Choke: 2 (Pillage Trilogy (Pillogy)) (23 page)

I closed my eyes and tried to enjoy watching my life flash before my eyes. Lizzy screamed, and I knew I was done for. I breathed in deep and whimpered.

Lizzy screamed again, and I could hear her massive wings flap. I opened my eyes and looked out through the hole. There were shadows and dark, blurring images everywhere. Lizzy was hopping up and down and blowing fire. I couldn’t believe it.

“Moths,” I whispered excitedly.

The cavern was filling up with them and they were distracting Lizzy. I was trying to figure out how the back door had gotten open, when the lid of my barrel popped off. I was a little surprised to see who was there.

“Van?” I questioned in disbelief.

“Hurry,” he whispered as moths covered his face. “We don’t have much time.”

Van pulled me out of the barrel as we were swarmed by the dirty, winged insects. Lizzy was flying around the other side of the cavern screaming and blowing. Fireballs flashed through the air as pockets of moths lit up and then fell to the ground smoking.

“Come on, Beck!” Van said as he pulled me along the side of the cavern toward the door. “Hurry!”

The moths were bad, but they were not quite as thick as the last time. I could see enough to view the large metal door and note that Kate was opening it about a foot wide. Unfortunately, I could also see that Lizzy was on to us.

“Run faster!” Van screamed.

Lizzy stomped through the moths and across the cavern racing toward us. The insects were everywhere, filling my eyes and mouth every time I opened either of them. Lizzy spread her wings and shot through the air just above the crates.

Van screamed something, but I couldn’t understand him. He reached the door first and squeezed through the opening. I turned back for one last look, and there was Lizzy five feet away, lunging toward me. Van tugged my left arm and yanked me all the way through the door just as Kate closed it. There was a tremendous crash as Lizzy slammed into the other side of the metal door.

I fell to the ground choking and huffing. Van was right next to me rolling in the dirt and acting as if he were on fire. With the door closed, the bugs were next to nothing, although a few huddled around the lights on the wall or were flying out through the opening in the moss.

Kate helped me up. I reached out and gave Van a hand.

“Thanks,” I said sheepishly.

“No problem,” he replied.

I could hear Lizzy pitching a fit in the back cavern. She was screaming and beating against the door like a psycho dragon. We all took a few steps away from the door just to be safe.

“Who opened the back tunnel door anyway?” I asked.

“He did,” Kate said, pointing toward Van. “It was my idea, but he crept in and opened the door. Luckily she was screaming so madly she didn’t hear. I told Van which barrel you were in.”

“Thanks,” I said again. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I told you,” he smiled. “I’m here to help you.”

I smiled back, sad that I had been such a jerk to him. “How did you even find us?”

Lizzy began to emit some sort of howlish cry.

“I was coming up your driveway hoping to speak with you when I saw a tiny string of light flicker on the side of this mountain. I started walking toward it and found the train tracks. I followed them and when I walked in, Kate was just coming out of that door.”

“I keep telling Beck not to have the lights on at night,” Kate said. “But, he’s lucky he did, because there was no way I was going in there to save him.”

“Thanks, Kate.”

She kissed me on the cheek, making me feel better.

Lizzy was repeatedly pounding into the steel door. I grabbed the metal pin from off the dirt floor and slid it into the latch just to make sure she couldn’t unlock it somehow.

“So what do we do now?” Kate asked.

“I don’t want to, but we have to destroy her,” I replied. “She’ll tear apart everything. She was going to kill me.”

“Sorry,” Van said sympathetically. “I know this can’t be easy for you.”

I had totally misjudged Van.

“So how are we going to do it?” Kate asked as Lizzy screamed in the background and leftover moths drifted around us.

“Let’s go in the train,” Van suggested as he waved some moths away. “I don’t want even one of those bugs touching me again.”

All three of us stepped into the train and took a seat where the passengers would have once sat.

“This is horrible,” I lamented.

“I know,” Kate agreed. “But we can’t let her harm anyone. The other dragons didn’t seem quite so possessed.”

I put my head in my hands and moaned. “She just wants to pillage. My head’s killing me.”

“Hold on,” Van said. “I think I have some aspirin in my backpack.”

Van got up and walked off the train, closing the door behind him.

“I can’t believe how wrong I was about him,” I whispered to Kate. “Usually I’m such a good judge of character.”

“Right,” Kate smiled. “You just need to learn to . . .”

Kate stopped to look at something.

“Learn to what?” I asked as if the solution to all my troubles was in her answer. I turned to see where she was looking.

Her eyes were fixed on the door where Van had just exited. It was shut and through the small square windows we could both see him jamming a metal rod down through the door handle, locking us in.

Van looked in through the small window and smiled. “Kids are so foolish.”

I jumped up before Kate.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “I thought you were getting your backpack.”

“No,” he answered. “What I’m doing is becoming the most famous person on earth.”

“You can’t do this,” Kate reasoned.

“Already have,” Van laughed.

I ran to the door and started to violently shake the handle and pound the door.

“Save your energy,” Van insisted. “You’ll get pretty weak in a few days without food or water.”

I had totally misjudged Van . . . again!

“Come on, Van,” I argued. “Let us out. My father . . . Thomas . . . well somebody will come looking for us.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I guess that depends upon how they feel after they read the note I forged, the one where you two talk about running off because you aren’t allowed to be together.”

Kate joined in on the banging. “Lizzy will kill you.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, his smile oozing grease. “I’ll get a tranquilizer gun. Shoot her full of enough medication to knock her out. Then, with the help of some of my more discreet friends, we’ll move her out of here in the dark of night. I’ve already decided on the story about how I fought and captured her. Imagine, the world’s first dragon in captivity.”

