Keepers of the Lost City

33 Bitter

Nina knew better than to descend into the Lost City by herself, but she searched the floor for the trapdoor marked on the blueprint annexure, for when Purdue and Sam joined her. With a lot of groaning and grimacing, she evacuated the loose boots and dirty clothing from the room and proceeded to tear the carpet from the skirting.

“God, I hope Purdue has not gone in too far already,” she muttered as she labored. She switched on the digital recorder and slipped it into her back pocket in order to have her hands free. A sigh of relief escaped her as she heard Sam return along the hallway outside the master bedroom. “Did you get him out in time, Sam?” she cried, ripping the old carpet from where it had been fixed for decades.

Cussing at the horrid clouds of dust and matter flurrying up into her face, she tossed the ear of the carpet aside to reveal the trapdoor. “I’ve got it, Sam!” she smiled, looking back at the doorway. She could hear his footsteps approach rapidly, but only when she stood up and looked out the window did Nina realize that Sam was outside in the driving rain. “Oh my God!”

Nina swung around and received a devastating blow to the face that took her clean off her feet. As soon as she hit the floor, she rolled to avoid another clout from the broomstick. She could not believe her eyes. “Jesus Christ! Sally?”

The small wife of Nigel Cockran sneered like a wild animal, wildly waving the broomstick at Nina. “You stay away from Ken’s kingdom, you nosey bitch!” Sally hissed at Nina.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nina screamed, holding up her hands from her prone position.

“Women were his bane, my darling Ken!” the old woman growled. “Bitches like you, who thought they were special! I was the only one who understood what he was trying to accomplish down here. Not his wife. Me!”

Nina slowly reached for the weapon Purdue gave her as she kept the frantic Sally talking. “What kingdom? What does all this have to do with you?”

Sally cackled wickedly. “It has everything to do with me! I was his lover, his friend, his assistant, and his miserable wife killed him for it! I know because he would have returned to me. We made history, Ken and me. Here at Nekenhalle he furthered the work started in World War II, by his predecessors — a genius idea to eradicate Allied stations and camps without any German casualties.”

“Snakes,” Nina answered.

“Oh, not just snakes, my dear. They had four Amazon Anacondas captured in Peru for the first test of Operation Eden,” Sally explained, pressing the stick down hard onto Nina’s throat. “That ship carried the reptiles to Spain, where Kenneth used some clever genetics to engineer a hybrid species with the size and strength of a constrictor, but the venom of a viper. Imagine that.”

“The Kriegsmarine-Zwei,” Nina grunted under the force of the stranglehold. “But the Spanish route went sour.”

“That is true,” Sally affirmed. “They got loose en route to Argentina and wreaked havoc on the ship. But the mayday came through to Black Sun headquarters in Málaga, who sent a cargo trawler to the rescue.”

“That was not a rescue,” Nina argued. “Every single soldier on that ship perished.”

Sally pushed the stick deeper into Nina’s skin. “The rescue was not for the soldiers, you imbecile! It was for the specimens. My darling Ken’s creations. Then they sank the ship to eradicate the evidence, but you and your boyfriend Purdue are just too goddamn nosy to leave alone what does not concern you!”

“So how did they get here?” Nina asked.

“Two pregnant females were brought here, courtesy of Adelaide’s Department of Nature Conservation, along with a consignment of mountain goats, just to make it look legitimate,” Sally boasted. “As a failed geneticist from my young days at Halford University in Oz, I instantly found Kenneth Wilhelm fascinating, and soon we were inseparable. Of course, Nigel had no idea. Still don’t. Ken died before he could devise an anti-venom, so I have been keeping an eye on his babies.” Sally shook her head hopelessly. “Unfortunately, the Hardings’ moving has been keeping me off the farm, so I could not keep the pit secret anymore.”

Nina could not breathe anymore and Sam was nowhere to be found to save her. Realizing that someone like Sally was the enemy, and that she meant to kill Nina, the historian tapped into her innate fighting spirit. Without a second’s hesitation, Nina swung her right leg across, sweeping the old woman off her feet with a work of hefty velocity. As she fell, Nina crawled over the trapdoor and jerked at the handle with all her might.

“No, you don’t!” she heard Sally sneer, as she leapt onto Nina’s back, but Nina flung her off, sending her sprawling across the floor. She straddled Mrs. Cockran to pin her down, and punched her in the face three times before grabbing her by the ears and slamming her head don on the wooden floor. Momentarily out cold, Sally’s limp and bloody body rolled away as Nina kicked her aside to climb down the trapdoor.

“This is fucking suicide,” Nina moaned to herself as she closed the door above her head. “I hope Sam and Purdue find me before I meet an ugly fate. God, I am really in deep shit now.” She sank her hand into her front jeans pocket to find her Zippo. “And I really don’t want to see what is around me.”