Chapter 6 - The Brother in the Dark
The second man didn't flinch beneath the glare of Mariela’s weapon. He stood there in heavy canvas overalls, his bare arms covered in jagged, self-inflicted burn scars that mirrored the markings of the pit vipers resting in the glass cases behind him.
"Step back from the cage!" Mariela commanded, her voice slicing through the humid subterranean hum. "Drop the weapon, or I will fire!"
"You won't fire," the man murmured, taking a slow, deliberate step through the standing water. "The muzzle flash in this enclosure will ignite the aerosolized rubbing alcohol we use to clean the serpent tanks. You'll incinerate yourself, me, and poor little Clara in that cage."
The woman in the cage let out a sharp, terrified cry. "Thomas! Please! Leave her alone!"
Thomas Vance. The younger brother.
Mariela’s mind raced. In the chaos of the dispatch and the initial breach, dispatch had only run the single resident listed on the municipal water deed. Nobody had known about a second inhabitant because Thomas Vance was officially listed in the Texas Department of Public Safety database as deceased—presumed drowned in Lake Travis seven years ago.
"Stephen!" Mariela shouted into her shoulder mic, keeping her sight aligned squarely on Thomas's chest. "We have a second hostile in the basement! I need immediate lethal coverage!"
Static hissed through the radio. The heavy concrete ceiling and steel reinforcement of the subterranean bunker were completely blocking the transmission. Stephen couldn't hear her.
Thomas swung the aluminum bat against the nearest acrylic terrarium with sudden, explosive violence.
CRACK.
The quarter-inch acrylic panel shattered. A deluge of stagnant water, cedar mulch, and a twelve-foot albino Burmese python spilled across the flooded floor, churning the water around Mariela’s boots. The reptile, disoriented and enraged by the shattering glass, thrashed violently, its massive, muscular coils slapping against the metal cage.
Mariela didn't hesitate. She couldn't risk a spark from a firearm, but she had non-lethal options. In one fluid motion, she holstered her Glock and drew her Taser, aiming the dual laser reticles directly at Thomas’s sternum.
"Don't move!"
Thomas lunged forward, the aluminum bat whistling toward her skull.
Mariela pulled the trigger.
Pop.
The two barbed probes shot forward, piercing the thick canvas of Thomas’s overalls. Fifty thousand volts of neuro-muscular disruption surged through his body. His muscles seized instantly, the aluminum bat slipping from his fingers and splashing into the water. He let out a strangled, guttural gasp, his eyes rolling back as he crashed onto his back, sending a wave of water against the cage bars.
The five-second cycle completed. Thomas lay twitching on the concrete slab, groaning, his fingers clawing at the standing water.
Mariela rushed forward, kicking the aluminum bat far into the shadows. She dropped a knee onto his shoulder, pinning him to the wet floor, and reached for the iron key clenched in his right fist.
Thomas’s eyes snapped open.
With unnatural strength born of adrenaline and madness, his left hand shot up, grabbing Mariela by the collar of her tactical vest. He dragged her down toward him, his face inches from hers, spitting blood and saliva.
"You think this is the only house?" he hissed, his voice a venomous whisper that sent a wave of nausea through Mariela's gut. "There are four more. Across the county. Arthur builds them... and I fill them. You'll never find the others before the water rises."
Mariela drove the butt of her tactical flashlight hard into the nerve cluster behind his jaw.
Thomas’s grip slackened. His head snapped sideways, his body finally going limp against the flooded concrete.
Mariela snatched the iron key from his hand. She scrambled to her feet, splashing through the water back to the cage where Clara was curled in a tight ball, sobbing hysterically as the massive python slowly slithered past the chain-link mesh, seeking higher, dry ground near the stairs.
Mariela inserted the key into the heavy brass padlock.
Clack.
The shackle sprang open.
Mariela pulled the cage door wide, kneeling beside the shivering woman. "Clara. Listen to me. Can you walk?"
Clara looked at her with hollow, tear-filled eyes, shaking her head weakly. Her legs were covered in pressure sores, her ankle rubbed raw by the steel band. "I haven't stood up in two years... my legs... they don't work..."
Mariela didn't waste another second. She lifted Clara into her arms, groaning under the strain of carrying an adult, even one as severely malnourished as this. She turned toward the stairs, navigating carefully around the thrashing reptile in the shallow water.
As she reached the bottom step, a pair of heavy boots came thundering down the concrete.
"Mariela!"
Stephen appeared at the landing, his face pale, his broken arm crudely secured in a sling made from his own duty shirt. In his good hand, he held his service weapon, sweeping the shadows below.
"I got her," Mariela panted, her boots slipping on the wet stairs as she carried Clara up into the warm air of the upper hallway. "I've got Clara. But Thomas is down there. Unconscious, but alive."
Stephen stared in shock at the woman in Mariela’s arms, then looked down into the darkness. "Thomas? His brother? The one who supposedly drowned?"
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"He's alive," Mariela said grimly, laying Clara gently onto the hallway floor. "And Stephen... he said this isn't the only house."
Suddenly, from outside in the yard, the wail of approaching sirens finally cut through the suburban silence. Four Austin PD cruisers, followed by an EMS ambulance and an unmarked black SUV belonging to the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Crimes Task Force, pulled onto Oak Street, their headlights illuminating the entire neighborhood in brilliant, unforgiving white.
