Apocalyptic Pirates 4, page 27
The main space of the church was filled with chunky wooden pews, and Shannon grabbed the end of one and tried to lift it, but it was bolted to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Letty gasped.
Her eyes were wide open, and I wondered if she was uncomfortable at the thought of defacing a place of worship.
“We need to barricade the door,” Shannon said.
“What about my mom?” Dia demanded. “We need to wait for her and my uncle to get here.”
“Dia’s right,” I said. “We can’t shut ourselves in until they get here.”
“How long will that be?” Shannon crossed her arms.
“Not long,” Dia insisted. “She said they were nearby.”
“They might have run into trouble.” I rubbed the back of my neck in worry. “There’s a shitload of dragons out there. Maybe I should go and look for them.”
“Don’t worry,” Dia told me. “Tio Fernando won’t let anything happen to my mom.”
“Do they have guns?” I pushed. “Any weapons at all?”
“Mom said Fernando has a knife,” Dia said.
“A knife?” I echoed. “Against those fuckers out there?”
“Normally a knife is all Fernando needs.” Dia shrugged.
It felt like there was a lot to unpack there, but now probably wasn’t the time.
At least she seemed a lot calmer now that she knew for sure that her mom was alive and with her uncle, and if she trusted that a knife was enough to keep them safe, then I guessed I shouldn’t argue with her judgment. It was her call, after all, even if there was no way that I’d feel safe with just a knife against a dragon.
“Okay,” I said. “I guess we’ll wait then.”
“What does your uncle do?” Letty asked Dia.
“This and that,” Dia replied. “He kind of moves between jobs.”
“When you say ‘jobs’…” Ally queried.
“Oh, no, not like that.” Dia chuckled. “Tio Fernando’s a good man. He was always giving me grief for not keeping inside the law. But he’s tough, and one of his buddies was Special Ops or something like that, so he knows how to handle himself.”
“One of his buddies was Special Ops?” Shannon gasped.
“I think so.” Dia sounded so casual about it that I wondered if she was pulling Shannon’s leg. “You’ll have to ask him about it when he gets here.”
As if on cue, Dia’s phone started ringing, and she answered it at once.
“Mom?” she whispered, and then her head snapped up. “They’re a few streets away. They’re hidden for now, but there’s a giant dragon on the roof of the building opposite the church.”
“Alright.” I checked my gun. “How are we all for ammo?”
“I need more,” Shannon said.
“Me, too.” Letty nodded.
We slotted in new magazines, and the sound of rifles locked and loaded for action sent a little boost of courage through me.
“Alright,” I said and took a deep breath. “Dia, tell them we’re going to open fire. Tell them to get ready to run.”
Dia nodded and spoke rapid Spanish into the phone.
I pressed my ear against the door and strained to hear if there were any sounds of the baby dragons outside.
There was no sound of the ravenous little fucks, so I glanced around to check that everyone was ready, and then I pushed the church door open and peeked around the edge.
I immediately saw the dragon they were talking about. It was a huge fucker with livid, lime-green eyes and light, almost neon, yellow scales. Its jaws were open showing the black slug of its forked tongue between its stained fangs.
Its head snapped around as the church door squealed open on rusty hinges. It hissed threateningly, but before it could attack, I stuck my gun out through the gap and fired.
My bullet tore through its pale scales, and a splatter of startlingly bright red blood exploded on its chest. It shrieked, and Shannon ducked down beside me and fired another bullet that slammed into its sallow neck and sent more blood droplets spattering down onto the ground.
“Mom!” Dia yelled. “Tio!”
Shannon kept her bullets concentrated on the yellow dragon, and I craned my neck around to see a woman and a man hightailing it around the corner. They were running as fast as they could, but from my position I could see the flock of baby dragons whizzing toward them from the right.
I took a deep breath and aimed at the chittering cloud of tiny brats. My bullet took one of them in the shoulder, and it squealed and tumbled head over ass to the ground. I fired again, but the flock scattered. Some of the little bastards went high and some went low, and they all chittered as though in gleeful triumph as my shot went wide.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
“Here, you take on the big guy!” Shannon shouted.
We switched positions, and while Shannon and Dia fired at the babies, Letty and I kept the big yellow fucker pinned down. It kept trying to jump down from the roof onto the street, but every time it moved, we sent bullets plowing into it.
But the adults that had chased us to the plaza hadn’t gone very far, and the gunshots drew them back to our location.
A wiry gray dragon with red eyes flopped onto the roof next to its yellow friend, and then a dark blue one with purple eyes hauled itself up there beside them. The two newcomers sniffed the wounds in the yellow one’s face and neck, and then their eyes locked on us.
“Ohhhh, shit,” I groaned.
With a joint screech, the gray and the navy dragon hurled themselves at the church.
Letty and I slammed shot after shot into their chests. Our bullets ripped holes in their leathery wings and tore chunks of flesh out of their scaly faces.
They screamed and wheeled back. They were so close that the downdraft of their wings batted our faces, and a few drops of blood from their gunshot wounds hit the front of my shirt.
“Come on!” I yelled.
