Dark Muse (27 page)

Just as Luke appeared to listen to him,
turning his head and gazing through the fine slits, another shot
struck the metal in the upper thigh, a few inches from Otis’ head.
The heat bowled him over, partly from surprise but also from the
wave that threw furnace temperatures into his face, causing his
skin to burn. It probably wasn’t much, but a bad sunburn hurt like
no other. Otis imagined how it would feel if any of the liquid rock
or flame touched his flesh.

It wouldn’t be like the movies, he thought,
where it just sloughed off like pudding, or would it? He’d faced
some horrible pain in his life from broken and shattered bones and
torn muscles, but he knew this pain would trump all other. He
looked to the other side where the supposed exit was—a bunch of
rocks, a hole in the wall that he hoped led to his friends.

How many more of these direct hits could Luke
take? How many steps would it take until he reached the safe
zone?

Luke moved his right leg, the one hit by the
fireball. He seemed a little less determined and less in stride,
but still he moved. His breathing flowed from the mouth hole in
gasps, as though he had been sprinting at high altitudes.

“I can’t.”

“What?” Otis barely heard him.

“Breathe,” a small, shaken voice said.
“Burning. Up.”

He imagined the worst, how the teen looked
under the mask, if his flesh bubbled like fried chicken. He would
never touch Kentucky Fried Chicken again.

At least twenty feet remained until they
would reach the far wall. Either they sped up or they would fry
like Kentucky Fried’s special blend.

More and more fire showered them, four then
five big ones striking hard. Two barely missed Otis.

“Move!” He yelled, begging Luke to shake free
of his stupor. The teen needed to move faster if they were to
survive.

Just as he moved again, fate slapped their
hopes to the ground.

The boy toppled over with a resounding
thud.

Chapter Twenty-Two

He likely never even saw the massive fireball
that dropped him. He fell face first and nearly bounced off of the
floor. Otis knew it was over. There was only a slim chance he could
even unlock the clasps and remove the mask. Even so, if Luke
remained conscious, Otis could never move him to safety.

He pushed at the boy. He needed to turn him
over and see if he still breathed.

Please don’t hit me, he begged at the tubes
from the cavern ceiling, though in his mind, he awaited the final
blow. He wondered if he would even feel it, even see it, or if it
would mercifully happen so fast that he only would see a flash of
light before the blackness.

The iron suit barely budged. And it cooked,
paining his fingers. He stripped off his shirt and wrapped it
around both hands. He pushed and pushed. His skinny arms failed to
turn Luke over. They felt weaker than ever. Some things never
changed.

Two more balls hit, one to the left, one to
the right.

A backbeat? Whoa.

Otis counted, first in his head, then by
tapping on the iron suit.

One, two. One, two.

Bass, snare. Bass, snare.

He waited for more. It came. A higher pitched
burst off to the left; a few seconds later one pitched to the
right—just like cymbal crashes.

Why hadn’t he noticed it before? It couldn’t
be this simple, could it? Deadly, but simple. Make the right moves
and live. One wrong one and burn like that Def Leppard song.

At least, he thought, it wasn’t as random as
being pummeled by great balls of fire.

If his new friend wasn’t in the process of
being barbequed, he just might have smiled at the irony.

“Luke,” he said. “If you can hear me, roll
over.”

He heaved and pushed again. Nothing.
“Please.” He shoved with all his might—nothing.

Then a groan emerged from deep within.

“It’s alive!” Luke definitely missed that
joke.

Otis turned him slightly and took the
opportunity, launching himself into the boy with a painful body
block. As Luke’s head turned, the latch for the helmet showed
itself.

Otis wrapped his hand in his shirt and
flipped it open. The heat seared the material but the latch popped
wide. He wasted no time placing his small hands on either side and
pulled. Hard.

With a sickening sound, akin to cutting open
a turkey wrapped in foil, the helmet slid off.

Otis bit back a cry.

Luke’s face was covered in blisters and his
mouth dropped in pain.

“Kill me,” said the twin.

