Chapter 19 Worst Queso Scenario
WORST QUESO SCENARIO
Geraldo led Bayard and Exandra through the fromagerie. When they reached the back, he opened a door that led down a stone staircase into the cheese caves. The temperature dropped precipitously, and the air filled with the earthy smell of aging cheese and damp stone.
“The conference room is here at the back,” Geraldo explained. “We use it sometimes for private tastings and business meetings. It’s very quiet, very secure.”
They wound through narrow passages lined with wooden crates, going deeper into the mountain. Finally, Geraldo stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. Through a small window, they could see a desk with a telephone on it.
“Here we are. It’s unlocked. The phone is hardwired directly to the main house. The call should come through any moment. Can I bring you anything while you wait? Water? Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine,” Exandra said. She wrung her hands and bit her lip, clearly anxious about this call.
“I’ll be fine as well.” Bayard waved off the offer. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Geraldo nodded and turned to go. His footsteps echoed back up the passage as he left.
The space behind the door seemed a bit small to call it a conference room.
It was windowless, carved directly into the rock.
A wooden desk sat against one wall. There was nothing on the desk besides an old-fashioned rotary telephone.
There was also a round table with four chairs.
A filing cabinet. And along the walls, more wheels of cheese, each one marked with strange symbols and numbers.
“Well,” Bayard said, taking a seat. “I suppose that now we just wait for that call.”
They sat in uncomfortable silence. After a few moments, Bayard stood up to examine the cheese wheels. Exandra paced. Five more minutes passed. Then ten.
“How long does it take to place a call?” Exandra muttered.
“Maybe there’s a delay—”
Suddenly a series of red lights began flashing in the corners of the room. And then they heard a spine-tingling scream.
“What the—?” Exandra moved toward the door.
It was locked.
“Bayard, the door won’t open!”
He tried it himself. She was right. Solid. Sealed tight. The scream repeated. The exact same scream.
“Is that even a human being?” Exandra cocked her head.
“I’m not sure… It’s coming from the speakers in the ceiling,” Bayard observed.
By the third time, the scream was not so much alarming as annoying.
“I wish there was a way to turn that off.” Exandra frowned.
“You know, I think it’s actually a goat,” Bayard posited. “You’ve heard of screaming goats?”
“I’m not sure I can unhear them.” Exandra stuck her fingers in her ears as the screaming goat bleated for a fourth time.
The telephone on the desk rang. Exandra grabbed it.
“This is Agent Thorne—”
A recorded message played, the voice tinny and artificial:
“This is a recorded message. The Emergency Response Protocol has been activated. Temperatures are rising in the storage sector due to the unaddressed buildup of pressure in the neighboring hot springs. The cheese cultures are in danger of catastrophic contamination. Sixty minutes till meltdown.”
The line went dead.
“I hear footsteps!” Bayard exclaimed, his ear pressed against the door. He rapped against it with his cane. “Hello? Geraldo! Can you please let us out? There seems to be some kind of emergency happening and we’ve been locked in!”
“Try your wand?” Exandra suggested.
“Excellent idea!” Bayard reached into his pocket and pulled out his trusty wand. He waved it at the locked door.
Nothing happened.
“Sera solvo!” He tried again, this time using the Latin spell for unlocking doors.
Still nothing.
“Desbloquear!” He tried a third time in Latin. But the lock would not budge. “The door must be warded.” He sighed.
Suddenly, a folded piece of paper shot under the door and skittered across the smooth stone floor.
Exandra bent to retrieve it and unfolded it. She read the message aloud.
“Solve the puzzles to access the emergency controls.” Her eyes widened. “It’s signed, ‘The Culture Vulture’ and there’s a P.S. It says, ‘good luck.”
Bayard sat down at the desk. He picked up the phone and held the receiver to his ear. Then he pressed the receiver back down and picked it up again. He checked the cord. “There’s no dial tone. I don’t think this line is working.”
Exandra continued to stare down at the note. “Bayard, you don’t think this is really—”
The screeching interrupted them again, causing them both to jump.