Dia’s mom and uncle were almost at the church. Dia’s mom lunged the last few feet and almost fell into Dia’s arms. Her uncle was right behind, and he’d almost reached us when one of the baby dragons suddenly ducked under Shannon’s shot and lunged right for him.
“Tio!” Dia’s scream echoed through the streets.
Her uncle turned, and in one swift motion he brought up his arm. It happened too quickly for me to see, but the dragon didn’t even have time to squeal before it flopped out of the sky and hit the ground with a squelch that sent blood and intestines everywhere.
Shit, he’d gutted it right out of the sky.
Dia hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said a knife was all her uncle needed.
But I had no time to marvel before he reached the church door. I sent another salvo of bullets at the adults on the roof, and Dia’s uncle helped me slam the door shut.
There was a thud from outside as the babies crashed into the door, and a defeated roar sounded from the rooftops. Dia’s uncle reached up for an iron bar that I hadn’t noticed before and pulled it down across the door. It clanged down into place and secured the door from the inside.
Then nobody spoke for a long moment. It seemed like we all held our breath waiting to see if the massive bastards above would come barreling right at the door, but nothing happened.
I slowly exhaled as I turned to Fernando.
“Thanks.” I nodded to him and pushed my sweaty hair off my forehead.
He nodded briefly and then hurried to be with his family.
“Dia, mi niña!” Dia’s mom had her daughter locked in a tight embrace. Their heads were so close against each other that their identical dark curls mingled and could have belonged to the same person.
“Mom,” Dia choked out.
Her uncle had his hands on both their shoulders, and when her mom finally released her, Dia turned to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“Dia, Dia,” her mom urged and pulled her away from her uncle only to grab her again and unleash a flood of excited Spanish at her.
Dia responded, and her mom pulled her into another long hug.
I swallowed hard and looked away. It seemed wrong to watch such an emotional scene, like I was intruding on something private.
Letty and Shannon were smiling through misty eyes.
“We did it,” Letty whispered. “We found her family.”
A roar from outside broke through the tender scene, and Dia gripped her mom by the shoulders.
“Mom,” she said in an urgent tone. “What’s the situation? Do you have a car or boat out of here?”
“Tu tio tiene un barco,” her mom began, but Dia cut her off.
“English, Mom,” she said, and it seemed like that was when Dia’s mom noticed us properly for the first time.
She stared around at us with her brow furrowed. She looked so much like Dia. She had the same wild dark curls and intense dark eyes, and she shared her daughter’s soft features, full lips, and round little chin. As her eyes focused on me and narrowed, I was pretty sure that she shared her daughter’s attitude, too.
“Who is this man?” she demanded. “Dia, who is this white boy you’re gallivanting around with?”
“Oh, my god, Mom,” Dia groaned. “We literally do not have time for this.”
“Hi, Mrs. Rojas, I’m Drew,” I introduced myself. “And this is Shannon and Letty.”
“Hmm,” she snorted.
“Mom, Drew saved my life,” Dia said with her voice rising. “We need to listen to him if we’re going to get out of this alive.”
Mrs. Rojas threw up her hands and let loose a flood of angry Spanish at her daughter.
“I’m Fernando.” Dia’s uncle stepped forward and gravely offered me his hand. He was tall and lean, and he looked very much like General Rojas. “Forgive Mariana. She’s been through a lot.”
“I have not!” Dia’s mom retorted. “This is a perfectly normal response to seeing my daughter in the company of strangers!”
“Mom, for God’s sake,” Dia groaned.
“Not in the church!” her mom scolded. “Show some respect!”
“I have a boat,” Fernando said to me. He seemed completely unfazed by the argument raging between the two women behind him. “We’ve been trying to get down to it for the better part of a week, but without a gun, it’s just been too dangerous.”
“Looks like you can handle yourself, though.” I nodded toward the bloodstained knife in his hand. “That was impressive out there.”
“It’s good for close-up attacks on the little ones,” he said. “No use on the big ones.”
“Still,” I said. “I’m impressed you survived.”
“We couldn’t have lasted much longer. They’re getting hungrier by the day.” He nodded toward the door, and as if they could hear him talking about them, something– probably a baby dragon– slammed into the church door. The iron bar held, but it hadn’t been built to stand against a horde of bloodthirsty scaly monsters from outer space. It was holding, but we couldn’t tell for how much longer.
“Are there any other survivors in the city?” I asked.
“Don’t know anymore.” He shrugged. “There were a few. But then we would hear screaming… And now we don’t know anymore. They’ve eaten a lot of the people who were here, and with the number of nests and young ones, they’re running out of food now.”
That was a fucking grim image. I didn’t like to think about how horrible it must have been for them trying to survive in the city by themselves.
“Do you have a boat?” Fernando asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “We’ve got a yacht waiting for us just off-shore.”
“Good.” He nodded. “So it’s just a question of making it out of the Old Town?”
“Basically, yeah.” I looked around the church as I turned over the pressing need for us to get the hell out of there.
Shannon and Letty were standing in the middle aisle of the church with their guns ready. Shannon saw me looking and cocked her eyebrow at me.
