The Sunset Prophecy (Love & Armageddon #1) (24 page)

“
Is he reading his own critiques?” whispered Cindy.

“
I think so,” Paolo answered.

Cindy nudged Paolo.
“I’m going in. He’s distracted.”

Paolo nodded, swallowing nervously.

“Facebook, its love hate with you,” Shia said, loudly.

“
Why do you keep reading that stuff? Who cares what idiots on the internet think?” said a young female’s voice.

Cindy stopped pushing through the door.
“Damn, he’s got someone else in there with him.”

“
You want a beer?” Shia asked the other girl in the living room.

“
He’s coming to the kitchen,” whispered Cindy. “Use your phone and find his Facebook page.”

“
Why?” Paolo asked.

“
Post something crazy on there...”

“
...like what?”

“
Talk smack on his...uh...on his uh...on his cars, yeah...his cars,” Cindy said, as she took another glance at his kitchen. “Also, tell him he’s got bad taste in countertops.”

Paolo scrolled through phone and found the Facebook page, as he came upon the message Shia
had just read out loud. He typed and maintained intermittent eye contact with Cindy.

Shia walked into the kitchen and Cindy closed the door.

“Come to the kitchen, I want to show you something in the garage,” Shia was heard through the door.

“
Dammit. Hurry, Paolo,” Cindy pleaded, with her ear against the door.

“
I just got this brand-new, white Panamera,” Shia bragged. “We can take everyone up the coast now.”

Cindy
’s eyes grew wide. She turned to Paolo. “Move, move, move...”

“
What? Where?” Paolo asked, as he submitted his comment.

Even though the door was closed, and both Cindy and Paolo could hear each other
’s panicked panting, they were able to overhear the Facebook notification sound of an incoming message.

Shia was right behind the garage door when he heard the
bloop
. “They wrote back, huh?”

The girl Shia wanted to show the car to
was also behind the door. Cindy and Paolo were hiding in an alcove next to the water heater.

Frustrated, they heard the girl say,
“Shia, stop obsessing over what these losers think.”

They heard Shia exit the kitchen, as his hard soles tapped the hardwood with flustered urgency.

“If you’re gonna keep doing this, I’ll fall asleep on the couch,” said the girl, as she followed him to the living room.

“
Whatever. Just give me a few. If you fall asleep, I’ll wake you up,” Shia said.

Cindy opened the door again. She scanned the area beyond the marble countertops. A conspicuous
red pantry door caught her eye.

“
Only douchebags with bad credit drive yellow Lambo’s?” yelled Shia. “Are you serious? How does this guy know what I drive?”

“
That’s the best you can come up with?” Cindy asked Paolo.

Paolo shrugged.

Cindy tapped him on his shoulder. “Do me a favor; take a look at that pantry door.”

Paolo came up from behind Cindy and
peered through the door, and stared straight at the pantry.

“
That door feels out of place doesn’t it?” asked Cindy. “Everything in that kitchen has been remodeled. From the countertops, to the fridge, to the oven, to the cabinet doors, all of it is extremely modern, except for that pantry door. It looks like it came with the house and has never been replaced.”

“
We don’t have much time. My chest is beginning to hurt. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Let’s check out that door. If there’s nothing behind it, we’re out of here,” whispered Paolo, nervously.

“
Let me make sure that’s where we should go,” Cindy said, as she rolled the rondure across the slippery kitchen floor with force. She pointed the dowel through the crack in the door and the rondure rolled straight toward the pantry door, where it with the small bit of wall underneath the pantry.

Luckily, Shia didn
’t hear the sphere make contact, as he continued to argue with his computer. “Brown marble kitchen countertops resemble petrified feces? What?”

Cindy sneered at Paolo.
“Really?”

Paolo slightly pushed on Cindy
’s back as they both entered the kitchen, still staying low to the floor.

Loud, angry keystrokes reverberated through the living room and into the kitchen, as Paolo and Cindy made their way to the pantry door.

Paolo’s back was turned toward Cindy, as he kept a watchful eye toward the living room.

Cindy ope
ned the door. Bags of beans, various canned items—actually, all beans and a George Foreman grill—greeted her. “I’ve never seen so many beans in my life,” she said, as she stretched her arm into the back of the pantry shelves, hoping for a lever or switch, but the fiddling of her fingertips found none. “I don’t think this is it.”

Paolo turned around and glanced up at one of the shelves. He noticed a
faded Green Giant can of lima beans. Its font unmistakably 70s. “That can looks older than Shia. Kinda strange he’d keep something that old, don’t you think?”

Cind
y reached for the can of lima beans. “It’s stuck,” she murmured.

Paolo then reached up and pulled on the can with more force. The can snapped downward, its top hitting the wooden shelf bottom.

The sound alerted Shia in the living room. “Who’s there?” he asked loudly.

All the shelves inside the pantry pulled themselves
backward a few feet, revealing a dark entryway in the ground with a ladder.

With urgency, Cindy got on her knees, picked up the sphere, and backed herself into the hole.

Shia stood up and faced the kitchen while still in the living room. “Hello?” he asked again.

As soon as Cindy was well below ground, Paolo got on all fours, his cracking joints
echoing throughout the kitchen, as Shia approached.

Paolo wormed into the entrance, his foot accidentally stepping on Cindy
’s hand. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?” he whispered.