“Let us out! A tranquilizer won’t work on her,” I yelled, not knowing for sure if it actually would. “Open this door!”

“How about you shut your trap for just one minute, Beck,” he growled. “The world’s going to be a better place without your smart-aleck mouth.”

I couldn’t really argue with that, so I just banged harder on the door.

“See ya,” Van waved. “I’ll be back to bag me a dragon.”

Van walked around the train, looking at it and making sure there was no way we could get out. He then disappeared through the large hole in the moss.

“I should never have left the light on,” I complained.

Kate was too worried to even say, “Told you so.”

Illustration from page 67 of
The Grim Knot

CHAPTER 25

What a jerk,” Kate said, falling back into one of the padded train seats.

“A jerk is somebody who cuts you off in traffic,” I told her. “He’s more like a murderer.”

“What a murderer,” she said, correcting herself.

We had beaten and tested every bit of the train from inside, hoping to find some way out. The thick plastic windows withstood all of our kicking and hitting. I had even crawled into the engine’s furnace to see if I could possibly climb out a smokestack.

Nope.

We could still hear Lizzy tearing apart everything and screaming in the back cavern. I was so mad at myself for letting Van trick me. And now he was going to steal my dragon. As a kid, I had seen the movie
Pete’s Dragon
about twenty times because I thought it was real. There’s just something about a cartoon dragon that made it easy for me to suspend reality. But I remember the mousy guy with the little beard who wanted to cut the dragon up and use it for all kinds of things. Now in my mind that mousy guy and Van were one and the same.

“I bet Van doesn’t even have a backpack,” I growled.

Kate just shook her head.

“There’s some good news,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Really,” she said. “What?”

“I was right about Van the first time.”

Kate tried to smile.

“Don’t worry too much,” I told her. “Maybe when he comes back, he’ll let us go.”

“Or maybe,” she suggested, “when he returns with his tranquilizer gun he’ll shoot us too.”

I looked around and then repeated what I had been saying ever since I had discovered the cave. “We could start the train.”

Kate closed her eyes and massaged her eyebrows.

“No, listen,” I said excitedly. “We start the train and bust out of here.”

“Then what?” Kate asked. “The tracks are covered with trees.”

“Not the tracks on the side of the mountain,” I reminded her. “They’re just hidden by trees. The train will at least make it to the bottom. Somebody has to notice that.”

“Nice,” she said. “I’ll take comfort in the fact that somebody will find our dead bodies smashed inside this train.”

“Maybe that cable attached to the back will lower us slowly,” I said wishfully.

Kate looked out the rear window at the huge reel of cable.

“I guess we could just wait for him to come and finish us off,” I suggested.

Kate sighed. “This train probably doesn’t even work.”

“Well, then, let’s at least try.” I hopped up. “Rip all the cushions off the chairs and see if you can pull any of that rug up.”

“Why?” Kate asked standing.

“We can wrap ourselves in padding so if we do crash, it won’t be as bad.”

Kate apparently liked that idea because she went right to it tearing up the train’s insides. I threw some small pieces of
cobweb-covered wood into the engine and tore off one of the seat backs. The seat backs were made of wood and had fabric covering it. I figured the fabric would be easier to get lit than the pieces of wood. I got the matches and struck one up. Luckily the train was made back in the good old days when there wasn’t a lot of thought going into how flammable the material was. The seat burst into flame and in a minute all the small pieces of wood were burning nicely. I began placing chunks of coal in the mix and soon there was a roaring fire. It was so hot the front of me was nothing but sweat now. And since we couldn’t open any of the windows, the entire space was beginning to feel like an oven on steroids.

Kate continued to rip the train apart as I shoveled more and more coal into the furnace. I shut the door to let the heat build and helped Kate out. She had pulled up some long velvet rope that had lined the carpet down the aisle.

“We can sort of tie ourselves to a seat,” she panted. “It’ll be like a seat belt. It’s really getting hot in here.”

I couldn’t clearly hear her because of all the sweat in my ears. I opened the furnace and shoveled more coal in. The
needles on the three gauges were beginning to rise quickly. I was excited, sweaty, and frightened all at once. The engine began to make all sorts of interesting noises, reminding me of a really old man struggling to get up from a chair he had sat in for years.

“Wrap yourself up!” I yelled.

Kate had already tied herself into one of the chairs and she was shoving padding all around her. Her red hair was wet from the heat and hanging in her face.

“Tighten my straps!” she yelled.

I pulled on the velvet ropes and made sure she was nice and secure. Then I put more coal in and began to shove pillows down my pants and up my shirt.

The gauges were rising fast. On one of the smaller ones, the arrow was in the red section, and the train was beginning to shiver. I put more coal in and got my velvet rope ready. One of the gauges began to shake and whistle. I flipped a big red switch and the front train light went on, shining toward the moss wall. I grabbed the crank and looked back at Kate.

“Should I do it?” I yelled.

“No,” she hollered back.

That was all I needed. I threw the crank forward and the train lurched, starting out slowly. There was only about two hundred feet of track before it reached the moss wall and started down the mountain so I hurried to my seat and tied myself in as best as possible.

The old train huffed, gaining more momentum with each turn of the wheels. It pulled out from under the metal platform.

“This is a really bad idea,” Kate exclaimed.

“I know,” I replied.

The huffing and puffing of the train was so strained and so jarring, I could feel it in my sweaty bones. By the time we were fifty feet away from the moss opening, we were rolling.

“We’re going to die,” she screamed.