Day of Doom (24 page)

Casper. “The dude can hit.”

“And Fiske Cahill is a master at

martial arts,” said Cheyenne. “He’s not some punk like you.”

“Well, regardless, it’s now time to pay the piper, as they say.”

Casper and Cheyenne stood and faced Sandy.

She said, “And what exactly does that mean?”

“It means exactly THIS.”

Sandy’s hand shot out of his pocket. In it was a spray can. He hit the button and a concentrated stream of air hit Cheyenne in the face.

“Hey!” yelled Casper. He lunged forward as his sister fell to the floor.

The spray next hit Casper in the face. A second later he lay paralyzed next to Cheyenne.

Sandy stood over them and smiled

triumphantly.

“Such silliness. Did you really think you could have beaten us?” He put his hands on his hips. “And they say weathermen aren’t tough. HA!”

His phone buzzed. He answered it.

“Yes, I understand. It will be done. Disloyalty cannot be tolerated.”

He put the phone away, grabbed Cheyenne’s arms, and started to slide her from the room.

“Away we go to your doom,” said Sandy. “I’m really starting to enjoy myself.”

Isabel stopped walking, turned, andlooked behind her. Her men stared

resolutely back at her. They were good men, loyal to her, but there weren’t that many of them. Vesper One would have far more assets than she.

She stared down at Atticus, who waslooking up at her with hatred.

She kicked him. “Stop looking at melike that, you little nothing.”

“I’m not a nothing. I’m the last Guardian!”

She laughed and kicked him again forgood measure. “Yes, the great and good Guardian. My prisoner. Soon to be dead. How powerful you are.”

“I would advise you to give yourselfup. It’s your only chance.”

She laughed again. “Well, you havecourage, I’ll give you that. But it is faroutweighed by your complete and utter

stupidity!”

Isabel looked in front of her, trying to figure out where to go next.

“So where’s the Doomsday device?” asked Atticus, peering up at her again.

She shot him a furious glance. “What do you know about that?”

“Pretty much everything.”

“You can’t possibly.”

“Now who’s being completely and utterly stupid?”

She kicked him again, harder.

He straightened back up, shrugging off the effects of her latest blow. “You’re

getting soft. Barely felt that one.”

She grabbed him by the collar and

slammed him up against the rock wall.

“What do you know about it?”

He looked at her, understanding

settling over his features. “Wow, he didn’t tell you? Amazing. Vesper One must have a problem with his second-in-command.”

“Shut up! Now, tell me.”

“What do you want me to do? Shut up or tell you?” he said imperturbably. “I can’t do
 
both
 
.”

She shook him, lifting his heels offthe floor with her rage.

“Do not be impertinent. Talk. Now!”

“Well, it’s Archimedes’, isn’t it? One of his inventions. It uses the corollarystrength of nearby subduction zones tocreate a massive power surge. It’s alreadybeen initiated.”

“And you know that how?” scoffed Isabel.

“Uh, duh. Why do you think you hadto take a train here as opposed to a

plane?”

“So
 
that
 
was the reason? I suspected, of course. Something is going on.”

“Well, we more than suspected, we knew. It’s messing with the magnetic polarity of the Earth.”

She stared at him curiously. “And that’s bad?”

“Are you kidding?”

She snapped, “I am first-rate with poisons. A genius, in fact. I’m an amazing code breaker. I didn’t have the code to get into this place, but solved it. I have drunk the Lucian serum. The only one in the world to have done so. I’m in my late forties but look like I’m thirty-three. And on my good days and depending on the light I can pass for midtwenties. But I am not, and never have been, brilliant in the

physical sciences.” She shook him again.

Atticus said, “Uh, TMI, but that’s okay. To answer your questions, reversing the polarity of the Earth’s poles I would put squarely in the category of utterly and irreversibly catastrophic, not simply bad.” He stared at her. “You gave a speech at the train station about AWW.”

“I believe in it,” Isabel declared.

“Uh, yeah. That goes in the ‘what the crap, you think I’m that stupid?’ category. But listen, even if you want to capitalize on the catastrophic damage to look like some savior, it won’t matter.”

She looked at him darkly. “Why not?”

“Hello? I’ve already told you. When you mess with the polarity of the Earth then there will be no more Earth. If there’s

no Earth I’m not sure how you can be the savior of it. Just employing standard logical reasoning, you understand.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Okay, and so what does that make Vesper One? He wants to destroy the world. Where is he going to live? Where

are
 
you
 
going to live? Got a moon colony

we don’t know about?”

Atticus didn’t really know what Vesper One’s plan was. But he had anincentive right this instant to make the “Doomsday” argument sound very real.

Isabel smirked. “He is not going todestroy the entire world, you idiot.”

“Okay, which part gets to survive? This piece of terra firma will be no morewhen he cranks the sucker up.”