“
I’m okay,” Cindy whispered back.

He then grabbed the pantry door and shut it before following Cindy below ground.

Shia peeked into the kitchen. “Who’s here?”

Suspecting someone had infiltrated the pantry, he gingerly stepped toward the red door. As he placed his fingers at the corner edge of the door, his female guest
, who had awakened from her nap, entered the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

He turned around, quickly snapping his hand away from the pantry door.
“Nothing.”

“
Are you done?”

“
Done with what?” Shia asked.

“
Answering stupid Facebook posts?”

“
Yeah...yeah, I was hungry and I thought that I would have...uh...some beans.”

“
Beans?” she asked, crossing her arms. “Let’s drive down the PCH. You promised me, remember?”

Shia glanced over his shoulder at the pantry, and then turned toward his guest and grinned.
“Of course.”

“
You said you’d let me drive?”

“
Yeah...yeah,” he said, escorting her through the garage. He closed the door behind him, after taking one quick, concentrated squint at the pantry, rationalizing away the remote possibility that someone was onto his secret.

—
oOo—

“
Déjà vu,” Cindy muttered, as she limped alongside Paolo. Fortunately, this time, the tunnel was lighted with a succession of construction lamps along the wall. “Wonderful, another stupid underground walkway.”

“
Is this tunnel similar to the one under the church?” Paolo asked.

“
Yeah, but the one under the church was dark as night. Also, if there is a winged demon awaiting us at the end of this tunnel, well, it was nice knowing ya’.”

They walked by rusty pickaxes and wooden wagons filled with stones. Used
-up lanterns littered the ground, giving the tunnel the appearance of an abandoned mine shaft. Paolo sniffed the cold air. The smell of what he perceived as gunpowder penetrated his nostrils. “TNT,” he said. “They probably used explosives to tunnel.”

Cindy repeatedly turned her head over her shoulder, seeing if the young actor was onto them.
“Did you close the pantry door?”

“
Yes, of course.”

“
Do you think he suspected us?”

“
I think if he did, he’d be on our tail. But either way, just keep marching forward. We’re the walking dead anyway.”

Cindy trudged forward, without saying a word. Her silence
showed agreement with Paolo’s assertion.

“
We’re not coming out of this alive, you know,” Paolo added.

“
Good. We’re going to die doing what we love,” Cindy said.

“
Now that I think about it, the only people who are going to miss me are maybe a couple of my students.”

“
That’s pretty depressing.”

“
Well, I never had kids. My ex-wife hates me, despite me still paying half her rent, while she lives with her mooch of a boyfriend, and my sister hasn’t talked to me in two years.”

“
Why’s that?”

“
Petulance,” Paolo stated, solemnly. “Pettiness. It’s a sibling rivalry that’s never been addressed with an adult mindset.”

“
That’s tragic. I actually have an excuse for not speaking to my family.”

“
Every family dynamic is different,” said Paolo, as the tunnel curved up ahead.

“
I was beaten repeatedly by my father for not living up to his expectations. My mother enabled him, and my sister, who I excuse somewhat for being younger than me, was a mute, and continues to be a mute, as she hasn’t called me since becoming a doctor.”

Paolo lowered his eyes. A momentary feeling of shame swept through his body as he realized that his situation was
nowhere near Cindy’s experience. Picking up the phone was all that Paolo needed to reconnect to humanity, whereas, Cindy needed a complete memory extraction.

“
I’m sorry you went through that,” related Paolo.

“
No worries,” she said, pulling her lips back with each step. “That’s why we’re here, right? To search for something bigger than ourselves, something that makes us forget ourselves.”

“
It’s kind of like being jettisoned into space with the promise of discovery but knowing you’re never coming back?”

“
Yeah, that sounds about right,” she said, as her grim countenance changed to one of acceptance.

The professor then pulled out his smartphone.
“No signal.”

“
We’re on our own.”

“
I’ll record what we see,” Paolo stated as he played with his note app.

With each step across t
he hard floor, Cindy’s foot felt as if a searing, iron mallet was pounding it.

“
You’re going to have to help me again,” she begged.

Cindy staggered and propped herself against the craggy wall. Paolo rushed to her aid and lifted her arm over his shoulder, brushing the side of her cheek in the process with his hand.
“You’re warm,” he said, as he placed the back of his hand on her cheek. “You’ve got a temperature.”

Sweat beads filtered through the pores on her forehead. The infection in her foot spread to the area just below her calf muscle.
“I’m okay,” she said.

“
I should have taken you to the hospital.”

“
There’s no time, trust me,” Cindy muttered, her voice weak.

Paolo carried her a few more meters before seeing the tunnel
’s end just ahead. “Looks like something’s blocking it,” he said.

He helped her bear up against the wall. Then, he planted both hands on the stone enclosure, which exhibited a slight a curvature that extended slightly into the tunnel. With all his strength, he pushed the wall. Scabrous stone impinged the area between his shoulder and neck. The wall began to roll as he willed it to his right. The stone wall wasn
’t a wall after all, but a large wheel that could be moved with moderate force.

As soon as an opening was revealed, the smell of gunpowder
permeated the air again, this time more pronounced. A dazzling display of white, fiery light blinded Paolo and Cindy, as the stone wall rolled away.