on an uninhabited tropical island.

As I mentioned, there were many things in this place that had compatible counterparts in the ‘outside’ world. Not just plants and such. I had no desire to find out what kind of fish and other creatures flourished in the stream and pond ahead of us, but flocks of colorful birds that ranged from finch cousins to those as big as condors flew all around us. Their songs were amazingly beautiful. Deer-like animals were also plentiful, with the key differences from their cousins thriving above ground being their three-toed feet instead of hooves, and their eyes. Their eyes’ iridescence was more vivid than the creatures we had just suffered through.