Something in Otis snapped. “Seriously? What
lame movie did you get that from? We don’t play that game here.
Get. Up.”

Wrapping his hands tighter, he unlatched the
rest of the suit and helped the teen out of it. Most of Luke’s
flesh was reddened but not damaged much. Otis turned the boy’s
head, carefully, toward the exit. Neither paid much attention to
the rain of fire around them. Until they moved, heat was the
biggest worry.

“Think you can make twenty feet or so?”

Luke shook his head.

“Tough. We’re going.”

“But,” Luke wheezed. “No. Protection.”

Sometimes, the iron ain’t in the suit
,
Otis heard his grandmother’s voice reverberate in his head.
Sometimes, it’s much deeper
.Why hadn’t he thought of that
earlier? The old woman had always pointed him in the right
direction. Without her advice, his parents might have given up on
him years ago and listened to some idiot doctor who believed he had
no chance to live this long.

Go, Grandma
.

He stared at the path he formed in his head,
punctuated by the rhythms he both saw and heard in his head. If
only he could help Luke move in time with the rhythms.
If
only.
The weight differential might be too much.

“Okay, farm boy. We move. Now. I pull, you
move with me. Otherwise, we both cook.

You want to fry, that’s fine, but don’t make
me burn out with you when I’m trying to keep your butt alive.”

Luke half-stood, partially holding back from
his injuries, but partially from not wanting to see Otis killed for
helping him. Otis saw this as all too obvious and knew he just had
to get the boy moving, not thinking about what might happen.

“If we don’t get out, your sister might be
dead as well.”

“Nope,” he replied. “She’s smarter than me.
She’ll find a way.”

Otis groaned in despair. Was this how he
sounded when the pain kept him up at night, crying to his
parents?

“Well, I’m not going to tell her you died a
wuss. You want to, go ahead, but please get off your swollen,
barbequed crack and do it so I can live for another hour or
so.”

Luke cried out as he pushed himself off the
floor on knees covered in blisters and burns.

“Twenty feet?”

“Yep.”

“Then what?”

Otis started into the dark of the exit. It
looked almost too tight for a human to fit through.

“Don’t rush me. I haven’t thought that far
ahead, yet. Just imagine you have rhythm and follow me. Please. I
don’t want to be something’s fried chicken tonight. Not enough meat
on me for anything. I’d be shorting them way too much. You, on the
other hand—”

Another cry, but one with movement. “I’m
coming.”

Then they were off.

Otis waited for the fireball then pulled Luke
along. The bass.

He waited for the snare then pulled again.
Both flamers missed them by hairs, but missed just the same. As
long as they kept with it, they had a chance to make it to the
crack in the wall.

* * * *

Otis imagined being behind his drum set and
holding the sticks in his hands. He controlled the beat. Without
the steady beat, the song fell apart. The band would suck. Everyone
would know it was him, his mistake. But, only one mistake was
allowed here.

“No way am I screwing up this song,” he said
to himself.

A crash singed his hair, leaving another
streak of charred hair behind. Other than that, they maneuvered the
distance, only to find the opening in the exit as small as he
feared; too small for Luke.

The teen began to cry, not for himself, but
obviously for his sister and family. This must have been his first
attempt at actually living and he blew the deal.

Luke picked up a cooling piece of rock in one
hand, not caring about the heat. He slammed it into the wall above
the crack with a stream of words Otis could only imagine were
curses in his village.

Another groan sounded, but not from the
teen.

Otis put his ear to the wall. Seriously?
“Hey. Hit it again.”

“What?” Luke had nearly gone over the edge to
looneyville.

“That rock ball in your hand. Hit the wall
with it again. Now. Hard.”

The boy did and the groan repeated. Otis
wondered why and he spread his hands all over the surface, feeling
for something. Anything. Nothing.

Then, there it was.

The simplest of symbols.

Lightning from the sky. Thunder usually
followed. The carved bolt gave him the confidence he needed to try
once more. He picked up his own cooled off ball of rock and told
Luke what to do.

