Choke: 2 (Pillage Trilogy (Pillogy)) (24 page)

“You’re probably right,” I screamed back. “I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

“I know you are,” she replied.

I looked over at Kate. She was covered with fabric and stuffing.

She looked at me. “This is probably one of the dumbest ways to die.”

I couldn’t argue that. We both held onto the seat backs in front of us as the train continued to pick up speed. It was only a few feet away from the moss wall now. In my mind I saw us shooting out of the green wall and blasting out over the forest. But the nose of the train just pushed the moss wall slowly out. Then there was a brief moment before the nose of the train dropped down like the front cart of a roller coaster.

I screamed my personal loudest.

The front section now pulled the rest of the train quickly out of the cave. The accordion design was brilliant, shaping the train into an arrow that was flying down the mountain. My heart had long since popped out of the top of my head, and Kate was saying things I couldn’t understand in a very loud voice. The slope of the tracks was so severe that it felt like we were freefalling. I looked out the windows and watched the mountain blow by us. The top of the train was thwacking and destroying any of the sideways trees that were growing in our way.

“Beck!” Kate screamed.

“Sorry!” I apologized again.

In what seemed like one very long, frightening instant we reached the bottom of the mountain. I thought we’d just slam into the trees and be obliterated, instead the train bumped and raced along the track. The weight of it was so tremendous and the fall down the mountain had given it such speed that there was no way it was going to stop yet.

It blew through the few trees that were growing through the tracks and shredded any of those near the sides. All the rain and the still-spongy ground made the trees just pop up out of the soil.

“It’s not stopping!” Kate informed me needlessly.

“We have to stop eventually,” I shouted back.

Everything was happening so fast. It felt like the world was spinning at a rate far faster than it should. I could see darkness and trees and stars and bits of light from the train’s lantern. We hit a big tree on the left side of the track and the train lifted a few inches and then its wheels slammed back down on the tracks. I could see sparks snapping and shooting up from below. The out-of-control train smacked another tree. It flipped up and shot back. The trunk of it pierced the roof and came shooting down between Kate and me. We both looked at the tree and screamed even louder.

I achieved a new personal best.

I felt like I was going to pass out. The velvet rope was coming loose and I was so shaken I couldn’t see clearly. My head crashed into the seat back in front of me and I could feel blood beginning to trickle down from the gash.

“This . . . was . . . a . . . really . . . bad . . . idea!” I yelled.

Kate didn’t have time to respond. The train slammed into the back of the garage and everything went black.

Illustration from page 70 of
The Grim Knot

CHAPTER 26

I heard the sound of water running and stones dropping. I opened my eyes and was surprised to discover that I wasn’t dead—in fact I was fine and still tied into my seat. The train was on its side, but practically standing on its nose. I figure the ground beneath the garage had stopped it. The roof of the train was completely cracked, and there was a large part of it missing from the back. I heard Kate struggling. I turned my head to look at her. She was conscious and trying to untie the knot on her rope with her teeth. Her head was covered in dust but she looked okay. Actually she looked better than okay.

I shook off my binding and carefully climbed up the tilted seats to help Kate.

“We’re alive,” I said nonchalantly.

“I can’t believe it,” Kate puffed while holding on to the back of her seat so she didn’t slide down.

“My idea worked,” I pointed out.

“You call this worked?” she smiled weakly.

“What? The ground stopped us.”

We both were pretty scratched up, but our bodies were still intact. I could hear the steam engine still sputtering and hissing.

“Don’t move,” Kate said suddenly.

I stopped moving. “Why?”

She leaned to the side to look through a busted hole. “Um, I think we’re sort of hanging.”

“Whaddya mean ‘sort of hanging’?” I asked, moving to see what she saw.

Kate was wrong, we weren’t sort of hanging, we were hanging. We had busted through the back of the garage and then
angled almost straight down into a hole. The tracks actually went down deeper but we were somehow hanging. I looked toward the rear of the train. I could see the steel cable attached to the back. It was taut and keeping us from falling any farther. The rear of the train was about ten feet beneath the garage house floor. Light from the garage lamps lit the scene in an eerie glow.

“We should get out of here,” Kate whispered.

“I agree,” I said, being agreeable.

We climbed up the seats and then worked our way out of the hole in the roof. The huge train moaned and swayed slightly which made both of us move a little quicker. We reached the back end where the cable was attached and climbed up the sloped track. Water was running down the rails from a busted pipe in the garage floor.

We reached ground level where the tracks had once gone under the garage wall. There was no longer any wall. We stood up and dusted ourselves off while checking for any breaks or bruises.

“You just might be too exciting for me,” Kate joked.

“I get that a lot,” I smiled.

We looked at the section of wall we had destroyed and then gazed out toward the trees. I could see straight into the forest thanks to the path we had cleared out. It was too dark to see all the way to the mountain, but I could see the cave’s entrance lit up on the side of it. The train had knocked out almost all of the moss, so it was easy to spot the large glowing hole. The long, tight cable stretched out from where I stood and ran straight up to the cave like a zip line.

Thomas and Scott came running around the far corner of the garage. Scott was carrying a shotgun, and Thomas had a closed umbrella. Scott swore as he looked at the destroyed garage wall. He slapped his forehead and began to yell at us.

“You did this?” he ranted.

“It was sort of an accident,” I said lamely. “We almost died.”

“Calm yourself,” Thomas insisted. “Is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine, but we were locked up,” Kate told them. “This was the only way out.”

“Is that a train engine?” Scott asked in shock as he stared down through the huge hole.

Kate and I nodded.

“You’d better fill us in, Beck,” Scott insisted.

