Chapter 18 - A Long Night
"Can we just keep going up here, now?!" Butch shouted at Blossom.
"I guess we..." she began, then she noticed that Brick had slowed considerably and had started to lose altitude. He had both arms wrapped around his ailing side, and she could see there was something wrong as he looked at her with glassy eyes.
"Brick, what is it?" she asked.
Brick shook his head as if to wake himself up. "I don't know, I'm just a little woozy." he replied. His vision began to blur and he squinted to clear it.
"He got stuck with something." Buttercup explained. "I saw one of those guys with a needle. I thought I grabbed the guy in time, but maybe not."
"Aw, man, not again!" Butch complained.
Butch and Boomer grabbed Brick and dragged him with them. Brick attempted to free himself from their grip. "I'm OK," he insisted groggily, "lemme go." Then he passed out and his body went limp.
They came to the ground just outside of Guayaramerin and looked for someplace to hide out until Brick woke up. They found a burned out building with all of its windows boarded up. They approached the building from the back and looked inside. Blossom nodded her approval and Boomer and Buttercup tore the boards off one of the rear windows. Blossom floated inside and looked around. There was little left in the way of furniture in the large round room she stood in and obviously no electricity as she flipped a light switch and nothing happened. She beckoned for the others to follow her as she began cleaning out a space for them to stay. Boomer and Butch carried Brick in followed by Bubbles and Buttercup. The Boys laid Brick down on the floor and the remaining five took up positions around the large room to wait.
"What is this place?" Buttercup wondered.
"Looks like an old hotel or something." Blossom replied. "This looks like the lobby." She stood up and wandered around the rest of the building's accessible rooms. Most had been completely destroyed by the fire. The smell of ash filled the air as she floated along a long hallway. She noticed that the roof had fallen down in one room allowing the second floor room's contents to fall into the one beneath it. She found it comical to see a bathtub lying on top of a burned up couch. As she went further down the hallway, she came upon a pile of debris. It looked like someone had attempted to retrieve whatever was left after the fire from one of the rooms. She knelt in the rubble and rummaged through the blackened wood and ash in the pile. She found several books, but most were too badly damaged to even make out the titles. She dug further and found several more deeper in the pile. These were in better shape as they had been protected from water and sun damage by the others on top. She pulled them out and looked them over. There were four in all, hard covered books with what was gold imprinted writing on them at one time. The gold writing had long worn off, but she still make out the imprinted titles that consisted of some sort of family crest and the number 1768. They appeared to be part of a set of encyclopedias. One had a broken binding and she had to juggle the pages back into it as she picked it up and another had some damage to its page ends, but all were still readable. She noticed that the books were written in English, and she smiled. She picked up another book laying in the pile, but it was written Spanish. From the pictures in the book, it looked like a travel guide of some sort. She decided it might come in handy and added it to the encyclopedias.
Blossom turned and looked to her left into the room the books may have come out of. She was saddened as she saw the room had been a library of some sort and had been gutted by fire. The massive shelves of books had all either fallen over or burned down. The roof had caved in long ago, and one wall was broken down as well. She saw a fruit tree of growing out of the rubble that had been the library's exterior wall. She put her books on top of the pile of debris she had pulled them from and floated over the rubble and burned books through the room to approach the tree. It had several limbs laden with fruit that looked like figs or kiwis. She pulled her shirt out into a kind of sack and pulled several pieces of the fruit from the tree. She picked enough to fill her shirt, floated back to the books, and struggled to pick them up. She managed to get them into the crook of her arm and floated back to the group.
It was entreing late afternoon as she returned to where the rest of the group was sitting. Boomer was looking out one of the broken windows. Bubbles and Butch were playing with what looked like a door knob, rolling it back and forth to each other. Buttercup was doodling in the ash with a stick.
Boomer turned as Blossom entred the room. "I'm hungry!" he announced.
Buttercup grumbled. "Is that all you guys think of? Food?" she asked.
Blossom giggled and answered, "Well, here, Boomer, try these." She carefully dumped the fruit in her shirt onto the floor and passed several pieces to each of them. Boomer took a huge bite of one of them, liked it, and chowed down on the rest of it.
Bubbles held one of hers up and asked, "What is it?"
Blossom shrugged. "Don't know. I found them growing on a tree in one of the rooms."
Boomer looked up from his feast, juice from the fruit running down his chin, and replied, "Who cares! They're good!" He further examined the piece he was eating and added, "I think it's kiwi." He turned the fruit towards Bubbles and showed her the ring of black fibers within the green rings of fruit. "See?" he asked.