“I don’t know what to think. I can hardly think at all, what with that stupid screaming goat!” Bayard snapped. “Silencio!” He pointed his wand at the speaker.
With a crackle, the alarm went silent. A moment later, the sounds of the screaming goats were replaced with elevator music.
“Are you kidding me?” Exandra groused at the speakers. Then the overhead lights buzzed for an instant and a digital clock on the wall flickered to life, beginning a countdown sequence: 60:00. Then 59:59. 59:58.
“Oh, good gracious gods,” Bayard breathed. “I’m not sure how or why this is happening, but it would appear that the threat to the facility is real. Someone must have targeted the facility for sabotage before we arrived. That’s why the telegram—to get us out of the way.”
“While they trap us here in some sick kind of game of cat and mouse,” Exandra finished.
“Don’t you mean cheese and mouse?” Bayard laughed bitterly.
“Bayard, that isn’t funny!” Exandra pursed her lips.
“Do you think we might have manifested this, Exxie? He glanced down worriedly at his wand. “What if all of our crazy machinations summoned a real-life Culture Vulture?”
“You know as well as I do that’s not likely, Bay. Neither of us has ever wished any real harm on the Yule cheeses.”
“Yet here we are.” Bayard gestured to the clock.
57:17 remaining.
“Okay, Bayard.” Exandra’s face became a mask of calm as she slipped into professional mode. “Here are the facts. If the hot springs pressure breaches the caves and makes the temperature rise too high, the cultures will become contaminated and you know what that means…”
Bayard finished her thought.
“No Queso Luna for the Yule celebration. No midnight revelations and shared joy for the villagers. Exactly what someone like the Culture Vulture wants!”
They stared at each other, fear and determination mixing.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Bayard said, rising to his feet again.
“We need to solve these puzzles,” Exandra said. “Fast.”
The first puzzle revealed itself immediately: a section of the wall slid aside, revealing a message chalked into the stone:
ONLY STRENGTH CAN MOVE WHAT TIME HAS SET. FIND THE MARKED WHEELS AND PLACE THEM IN ORDER OF AGE.
Exandra looked around. Four massive cheese wheels sat on a platform, each easily fifty pounds. Above them, four empty shelves were each marked with a year: 1847, 1923, 1965, 2001.
“The wheels must have the dates somewhere,” Bayard said, moving closer. “But they’re on the bottom. We have to lift them to see.”
Exandra cracked her knuckles. “That, I can do.”
She lifted the first wheel—heavy even for her considerable strength—and turned it so Bayard could see the carved date on the bottom.
“1965!”
She placed it on the corresponding shelf. Then the next: 2001. Then 1923. Finally, 1847.
A grinding sound, and a door opened in the far wall.
55:27 remaining.
They rushed through into the next chamber. This one was filled with bottles of various liquids, each labeled with handwritten specimen labels with Latin inscriptions. A whiteboard on the wall displayed a question:
WHICH THREE CULTURES ARE REQUIRED FOR AUTHENTIC QUESO LUNA? SELECT CORRECTLY OR PREPARE FOR THE MELTDOWN.
“This is your specialty,” Exandra said. She held up her hands. “It’s all you.”
Bayard studied the bottles, his mind racing. Queso Luna. Fresh goat cheese. What cultures would they use?
“Lactococcus lactis,” he murmured. “Definitely. And Leuconostoc mesenteroides for the texture. And...” He examined the other options. “Lactobacillus rhamnosus. Those three.”
He selected the bottles and placed them on the tray on the counter. They waited a moment, Bayard afraid he’d chosen wrong.
Another grinding sound. Another door.
49:23 remaining.
The third chamber contained what looked like a large wooden cutting board mounted on the wall, its surface covered in carved symbols and patterns. Cheese wheels marked with matching symbols sat on a nearby table.
DECODE THE PATTERN. PLACE THE WHEELS IN THE CORRECT SEQUENCE TO CLEAR THE PATH FORWARD.