I gave both Scott and Thomas the quick, yet heavily edited, version of what had transpired. I told them about finding the cave and about Van locking us up in the train. I told them about having no other option and how we tied ourselves to the seats. I told them everything I could remember, although I might have accidentally left out the part about the dragon.

“Where’s that reporter now?” Scott asked, turning his fury from me to Van.

“We don’t know,” I said honestly.

“The important thing is that everyone’s okay,” Thomas said kindly.

“Everyone’s fine,” I replied. “It could have been much worse.”

The hanging train moaned, followed by a thunderous crack in the air. The taut cable went limp. We all stepped back as the back of the train dropped down two more floors. There was a great noise as it hit the very bottom of the tracks. We all stood there staring into the hole, listening to things break and split apart. I was pretty happy we had gotten out in time.

“Well, that’s a little worse,” I observed.

I was going to say more, but an ear-splitting noise rang through the air. I turned and glanced toward the mountain. A dark smear shot out of the lit-up cave. I could see Lizzy’s silhouette for a second. It was enough to make all of us shiver. Scott swore again, and Thomas went weak in the knees.

“Oh yeah,” I said apologetically. “And there was a dragon.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Thomas curse before.

Lizzy was temporarily lost in the darkness, but I heard her scream getting louder as she flew closer. All four of us ran toward the manor. When I passed the snake fountain I stopped and looked up. I could see Lizzy’s shadow against the half moon. She twisted and dove toward the manor screeching.

Scott raised his shotgun and fired twice.

“That’s no good,” I yelled. “There’s only one way to kill her and it isn’t with a gun.”

Lizzy extended her back legs down and out and then slammed into the copper dome. Her talons scraped across the metal. She stopped and began clawing at the dome, desperately trying to take hold of something. Lizzy raised her head back in a fit and blew fire up into the night like a flaming fountain.

“Aeron!” Thomas hollered. Even when he screamed, Thomas sounded like a gentleman.

The fire backlit all the gargoyles on the edge of the roof and made it look like a host of beings were looking down at us. Lizzy’s talons grabbed hold of the top of the dome and she peeled back a large piece of the copper. Thomas and Scott ran toward one of the back doors of the manor. Kate started to follow, but I grabbed her arm.

“Wait!” I ordered.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“We can’t do anything about her from up there,” I said frantically. “She just wants the metal. She’ll return to the cave with what she’s pillaged.”

“So?” Kate asked.

“We’ve got to get to the cave and put a stop to her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” I hollered. “Maybe we can lock her back up. I just know there’s nothing we can do from in the dome.”

“We almost died up there,” Kate reminded me.

“Well, you can wait here if you want,” I offered.

“No way.”

We were pretty beat up. My body was growing rapidly more achy from the shock of the accident, and I had blood all over my arms. I could also feel a huge lump rising on the back of my head. Kate wasn’t in much better shape, but we had no time to sit around and lick our wounds.

“Running hurts,” I hollered as we ran.

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, when my feet slap down on the ground, it sends shockwaves shooting up and down my entire body.”

“Don’t really tell me,” Kate grunted.

“Oh,” I puffed back.

“How do you think Lizzy got out anyway?” Kate yelled.

“I have no idea. I slid the bolt through the lock.”

We couldn’t run all the way to the stone stairs, but we walked as fast as possible. We watched Lizzy fly overhead as she returned to the cave to drop off some of her spoils.

“Keep going,” I told Kate. “She’ll probably go back for more.”

We reached the stone steps and I cursed every stair I had to climb. Halfway up, we saw Lizzy burst out of the cave above and head back toward the manor.

“Hurry!” I ordered.

“I’m ten steps ahead of you,” Kate yelled back.

“Well, then wait up,” I pleaded.

By the time we reached the cave opening, I was totally out of breath, strength, and courage. I would have done almost anything to just sit down, rest up, and have someone else take care of the problem I created.

As I stepped into the cave I could see quite clearly how Lizzy had gotten out. The stone wall between the front cavern and the back one was broken open, right behind where the train had once sat. I could see directly into the back cavern.

“I don’t think we’ll be locking her up back in there,” I said. “So the train broke the wall?”

“The steel cable,” Kate said. “When the train fell into the garage hole it was because the reel busted away from the wall and broke open a hole for Lizzy.”

I could see the huge wide reel standing up on its side near the front of the metal platform the train had once been parked under. The reel was taller than the platform. There was tangled cable lying across the floor in large, messy coils.

“So what do we do?” Kate asked desperately. “We can’t lock her up, and what’s Lizzy going to do after she gets all of the copper dome?”

“Probably head into Kingsplot,” I said.

“You’ve got to kill her,” Kate said solemnly. “Seriously, Beck.”

“I know,” I replied mournfully.

“So do you jab a stick in her throat like the last ones?”

“No,” I answered. “There’s only one way to kill her.”

“How?”

“We’ve got to choke her.”

Kate laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

I shook my head.

“You can’t choke her,” Kate yelled. “She’s huge.”

“I was supposed to do it right after she was born,” I explained.

“But you didn’t.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that,” I argued.

“So what now?”

I probably would have said something brilliant if it had not been for the interruption of Lizzy. We heard her scream first and then like a big wad of scary, she entered the cave. Kate and I hid behind the huge reel.

Lizzy had another copper section in her talons. She dropped her spoils and folded her rubbery wings. The gray stripes on her body were spreading, making her bottom half almost completely dark. She rocked back and forth on her feet and then blew fire while rotating her head. The flames vanished, and she screamed as if she were the queen of the world. Lizzy leaned her head down and picked up the copper roof with her mouth. We watched her carry it through the hole in the wall and back toward her nest.