Secrets of Snake Juice Revealed! Part 3

The thrilling snake juice investigation continues with the dramatic Part 3! Click here for Part 1 or Part 2.

I woke to see the blonde woman extending an ice pack towards me.

“For your head.”

“Thanks,” I said, still taking the ice pack. “Where are we?”

I looked around to see we were no longer in the helicopter, but instead in some narrow room.

“Um, Tennessee, I think,” she said, peaking over my shoulder.

“Tennessee?” I said, closing my eyes as I pressed the ice gently on my throbbing head.

“Yeah, well, you can’t really reach Illinois without going over Tennessee,” she said with a shrug.

Baffled, I looked over my shoulder to see clouds and mountains slowly moving along.

“We’re in an airplane?”

“I prefer to call it my jet-propelled laboratory,” Dr. Supplies said, entering the cabin. “Billy, I sink you want to see zis.”

The blonde woman stood to leave, but stopped suddenly and shook my hand.

“I never introduced myself,” she said. “I’m Billy Beane. Nice to meet you.”

***

I wandered into Dr. Supplies’ “laboratory,” which was not much more than a second cabin with several laptops and a large gun rack. The doctor was sitting at one of the laptops while Billy looked over his shoulder.

“I have finally pinpointed zee exact location of Portal One,” he said, tapping the monitor. As I entered, they both looked up. “I am most sorry, Mr. Woodrum, but it is best if you do not join us.”

Taking my leave, I decided to explore the plane’s fore. The cockpit door was ajar, so I stepped inside. Eliezer Alfonzo and Justin Smoak sat in the captains’ seats, talking quietly to each other.

“It’s nice to see you put a shirt on, Justin,” I joked with a smile.

Smoak, now wearing a full tuxedo, pulled a pistol from his jacket, placed it on his lap, and then gave me a look that said: “Speak again and you die.”

“My friend here likes to look nice,” Eliezer said, glancing at Smoak, “when he thinks we are going to die.”

Eliezer chuckled a little to himself and then shook his head. I sat in the empty navigator’s chair and stared at the blinking lights and bewildering gizmometry of the jet. After an extended silence, I spoke up again.

“So that lady,” I began. “Is that really Billy Beane. I mean, like, the Billy Beane?”

“Lady? No,” Eliezer said. “She’s no lady.”

“More like a hard-drinking banshee,” Smoak said with a smile.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “I always thought Beane, y’know, looked more like Brad Pitt, not that girl from Mythbusters.”

“Don’t believe everything you see,” Eliezer said. “Better yet, don’t believe anything you see.”

“Better yet, don’t talk,” Smoak said, flicking some instrumentation.

“Yes, I am that Billy Beane,” Billy said as she walked into cockpit. “The man in Oakland is my, shall we say, surrogate. And I wrote Moneyball to give him some backstory.”

“So Joe Morgan was right all along?” I asked incredulously.

“Joe’s been a thorn in my side for a hun—” Billy stopped herself as Smoak looked back at her, “—Morgan’s right about more than you realize.”

***

The plane touched down at Midway airport in Chicago, and the ground’s crew quickly shuttled the jet to the secret hanger underneath the train station.

Inside the vast, dark hanger, a conference table sat, lit by a single light hung high in the tall ceiling. The five of us all sat down at the table. Beane, Smoak, and Alfonzo all prepped their weapons as Dr. Supplies set up his laptop.

“Unfortunately, we have bad timing,” Dr. Supplies said, turning his laptop to face us. A radar map showed a yellow and red storm approaching, perhaps an hour away.

“Can’t we just wait it out?” I asked.

“We need the storm,” Beane said. “The water and electrical energy in the air makes the portal more distinct, more easy to find.”

“At least there’s no game today,” Smoak said, slapping an ammo clip into his pistol.

“Game?” I asked.

“You haven’t figured this out yet?” Smoak said. “The portal is in Wrigley Field!”

***

“We know these monsters have been using traces of human emotion to slip into our world,” Beane said as the van rolled through the storm towards downtown Chicago. “So places like Chicago and Boston are hotbeds for this kind of activity.”

“On any given night game,” Eliezer said as he cocked his M4, “half the people you see in the stands are paid fans, and half are the emotional monsters.”

“So what are you guys going to do when you get there?” I asked. “Why all the guns?”

“Zat is for your safety,” Dr. Supplies said from the driver’s seat. “Because you are going to close zee portal.”

“What?! I’m just a reporter! I can’t close the portal!”

“You are not just a reporter,” Smoak said. “You are a Cubs fan too, aren’t you?”

I looked down and said nothing.

“Then you are partly responsible for this whole mess.”

“You will need to drink some of this,” Eliezer said, handing me his bottle of snake juice. “It helps you both see the portal…”

Eliezer looked at the others in the van.

“…And hopefully close it too.”

END PART 3