Read The Curse of the Dragon God Online
Authors: Geoffrey Knight
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay
The Curse of the Dragon God (33 page)
“Which means they’re still in the mines,” Jake said. “Come on.”
They skidded, slid, sprinted across the snow and charged into the massive entrance of the main mine, running uphill, following the mine car track to the peak of the elevator shaft before coming to a halt at the sight of the blasted winch gears.
“Will!” Jake shouted, hurrying to the edge of the shaft. “Professor!?”
At the bottom of the shaft, Will was trying to pull the bent, twisted metal of the smashed elevator cage out of the way to assess the damage when the three of them heard Jake’s voice echo down the shaft. Will quickly pulled himself inside the warped cage and shouted upward. “Jake! We’re okay, but the elevator’s history! And I hate to tell you this, but there’s a ticking bomb down here! We’re talkin’ minutes!!”
Shane was already sizing up the situation, eyeing the pulley cradle that had held the cables, attached to the roof of the tunnel directly above the shaft. He began pulling at cranks and busted wheels in the winch gears. “Jake, this thing’s gone to God.”
“I think we’re all about to join it.”
Shane grabbed a broken metal rod. “Maybe I could figure out a way we could lever it up. If we could find a cable maybe we could winch it ourselves.”
“We don’t have time!” Jake’s shoulder ached and he held it tight, trying to think, trying to figure out—
Choof! Choof!
The sound of the train building momentum echoed up the tunnel, infuriating him even more. And then—
—enlightening him.
“Wait a minute. What did you just say?”
“Maybe we could lever it up.”
“After that.”
Shane shrugged. “If we had a cable maybe—”
“Shut up and run!”
Jake was already bolting back down the tunnel, away from the elevator shaft. Shane didn’t ask why. He simply bolted after him.
In the engine compartment of the train, Xi frantically shoveled coal into the furnace, building up as much heat as the steam engine could take. Gauges and dials flicked and climbed rapidly.
In the master carriage, Mya knelt beside the second zidium device and began entering numbers into the activation panel. The panel flashed; the bomb was ready for its instructions. Mya instinctively checked her watch for an estimated arrival time to Beijing, and caught a glimpse of the first zidium’s remaining time. Five minutes, 37 seconds. She gave a shiny bloodred smile, then began to punch in the Beijing bomb’s countdown.
In the bedroom carriage, Doctor Cyclops rifled through his medical bag for a small bottle of multicolored pills, emptied a random amount into his trembling hand, and tipped them down his cracked dry throat, chewing on the last few that refused to slide down. His nerves seemed to calm instantly. He snatched up his rusty scalpel, then smiled as the handsome Italian on the bed stirred. It seemed Luca would be awake for his own dissection after all.
On the flatbed car, in the freezing wind and snow, Chad gripped one of the chains holding the chopper in place as the train finally lurched into motion. He glanced at the mine entrance and grinned. “See you later, Sen. Don’t take it personally—it’s business. I’m sure you understand.” Then, as the wheels of the train began to rumble slowly into motion, he started unclasping the belts and chains that restrained his getaway helicopter.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw the train let out another puff of steam. He heard the icy wheels finally find traction. Metal groaned and the couplings between the cars clanged and jolted as the Zhang Diamond Express rolled slowly into motion. He poured on the speed, racing not toward the train, but back down the quarry road, down into the graveyard of cranes and bulldozers.
Behind him, Shane wondered where the hell Jake was going. The mine was about to blow! The train was about to go! So why the hell were they headed back down to the—?
Suddenly Shane realized exactly what Jake was doing. He shot a sideways glance at the train as it slowly gained momentum. He sized up the distances in his head. And he too sprinted faster than he had ever sprinted in his life.
Jake practically crashed into the wreckage of the shredded portable office, its contents scattered across the ice. He saw coils of cables, long steel cables. He scooped one of them up just as Shane came sliding to a halt in the snow.
“Wait! That’s not enough! We need two.” Shane snatched up a second heavy looped coil, then the two bolted side by side back up the quarry road to the rail yard.
“You get the train,” Jake said, grabbing the large end clasp from his own cable and connecting it to Shane’s.
“No, you get the train,” Shane asserted as they reached the top of the road, still running. “The mine’s too dangerous.”
“And the goddamn train’s getting away. We don’t have time to argue!” And with that Jake shoved Shane in the direction of the train, at which point Shane had no choice. Every second, every inch of cable, mattered.
Jake ran for the mine entrance, carrying his coiled cable.
Shane raced after the rear of the train, carrying his.
Between them the two clasped cables began to unloop, growing longer and longer as the distance between the two men quickly grew.
The train was chugging, still finding its pace, picking up speed. Shane was running his heart out, allowing the cable to unspool behind him as he jumped onto the tracks and pursued the train with all he had.
But before Shane could reach it, the locomotive matched his pace, then began to really pick up speed as it started to descend around the mountain. Shane gave it even more, leaping over the crossties of the tracks. He took the remaining end of the cable in one hand, opening the clasp as the rest of it continued to rapidly unravel. He got to within 10 feet of the train, pushing himself closer inch by inch, pushing himself faster second by second, ready to hook the cable onto the rear car—
—if only he could reach it.
The grind and squeal of the wheels grew louder as the train picked up speed. And Shane knew this was the closest he was going to get. The train was gradually beginning to slip away from him.
“Not so fast, you son of a bitch!”
He skidded to a halt. He quickly looped the end of the cable into a ring. He circled it quickly above his head like a lasso and hurled the steel loop as hard as he could. It whipped through the air, the cable’s end snagging the chopper’s tail.
