Apocalyptic pirates 4, p.29
Apocalyptic Pirates 4, page 29
I took a quick sidestep to the right and shoved the door open wider. Taken by surprise, the dragon plopped to the floor, and I slammed the door closed again– this time on its neck.
It squealed and tried to dig its claws around the edge of the door, but I put all my weight behind the handle and then jumped and stamped with my feet together on the tiny fuck’s neck. My boots connected with its spine, and I felt something snap inside its neck.
It gurgled out a weird cry, and I slammed the door shut on its neck again and again. Its eyes rolled back in its head, and it twitched crazily. With one hand finally free, I brought the butt of my rifle down on its head and pulverized its skull. Then I kicked its body out of the doorway and finally slammed the door shut.
I could hear chittering and squeals from the church, and I knew there would be more babies on the way.
There was blood and scales and all kinds of shit on the butt of my gun, but I grabbed a cloth that was hanging from the back of the chair and gave it a quick wipe down. I hoped it wasn’t anything holy that I’d just desecrated, but I reckoned God wouldn’t mind in a case like this.
The secret door was still held open by the chair, and I didn’t want to leave it gaping open in case any of the little dragons managed to break into the office, so I dragged the chair around and wedged it underneath the handle of the office door.
Then I took out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and headed down into the darkness.
Shannon must have been really hurrying the others along, because I got to the bottom of the staircase without bumping into them. When I reached the passageway, I lifted up my phone to shine the light into the dark depths of the tunnel.
“Shannon?” I called.
“Drew!” Her voice was high-pitched with anxiety.
I peered into the dark and quickened my pace. There was the sound of scuffling footsteps, and then Shannon appeared. Her brown face was washed out in the light from my phone, but even the shadows couldn’t hide the naked relief on her face when she saw me.
“Oh, thank fuck,” she breathed. “You’re alive.”
She ran up to me and tried to give me a hug, but the tunnel was too narrow, so she grabbed my face and kissed me soundly.
“I heard shots,” she said. “And banging.”
“Yeah.” I blew out my breath. “There were baby dragons coming in through the window, and one tried to get into the office. So I stamped on its head until its neck broke.”
“Whoa. Badass.” Shannon gave a breathless little chuckle. “I don’t know why I was so worried about you.”
“I’m glad you were worried,” I told her. “Is everyone okay down here?”
“Yep.” She nodded. “We’re all good.”
“Great. Let’s go, then.” I tightened my grip on my gun and the bottle of alcohol, and followed Shannon forward.
Shannon wriggled through the passage to get to the front of the group. Letty was in the rearguard. She was staring wide-eyed into the darkness, but her face broke into a huge smile when she saw me.
“Oh, my Lord, Drew,” she said. “Am I glad to see you.”
“Me, too,” I told her.
“Let’s go!” Shannon called. “Move forward.”
We walked into the darkness.
The journey was a lot louder this time, and I could hear everyone’s panting breaths filling the passageway. The air felt hotter this time as well, and more oppressive, although that could have been my imagination playing tricks on me.
My fingers were tight around the neck of the bottle of Cognac, and I couldn’t shake the worry that I was going to drop it or someone was going to bang into me and smash it to pieces. But I couldn’t waste time on vague worries when there were very real and very dangerous problems literally just around the corner.
Finally we came out of the passageway into the wider circular space that formed the bottom of the well.
The nest was there and glistening horribly in the pale light. The bronze eggs glowed, and I hated knowing that there were more of the terrible dragon brats growing inside them.
“Everyone okay?” I asked in a whisper.
“Is that a nest?” Mrs. Rojas asked in horror.
“No, Mom, it’s a church parade,” Dia hissed. “Of course it’s a nest.”
“Don’t you take that tone with me,” Mrs. Rojas began, but I cut her off before they could start a full-blown argument in the middle of our escape plan.
“Guys, please, we need to focus.” I pointed to the ladder fixed to the wall beyond the nest. “That’s our way out. We’re going to have to go up one by one. I don’t know how stable that ladder is, so we’ll have to move carefully.”
“I’ll go first,” Shannon volunteered.
It was the right call to make. Shannon was probably the most physically fit out of all the others, and she was the best shot, so she would be best prepared to climb the ladder and deal with any threats she might find at the top.
Still, I kind of hated that I had to watch her walk into such a dangerous situation as this.
“Be careful,” I warned her.
“I’m always careful.” Shannon threw me a quick smile.
She stepped lightly around the dragon nest. Seeing her standing so close to the eggs really put in perspective how fucking big the nest and the eggs were. It would have taken anyone two arms to lift one.
I reminded myself how easy it had been to smash through them on Woman Key, and how goddamn satisfying it had been to hear them crunch into pieces under my feet.
Shannon reached the bottom of the ladder, and she pulled lightly on the first few rungs to test their strength.
“It seems okay,” she called.
“Be careful,” I said again.
Shannon looked over her shoulder, and I just knew she was about to rib me for being too fussy.
But just as she opened her mouth, a dark shadow fell over the well.
Chapter 18
For a brief moment we were swamped in total darkness.
