“Loki called it ‘Everworld,’ ” Jalil said. “Not that that tells us much.”
“Maybe we’ve all gone nuts,” April said, laughing a little at the idea. “Maybe we’re psychotics walking around a padded room wearing paper slippers and straitjackets.”
“Sounds like you took Cuckoo’s Nest a little too seriously,”
Christopher said.
“Did you see it?”
“Yeah. I needed some extra credit in English so I wrote a report on it.”
“And?”
“And you were very good, April,” Christopher said. “But nothing compared to your performance with that dumb Viking back there.”
April laughed again. It annoyed me. What right did she have to laugh? She would laugh at me, no doubt. Probably already had. Big deal David, tough guy David, David with the attitude, crying and squirming and…
I couldn’t think about it. It made me want to crawl out of my own skin.
“This is all connected to Senna,” Jalil said. “This didn’t start with us hanging off a wall. This started with all four of us being there at the lake this morning. And her being there.”
What was he talking about? I tried to tear my mind off my own self-loathing.
Jalil was right. Only it may have started even earlier. I said nothing, but I wondered if it had started with the fight at a Taco Bell. Why had we all been there? Was that part of some plan?
I flashed on my car, Senna beside me.
“Something is going to happen.” That’s what she said.
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. I only know something will happen. Soon.
Something… terrible.”
Yesterday. A million years ago, and yet I could still see the way her eyes glittered. “Sometimes I know things before they happen. Sometimes I can see a scene in my head. Like watching a movie. And then it will happen. I think, did I make it happen? Or did I just see it somehow?”
Good question, I thought grimly. Very good question, Senna.
Senna, the “witch” Loki wanted so badly.
“David, when it happens… when it happens, David, will you save me?”
I grabbed my head with my two hands and pressed hard on my temples. No, I won’t save you Senna, I’ll shake and quiver like a scared rabbit. That’s what I’ll do, Senna.
“Hey, watch where you’re waving that thing,” April said, looking at the sword. “You have a headache or something?”
She swung her backpack around and began digging inside.
The question was so mundane I had to laugh. A headache?
Did I have a headache? I was living a nightmare inside a nightmare.
April dug out a small blue-and-white bottle. She twisted the cap off and handed me a round, dark rust-colored pill — an Advil.
“Here. You’ll have to swallow it dry. I better ration them, so see if this one works before you take another.”
“Oh, April,” I sighed, shaking my head.
“What?”
“Nothing. Save it. You’re right, we may need it.”
Jalil quickened his pace to catch up to us. “What else do you have in that backpack?”
“Good question,” Christopher muttered. “And if you say, ‘I have my nine-millimeter Glock and an extra clip,’ I’ll kiss your feet.”
We kept moving as April searched by dim torchlight. “The Advil. Bottle of a hundred, maybe half gone. Um… my CD
player.”
“What CDs?” Christopher asked.
“Alanis Morissette… Um, that Lilith Fair CD…”
Christopher and I both groaned.
“The Bach B-minor mass. And the sound track from Rent.”
Jalil groaned. “Oh, man. Show tunes? We’re stuck a long way from the nearest Sam Goody and all we have is whiny women and show tunes?”
“Hey, she brought some Johann Sebastian, too,” Christopher said, changing sides. “Lighten up on the girl. Broaden your tastes.”
“Sorry, if I’d known I was going off to bizarre world to hang out with trolls and Norse gods, I’d have brought a wider selection,” April said. “Not to mention extra batteries. And don’t dis Rent, drama club is putting that on this year.”
“Not just Norse gods,” Jalil said, thoughtful once more.
“There’s that alien and that Ka Anor thing. And Loki said something about Huitzilopoctli. And the prisoner was talking Ra.”
“Didn’t he play third base for the Cubs back in the eighties?”
Christopher said.
Humor. The just-nearly-died brand of giddy humor.
“I have this vague memory that Huitzilopoctli is some kind of Aztec god. And, of course, Ra. Egyptian.”
