Project Purple

60 - Level Up!

"Don't move," she said, "it's dead ahead".

The olive-blushed taipan, possibly the most venomous snake in the world, curled in her flashlight beam, ready to leap.

They were down to two, but still a team. This time there were no degrading monikers, no Goatwench, no Tallyman; the new scenario was too brief to establish such formalities. They'd survived the Colonial massacre, what they had called Project Purple-Though they hadn't exactly won, they hadn't exactly lost. It was inconclusive.

The colonists had been promoted, all three of them. Survivors continued on to the next challenging round, something they referred to as a study in Organizational Prioritizing. This one involved reptiles.

"Now what?" Buford asked, frozen next to cosmetics counter, watching the thing hissing and spitting in its insistant coil. At least in the Russian Far-East there was always hope of escape; there was always an open direction. But in here, the stifling incarceration offered only bottled-up hopelessness.

"Back up, slowly."

Would they ever be released? Even if they were, could Henri ever really go back? Could Buford go back to selling toilets?

"I think we're in a Macey's," Buford half-whispered, stepping back, "Wish we had Jannie with us, she used to work at a Macey's."

A floor plan next to an inoperable elevator indicated three levels, and they were headed up to the roof. Sometimes they could feel a terrific heat blasting through the air ducts to keep the snakes active-so they figured-and the AC units would probably be on the roof.

Buford shook his head, scanning the aisle behind them, "I know Home Depots inside out, but this is a Macey's-or, at least they've set it up like one."

They'd had enough of the first floor, witnessing a stunning taipan ambush earlier-A snake dived down on some poor guy from a mean's wear display case near the front doors. Another sprang out from under a rack of Tommy Hillfiger shirts -a good lunge of ten feet, or so, twice the snakes length.

It was cartoonish: They didn't stop, enveloping him, biting with such savery, thrashing around him like angry, olive-colored cables, sheathing him as he stumbled, taking down a mannequin in leisure wear.

His screams still rang in her head.

But there was something that stalked the floors, too, even worse than the snakes-demonstrated by the severed shoulders and head of what looked like a woman dangling from the thing-her face, and with the pageboy hairdo, flopping from the thing's mouth like some perverted dinasoaur exhibit. The snakes only killed you with their highly potent venom, and then slithered off, but the enormous monitor lizards, they wanted meat.

There were other teams, all Americans, of course. When they were all herded together at the little dock, she had a few minutes to size up the competition; some looked dazed, unsure of what was happening. They wouldn't make it.

The woman with the pageboy cut, Henri remembered seeing at the dock. Her partner, a middle-aged bald guy, who looked like a cop, studied Henri like she should know him, like they had gone through some momentous experience together. His eyes pleaded with her to forge some kind of link with him, like Henri should be with the cop, instead.

Like Hell. They might be inside a Reptiles-R-Us, but that didn't change anything; the Goatwench's fidelity was steadfast to what remained of her colony-the one that become a fort-and to the lone colonist-the one person who had garnered the resources to stay constant with her.

"Think I prefer the 1600's," Buford said through his teeth. The taipan had crept forward, its downright aggression convincing-Pheromones, or whatever wicked narcotic they pumped into the things gave the snakes not only a frenzied hostility, but a special cunning had kicked in, as well; some chemical craziness had given their asailants an additional degree of menace.

"Behind," she said.

Another taipan had slithered into the aisle from behind the green Starbucks sign. A pincer move. These reptiles-they knew their maneuvers.

"Maybe they're animatronic-like that hawk you took down."

Henri craned her neck and scanned the next section-Mens' Shoes, wondering of that would be safer, though it took them farther from the stairwell...

What was the damned purpose of this terror? Nobody told them anything short of 'Capture the other team's flag'; that and 'survive the night'. All they had secured for weapons were a couple of steel bars from clothing racks. For snakes, Buford suggested tennis rackets in Sporting Goods, Level Three.

That's where they were headed, for tennis racquets, maybe a hockey stick, and then the roof. Henri had the feeling the cop was upstairs, waiting; that some kid of showdown was inevitable.

She looked up at the ceiling cameras: The Rhizome-watching, analyzing, also waiting, for some innovative technique of organizational prioritizing.

"Goddamned things are about to jump us, Henri... What now? ... Henri? - What now?"