Then the light suddenly poured out again as we heard a scratching, scraping, flapping noise, and a dragon’s head suddenly emerged from the top of the well.
Its heavy blue head was as big as a Labrador’s entire body, and its pupils turned into huge black caverns as it saw us. It opened its mouth to roar.
I raised my gun to my shoulder, but Shannon was even quicker. Her bullets tore into the dragon’s neck and gaping jaws. My shots embedded in its snout a split second later, and it sneezed out a coughing roar that sent blood droplets smacking into the walls of the well and splattered on everyone in the group.
Mrs. Rojas screamed. Fernando shoved her behind him and raised his knife, but the dragon was already falling.
The light vanished again as it scrabbled and flapped to try and get a grip on the sides of the well. Its claws scraped over the ancient stone, and a snap that might have been one of its wing bones breaking echoed like a ricochet in the small space. With a strangled screech, it lost its grip and fell.
“Look out!” I screamed as I hastily pressed myself against the wall.
Then the enormous beast crashed into the nest so hard that the ground shuddered beneath my feet, and there was a round of smaller cracks as the eggs smashed under its weight.
“Shannon!” I yelled.
“I’m okay!” She’d managed to throw herself out of the way before the dragon fell, and she was now picking herself up from the back wall.
The dragon let out a gurgling moan. It lifted its head and feebly tried to flap its wings, but Shannon’s next two bullets smashed into its skull, and it finally lay still.
My ears were ringing in the silence that followed. The well seemed to still be echoing with the sounds of gunshots and the dragon’s furious roars.
But there was no time to wait around for the air to clear.
“Everyone, hurry.” My voice sounded weird in my own ears, and I couldn’t tell if it was my voice or the deafening aftermath of what had just happened. “That sound is going to have alerted every dragon nearby that we’re here.”
Shannon leaped for the ladder again and hauled herself up the first rungs.
“Be careful!” I called.
Shannon scampered up the ladder with the agility of a squirrel. She disappeared from view, and then her head popped back over the edge of the well.
“Come on!” she called. “We’re just outside the city walls. I can see the port from here.”
That was a fucking relief.
The others climbed up the ladder, and I brought up the rear, but before I started climbing, I doused the nest and the dead dragon in the Cognac I’d taken from the church.
I climbed up the ladder to join the others at the top.
“Dia,” I said. “Do you have the lighter?”
She rummaged in her bag, brought it out, and tossed it to me.
I tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of my t-shirt, since it was covered in bloodstains now anyway, and held it over the flame until it caught. Then I leaned over the well and dropped the flaming piece of fabric down into its dark depths.
With a loud whoomp, the nest caught fire.
The flames licked around the dragon’s corpse and shone on the broken pieces of bronzed eggshell. The dragon’s head was resting at a weird angle, and for a second, the leaping flames seemed to catch in its glazed, dead eyes and make it look alive. The fire shone on the drool stringing from the dragon’s jaws and the disgusting meaty paste clinging to the nest.
Then the fire leaped and spread. With a roar that rivaled the dragon’s own, it covered the fallen predator and belched out a thick cloud of black smoke that made us all start back from the well.
The passageway had taken us out just beyond the walls of the Old Town, and we were standing by the side of the road that ran along the coast. The sea was just nearby, and if I squinted, I thought I could make out a faint shape on the water that might be the yacht.
“It’s this way.” Dia hurried down the road back to the place where we’d originally docked, and we all followed her at a brisk jog.
I pulled out my phone and rang the satellite phone Ally had with her.
She answered it at once.
“Drew?” she demanded. “Is everything okay? What’s going on? Do you need me back?”
“Yes, we’re all good, and yes,” I replied. “We’re outside the Old Town and heading back to Dia’s dock.”
“Great,” she said. “I’m not too far away, so I’ll get there very soon.”
“Thanks,” I replied and put my phone back in my pocket.
“Was that Ally?” Dia asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded, and I smiled at the thought of how excited she was going to be once she found out that Dia was staying with us. Then I wondered if Letty and Shannon knew that, too. I’d thought Dia and I had been talking pretty loudly in the church, but neither of the other two women had commented on it, so maybe they hadn’t.
I was looking forward to breaking the happy news once we were safely back on the yacht.
“How far away is your boat from here?” I asked Fernando.
“Not far.” He pointed back the way we’d come. “There’s another port to the north, and I left it there.”
“Well, as soon as we’re back on the yacht, we can take you and Mrs. Rojas there,” I said. “And then you can carry on with the rest of your journey.”
“You have a yacht?” Mrs. Rojas asked. She didn’t say it like that was a good thing, more like it was a strange and unattractive disease I’d contracted.
“Yes, Mrs. Rojas,” I said politely. “It belonged to one of our crew’s ex-husband. It’s been a real lifesaver.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Mommm,” Dia hissed. “Can you cut Drew some slack, please?”
“Cut him some slack, huh?” Mrs. Rojas pursed her lips. “Forgive me for wanting to be careful about the company kept by my only daughter.”
“Mom!” Dia shouted.
“Hey,” I interrupted. “We should probably still try to–”
A roar cut off the rest of my sentence.
“–keep quiet,” I finished.
