Surviving the Improbable Quest (14 page)

Chapter
22

Waterslide at a Zoo

Rubic and Alice crouch down and run as light-footed as possible to the door of the dam’s control house. Rubic gets to the door first. It’s locked. He turns to the rocky cliff side and grabs a stone the size of a football. He brings the rock down on the door handle until it breaks. The door opens into a long hallway. Moonlight spills into the building illuminating the greenish stained walls. There are three closed doors on the interior sidewall and one door at the back. Rubic turns to Alice, looking at her belt. “I suddenly feel like I should have a gun.” She did not have one.

“You couldn’t shoot straight in your condition anyway.”

Rubic finds a branch. It’s not as thick as he wanted, but it will have to do. Holding the stick up like a baseball bat, Rubic tiptoes into the building.

Rubic knows Allan is in here; he can feel it. Small pebbles and dried mud crunch under Rubic’s feet. He tries the first door handle. It’s locked. He considers busting it open, but when he removes his hand from the knob, he notices his fingers have wiped a thick layer of dust from the handle. No one has been in this room in quite a while. He checks the other two doors. Same dust. He moves to the last door. This handle is clean.

“Are you sure you should go in there?” whispers Alice.

“I’m as sure as the sun will rise.” Rubic pulls open the door. A swoosh of wind makes a ‘suuuca’ sound. Rubic feels cool air on his cheeks and sees a dim light. The room is an office with a desk, a bookshelf and a wall full of filing cabinets. There is no dust on any of the surfaces, yet the room doesn’t look used. The desk is absent of a computer, papers, pens and other typical office decor. There isn’t even a chair.

Rubic leads Alice through the office to a far door. The dim light shines from under the door and looks wavy in Rubic’s altered vision. He rubs his eyes and turns the handle slowly then bashes the door open with his shoulder, trying to catch anyone inside by surprise. The door whips open and bangs against the wall.

The room is huge, warehouse huge. A metal stairway off to the left leads to a catwalk. Three huge metal pipes protrude from the back wall and then bend ninety degrees to the floor. They must be turbines, one of which is on and generating power. Huge black cables run from the generator to an air conditioning unit that sits on top of a large metal box, which is almost as large as a shipping container. It must be a walk-in freezer. Along the exterior wall are tables clustered with beakers, books, jugs of chemicals, centrifuge machines, computers, note pads and shelves full of stuff.

“Allan!” Rubic yells as he steps into the room ready to swing his stick. “Allan!”

Dogs bark, and banging echoes throughout the laboratory from somewhere farther inside the building. Rubic turns around to see Alice. His eyes widen. She’s still in the doorway, her face tight and angry, her hand holding the handle tight.

Her lips are pressed together. “I’m sorry Rubic. But neither you, nor anyone else, can stop me. My work is too important. I’m on the brink of discovery here. People have polluted entire ecosystems for less.”

Rubic shakes his head in disbelief. “
Your
work?”

“I lost a daughter. Seventeen years ago. She vanished into thin air. We were in a field of the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen. She was in her vintage bassinet. It was white with a green vine painted along the side. I turned my back for a second, Rubic. A second.” she spat. “It was the flowers. They took her somewhere. It took me years, but I’ve found a flower. Just one and I isolated the compound and have been testing the chemical reaction for years. I’m so close, you know.” She huffed. “I believe the flowers have taken Allan, too.”

“Flowers? Take a person? What are you talking about?” Rubic questions whether he’s hearing Alice right or hallucinating her speaking to him. “This is crazy. What you’re saying is so impossible.”

“I know. No one will believe me. That’s why I have to succeed first. I have to find out how the flowers work. Soon, you will understand me. When Allan is never found, when they scour this mountain and find nothing, you will understand my pain.” Alice takes off her hat and tosses it at Rubic’s feet. “Never fit me anyway. Good-bye, Rubic. There is a way out, deeper in the dam. I hope you get to it before it is too late. I just need a head start.” She slams the door shut then uses her key to engage a deadbolt.

Rubic runs to the door. “What did you do to Allan? Hey! You psycho.” He slams on the door with his fists. Anger forces his jaw shut. He feels like he’s going to explode.

Alice doesn’t answer. Rubic spins around and presses his back to the door. He’s confused.
So all this laboratory stuff is hers. What is she doing that is so important she had to dump tons of chemicals in the lake? What does it have to do with her missing daughter? What flowers is she talking about? Allan has to be in here. There is no other place for him to go.

A red light catches Rubic’s eye. It’s from a square object sitting by the wall. Rubic leans close to the object, which looks like a pile of clay the size of a deck of cards. The clay is wrapped in cellophane with a timer secured to it with duct tape. It’s a bomb. His eyes follow wires down the wall. There’s another explosive fifty feet away, then another. This whole place is rigged to explode.

Rubic runs to the middle the room. Dogs yip and bark incessantly from some other room. “Allan!!!” He searches the makeshift laboratory. Rubic runs to the cooler behind the turbine pipes. He yanks the door open and peers inside. His panic overwhelms him. He runs into the cooler. “Allan! You in here?” He gets to the back wall. No Allan.

How long has it been? How much time do I have?
Rubic, ignoring his injuries, bolts from the cooler and runs up the stairs taking two at a time. The metal catwalk along the lakeside of the wall goes under the large turbine pipes. At the far end is a door. He runs to it not concerned with his heaving breathing or time-bomb ticking heart.