“It’s a cipher,” Bayard said, excitement cutting through his fear. “Look here: These symbols correspond to traditional cheesemaking marks. Each one represents a stage of production.”
“Can you read it?” Exandra asked.
“I think so. This one—” He pointed to a symbol.
“—represents the curdling stage. And this one is pressing. This is aging. This is...” He worked through the logic, his fingers tracing the patterns.
“They need to be arranged in the order of production. Curdling, cutting, pressing, salting, aging, wrapping.”
They worked together, Exandra lifting the heavy wheels while Bayard directed placement. When the final wheel clicked into place, a hidden panel slid aside, revealing a narrow passage.
42:15 remaining.
“Through here,” Exandra said.
But the dimly lit passage was more than simply narrow.
It was an agility course that wound them up through the aging caves.
Low ceilings, tight turns, places where they had to squeeze between the racks.
The final section required climbing back down a ladder while maintaining three points of contact.
“I’ll go first,” Exandra said. She wanted to be somewhere she could catch him if he fell. She could never forgive herself if he got hurt again.
“No, I will.” Bayard moved toward the entrance.
“Bayard, with your leg—”
“My leg is fine.”
“It’s not fine, and this requires agility—”
“I’m not helpless, Exandra!”
“I never said you were!”
“Didn’t you?” His voice cracked. “Isn’t that what you’ve thought about me for the past eighty years? That I’m broken? Damaged? Someone who needs to be protected and left behind?”
“That’s not—” Exandra’s eyes filled with tears. “Bayard, no. That’s not what I think at all.”
“Then leave me alone and let me do this.” He stopped, breathing hard. “Please.”
They’d navigated the course together. Bayard’s limp had made certain moves difficult, and twice Exandra had braced him when his cane slipped.
But he hadn’t complained or hesitated in asking for help when it was necessary.
She stared at him, forcing herself to stand down. “All right, Bay. I’m right behind you.”
But she still couldn’t make herself watch while he climbed down. She closed her eyes and held her breath till she heard him shout up to her. Then she quickly climbed down after him.
At the bottom of the ladder, they found themselves in a larger chamber with a control panel on the wall. A heavy metal door marked with a lit “Exit” sign stood before them, still locked.
FINAL CHALLENGE: ENTER THE SEQUENCE TO RESTORE TEMPERATURE CONTROL AND PREVENT CONTAMINATION. USE EVERYTHING YOU’VE LEARNED.
The digital panel displayed a series of spaces waiting to be filled in. The keyboard was rife with possibilities. Numbers, letters, symbols. The “sequence” was an elaborate password of sorts. It could be anything. Exandra leaned against the cold stone wall, resisting the urge to pull her hair out.
“How will we ever figure out what numbers to choose?” she moaned.
“I think it’s all of them,” Bayard mumbled as he realized. “The years from the wheels. The cultures we selected. The cipher pattern. We have to combine them in the right order.”
3:42 remaining.
“The years were 1847, 1923, 1965, 2001,” Exandra recalled. “And the cultures—”
“Lactococcus lactis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Lactobacillus rhamnosus.”
“And the cipher sequence—curdling, cutting, pressing, salting, aging, wrapping.”
They stared at the panel, trying to see the pattern.
2:15 remaining.
“Wait,” Bayard said. “The symbols—they corresponded to years. Each stage of cheesemaking has a traditional time period. If we match them—”
His fingers flew over the panel, entering the combination: dates, culture abbreviations, symbols in sequence.
0:47 remaining.
“That’s not working,” Exandra said, her voice tight.
“Try reversing it,” Bayard suggested. “Newest to oldest?”
Exandra’s large, agile hands flew across the panel.
0:23 remaining.
At the very last moment, a green light flashed.
The door clicked open.
They stood there, breathing hard, covered in dust and sweat, and for a moment, they just looked at each other. Then they embraced. But only for a moment.
“We did it,” Exandra whispered.
“We did.”
They stumbled through the door, back into the open air. They were standing in a private patio off the side of the fromagerie. And what they found there made both of them gasp.