A crunching of claws over stone and a great deal of awkward flapping echoed around us before three dragons landed on top of the city walls just ahead of us. They stretched out their necks and seemed to be sniffing the air. They must each have been about twenty feet long, and they were built like tanks. They were all various shades of blue, ranging from almost baby blue to dark navy.
Everyone skidded to a halt.
I carefully slid the gun down from my shoulder. Shannon did the same.
“Guys,” I whispered. “Get ready to run.”
“There’s three of the fuckers,” Dia hissed.
I half-expected Mrs. Rojas to tell her daughter off for swearing, but the Latina woman’s face had gone dead white, and she had her brother’s arm in a death grip.
“Dia, you need to lead everyone back to the dock,” I instructed. “Ally’s on her way back there with the yacht.”
The three dragons’ heads were snaking this way and that. They didn’t seem to have spotted us yet, maybe because they were distracted by the smell of the smoke that was still billowing out of the mouth of the well.
Shannon and I raised our guns and took careful aim.
The Indian woman’s bullet took the bright blue fucker clean between the eyes. It let out a strangled squeal, and then Shannon released another round of shots at its skull, and it fell without a sound. It toppled backward, and there was a crash as it smashed into something behind the wall.
My bullet caught the navy dragon in the jaw. It threw up its head and roared in pain.
The pale blue dragon’s head whipped around.
“Run!” I yelled.
The others took off running toward the dock. Shannon and I fired again as the two remaining dragons launched into the air. They didn’t fly so much as plummet to the ground, and the thud of their landing made the whole road shake.
I fired at the navy dragon, and my bullet lodged in its neck. It shrieked, and blood dribbled down its scaly hide and dropped onto the road.
The pale blue dragon lunged at us with its wings outstretched and its jaws snapping.
Shannon backed away while firing steadily at the oncoming monster. She sent bullet after bullet into its huge body, and tiny jets of blood spurted out from the gunshot wounds. They seemed almost unnaturally bright against its pastel scales, but it still wasn’t slowing down.
I ran to the edge of the sea wall and balanced on the rocky border. I snugged my rifle into my shoulder and took a deep breath as the navy dragon roared and charged after me. I fired, and my bullet sent its shoulder jerking back with the impact, but it only stumbled for a second before it kept coming. Its navy jaws opened wide. I could see down the red tunnel of its throat and the way the ragged fronds of flesh fringing the gunshot wound in its jaw fluttered and dripped blood with each roaring breath it took.
I held my ground for as long as I dared. Then at the last second, I threw myself out of the way.
The dragon was going too quickly to stop, and its momentum carried it over the sea wall and dropped it straight into the ocean over the border.
It splashed and wailed in a wheezing, shrieking sort of way that grated on my already sore eardrums. Its wing flapped uselessly against the waves, and its huge, heavy body pulled it down beneath the surface. A cloud of red spread out through the water, and it didn’t come back up again.
I whirled around to help Shannon, but she didn’t need any assistance.
The pale dragon was gushing blood from too many bullet holes to count. Its legs had given way, but its bloodlust and hunger was so strong that it was still trying to fight. It snarled weakly with its long black tongue hanging out of its jaws, and it managed to get one front leg up and drag itself a foot along the road before it collapsed again.
Shannon was standing in front of it and looking down at the defeated monster with a weird expression on her face.
“Are you okay?” I panted.
I ran to stand by her side.
“Yeah.” Shannon seemed to snap out of her daze. “I’m out of ammo.”
“Here.” I offered her my gun.
She traded rifles with me, took a deliberate step forward, and sent two shots slamming into the space between the creature’s furious pale eyes. It convulsed for a second before its enormous head thudded to the ground.
“You okay?” I asked again.
“Yeah.” The Indian woman shook her head. “It was so hungry. Did you see how it kept trying to get up? It could barely stand, and it still wanted to fight.”
“That’s instinct,” I said. “It’s an animal, Shannon, it’s what they do.”
“Yeah.” Shannon shook her head.
“Come on.” I patted her shoulder. “Let’s go before more of them come back.”
The others were already out of sight, but we ran as fast as we could down the road, and I soon began to recognize the road from before. Then I spied the yacht up ahead drawing into the dock, and the others crowded on the rocky spit waiting for it.
Letty and Dia had been anxiously looking out for us, and their faces lifted in relief as Shannon and I ran out onto the spit and joined them.
“We’re all good,” I panted.
The yacht was a sight for sore eyes, and I was overwhelmed by a flood of relief as we all clambered on deck.
Ally was running the engine, and I hurried into the cockpit to speak to her.
“Drew!” The redhead flung her arms around my neck, gave me as much of a crushing hug as her moderate upper body strength would allow, and then ran back to the wheel.
“Did you miss us?” I asked with a grin.
“Nah, not really.” She winked at me, and then her auburn eyebrows shot up. “Dia’s back! Is that her mom? And her uncle?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Can you take us up north but stay fairly close to the coastline? Dia’s uncle has a boat that’s docked further up there.”
“Sure.” Ally nodded and spun the wheel to set our course.
She was watching Dia with a faint furrow creasing her brow, and I could guess what she was thinking about.