“I’m going to investigate with the others,” I told Fernando.
“Okay.” He nodded. “I’ll stay here with Dia and Mariana.”
I joined Letty and Shannon in the aisle.
“Have you looked around at all?” I asked them.
“Just a little,” Letty replied.
“There’s a cupboard down there.” Shannon pointed to a row of dark wooden paneling underneath the alcoves and the crucifix. “It’s full of booze.”
“That’s Communion wine,” Letty said in scandalized tones.
“Holy booze,” Shannon amended.
Letty sighed.
I pulled open the cupboard to see for myself and found a bottle of wine, a cut glass decanter of what looked like Cognac, and a box that turned out to be full of little round white disks.
“Those are Communion wafers,” Letty explained as she leaned over my shoulder to see inside.
“Ooh, snacks,” Shannon said and grinned at the outraged look on Letty’s face. “I’m joking, I’m joking. I know what Communion wafers are.”
Letty gave a haughty sniff.
We walked the perimeter of the church and found a little door tucked away behind a painted red and gold wooden-hinged screen. It wasn’t locked, and it led to a tiny office with a chair, a table, and just enough wall space to hang several painted portraits of people who I assumed were saints. I was about to turn and leave when something in the corner caught my eye.
One of the portraits was hanging crookedly on its nail and showed a dark line in the wall behind it. I went up to it and pushed the portrait to the side. Behind it was a door. It had been painted the same plain white as the rest of the walls, and it didn’t have a handle, just a small round hole drilled into it.
“Hey guys,” I called.
I took the picture down off the wall, poked my finger into the hole, and pulled. With a groan and a faint smattering of dust, the door opened to reveal a dark stairway leading downward.
“Whoa,” Letty breathed.
“What the hell?” Shannon whispered. “A secret passageway!”
I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight.
“Oh, my lord, are you going down there?” Letty’s eyes were wide.
“We need to find a way out of here,” I said. “This could be it.”
“Yeah, come on, Letty.” Shannon flashed the other woman a wild grin. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Oh yes, of course, I have no sense of adventure at all, I’m just a stay-at-home plum puddin’ of a gal.” Letty’s accent came through as thick as gravy in her indignation, and she pulled out her inhaler in the most adorable display of preparedness I’d ever seen. Then she took a long puff and nodded. “Let me go down there, I’ll show you who’s got a sense of adventure.”
“Alright,” I declared. “But I’m going first, okay?”
“Be my guest,” Shannon chuckled.
Despite my brave words, I was still a little apprehensive about going down into the darkness with only my phone to guide the way. I shone the light down into the shadowy staircase.
“It looks like the steps have been cut into the stone,” I said. “That means we don’t have to worry about any of them having rotted away.”
I wedged the door open with the office chair so it couldn’t swing shut and lock us all inside.
Then I took the first tentative step down into the darkness.
Nothing leaped out of the shadows and bit my face off, so I carried on.
Letty and Shannon followed me, and our footsteps echoed down the first few steps, but we made sure to step more carefully as we carried on heading down.
I kept my hand against the wall to steady myself, and my fingers brushed through dust and cobwebs. The stone felt cool and rough under my touch. I wondered how far down we were going.
Then suddenly the steps ended. Instead they turned into a narrow passageway that stretched away into the darkness. I raised my phone to try and illuminate the way ahead of us, but there was no way of telling how far ahead the passageway might go.
“What now?” Shannon asked.
Letty shivered, and I made my decision.
“Letty,” I said. “You go back and tell the others where we are. Shannon and I will carry on and see if this leads to a way out.”
“Is this because you think I’m scared?” Letty demanded. “Because I’m not.”
“No, it’s because you’re a shit shot,” Shannon told her.
“I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,” I said. “But if we find anything bad down here…”
“Then Shannon’s going to be more useful than me.” Letty sighed. “I get it, and I can’t say I’m sorry. You guys be careful, alright? Don’t go deaf shootin’ things down here.”
“You be careful, too,” I said. “I hope we won’t be long. Will you be okay going back up the stairs without a light?”
“Yep, I’m good, it’s all one direction.” Letty started back up the stairs.
Shannon and I began to make our way carefully through the passageway.
I was trying not to think of the horror movies I’d seen where these kinds of situations always ended in mutants or hill people or naked mole rats pouncing on the heroes out of the darkness. I held the phone up to shine the light as far forward as it would reach, but it was just a phone flashlight and there was only so much it could do against the all-consuming darkness that seemed to get thicker and more oppressive with every step we took.
I couldn’t tell how long we’d been walking for. Time seemed to stretch out and become unreal. Our footsteps were so muffled on the ancient stone that I wondered if we’d gone down too deep and the pressure was building up inside my ears. Maybe we were under the ocean and beyond the walls was a thousand tons of seawater just waiting for the right combination of vibrations to break down the stone and crush everything in its path.
“Drew.” Shannon’s voice made me jump out of my skin.
“Fuck,” I gasped. “That really fucking scared me.”
“It’s horrible down here,” she whispered. “How long have we been walking for?”
