“The beginning of the end,” Wyungare told him.
The second explosion was much louder. An instant later, the shock wave shook the Rox like a bowl of stone Jell-O. The bodysnatcher lost his footing, stumbled to one knee.
The bodysnatcher left the Aborigine there to die in the darkness, and sprinted for the light. He ran up the steps. By the time he reached the surface, he was breathing hard.
The afternoon was dark as midnight. Screams, shouts, and moans of pain echoed through the fog. Acrid smoke burned his eyes. Someone was whistling, a high shrill sound like a teakettle starting to boil. The towers of the Rox were outlined dimly against the flickering reddish light of some huge fire on the far side of the island. The whistling grew louder, became a scream that filled the world. He saw the tall shadow of the jumpers’ tower turn to light. Then it was gone, while the night rained stone and fire.
Battle turned to Danny. “How’s the frontal assault progressing?”
She stared into space, rubbing her injured shoulder and listening to private voices whispering in her ears. “Not so good. They’ve been beaten back for now.”
Battle snorted. “Wimps,” he said. “Let’s go.”
As Battle strode off Danny grabbed Ray by the arm and surreptitiously held him back. “Doesn’t this underground playground strike you as odd?” she asked him.
Ray shrugged. “Bloat’s crazy.”
“Yeah, maybe. But he’s not irrational. He’s been doing a good job at holding off the frontal assault. Also” — she gestured around herself — “someone who was really insane couldn’t have built all this. It’s too well designed.”
They started after the others. “I see what you mean,” Ray said. “But so what?”
“All these traps,” she said. “All these obstacles he’s put in our path. Sure, some were pretty dangerous, but none were out and out deadly. It’s all like some big game with him.”
“Game,” Ray repeated. That word struck a chord, but just why he couldn’t say. “Game —” he said thoughtfully, then he stopped, staring.
Tacked to a stalagmite near the end of the chamber was a T-shirt similar in design to the one the old bridge-keeper had been wearing. Only this one bore the legend BLOAT FLOATS around the smiling Bloat-head silk-screened on it.
“Hey,” Ray called out, “wait a minute, everyone.”
The others hadn’t seen the T-shirt. They’d gone past it, almost reaching the door set in the chamber’s wall. They stopped, turned, and looked at Ray as he shouted.
“Look at this,” Ray said, gesturing at the shirt.
As he did, the Bloat-image winked at him. “Bloat floats,” the image said. “Do you?”
There was a grinding hum of machinery set in motion, and the floor of the chamber started to move and tilt. Ray grabbed a stalagmite and then grabbed Danny’s waist as she slipped past him, pulling her to him.
Battle let out a wild yell. Puckett grabbed his boss by the arm and grabbed Boyd around the waist and waited stoically until he slid toward another stalagmite that he managed to hook a foot around. Ray smelled salt water as the floor continued to rumble and tilt. “It’s a water trap,” he shouted, “opening into the bay!”
Nemo bellowed in fear and flung himself flat, desperately reaching for a stalagmite, but his clawing fingers missed by inches. Ray tensed, thinking about leaping after him, but Danny said softly, “There’s nothing you can do.”
They all watched, horrified, as Nemo, roaring and fighting for nonexistent purchase on the slippery chamber floor, slid inexorably toward the span of open water.
As he hit the water Ray shouted, “Swim for the other side.”
Nemo bobbed up and down, arms waving frantically over his head. “I can’t swim!” he shouted in an agonized voice, and then he was gone, the water closing sullenly over his head.
“Christ,” Ray muttered.
There was a moment’s silence; then the water split apart and something big and long heaved itself onto the level area of floor on the opposite side of the water trap. It was a fourteen-foot-long alligator, with a blue plastic hospital bracelet around its right front foreleg. Ray forgot the horror of the moment in sheer astonishment as it disappeared down the corridor on the trap’s opposite side.
Ray stared after it, hardly aware of the slim, hard-muscled body he held tightly against his own.
“Third time lucky,” Danny said to him. One of her slim, strong hands snaked up around his neck and pulled his face down to hers. Their lips touched; then she pulled away.
“Dead end, goddamn it,” Battle roared. “Goddamn dead end. There’s no way across this damn moat. Ray! Throw us a line and haul us the hell out of here! We’ll have to retrace our steps and hope the other corridor leads to that fat fuck’s throne room. Damn!”
Ray reached for his pack and the rope coiled in it, all the while staring at Danny. Once again, she had that internalized expression on her face, but Ray could think only of her sudden kiss, and the promise of more to come.
Saturday afternoon
September 22, 1990
He waited inside his shell on the roof of the Jokertown Clinic, as he had waited a thousand times before.
Most of his screens were turned to commercial stations. WOR was broadcasting a Dodger road game. They were losing to the Seals out in San Francisco, 80 in the second. WPIX had Wheel of Fortune. But the networks were all news, and all the news was bad. What had von Hagendaas called it? The most powerful ace task force ever assembled… and the Rox had flushed them away like toilet paper.
Mistral, jumped. Pulse, jumped. Cyclone, believed dead. Detroit Steel and Snotman, buried under tons of rubble, believed dead. Elephant Girl, wounded, maybe mortally. And the Great and Powerful Turtle…
Tom laughed bitterly. The sound echoed dully in the close confines of the shell. His head was pounding, and one side of his face was stiff with dried blood where he’d smashed it during his tumble. Some heroes they’d turned out to be.
The military had resumed its shelling of the Rox. On CNN, Peter Arnett was broadcasting from the New Jersey, out in the Atlantic beyond Cape May. The decks were frantic with activity as the great battlewagon prepared to open up with its sixteen-inch guns. The open mouths of the huge turret guns loomed behind Amen, vast as caves. Tom was looking at them, and feeling sorry for the poor doomed jokers on the Rox, when Danny Shepherd finally returned. Finn was with her, the little palomino-pony centaur who had been running the clinic since Tachyon left.
Danny’s shoulder had been cleaned and bandaged. “LEGION,” Tom said in a flat, stiff voice.
She ignored the ice in his tone. “I’m going to live,” she announced cheerfully. “Lucky it wasn’t my pitching arm.”
Tom spoke to Finn. “WHAT ABOUT RADHA?”
The centaur fiddled with his stethoscope. “She’s resting comfortably,” he said. “We’ve sent to the zoo for a specialist. She’ll have to stay an elephant for a while. Those wounds would be mortal in a human.” The joker doctor shuffled his hooves. “Our nutritionist is having kittens. Know anyplace we can get a deal on hay?”
Tom had no answer for him. The silence hung in the air.
“My, ah, sister’s okay,” Danny said. “The winds pushed me clear of the Wall, thank God. Another me went out with the Coast Guard cutter, so they had no trouble picking me up, even in the fog. I’m back on Governor’s Island now.”
“GOOD FOR YOU,” Tom told her.
“Speaking of which,” said Finn, “we’ve had a visit from your army friends. A major. He’s upset that you folks came here. It seems they have a military hospital set up on Governor’s Island. All the wounded were supposed to be taken there. He wants to transfer Miss O’Reilly.”