“Nina!” he screamed. “Nina! Are you still with me?”
He heard nothing from her, exacerbating his despair tenfold, but it only spurred Sam on to use his loss as rage against the oversized demoness from the Lost City. Evading the lashes of the serpent’s tail thrashing about, Sam severed the spine. It was dead, but its kept writhing and screaming in a defiant reflex, until its contractions finally decreased.
“Hold on, Nina!” Sam kept roaring, hoping that Nina was still alive to hear him.
“Sam, listen,” Purdue said. “It is going to take me a while to wedge free my hands, and Nina does not have much time. “Reach into my pocket here,” he motioned with his head, “there is a platinum vial in there containing antivenin. Take the small med kit. It has hypodermics for each of us, just in case. Hurry up!”
Sam winced as he got hold of the canteen. “How did you get this?”
Purdue smiled a little. “Heike gave us her heart. That is why she was on the Nazi ship, you see? When I melted the gold down, the platinum flask survived the heat. It contains a compound that neutralizes PLA2 and its neurotoxic potency.”
Sam could not believe it. “This… this is why you are the boss!” Sam shouted cheerfully. He leaned forward and planted a smack of a kiss on Purdue’s brow before racing to give Nina the antidote, hoping that she was still alive. Her heartbeat was faint, but he managed to plunge the needle into her vein and feel her weak pulse grow a little stronger.
“You’ll be better in no time, love,” Sam whispered and kissed Nina’s temple.
36 Kaitiaki
A cracking sound echoed through the infinite lanes of the corpse-laden city, frightening Sam and Purdue into silence. They froze, suspended in terror, waiting.
“Anybody down here still alive?” Sully shouted, followed by the voices of the search party clumping along behind him.
“Sully! Help us! Oh, thank God you are here!” Purdue hollered.
The men of the Harding search party came to their aid, but not before they cracked some of Sgt. Anaru’s flares.
“Good God, look at this place!” Cecil gasped.
The others were in similar awe at the ancient necropolis of lost miners, travelers and soldiers, all fallen victim to the primitive maze built by some unknown civilization before the natives began to pass down their legends.
“Nobody must ever find this place,” Gary declared. “No ways, mate. No ways.”
“It is too precious to destroy,” Herman said, “but the young man is right. Nobody can come down here. Louisa Palumbo found offspring up at the pit. Who knows how many have been born down here since Williams brought them here and experimented on them?”
“Too right,” Sgt. Anaru agreed. “And that atrocity must be washed off.” He pointed at the Dire Serpent. “It is Nazi shit desecrating this sacred place just for their sick means to subdue the world.”
“Then we’ll do that ourselves, all of us here,” Cecil Harding suggested. “And none of us present ever tell a soul about this place. Let it stay a legend, hey?”
“I’ll buy it from you,” the injured and exhausted Purdue offered.
“We’ll talk,” Gary chuckled with his brother at the billionaire’s resilience.
“You’re actually going to buy this place?” Sam reprimanded Purdue quietly. “You are incorrigible!”
Purdue smiled. “I have no use for uranium, and it is better away from the world, Sam. I am purchasing Nekenhalle and donating it to Herman, for the Maori Council to use the land. Know what I am saying?”
“Ah! I get it,” Sam replied. “I like that idea.”
“Sam, did you get all the footage of the Dire Serpent? Even if they wash it off, I would like to have that footage, please,” Purdue beseeched.
“Of course, old boy,” Sam winked. “It is, after all, what you pay me for.”
Purdue tried to laugh, but his wounds prevented him from doing it properly. Knowing that his beloved Nina was going to be alright was a great solace, but what cheered him the most was what he saw on the wall in the Lost City. The Dire Serpent was not a picture, but an intricate sequence of numbers and symbols, put together by some German physics giant to look like a snake. It was a cleverly hidden equation he could not wait to scrutinize as soon as he arrived back home.
David Purdue’s genius once more urged him to know more. Without realizing it, he had played right into the hand of the late Mrs. Gloria Williams, whose ashes were smoldering in the newly gutted debris of Grange House.