Nina whispered in his ear, “I think that was Sally… shooting Purdue. Not Purdue shooting the snake. Jesus, Sam, I am in agony.”
“Hold on, love,” Sam consoled her, trying to sniff quietly to prevent her from hearing him weep. Purdue was silent, and, as long as Sam kept quiet, Sally would not locate him and Nina. Unfortunately, their stealth was costing both Sam’s friends their lives, each of their breaths like another grain of sand, falling through an hourglass.
35 Feasting & Fire
Louisa’s yelps disappeared deeper into the mouth of the mine as the Harding brothers, Olden, and Sgt. Anaru rushed after her. Olden found her baton in the fork of the tunnel and picked it up.
“Take the right hole, Eddie… and you, Gary!” Sgt. Anaru delegated. “I’ll take the left with Cecil! Let’s go before she is dead!”
Both parties could hear the conservationist squealing, begging and crying. For all their calls and shouts, Louisa did not answer. From her bag, she kept dropping glass sample flasks to alert the men, but she could not make a sound. With two strong flashlights, Eddie Olden and Gary Harding followed the sound of broken glass. As they rounded the second protrusion of rock, they ran right into the slimy scoots of a giant anaconda that screamed like a banshee.
“Crikey Moses! That is the screaming we heard?” Olden gasped.
Louisa was crawling away behind it; having lured the men in to distract the snake from her while, she collected one of its offspring as a specimen. Eddie Olden did not stand a chance against the lightning fast lunge of the snake, which coiled itself around his body in seconds. Gary screamed in horror as he watched the Australian’s bones snap and spear through his skin, killing him instantly. Using the feeding time of the snake, Gary ran screaming to the entrance of the cave, diving out over the ledge and rolling down the cold, black mud.
Gunshots clapped incessantly from up in the mine as Gary dared look back up. He could see Herman and Sully run in with the bag they brought with them. “Don’t go in there!” he shouted, but they ignored him. Gary cried like a child, relishing the cold rain and the fresh air. “I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I am not like Bill Best, but I will not let that happen to me. I will not!”
Moments later, Sgt. Anaru, Cecil, and the elders came racing out, falling and rolling over one another down the hillside. “Heads down! Cover your ears!” the elders bellowed before the mountain erupted in a splitting explosion that sent dangerous debris and rock flying. The car alarms wailed sharply under the rumble of thunder and the aftermath of the blast. Muffled cries of pain came from the sand and weeds as the men were pelted with matter, but nobody suffered serious injuries.
Gradually they sat up, looking at the destruction around them. The mouth of the mine had collapsed, leaving its support poles like skew teeth in the rubble. “My God,” Gary sobbed. “Now we’ll never find Dad.”
His brother leaned in and embraced him. “We both know he would not have survived those screaming monsters, Gary,” Cecil admitted. “I think we did our duty, but I don’t think either of us ever really believed that Dad is alive.”
“Louisa?” Sgt. Anaru asked no one in particular.
“She was trying to get a baby snake to take back to Oz, the crazy bitch,” Gary hissed. “And used her own colleague as a diversion.”
Cecil shook his head. “That is insane, to let those mutants loose on the Outback, or anywhere else.”
“Well, that problem is taken care of, right?” Sully wheezed, slapping his wet hat on his hand.
“In essence, we killed a woman,” Cecil tried to shed some morality, but his words were not supported by any of the men present.
“In essence, she killed Eddie Olden,” Sgt. Anaru reevaluated the statement. “God knows how many people would have died if Herman and Sully did not put a lid on this mine for good.”
A moment of silence ad relief fell over the group, bringing immense and well-deserved respite. Herman looked around suddenly, and asked, “Wonder if they got to Dr. Gould in time.”
Sam took Nina’s advice and decided that Sally was bad news. Time was running out and he had no light. As quietly as he could, he propped Nina’s quivering body against the inside of the niche in the wall. Sam dared not flick a lighter or light his way, as it would surely betray his location to all the females trying to kill him down here.
Slowly, his hands searched the soaking wet tunnel floor for his camera. Through his desperate fumbling, the tough journalist cried softly. If he was unsuccessful, he would lose both his best friends from this accursed episode in their careers. In his mind he condemned his involvement in the Spanish diving expedition that uncovered all this hell.
Sam jolted in fright as his fingers found something in the dark, but he realized that it was the soft material of his camera microphone. Lying on his belly in the shallow mud and water, Sam closed his eyes to better explore his camera’s buttons with his fingertips, looking for the infrared function. Listening intently for any movement, Sam flicked on his infrared screen to better navigate their way around deadly obstacles, but what he saw as he flicked the switch, was a sight he would never get over.
Purdue was unconscious from his gunshot wound, slowly being swallowed by the grotesque scaled monster. “Oh, Jesus! No! Oh my God! No!” Sam screamed inadvertently. Sally began to shoot blindly in his direction, but he did not care. He clenched the compact camera between his jaw and his shoulder and used his right hand to draw his weapon. Even if he could just interrupt the serpent’s feast, he would be helping. Sam tried to aim through his tears, but in the end, he just aimed lower than the bumps Purdue’s legs made in the snake’s skin, and fired.
In his viewfinder he could see clumps of flesh explode where the bullets hit, tearing through the perfect pattern of scales.
“Don’t you dare shoot at Ken’s creations, you son of a bitch!” Sally screeched in the dark, shooting at Sam, but he kept shooting off round after round, taking care not to hit Purdue. He had had enough of the Black Sun’s disciples. He was fed-up with Williams and his crooked sense of science. “We will never be as brilliant as he was!” she growled in the darkness.
Sam swung around, his night vision perfectly revealing Sally’s frame.
“Oh, don’t fret, Sally. You’ll be as dead as he is,” Sam shouted. With one well-placed bullet through her eye, he ended her. Using the running camera, he navigated his way to Purdue. The gunshots did nothing to the armor of the snake’s scales, so Sam had to find a way to cut Purdue out.
“Sam!” Purdue suddenly hollered in horror. “Sam, get me out!”
“Listen, you have to relax!” Sam told him. “The more you wiggle, the sooner she will crush you. I have a plan. Just try to be quiet. Just Zen, alright?”
“Zen? Jesus, Sam!” Purdue shrieked.
“Anacondas’ teeth point backwards toward their throats, Purdue,” Sam explained hastily. “I cannot pull you out, because its teeth are designed to act like hooks to avoid you from falling out.”
Sam ran back through the slippery blood and water to where Nina was shaking uncontrollably. “Will be just a second, love,” he panted heavily as he retrieved some of the old barbwire. With the snake busy, it did not care for Sam’s movement. The journalist tied the barbwire around a protruding rock formation on the other side of the snake and jumped over the huge body to the other side. Like a two man crosscut saw, Sam used the wire to cut through the gigantic serpent’s flesh. It worked. The thing began to screech and keen as Sam’s force and movement split its body open. “Hang on, Purdue!” he shouted, feeling victorious while sobbing like a little boy. Sam’s roughshod efforts played havoc on his already calloused hands and his own skin suffered the cuts of the wire, but if he did not finish the task he would lose the only people still precious to him.