The Cursed Demigod
Chapter 21 – A Jailbreak… Of The Explosive Kind.
" You idiot! I'm never giving you chocolate again! Even if it is allergy free!" A second voice yelled out, seconds later.
" Aw, come on! Aren't you supposed to warn people before you blow something up?" the first voice whined.
It sounded suspiciously like Glade and I wondered what exactly those two had been doing while Karla and I were stuck in jail. But I was mainly worried for my life to ponder that thought for very long. Both Karla and I had looked at each other in horror at the mention of blowing something up. And knowing my luck at the moment, that something would probably be me.
" Well, yeah. But you're not supposed to scream it out so that the gods can hear all the way on Olympus on the other side of the country!" the second voice, probably John, growled.
" You're not?" Glade asked, clearly high on something. He should know that.
" Do you know anything about what we are doing?"
" I know that you have to be away from the wall when the Greek fire explodes."
" You're using Greek fire!" Karla practically roared as she threw my bag against the cell door.
" How else are we supposed to get you out?" Glade called from the other side of the wall.
" I don't know… maybe use the front door!"
" She's right, you know Glade. We could have just snuck in, knocked the guards out, taken the keys and let them out that way. But someone wanted to blow something up. The Fourth of July fireworks don't start until four days from now."
" Well that's just fine and dandy!" I growled, sarcasm dripping in my voice and my hands flailing in the air with frustration.
" What's your problem?" Karla asked me.
" I've probably been given the worst gift for my birthday that anyone, let alone my insane ancestor's ghost, can give me. I'm going to die on my birthday underneath a firework filled sky. Never thought that could happen… then again I never thought my life could happen."
" You can't be serious."
" If I wasn't what would you say?"
" Your birthday is on the Fourth of July?"
" Got a problem with that? Because my uncle was born on Christmas day and my grandfather was born on New Year's day."
" No. No problem here."
I never thought I'd see the day that a child of Ares was left speechless. Usually they had some kind of snide remark or scary outburst that you needed to watch out for. Then again, I never expected to meet a child of Ares, thinking that they were all like their father. Boy, was I wrong. At least with Karla, I was. But before I could think about anything else to do with what was going to be happening four days from now, Karla had dragged me onto my feet and had moved me to the cell door… just as green smoke began pouring in from the window.
" I hope you two are nowhere near the window, because this thing is about to blow." John called seconds before the wall blew up and alarms began blaring.
Thank the gods Karla had dragged me away. There would be nothing left of me if she hadn't. When the dust cleared, there was a nice big hole in the side of the jail where the back wall to our cell had been. However, my left side was facing the blast (Karla had dragged me by my right arm) and I didn't have the chance to cover my ears so now blood and mucus was trickling down the left side of my face. Great. My injury list now read:
1) Massive hole in left shoulder, going through bone at the same time. I seriously hate spiders. Especially large, hungry and angry ones.
2) Splitting headache thanks to Karla.
3) Poison… because my insane ancestor is a serious madman.
4) Burst eardrum thanks to a chocolate-high Glade and his insistence on using explosive green substances known as Greek fire.
My balance wasn't that good thanks to my recent injury, but somehow I managed to stumble out of the cell without too much trouble. Karla was right behind me, carrying my bag and looking murderous at John and Glade who were standing by the path waiting for us. They had more room to manoeuvre than we did. They were luckier than we were. They were going to get an earful from Karla and they knew it.
" You!" She growled, shoving her finger in John's face. " What took you so long? The poison is spreading! It's covering the top of his shoulder and turning his arm blue! And because you weren't there, I had to do everything! Including washing the old bandages!" The only thing John did was blink a couple of times in shock before the daughter of Ares practically punched Glade in the face. " And you! You idiot! You-you son of a-a donkey! Why would you blow up a jail cell? Does the word inconspicuous mean anything to you? You could have killed us! And while we're on it, 'drop and roll'? Did you somehow forget that Wolf-boy has a massive hole in his shoulder that prevents him from doing stuff like that?"
I never knew Karla cared... or had that kind of vocabulary considering. (And there I go with my stereotypes again.) But at that moment I was looking at Glade. His face was contorted in a mixture of confusion, fear and anger. The fear I could understand. The anger was probably due to the donkey insult (I guess satyrs don't like being called donkeys). But the confusion I could only assume was from his currently high state of mind. Again I wondered what the two of them had been doing while Karla and I were locked up.