“Yee-hah!” Shane crowed, panting with exertion, then quickly turned and raced back up the tracks toward the mine.
At the other end of the still unraveling cable, Jake charged up the mine tunnel toward the elevator shaft, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Will! Will, can you hear me!”
Jake’s voice echoed down the shaft as Will was still desperately looking for another way out. “Jake! I can hear you! We’re runnin’ outta time down here!”
“There’s a cable comin’ your way! You get one shot!” The cable began to snap and whip loose from Jake’s grip. He saw the shaft coming up and the winch pulley on the ceiling. “Get everyone on the elevator now!”
Down below, Will shot an urgent glance at Bradley, who was already easing the fragile Professor onto the tangled elevator platform.
Above, Jake opened the clasp at the free end of the cable, ready for Will to grab and hook onto whatever he could, then swung it high as he continued to sprint. The cable cut into the air, hit the roof of the tunnel just above the pulley, then dropped in a fast, vertical fall down the shaft.
“Incoming!” Jake shouted.
Hurriedly Will pulled away a broken section of the top of the elevator cage and saw the cable snaking down the shaft at full velocity. Suddenly the open clasp of the cable smashed against the top of the cage, inches from Will’s head.
Like lightning, his hand grabbed it. Will hooked the clasp onto a steel bar on the top of the cage. The cable whipped tight, all the way up the length of the shaft. Suddenly the elevator carrying Will, Bradley, and the Professor took off up the shaft like a rocket.
The chopper reared up, snapped against its chains, then slammed back down on the flatbed. Chad had yet to release the restraints holding down the landing skids of the helicopter, but the jolt was enough to knock him off his feet and onto the icy flatbed. “What the fuck?”
With the shock of the jolt he didn’t hear the crunch and grind of the lasso cable tighten its lock on the tail’s boom. Instead he turned his head to the squall that was building above them, thinking the chopper had been picked up and dropped back down by the wind.
Now more than ever, all he cared about was getting this bird in the air before heaven descended upon them and hell erupted from below.
Back in the dark cave below, Zhang suddenly stopped in his excited tracks.
At first he thought he’d approached the end of the cave. In the blackness it was impossible to tell, but that strange sixth sense, that inbuilt radar, told him that his path was blocked. And he realized he was no longer alone.
The old man stood for a moment, lost in this dazzling dark world, speckled with diamonds—
his
diamonds—all around him, feeling the drip of his own blood down his temple, and sensing—
his
diamonds—all around him, feeling the drip of his own blood down his temple, and sensing—
Suddenly the old man gasped.
Directly in front of him, only a few feet away, a cluster of diamonds appeared in the shape of an eye.
No, they didn’t just appear. They
opened
. The glittering, diamond-filled eye before him opened.
opened
. The glittering, diamond-filled eye before him opened.
It looked into his soul.
Then another eye, made up of another thousand tiny diamonds, opened beside it.
“Fucanglong,” the old man breathed in sheer terror.
His wounded head swirled. He tried to step back but tripped on a rock and fell. He shut his eyes tight, knowing that the last thing he would ever see was the eyes of the dragon god of the underworld. A god that would protect its treasures at any cost, and destroy all those who tried to steal them.
Sen began to whimper. As the seconds on the zidium device in the cave behind him ran out, the dragon god inhaled and let loose his mighty roar.
The red digits sped toward finality then suddenly froze on
00:00:00
, and for a moment the whole world seemed to stop. Then the silver ball gave off a buzz, like a magnetic drone that increased in volume, seeming to suck the very space and air from its surroundings.
00:00:00
, and for a moment the whole world seemed to stop. Then the silver ball gave off a buzz, like a magnetic drone that increased in volume, seeming to suck the very space and air from its surroundings.
The blast was so fierce it completely vaporized the cave of diamonds. It pushed outward in all directions in a white wave of destruction, letting nothing stand in its way.
The ceiling of the cave lifted up into the cavern above, breaking apart, then consumed completely by the blast. Boulders were pushed into the air and shattered to smithereens. Walls disappeared before they even had a chance to collapse. The wave roared down every tunnel extending from the vast cavern, then gushed upward, funneling its destruction up the elevator shaft.
Will looked down through the steel grate of the elevator platform as the cage rocketed upward. His eyes shone in the reflection of the blast wave rushing up beneath them, devouring the walls of the shaft. “Oh,
FUCK!
” he cried.
FUCK!
” he cried.
Outside, on the train tracks, Shane stopped running at the sound of a powerful
oomph!
deep inside the mountain, so low and resonant it sent a shudder through the earth, followed by a ripple that buckled the train tracks. He started running back to the mine as fast as he could.
oomph!
deep inside the mountain, so low and resonant it sent a shudder through the earth, followed by a ripple that buckled the train tracks. He started running back to the mine as fast as he could.
In the engine compartment of the Zhang Diamond Express Xi felt the tremor, then heard the screech of the train’s wheels as they scraped against the warping tracks. He started shoveling more and more coal through the large open door of the engine’s furnace, feeding the hungry fire and pushing the train to go even faster.
In the master carriage, the diamond-tipped crystals dangling from the chandeliers tinkled in panic. Mya looked up and felt the tremor ripple through the room.
In the bedroom carriage, the walls, the floor, and the bed rumbled. It was enough to shake Luca out of his groggy state of semiconsciousness. He opened his eyes and saw Doctor Cyclops grinning over him with a scalpel in his hand. The psychotic surgeon raised his knife and giggled, “Wakey, wakey.”
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