Chapter 8 #2
She glared at him. There was an equal chance she’d knock him out with her bag before turning it on the chimp. “Excuse me? Why don’t you tell him that? It’s my food.”
Trey turned to the animal, putting up his hands in a calming motion. “Look, Buddy, trying to get a few bananas from my wife’s purse isn’t worth dying over.” He turned to his wife. “Is that better?”
“Thank you,” she said, nodding her approval.
Too bad Buddy didn’t understand, as he started running toward them. Both Trey and Catalina yelled at the top of their lungs. He was ready to blindly kick an animal in the balls, and she swung her bag back as if preparing to cannonball it into the ape’s jaw.
Suddenly, the chimp stopped short. Buddy made a couple of screeches before racing across the carpet tufts.
He made it to a wall, clambered up the surface, and grabbed hold of the edge of a hole for an electrical socket that was missing its faceplate.
After pulling himself inside, he turned to flip them off with both hands before disappearing into the wall.
“Well, we showed him,” Trey said, surprised the plan worked and they managed to intimidate an ape.
“You really think we scared him?” Cat didn’t sound convinced.
He slipped his shirt back on as she unwrapped the straps from her arm and set the bag on her shoulder. “Sure, maybe it was all talk and no—”
A thundering rumble interrupted their conversation as they turned around, unsure of what doom they were about to face. Out of all of them, it was becoming clearer Buddy was the smartest one because he got out of there before the earthquake hit. Trey didn’t even know that Cancun had earthquakes.
“Trey?” She returned to gripping his shirt.
He wasn’t sure if they should run or maybe risk angering Buddy again and making for the hole in the wall.
Before any decision could be made, though, a fleet of giant shoes descended upon the area.
While the voices were loud, they echoed in the space above them and overlapped, making it hard to understand what was being said.
Catalina tugged on his arm. “We need to get back to the booth! Come on!”
She was about to leap to the closest carpet tuft beyond the chair, but he grabbed her and yanked her back just before she would have been rolled over and smashed by a monster wheel.
“Watch out!” He carefully poked his head out from under the chair, inspecting the object as much as he could.
It appeared to be a furniture dolly. The wheel was as high as a building.
Knowing it almost took Cat out caused a cold sweat to break across his neck.
“You can’t just go out there. You’ll get crushed.
” At the moment, under the chair was the safest spot to be because there were too many things to dodge out in the open.
“I thought we were trying to get help. We’re not going to get it here. If anyone is going to find us, maybe they’ll find us in the booth,” his wife insisted.
“Only if they’re looking for us. If not, how are they even going to know we’re there?”
His wife was getting more frantic as she jerked away from him. “I don’t know. If someone knows that we—”
“How would anyone know that? Just think about it. Did anyone see us come into the room?” Catalina was smart, but all of this was too dangerous, and he had to protect her over everything. His heart wouldn’t let him risk something happening to her.
“I don’t know. All I know is that it’s the best shot we—”
There was a giant slam, making them jump. Followed by Shit! echoing around them.
“Will you be careful with that? That thing is worth more than your whole paycheck. If you crack the MASS laser—”
“I didn’t crack it,” the deep male voice grumbled. “I already took that part out. I was just taking the booth apart, and the side slipped from my hands. That's all.”
Sure enough, the booth, the same one Cat was eager to get back to, was being dismantled.
There was still the original platform flooring, but a side wall had tipped over and was lying on top of it.
Trey pushed down a hard swallow. Buddy and dolly wheels aside, this was the first time a real shiver of dread went through him at the thought of what could have been.
If they had still been inside the booth, they would have ended up as nothing more than an unnoticeable tiny smear, both their lives wiped out without anyone being the wiser.
The same thought must have passed through his wife’s mind because she stood frozen in place with a hand rubbing across her clavicles, a habit she resorted to when attempting to remain calm.
They stood there, doing nothing more than watching the chaos move around them, seeing bits and pieces of a larger picture of activity, most of it consisting of feet and hands shifting in and out of their view.
Running out, attempting to catch anyone’s attention, appeared to not only be useless because of the noise but also a death wish.
From what he could tell, everything was being either broken down or packed up.
At one point an open cardboard box spilled over, and hands rushed to shovel the contents back in.
A power strip surge protector was pulled from the wall and left haphazardly beside one of the dolly wheels.
“What are we going to do?” Catalina asked. It was unclear if this was a serious question he was supposed to provide a real answer to or if she was merely talking to herself out loud. He hated that her voice had become broken, sounding as though she was barely holding it together.
