“Where are the bastards?” Riley said, desperately using the light on his wrist watch to light the floor.
“I’m releasing them now!” Madan purred. He pushed a button on his control panel and the ceiling fell open above their heads. They could see now it was a false ceiling, and it was raining scorpions.
“Holy crap!” Charlie said. “Take cover!”
Riley dived for the cover of one of the trees. “Crazy bastard keeps them up there and drops them on his victims!”
“There must be hundreds of them,” Diana said.
“Over one thousand,” Madan said.
With the lethal shower now over, Decker stepped up on a small rocky island in the center and stared at the floor. It was literally crawling with scorpions, and now he saw vents opening in the walls.
Madan smirked. “Some cobras and kraits to keep you company. Don’t say I’m not generous.”
“This is a God-damned nightmare!” Decker said, flicking a scorpion off the rock with the toe of his boot.
“Let them go, you sadistic bastard!” Selena urged Madan.
“Never… I must see them die. I have to kill them.”
She looked down into the pit and saw the terror on her friends’ faces as the scorpions and snakes grew in number and gradually surrounded them on their tiny little rocky island.
21
Decker scrambled further up the island and immediately spun around three-sixty to scan his new surroundings for any sign of an escape route. His eyes lingered for a moment on the writhing body of Laghari as he desperately tried to brush dozens of the lethal creatures from his face and chest. He had been unable to flee when the scorpion nest had fallen from above. Now, the countless enraged creatures were firing their stingers at his flesh and bursting their lethal toxins inside his body.
With Laghari’s hoarse screams of terror filling the macabre enclosure, Decker instinctively brushed himself down, even though he knew none of the creatures were on him — yet.
They all watched the young Indian slapping at the scorpions, but then his movements became slower and gradually he settle down until he was no more than a silent heap covered in crawling, scuttling insects.
“That is not the way to go,” Decker muttered.
“Sounds like they’re actually enjoying it,” Diana said, the disgust palpable in her voice.
Decker pointed to Rakesh Madan who was still peering down through his window high above their heads. “Well, he certainly is.”
“There is no way out, my friends,” Madan called down. A look of smug satisfaction spread on his lean face. “Eventually you will fall down and pass out with exhaustion, and then they will get you.”
“There must be some kind of way out of here,” Riley said. “They didn’t get all this junk in here without a door.”
“There,” Diana said, pointing to the far side of the room. “Is that a door?”
“Yes, but it only opens from the other side.”
“Dammit!”
The scorpions clattered closer, and the snakes slithered around them. “Will he really make us stay in here until we pass out?” Charlie said.
“Seems like the kind of guy who would,” said Decker.
“Listen,” Riley said. “That’s not the way I plan on going out, so I’ve got an idea.”
“Hit me.”
“We can stack these rocks up high enough to climb onto what’s left of the viewing gantry, right?”
“Not with old Kaleka watching over us with a gun, we can’t,” Decker said.
“Leave him to me,” the Australian said, gently crouching down and extending his hand toward the writing floor.
“What the hell are you doing, Riley?” Diana said, horrified.
“We have scorpions back on the station. They’re not as dangerous in Oz, but you get to learn how to handle the little bastards.”
He flattened his hand on the floor, knuckles down and gently pushed one of the scorpions back with his other hand. Nudging it back by its front pincers he was able to get it to reverse into his hand. “They can’t sting backwards, you see…” he said, standing up and giving his friends a broad smile.
“What now.”
“Now this.”
He hurled the scorpion at Kaleka and it struck him on the throat. The Indian screamed and stumbled backward. Instinct drove him to drop the gun into the enclosure as Riley knew it would, and the Australian caught the weapon as Kaleka hurriedly brushed the scorpion off.
Riley didn’t wait a second to fire at the panicked Indian standing above him and he loosed three shots until they all heard the ominous sound of dry-firing. “Damn thing’s out of bullets.”
Madan instantly responded by killing the lights and then they all heard the door opening and shutting.
“He’s chickened out!” Charlie said.
“Good job, Riley,” said Diana.
“Move those rocks!” Decker said. “They’ll be back in here with more guns than the US infantry!”
Riley was already heaving one of the rocks up and stacking it on another. Charlie and Decker joined in as Diana kept an eye out. Riley was the tallest and a minute later he was able to reach up and grab part of the gantry. He heaved himself up out of the pit and looked up. “Madan’s gone!”
Charlie sighed. “Bastard must have decided to cut his losses and get out of here while he still has Lena.”
Riley lowered his hand into the pit and helped the others out one by one, and when they were all safely out of the enclosure they all knew what they had to do next.
They made their way along a corridor and quickly found themselves in the engine room. Decker didn’t like big engine rooms. They were dangerous places. He could control an aircraft, but in a place like this — all full of gauges and tubes and machinery — anything could happen. He’d heard all about boiler explosions, high-pressure fuel lines bursting open and burning sailors, compressor airlines and crankcases exploding, and… give me an old plane any day.
“God this place is noisy!” Diana said.
“I’ll say,” Decker said. “I can’t get out of here fast enough.”
“But which way?” Charlie said.
“Up,” Riley said. “On a boat, always up.”
“You never saw The Poseidon Adventure!” Charlie said. “They had to go down to go up.”
“Never saw that one,” said Riley. “Read a book about Poseidon once though.”
They stepped cautiously up the steel staircase and reached another door. Decker thought he saw daylight through the tiny porthole and that meant they were making progress. At the rear, he watched Riley, Charlie and finally Diana step through and then he made for the door.
It swung shut behind Diana and as he reached his hand out to push it open he felt a pair of greasy hands grab him around his neck. It shocked him, and he called out for help but between the vice-like hands around his neck and the noise of the engine room right behind him his cry for help was no more than a pathetic squeak.
He stared through the porthole with desperate, bulging eyes as he watched his friends jog along the corridor and slip out of sight. Soon, one would turn and notice he was missing — but how soon? Whoever was strangling him wasn’t going to take very long about it, he realized with horror.
The assailant dragged him back into the noisy engine room, and pulled him down onto the riveted steel floor panels so he was out of sight of the porthole. With one hand on his throat he pulled a long, filthy cloth from his pocket and wrapped it around Decker’s neck to use as a ligature.
The American stared up and saw his attacker for the first time. He was an older man, presumably one of the senior officers in the engine room, and now his scarred, sweating face was hovering close over him. He leaned in even closer, the effort of choking Decker reducing his speech to a hoarse whisper, “Time to die!”