However, I quickly got bored of the yelling. Very slowly, so that my head didn't go spinning and I didn't lose what balance I still had, I turned my head to assess the damage. Aside from the giant hole where the wall of our cell should have been, the grass around it was either dead, disintegrated or squashed under broken bricks and iron bars. There was even the odd small flame still flickering on the grass that refused to go out.
And beyond the hole in the wall, I could just make out the alarms blaring and the prison guards trying to find the source of the problem. That was when I knew that we needed to get out of there. The problem was, the pain and disorientation combined to make my head spin and I staggered a bit where I stood. I reached out to my left to try and steady myself. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realised that it was Karla's arm that I had grabbed.
" Do you mind, Wolf-boy?" Karla growled loudly, but it was distant despite her being right next to me.
That confused me. And being a child of Athena, I instantly knew something was wrong. Usually you would notice straight away if you couldn't hear something from a certain direction. For some strange reason it took me quite a few minutes. I hadn't paid much attention because my right ear was right next to Karla screaming at John and Glade. But now that my left was in clear range of being yelled into, I couldn't hear anything out of it… unless you counted some distant humming sound that is. One thing was clear, though. The blast had not only knocked my sense of balance, it also made me deaf in my left ear.
Slowly, my eyes half closed to try and prevent myself from getting dizzy again, I turned to face Karla. She looked like she was trying to figure out what was wrong with me as well as looking mad at me for grabbing hold of her to steady myself. It was clear that she was still angry at John and Glade, but the sight of me seemed to make her furious. With her eyes ablaze, she turned back to Glade and muttered a few choice words angrily at him. I couldn't hear what she said, but judging by Glade's now completely white face it must not have been good.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed John mouthing the words 'can you hear me?', though I was pretty sure that he was actually saying them and I just couldn't hear him say them. He looked worried when I looked back at him blankly, still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. But I knew, deep down I knew, Glade had gone and burst my eardrum for me. I was glad, though, that I wasn't the one to be yelling at him.
John moved to my right side before asking, " Can you hear anything at all from your left?"
" No." I replied, though my tongue had slipped into Greek. It came out like " Ochi."
Thank the Gods they understood.
" What about pain?"
" I'm in so much pain, I can't even tell where it's coming from anymore."
My sentence, though in Greek and slightly slurred, seemed to knock the wind out of me. In fact, it sent my head spinning and I nearly did a comical fall in the process. I got about half-way before John and Karla grabbed hold of me and steadied me. And, even though there were a lot of thoughts running through my head about my current situation, only one stuck out. Why were we still standing there when the police were after us?
" We need to leave." I grumbled, blinking away the dizziness. My grumble was almost loud enough to be considered a yell. I blamed my lack of hearing.
" First, I think we need to do something about your ear." John said to my right as I watched Karla's lips form a string of words that I couldn't make out to my left.
Okay, I lie. I could make out 'wolf-boy', but that was about it. But then I noticed the policemen inspecting the jail cells and realised that we didn't have time. Every muscle in my body was tingling, urging me to run for my life. Every hair on my arms and the back of my neck rose as if sensing the danger I was in. The problem was convincing my friends and my brain that we needed to move.
" No." I managed to slur in Greek. " We need to leave now. We don't have time to spend our days in another prison. Run now, heal later."
On saying this, I tried to run. It was an epic fail. I took two completely off balance steps backwards thinking I was going forwards, did a full circle turn as I tried to steady myself, did a sort of zombie shuffle off to the side towards Glade which ended in me rolling over myself and somehow managed to end up back on my feet despite the insane amount of pain I was in. It honestly felt like I was drunk or something. Probably looked like it, too.
What did I learn through this experience? Never try running when your head is busy acting like a spinning top, your body feels like it just got run over by a stampede of elephants and you feel like your world is a tight rope that you are crossing because you basically have no sense of balance. I got an earful from Karla (who had since realised that I could hear absolutely nothing from my left side) over it when she came over to me and grabbed me firmly by my right arm, claiming I was an idiot and a lot of other things that I tuned out on.
And that's when the police decided to get the other's minds into gear. " Oi! What are you doing? Get back here!"
It was the guy that I had seen come to the cell door to try and shut Karla up. And Karla recognised him. Without a second thought, she wrapped my arm around her neck and practically dragged me down the road. John and Glade followed like they had some kind of angry wild animal after them. And behind them came the cops. I could honestly say that this was not the first time that I thought we weren't going to make it out alive.
Hope you guys like this chapter. R&R