After a four count, they hit either side of
the crack, dead in the center of the drum cymbal. Again, one more
time in the most basic of rhythms which created rock music.

Like magic from the corniest of movies, the
wall opened a foot wider and showed them freedom.

“It worked!” Luke dropped the ball and
completely missed the wall of fire rushing at both of them from
behind.

The opening must have triggered a back draft
of some kind and within seconds, the cavern lit up like the
Rockefeller tree on Christmas—doused in gasoline.

All Otis could think was that this must be
how the people on Hiroshima felt right before the first atomic bomb
hit. A massive heat fist sucked all of the air from their lungs as
it struck.

The firewall slammed both of them with a
death hand and flung them straight through—right into the arms of
the final test.

As Otis felt consciousness fading and air
finding its way into his body, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “I
think we’re gonna be okay,” he said, right before the darkness took
him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Muddy fell through the glass-like opening and
found himself in worse shape than a moment before. He looked around
for his band mates. Just as he had feared, they were nowhere to be
found. He called out for them, but only echoes answered him, along
with the rush of the subterranean river in front of him.

Where did this come from? Did the ocean feed
it or did the mountain bleed a deep spring?

His feet slipped on the stone ledge and he
landed on his side with a painful thump. He moved each of his
limbs, squeezed both hands and turned his ankles. Nothing was
busted. Nobody saw his boneheaded move, but how he wished someone
was
there to laugh with or even at him. Before he arose, he
pulled himself up to a sitting position and gasped at the scene in
front of him.

The ledge jutted out only four feet. After
that, only water and the steep sides of the river filled his view.
No banks rose from the water, only a curve from the bottom that
continued to the top of the tunnel where he stood. The diameter of
the river tube couldn’t have been more than twenty feet across. Too
wide to chance it, though.

He could swim his way out, but as Muddy
watched the tumultuous flow he knew he wouldn’t be doing much of
anything except being flushed away at a high speed. He would likely
drown before arriving wherever the river headed. What if the tunnel
ended and the river continued under water? He imagined the burning
of his lungs and the terror of getting trapped beneath the surface,
knowing he was going to die.

But his friends were somewhere in this place
and they were here because he’d asked them to embark on this
strange trip.

He examined the ledge and attempted to gauge
the depth of the water beneath him. An odd luminescence emanated
from the walls and ceiling, likely from molds and quartz, but it
wasn’t bright enough to help him see much under the surface.

He half-expected the ledge to retract, to
close the wall behind him and force him into the water like in some
Indiana Jones
or
Star Wars
movie. But it didn’t
happen. However, he couldn’t just sit here waiting for a hero. He
was supposed to be Zack’s hero. Poe’s hero. He couldn’t do squat to
save his mother so could he even handle this? His only other choice
lay in ruin behind him and even Steven Tyler would never tell him
to
walk that way
.

He lay down flat and reached into the water,
feeling for the bottom. His hands found nothing but water. Cold
chills raced up his arm in goose bumps as he fished around, hoping
nothing bit them off. Could he chance it? It wasn’t like he had a
choice.

Then he saw it. A lightened piece of wood
peeked out from under the ledge.

He stared at it for a moment before grabbing
hold of the corner and sliding it out.

Mark Twain might be laughing his butt off, or
trembling in fear, if he saw what Muddy had discovered.

An old-fashioned raft.

And here was the mighty river.

Muddy climbed onto the makeshift raft and
found it sturdy to stand on, but still he sat, feeling safer that
way. Two oars lay strapped to either side. If he waited any longer,
the dread might overwhelm him, so he pushed off. Immediately the
current pulled him along. Even before he got his bearings, he felt
the rhythm of the water pulling him to an uncertain destination as
the music began to flow in his head.

More like Finn, he decided, than Sawyer, but
Rush wrote it their way. More likely, he had the brains and skills
of Huckleberry, along with the bad luck. Still, the adventurous
streak in him had turned to high since that first night at the
crossroads. Someone must have known where the river went; was this
part of
the
River? Somehow, he doubted it, but still didn’t
want to fall in and find out for sure.