Bubbles smiled. "Neato!" She bit into her fruit and smiled. "Hey, this is good!"
The afternoon wore on into evening. They made several trips to the kiwi tree and helped themselves to its fruit. They sat in the room watching the sun cross the sky. Blossom had begun reading through the encyclopedias and had given the book in Spanish to Bubbles. Bubbles paged through the book as Butch looked over her shoulder.
Blossom came across a word she couldn't make out. It appeared Spanish. "Hey, Bubbles, what does 'La Santisima' mean?"
"'Most Holy'", Butch replied.
Bubbles looked at him with a smile. "Wow, you speak Spanish, too?" she asked.
Butch nodded. "Yep."
Buttercup grumbled from her doodling. "Yeah, these guys are all messed up." She pointed to Butch. "He's got night vision like me, but speaks Spanish like you."
"Cool!" Bubbles exclaimed.
"He's also got that sonic voice like you, but, so far, no tornado bit." Buttercup added.
"No, that's me." Boomer replied as he munched on another kiwi.
Buttercup rolled her eyes. "See what I mean? Messed up."
Boomer looked at Buttercup and frowned. "Not like this experiment we call life was an exact science, now was it?"
"What difference does it make, anyway?" Butch shot back.
"None to anybody else except her, I guess." Boomer replied, still staring at Buttercup.
"Hush, you guys." Blossom said from her book. "Let's not worry about the whys or hows, let's just consider ourselves lucky we have what we have, OK?" She shook her head in disgust.
Boomer shrugged and returned to devouring kiwis. He looked at Brick, still sound asleep on the floor. He nodded towards his brother and asked, "How long's he gonna be out, anyway?"
Blossom shrugged. "I don't know. Last time he got it, we were all out cold. Woke up in a totally different place on a different day, in fact." she replied.
"He's gonna be OK, though, right?" Boomer asked.
Blossom nodded. "Except for whatever's wrong with his side, he's no different than when we left."
"Well, that and the busted lip from you slugging him." Buttercup snickered.
Blossom glared at her. "I already told him I was sorry for that. Can't help it. He sneaks up on me and wakes me up, I swing first, ask questions later."
Storm clouds began gathering overhead as the evening twilight faded into darkness. Boomer jumped as Brick suddenly moved. He groaned and rolled over onto his stomach. He put his arms around his head and slowly opened his eyes.
"Aw, man, that stuff gives you a killer headache!" Brick stated. He pulled his knees up under himself and continued to hold his head. A crack of thunder made them all jump.
"Ow, ow, ow!" Brick moaned. Boomer took one of Brick's arms and made him sit up.
"C'mon, shake it off." Boomer told him.
"Easy for you to say." Brick replied. He rubbed his side again and looked around. "Where are we?"
"Guayaramerin," Blossom replied. "We'll probably have to stay here until morning. This storm's looking pretty bad anyway."
"What's Guay-a-rah-rah, whatever you said?" Brick asked.
Blossom put her book down as a street light's flickering was now too dim to read by. "It's where the boat we were on was supposed to dock. Trinidad's not far from here. We'll head out as soon as it's light." she explained.
The rain began falling heavily and trickled in on them through the burned out roofs of the hotel. The wind blew hard and strong causing the weakened hotel to creak and sway with its force. They heard a crash as a section of one of the rooms fell in from the storm's force.
"I say we move right now!" Buttercup shouted over the storm. "At least the worst that will happen outside is we'll get wet!"
"I'm with her!" Boomer shouted.
"But what about the lightning!?" Bubbles shrieked. She cowered down next to Butch as another crack of thunder shook the hotel.
Blossom looked at the roof. The rain poured through the boards and she could see them bending downward with the rain's weight. She nodded. "OK, let's go. I just hope we pick the right direction!" she yelled.
Butch pointed towards the centre of town. "We go that way!" he shouted. "From what Bubbles and me can get out of this book, Trinidad is over that way, past town, through some woods."
Boomer grabbed Brick's arm and dragged him to his feet. Blossom grabbed his other arm and the two of them helped him through the rear broken window. The rain poured down on them as they stood outside. Brick leaned over with his hands on his knees as his head continued to spin from the tranquilizer. They heard a loud snap then a groaning sound and jumped back as the hotel's main rear wall fell outwards towards them.
They then watched the rest of the building collapse in on itself. As lightning flashed, they saw that the room they had been in was now completely destroyed.
Brick stood up and surveyed the crumpled building. "OK, that'll clear the head!" he exclaimed.
"Can we please go now?" Bubbles asked.
"OK, let's go." Blossom instructed.