While he wanted to be the positive go-getter with a plan and reassure his wife everything was fine and they’d figure it out, he didn’t have anything to give her.
The only response he managed was a shrug of his shoulders because he didn’t know what to do.
She rubbed the spot on her chest harder, more frantic.
“No,” she said. “I don’t—We need to do something. They need to help us. We need to go with that equipment.”
“What? Why?”
“If all this stuff has a shot of returning us to normal size, then we need to go to where the equipment is. Staying here isn’t going to fix us.”
Catalina was smart and quick on her feet. It was one of the things he really loved about her. What she said made a lot of sense, except it felt impossible. “I mean, how are we going to do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can get in a box or climb on the dolly.”
They tentatively peered from under the chair, gazing upward at the mammoth-sized skyscraper made up of a furniture dolly filled with equipment.
At the very top of this overwhelming mountain was a cardboard box, its flaps propped open as though the movers were in the process of tossing things inside.
Even if Catalina was able to pull out a set of professional mountain climbing equipment from the depths of her bag, there was no way this was going to be something they could manage in a short amount of time.
The speed at which the movers worked meant Trey and Cat had a short window of opportunity.
But his wife was determined, and he didn’t have any better suggestions despite his apprehension.
“You want to try to get up there?” He pointed to the pinnacle of the mountain above them.
She grimaced as if she was also calculating the probability of this plan working or if there was a greater chance they’d plummet to their death instead. “Yes?” she replied, not sounding the least bit confident about it.
“Cat—”
“Yes! We have to get as high as we can or at least a spot that’s secure. Going with the equipment is our best shot.”
They approached the dolly wheel as their first obstacle.
There were four wheels on the ground as the dolly was in the truck position.
He studied the treading on the wheels, and maybe it was possible they would be able to climb it.
At least he might have a shot. His wife was smaller, less physically strong than him, but if he had to pull both of them up, he was going to do it.
Either they both made it or they didn’t.
There was no third option in his mind. Cat, although determined, was rubbing her chest again.
“You’re going to have to leave the bag,” he told her.
“No. I’m not leaving it.”
“Are you worried about leaving your ID behind or something? Do you think there are tiny cops around to ask for it?”
“I’m not leaving it,” she reiterated through clenched teeth.
She was obviously attached to the bag, but climbing was going to be challenging enough even if she didn’t have to lug the heavy thing around. He reached out his hand. “Fine. Let me have it.”
“You’re not tossing it. The bag is coming with us.”
“I’m not going to toss it. I’ll carry it. This is going to be difficult, and you don’t need any extra challenges. I’d rather take the risk. You can trust me.”
She eyed him suspiciously. He missed having a wife who fully trusted him. To his great relief, there must have been a spark of that faith still alive, because she slipped it off her shoulder, handing it over.
He didn’t know how she managed this bag every day.
It must have weighed at least ten pounds.
Maybe she was more muscly, at least on one side of her body, than he realized.
Trey half expected her to ape-swing up the dolly wheel like Buddy and leave him behind to struggle.
He should never underestimate her. He made sure the bag was zipped and undid the strap as much as he could before slipping his head and one arm through until the strap fit snuggly and diagonally across his torso.
“Okay, are you ready?” he asked her. They would have to move fast. Who knew how much time they had remaining? He kneeled to provide the first boost to Cat.
“Okay,” she replied, stepping into his cupped hands. He pushed her upward against the side of the dolly wheel. She clung to the edge of the wheel treads and inched her way up. No chimp-like swinging here.
Trey leaped upward as much as he could for his own boost, grabbing the edge of a tread with his fingers and finding footing for his feet. He encouraged his wife to climb, following her pace in order to help if necessary but his heart beat hard with the knowledge this had to be a long shot.
Unfortunately, they had only gone up a small amount when the wheel started turning. They had run out of time. They both screamed, hanging on as much as they could, but it didn’t stop them from losing their grip and tumbling to the ground.
“No! No, no, no, this isn’t happening,” his wife called out as soon as she got her footing on the carpet again, doing clumsy leaps across some of the carpet tufts as though she’d get another chance if she caught up to them. “They can’t leave us here like this!”
The dolly traveled too fast for them to catch up, so there was no point in running after it. He stood there panting, his hands on his hips, watching after her. She only went a short distance before giving up, her shoulders dropping in defeat.
They were being left behind.