“Aztecs? Why would there be Aztecs?” Christopher demanded.
“Why would there be Loki? Why would there be a big freaking wolf?” I demanded, suddenly angry. “Why would we all go trotting down to the lack and end up hanging in chains?
You want to start with the ‘why this’ and ‘why that?’ ”
“Touchy, isn’t he?” Christopher mocked. “Must be the wet pants.”
I was on him before he finished the last word. I grabbed him by his collar and shoved him against the wall. His hair was inches from the flame of a skull torch.
“Don’t push me!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Don’t push me or I’ll shove this sword up your ass and see how brave you are!”
I was panting. Christopher looked amazed.
Jalil grabbed my sword hand, whipped his other arm around my neck, and yanked me back. He spun me away. I stumbled but kept to my feet. I clenched the sword and tensed my arm, ready to do murder.
April stepped between me and Jalil.
“What are you, crazy?!” Christopher yelled.
“Shut up, all of you!” April hissed. “We’re in a tunnel, you idiots. Voices carry. You want to have those… those trolls all over us? I don’t, so shut up and calm down and stop acting like little boys.”
She was right. Obviously. But I almost didn’t care. Christopher had as much as called me a coward. I couldn’t let that stand.
April sighed and smoothed her hair back. In a calm voice she said, “Listen to me. We don’t need this. We stick together or we don’t have a chance. Even if we do stick together, we don’t have much of a chance. We have to figure out what’s going on and get home, and stay alive in the meantime. We’ll need food and water and warm clothing.”
“And weapons,” Jalil interjected.
“That, too. What we don’t need is a bunch of macho crap.”
For a while no one spoke. Christopher and I both sort of came down at the same time. Like a pair of balloons someone had poked holes in.
“We’re dead meat, anyway,” Christopher said.
“Oh, really?” April said. She pointed back down the tunnel.
“Then head back that way, go find the nearest troll or whatever, and die. Okay? Otherwise, if you want to stay with us, work on helping and stop being a baby. And, by the way? We’re not dead meat. We have one big advantage: We’re smarter than those guys.”
“We are?” Christopher asked skeptically.
“Would you have fallen for that ‘They went thataway’ routine back there?” April asked him.
I avoided looking at Christopher. But I saw Jalil nodding agreement. “The Trojan Horse,” he said to himself. Then for the benefit of the rest of us, “Trojan Horse. You know, war of Troy, Greeks against Trojans.”
“The Greeks fought against condoms?” Christopher asked.
Jalil ignored him. “The Trojans are inside the city, Greeks can’t get them out, so the Greeks build this big horse, hide a bunch of guys inside it, the rest sail off and leave the horse for the Trojans, telling them it’s a surrender gift. The Trojans haul it into the city, the guys climb out at night, open the gates, bye-bye Trojans.”
“Who would be that dumb?” Christopher asked.
“I think that’s his point,” April said. “Not dumb
, maybe. Just naïve. I mean, we come from a cynical age. Suspicious of everything. Maybe that’s an advantage we have.”
“Yeah, our bad attitudes versus their swords and axes and giant wolves,” Christopher said darkly. “Let’s just find the trapdoor to get out here and back home.”
“I’m for that,” April said.
We started walking. April searched through her backpack again. I had to say something. I couldn’t let it all just lie there.
So I said, “Okay, we look for a way home. But we all go. All or none. The four of us and Senna.”
No one said no.
No one said yes, either.
Chapter
XIII
Fifty-seven Advil.
A Sony personal CD player with headphones.
Four double-A batteries, mostly charged.
An Alanis CD, the Lilith Fair CD, Bach, and Rent CDs.
Two books: Great Poetry of the English Language, and Chemistry: Principles and Application.
One spiral notebook.
A pencil, a felt-tip pen, and two ballpoint pens.
Tampons.
Clinique blusher.
Keys.
That was what we found in April’s backpack.