Isabel glanced at her men. They were

eyeing one another nervously. She looked back at Atticus. “So you’re saying that he plans to destroy the part of the Earth where we are right now? But
 
he’s
 
here! I know he is. How does that make sense?

He’ll die, too.”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe he’ssuicidal. Ever think of that possibility?”

Isabel hissed like a snake and

glanced at her men once more. They were all taking steps back.

“What are you doing?” she snapped. “Don’t listen to him. He’s only a child.”

The men turned and ran flat out.

“Come back! Come back!”

Before she could make another move,

her men were out of sight.

She looked down at Atticus and

shook him hard. “You fool. You did that

on purpose. And now you’ve cost me my

henchmen.”

“I just wanted you to be fully

informed as to the conditions on the

ground. So, are you going to stick around for the big boom?”

“Idiot boy. I —”

Atticus   shrieked   and   pointed. “Vesper One! There!”

Isabel didn’t look that way. “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

Atticus slipped one hand inside his pocket. A second later the sounds of an MP5 machine gun blasted through the tunnels.

Isabel ducked, rolled, and pulled a large gun from her coat pocket.

When she got back to her feet, Atticus was gone.

She had no idea that Dan had told Atticus exactly how he had fooled Isabeland her henchmen back in DC. Or that Atticus had loaded that same sound track

on his phone and engaged it by pushing a button when he’d slipped his hand in his pocket. That tactic had just paid huge dividends.

She heard his footsteps running away, but with all the tunnels here, it was impossible   to   determine   in   which direction he’d gone. But she didn’t need him, anyway. However, what he had told Isabel had been valuable. To think that the

idiot Vesper One would even contemplate such a thing. But it couldn’t be true, could it? It was one thing to beat the Cahills and rule the world. It was a very different thing to destroy the world entirely.

I live here, too.

She looked down at the knapsackshe’d been carrying. It belonged to thatsimpering Dan Cahill. She smiled. If shehad figured correctly, it was more thanworth its weight in gold. All her littletexts under the name of Arthur Josiah

Trent to his adoring, gullible son wereabout to pay off.

She opened the knapsack and dugthrough it.

It took her a minute, but she found it.

She held up the silver flask.

The serum.

Finally. She had it.

And with it she perhaps had a way towin after all.

“Oooff,” Jake exclaimed as he turned a corner and ran hard into something. The “something” fell backward and Jake landed on top of it.

“Atticus!”

Jake quickly lifted his little brotherup and dusted him off as the othersgathered around.

Jake hugged Atticus so hard hisbrother gasped in pain.

“Att, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you alive again.”

“Well, if you keep squeezing him that hard, he might not stay alive,” pointed out Sinead.

Jake let him go and stepped back, abroad grin on his face.

“How did you get away, Att?” asked

Dan.

“Just a little misdirection,” he said, obviously pleased with himself. Just then, Atticus seemed to notice the others. He flashed a huge smile. “You guys got away, too!”

Evan nodded. “We split up. Fisketook four others and headed out in another

direction. I hope they’re okay.”

Atticus   smacked   knuckles   with

Phoenix and smiled shyly at Natalie, who

had regained a little of her haughtiness and

didn’t smile at him.

“So, what do we do now?” asked

Jake.

Amy looked around. “Preferablyhook up with the others, locate the Doomsday device, and somehow disableit.”

“That’s a lot to ask for,” said Hamilton.

“Go big or go home,” declared Dan.

Atticus looked at him. “Isabel has your knapsack.”

Dan’s features clouded. Amy gazed at him worriedly.

Hamilton caught this look.

“Something we need to know? What’s in Dan’s knapsack?”

Amy stared at Dan but said nothing.

Dan sighed. “The serum.”

“What!”   exclaimed   the   former

hostages in unison.

Jake looked accusingly at Amy. “You

didn’t tell me that.”

Ian said, “So, our mother finally hasthe serum. She’ll take it. And when she

does, there will be no stopping her.”

“Maybe,” said Amy. “But maybe we won’t want to stop her.”

They all stared at her.

“How exactly does that make sense?” asked Evan.

“Oh, it makes a lot of sense from a historical perspective,” replied Amy. “But we don’t have time to sit here and debate

this. We have to find the others. And we

have to do it fast.”

Jake said, “She’s right. Come on.”

They   ran   hard   down   severalcorridors, turning left at some and right atothers.

Every once in a while Amy wouldlook down at her phone-app compass. Ithad worked pretty well before, despitetheir being inside a mountain. But now itwas jumping all over the place.

Something   was   coming.   Shewondered if it could be stopped. Maybe itwas already too late.

They reached a broad passageway,far wider than any of the others they hadencountered. Amy stopped and said, “Let’s take a minute and get our bearings.”

“Look,” exclaimed Dan.

They all stared at where he waspointing.

Jake said, “It’s a door. First one

we’ve seen.”

“It’s   a
 
big
 
door,” added Atticus, staring up at the ten-foot-high wooden portal.