The door is unlocked. Beyond the door are cages, lots of them. They line a tunnel that heads deep into the dam, imprisoning dogs, monkeys, rats, rabbits and birds. They’re all going nuts: barking, jumping, flapping and shrieking. “Allan! Are you in here?” Rubic almost leaves, but remembers Alice’s words. She said there is a way out, deep in the dam. It has to be here. He runs down the seemingly endless row of animal cages. Six or seven cages at the far end have toppled over; all but one is still occupied by noisy birds. One large cage lies open, its hinge broken and bent. Rubic expects to run into a wild, crazed dog or orangutan, but doesn’t.

Rubic follows a trail with his eyes—a trail of spilt cereal and birdseed that goes to an open drain on the floor at the end of the tunnel. The drain is four feet across and centered underneath three basketball-sized metal pipes coming out of the wall and turning down into the floor. Each pipe has a large red valve wheel attached to it. Rubic inspects the drain. A glint of light catches his eye. It’s a pin. He picks it up and cradles the pin in his palm. It’s the 50’s pin-up girl he'd fastened to Allan’s shirt. He
was
here, but escaped. “Allan! Are you down there? Please, say something!!” The drain leads into the heart of the dam. It’s dark and damp and it smells like the poison that covers the canyon below. It’s large enough for Allan’s body, but it must be a long way down. The darkness from the pipe seems to reach out as if it has fingers that can grab and take. Rubic remembers the pipe he passed on his way to the control house. It’s the same diameter and came from the same side of the dam. It has to be the same pipe. But if it isn’t, Allan might be trapped down there. How could he know? He’s got to think fast. This building is going to blow any second.

Rubic runs to the nearest cage and grabs it by the top handle. He drops it down the pipe and listens. It goes a long way down. After he hears it clatter at the bottom he hears the bird screech. Rubic drops all the birdcages down the tube, takes each rabbit and rat and dumps them down into the hole. He looks at the dog and monkey cages. They’re too big to pick up. He runs by each cage and opens the doors. When he turns he’s staring at growling dogs. The monkeys have already headed toward the drain. Rubic kicks an empty cage at the dogs. “Get! Get to the drain you flea bags.” The dogs back up. When the dogs get too close to the monkeys, the monkeys choose to leap into the drain. Rubic kicks the cage one more time forcing the dogs into the drain. They yip all the way to the bottom. “At least you’re not blown to bits.” Rubic yells. He steps over the cage and looks into the dark hole.

An explosion rocks the walls. Then another. Then another. Rubic turns to the door and sees a ball of fire. He closes his eyes and jumps into the darkness. The speed of his fall surprises him as his stomach threatens to leap out of his throat. “
Too fast, too fast, too fast!”
Rubic screams. He braces for an impact that will surely break something in his body.  

#

Allan feels himself rolling and turning in the same way he rolled and turned in the flood. He can’t breathe or hear any sound.

Then his body hits gravel. Water washes over him. It’s that bitter chemical water. It’s nighttime and the moon is high overhead. One moon surrounded by familiar stars. He’s home. The night is cool and the crickets chirp loudly, all are oddly comforting because of their familiarity. He sees the dam stretch across the canyon and the control house built into the side of the mountain. And there’s a light. Allan remembers his ultimate goal—to get help for his trapped uncle. Maybe it’s not too late.

Clattering echoes down the pipe he just emerged from, rattling louder and louder until it stops. He looks into the dark, straining to see. A parrot bursts out of the pipe, flapping and screeching. It lands on Allan’s face and he falls back.

He hears another clanging in the pipe. Two wire cages burst out of the pipe and land on him. He hears more noise coming down the chute and rolls away from the opening. Two more bird cages. Allan sees them piling up and pulls the cages from the end of the pipe to allow more to tumble out. The cages are filled with parrots and crows and pigeons. Another cage breaks open and a bird goes flying away.
Are these cages and animals from Lan Darr?
Rabbits and rats fly out. They’re unhurt and they scatter.

Then comes screeching. Out fly a monkey and an orangutan. They land and run. Then out fly dogs. It’s like a water slide at a zoo.

As if being surrounded by wounded animals of all kinds isn’t weird enough, the control house explodes. Allan thinks he is far enough away not to be in danger so he watches. There is another explosion. The orange plume rises like a bubble under water, only it’s massive and hot. Allan flinches as a third explosion takes out the entire side of the control house.

A visible crack snakes its way up the side of the dam, and water shoots out. Now Allan is in danger. He’s going to be flooded out, again. His body races with adrenaline and he’s so afraid.

Snap. Crack.

More thuds come from pipe. A man flies out. The man lands in the gravel and rolls. When he comes to a stop his head pops up. Rubic! Tears burst from Allan’s eyes and he sobs in an expulsion of bound up emotion.

“Allan! My God!” Rubic leaps to his feet, slipping on the gravel. He scoops Allan up and hugs him hard. Allan coughs between sobs.

Snap. The crack in the dam widens. The spray of water turns into a roaring torrent. Rubic lifts Allan and follows the monkeys uphill.

“Rubic, the birds.” Allan screams.

Rubic turns to the pile of cages, rips open them all and then shakes them so the birds fly out the doors. He returns to Allan, picks him up and runs up the gravel slope.

They get to a steep hillside. Rubic, in his adrenaline-fueled panic, bad arm and all, pulls Allan over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and clambers up the slippery, pine needle-strewn incline.

A huge chunk of concrete collapses to the riverbed and causes a catastrophic failure in the structure. The entire dam ruptures and a million gallons of water flood the valley. It’s more water than the earlier flash flood, a lot more.

Rubic can’t go higher. Even the monkeys have stopped climbing. Rubic turns and slowly lets Allan slide from his shoulders. The water rushes below. They’re safe from its clutches.

Rubic gasps, trying to catch his breath. He turns and grabs Allan and hugs him. “Damn good timing.” Rubic sees Allan is still crying and lets himself cry also. “Are you okay?”