Jalil had keys, a Swiss Army knife, eleven dollars and forty cents, a watch that had been crushed by the chains around his wrists, and his dad’s Shell credit card. Christopher had keys, twenty-one dollars and nine cents, a receipt from Marshall Fields for a three-pack of underwear, and a phone card.
I had keys and a quarter.
“Well, if keys turn out to be money around here, we’re pretty well set,” Christopher said. “Lots of keys. No Uzi, which is what we need in this nuthouse. No grenades, which would come in very handy. Nope, a little pocketknife and a lot of keys.”
“How do they keep these torches lit?” Jalil wondered. Then,
“Forget the pocketknife and the keys. The most important thing is the chemistry textbook.”
“Why? You thinking we’ll whip up some —” The joke died on his lips. He grabbed April and pulled her to the side of the tunnel. We all froze. “Shhh!”
We listened, straining. Nothing. Then…
Voices!
“Behind or ahead?”
“Behind,” April said. “They’re after us.” She didn’t mention that they’d probably heard Christopher and me going at it.
“Let’s run,” Jalil said.
“But quietly.”
We ran. One big advantage we had over the Norsemen and trolls: They wore boots, we wore sneakers. Hard for men in boots to outrun teenagers in sneakers. Harder still to hear sneakers if you’re busy stomping around in boots.
We ran and now, ahead of us, gray light.
“That’s not torchlight,” April said, panting.
We soon reached the source of the light. A tunnel that went off to the left. It was not meant for people to walk through. It was no more than four feet square. But at the end I saw a perfect square of blue.
“Ventilation shaft,” Jalil said. “I don’t know how high up we are, but we’re definitely up. We go that way, we’re probably looking at a long drop.”
I snagged a piece of the frayed sleeve of my sweatshirt and ripped it off. I wedged the fabric in a crack in the rocks. “Maybe this’ll make them think we went that way.”
We continued along the tunnel, running at a pace we could handle. The noise behind us was fading. We were gaining.
Then, a sudden turn in the tunnel, around the corner with Jalil in the lead, and —
“Stop! Back! Back! Back!” Jalil stopped fast, jumped back, and spread his arms to stop the rest of us.
I glimpsed a sheer drop. The tunnel simply came to an end, opening into a vast natural cave. Stalagmites shot up from the floor, natural skyscrapers. Stalactites hung down from above. An eerie glow fil ed the cavern. It was a glow that came from a living creature.
There, curled and coiled, its loops wrapped casually around pillars of stone, lay a snake. It was radioactive green, with a pattern of hollow squares, like yellow leopard spots, all along its length. The yellow spots were each the size of a basketball court.
It was a snake the size of a fifty-car freight train. And that was only the part we could see. There was no way of knowing how far back down the caves this hideous, impossible creature stretched.
“You know that film they showed in, like, fourth grade?”
Christopher said. “That nature film where they showed a python eating a small pig and you could see the bulge of the pig going through the snake?”
I didn’t remember ever seeing that film. But I knew what Christopher was talking about.
“Well,” he said, “this snake could swallow a cement truck.
With no bulge.”
We stood rooted in place at the edge of the precipice, the four of us pressed against Jalil’s arms, staring down at the snake.
Just then, I guess someone finally told Loki we’d escaped.
“FIND THEM!”
The voice blasted down the tunnel. It was thunder! It was bombs going off! It shook the rock beneath our feet.
April fell against Jalil.
Jalil windmilled his arms madly, trying to fly. I stuck out a hand and grabbed his right arm. He spun to face me. His foot slipped. He fell.
Chapter
XIV
I gripped Jalil’s hand but his fingers escaped.
His face hit hard on the edge of the floor. His hands scrabbled on stone. April screamed.
Jalil was slipping. I dropped to my belly. Jalil’s left hand waved, helpless, unable to grab anything but air.
I clamped both my hands on his right arm, but it was a weak grip. His fingernails clawed at stone. Sweat slicked his forearm.
