David Robbins - New Orleans Run

“Let the ceremony begin!” Baron Laveau shouted, standing. He beamed at Majesta and Violet, who were on his left, and then glanced toward the drum, “Sound the Drum.”

Lynx saw a tall man lift a mallet of some sort and strike the drum. The booming retort reverberated in the arena and out over the bayou. He guessed the sound could be heard for miles under the right conditions.

The tonton macoutes began to chant in an unknown language.

The mallet struck the drum, and again the thunderous percussion echoed on the night breeze.

Lynx suspected what was coming. He ignored the drumming and the chanting of the tonton macoutes , who had only filled slightly over half the bleachers, and devoted his efforts to breaking the chains. He wrenched and pulled and lunged in reckless abandon, heedless of the pain the shackles caused as they dug into his wrists. If he didn’t get free, he was dead. And he didn’t want to die. Not when Melody was waiting anxiously for his return. Not when he had so to live for. A future with the woman he loved. Young kids of his very own.

Damn the injustice of it all!

His arms hurting terribly, his wrists bleeding profusely, he kept at his task with undiminished intensity. His hybrid strength enabled him to persist far beyond the point where a man would have weakened and collapsed. He bared his teeth, his chest heaving, and struggled, struggled, struggled. The drumming had become a monotonous backdrop to his efforts, the chanting a litany goading him to continually renew his attempts. Only when he heard Ferret yelling his name did he finally cease and stay still, weary to his core, dripping sweat and blood. He looked to his right.

“Don’t you see it?” Ferret asked in consternation.

“Dear God, no!” Gremlin declared.

Lynx shifted, and every hair on his neck and stood on end at the horrifying apparition slithering from tunnel not 50 feet away. He inadvertently gasped and recoiled.

Damballah had arrived.

The Snake God of the bayou.

Primal power incarnate.

Lynx’s worst nightmare. He crouched and formed his fingers into rigid claws, growling fiercely, resolved to go out fighting to the last. Fear tried to dominate him, sparked by his dread of all snakes, and he asserted self-control with a supreme exertion of willpower.

The drumming stopped. The chanting too. An expectant, heavy hush descended on the area. The gathered members of the Black Snake Society gaped at their Deity.

Damballah entered the temple slowly. The monstrous reptile drew its entire 40-foot length inside, then slid toward the posts as it had done countless times in the past, its chilling yellow orbs fixed on the creatures it would soon devour.

Lynx had never felt so helpless. The titanic serpent dwarfed him into insignificance; he’d be swallowed in one gulp.

“Oh great Damballah!” Baron Laveau called out. “Hear our prayer.

Accept these tokens for our loyalty and grant us continued good fortune!

Take them! They are yours.”

The Snake God crossed to within six feet of the sacrifical posts and halted. Its mighty head rose into the air. Ten feet. Twelve.

Lynx saw the thing looking at him, and trembled.

“Feast on these morsels!” the Baron yelled. “Enjoy the fruits of our labor for you!”

Damballah’s head rose ponderously, the great reptile staring at the man in red.

Lynx also glanced upward, wishing he could throttle the Baron’s neck, peeved at the idea of being killed without a chance of retribution, and because he was the only person in the whole temple to be gazing in that direction, because everyone else had eyes only for the snake, he alone saw it, he alone witnessed the giant rising from concealment behind the bleachers at the very top, he alone observed the herculean seven-foot-tall figure race down the aisle to the right of the Baron. He alone saw the cyclopean makeshift spear clenched in the giant’s brawny hands, a spear ten feet in length and six inches in diameter, fashioned from the limb of an oak, sharpened to a point by the Bowies the giant always carried.

Blade was there!

Tensing in anticipation, Lynx watched as Blade came to the end of the aisle near the Baron. He expected the giant to hurl the spear. Instead, in awe and wonderment, he saw Blade place a combat boot on the very edge and vault into the air, leaping high and wide.

The giant’s momentum and bulging muscles served him in good stead.

He arced up and over Damballah’s head, and at the apex of his leap, at the very instant he hung in the air over the serpent’s eyes, he bent in half and swung the spear with all the force in his arms and shoulders, driving the point into the snake’s flesh, penetrating to half the length of the spear, and held on tight.

For a heartbeat nothing happened.

Suddenly the Snake God exploded into action. Damballah’s mouth opened wide and it hissed louder than a thousand cottonmouths. Its body convulsed, and its head shot even higher and thrashed wildly.

Blade clung to the spear in desperation, his arms and legs wrapped around the shaft.

Majesta screamed.

The black snake rose almost 20 feet, half of its span suspended above the posts, and then it crashed down, falling between Lynx and Ferret, a full third of its body smashing over the rim and onto the bleachers, onto the Baron and the women with him, crushing them.

Blade let go of the spear and jumped. He landed to the right of the serpent, took hold of the top of the smooth wall, and swung down to the arena.

Above him pandemonium erupted. Damballah continued to convulse in a violent paroxysm of monumental proportions, bearing to the left on the bleachers, sliding over tonton macoutes or battering them aside with its blunt head. Screeches of anguish and terror filled the temple. Panic spread like wildfire, and those men in black who could do so, fled. But the majority never made it out. Limp, broken bodies lay everywhere.

Damballah slid onward, making a mindless circuit of the arena, moving slower and slower. In less than a minute the Snake God had devastated those who worshipped it, and the destruction didn’t stop until Damballah plowed into the Sacred Drum and sounded the resounding beat for the final time. The serpent sagged, its head jutting from the ruptured skin, and expired.

Blade ran to the posts and stopped next to the cat-man. “This is the last time I bring you guys on a mission,” he stated.

Staggered by the snake’s demise, by the havoc, by his own close call, Lynx looked at the giant in confusion. “What? What did you say?”

“I’m not bringing you bozos on another run.”

“Why not?” Lynx asked absently, gazing at Damballah.

A grin creased the giant’s mourn. “Because here I am doing all the work while you three just hang around.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a pitiful sense of humor?”

“So what the hell are we doing back here?” Lynx snapped, squinting up at the noon sun. “Unfinished business,” Blade said.

“Gremlin thought we had everything wrapped up, yes?” The humanoid commented.

“Yeah,” Ferret chimed in. “The tonton macoutes who survived have all fled to parts unknown. We freed all the prisoners held in that damn tower, and helped them break into the storehouse so they could arm themselves.

That guy Jerry seems like he knows his business. He’ll make a new leader of the Resistance.”

“Not that they need a Resistance anymore, no,” Gremlin mentioned.

“All I care about is that Eleanore is doing okay,” Lynx said. “A couple of days in bed and more food will have her on her feet in no time.”

Blade nodded. “All in all, a job well done. The people of New Orleans are free at last.” Lynx looked over his left shoulder at the temple, 40 yards to the southwest, and thought of the rotting carcass inside.