And now I was slipping. I snatched his sleeve to improve my grip. But I was being dragged, dragged toward the edge.
He looked at me, eyes huge, mouth open like he was screaming, but no sound came out.
Slipping… slipping… I had to let go or I’d—
April landed on my back, too hard, almost knocking the wind out of me, but stopping my slide.
I caught a flash of Christopher down on his belly, too. He was extended out over the edge, trying to grab Jalil’s flailing hand. My fingers slipped. Damp, smooth flesh. I couldn’t hold on. I dug my fingernails, ready to tear Jalil’s skin to save him.
Slip!
“Ahhh!”
I caught him again at the wrist. Now his other hand was too far for Christopher to reach. But I could hold onto the wrist better. Both hands tight around Jalil’s wrist till they cramped.
Then, behind Jalil’s head, I saw it.
The snake’s head rose up, up, slit eyes amused and eager. A bluish tongue, forked, thick as bridge cable, thirty, forty feet long, whipped out, whipped back, whipped out and quivered, tasting the air.
I flashed on Loki’s tapestry, the uniforms of his men: Was this the snake who’d been used to drop venom on the god’s face?
“FIND THEM!” Loki cried again. The sound hammered at them, confusing my thoughts.
“I HAVE THEM, FATHER!”
This voice had come from the snake. No lips had moved. It had no lips. But the sound had come from the snake with the intelligent, mocking eyes.
“Father? Father?” Christopher demanded shrilly. “I thought my family was messed up!”
The snake’s mouth opened like an automatic garage door. It opened and then there were the fangs, glittering in the puffy pink-flesh mouth.
Jalil flailed. Christopher nearly toppled over the edge, reaching for his hand. In seconds the snake would strike.
“April! Backpack,” I gasped. “Give it to Christopher.”
I could feel her on me, squirming, getting it off her. “Here!”
she yelled.
Christopher wrapped one hand through a strap and swung the pack out, trying to lasso Jalil’s other hand.
A grab, a miss! A grab…
Yes!
Jalil’s han
d snagged the strap, Christopher clamped his own hands around Jalil’s wrist, and we pulled. Jalil’s feet scrabbled at the sheer wall below him and found some tiny edge to push against.
Up he came.
The snake’s eyes darkened.
Like a bullwhip, it struck!
Jalil clambered up as the snake’s head slammed against the tunnel opening, fangs out. Fangs so big I could have stuck my fist up inside the hypodermic hole.
But the snake’s head was too big for the tunnel. We wobbled to our feet and ran. Then we stopped very suddenly.
Christopher yelled a curse. We were face-to-face with a tunnel crammed with trolls and men, all with swords drawn and axes held ready.
Behind us, the enraged snake reared back and slammed itself against the tunnel opening again.
“Down!” Jalil yelled. He shoved me face-forward. I plowed into April. Christopher must have figured it out on his own because he hit the dirt like he’d been tackled from behind.
The snake’s forked tongue shot just inches above us. It darted forward down the tunnel, knocking down a handful of trolls and men like bowling pins.
The forked tongue curved and wrapped and snapped back.
Snapped back over us with several hundred pounds of bellowing trolls and wild Norsemen.
I was kicked, pummeled, and nearly slashed by a sword blade. I raised my head just enough to see them sucked, screaming, into that pulpy pink mouth.
The two men and single troll who were left backpedaled fast. I charged, sword held straight out in front of me.
Taken by surprise, the two men slammed back against the tunnel wall. The troll stood blinking stupidly. I rammed the sword into his chest and kept on running.
April was right behind me, Jalil, Christopher.
Suddenly, the sound of a bag of cement hitting the ground.
One of the men had tripped Christopher. The Norseman was drawing a long knife from his belt.
He pulled Christopher’s head back by the hair, exposing his throat.
Jalil fumbled in his pocket.
“Damn it!” I yelled in utter frustration. I had no weapon.
Nothing! The remaining Norseman was grinning. Grinning at April. He grabbed at her. She evaded him.