Chapter 19
In Which the Storm Breaks
Carlos was bored. Not only was he on guard duty, but he had been assigned the stupidest position in the camp. He was the only guard in the tent covering the hole in the ground which led to where the prisoners were kept – in other words he didn't really have anything to guard. It's not like the prisoners were going to just bust out of their cell, take down the guard and somehow climb out of the hole without a ladder. And if they tried, he could just shoot down the hole to quiet them down. Not that they would try. Even desperate people were not stupid enough to attempt to get out of this camp. He sighed and shifted his rifle. He'd been here for almost three hours now, with no one to talk to and only the occasional mosquito to keep him company.
"Hey!"
Carlos cocked his head. That sounded like his friend guarding the cell from inside the hole. He was probably as bored as Carlos. He inched over to the hole and looked down cautiously.
The blonde guard waved at him. "Carlos, isn't it?"
Carlos frowned. The guard knew his name, he was sure of it. What was he playing at?
"Yes, it's me. What are you doing—"
"I was just wondering, are you bored?" the guard cut him off.
Now Carlos was getting suspicious. Something was definitely going on here. On the other hand, he was bored.
"Very bored. Why?"
"Wanna play checkers?"
Ooo, he was good. He knew Carlos had a weakness for checkers. But Carlos stood his ground.
"Not right now, I'm on duty." he said loudly, in case anyone was listening.
"Oh come on, you're guarding nothing. What's the harm in one little game? I'm bored stiff down here."
Carlos was unsure. "We might get caught."
"How? Everyone's busy packing, and Phil said he wasn't coming back for five hours. There's no risk."
Something still didn't seem right to Carlos, but the lure of checkers won out. "Ok, I'm sending down the rope ladder."
A few moments later he was receiving a boisterous hug from his liberated friend. "Thanks for the lift," said the guard, smiling. Then he hit Carlos in the back of the head with a rock he had hidden in his hand.
Carlos thought, just before he blacked out, that this guard might not be the best friend he ever had.
**********************
Gerald stood brushing dirt off his clothes by the edge of the tent. The walls of the hole in the ground had not exactly been clean. Plus there was the fact that he'd been lying on the floor of an underground prison cell for who knew how long. At least he'd left his white suit behind at Syl's place. Man, who knows what it would have looked like by now. No doubt about it, black is the color to wear for dirty work.
Helga's voice broke him out of his musings. "Are you just going to leave him there?" She pointed to the unconscious Carlos.
Their guard was sorting through some boxes stacked in a corner of the tent. He turned around and shrugged. "You got a better idea?"
"Yeah. We put him out of commission."
"He is out of—"
"Permanently. What if he wakes up before we're out of here? Even if we gag him he could still make enough noise to get us all killed."
But the guard shook his head. "No way. This guy's a friend of mine."
"He won't be when he wakes up."
Ignoring this, the guard finished his search and walked back over to Gerald and Helga. "Well, this is all I could find as far as weapons go." He held out a single hand grenade that looked as though it had been made in the late '60s. "And it's probably a dud."
"We'll take it anyway." Gerald decided and took the grenade. Noticing Helga's raised eyebrow, he added, "Hey, those guys have guns, knives, and active bio-something bomb thingies. I'm taking what I can get."
"What about his rifle?" Helga pointed to Carlos. Gerald picked it up and inspected it.
"You know how to work that?" she asked.
"No." Helga rolled her eyes and took the rifle from Gerald.
"Ok you two, decision time," the guard reclaimed their attention, "You have three choices: you can head towards the river, take the jungle path, or try to find your way out of here in the ruins beside the camp."
"Syl – even if she didn't set us up – will be long gone by now," said Helga, "So the river's out."
"The ruins might give you more cover."
"Yeah but with Gerald's sense of direction we'd end up heading right back to camp. I say we take the path."
The guard nodded. "If you stay to the side of it for a few miles you should miss any advance moving parties." He glanced outside the tent. "I think I can get you across camp, but you'll be on your own from there. I can get Carlos here," he indicated the man on the ground, "To help me think up a plausible story as to how you escaped. He'll understand once I explain it to him. But we have to hurry, Phil's three hours are almost up. He'll be here soon. We can hop from tent to tent, that way we won't be out in the open long enough for anyone to spot us, hopefully."
"How many tents to the end of camp?" asked Gerald.
"Five."
"Right," said Helga gripping the rifle, "Let's go."
*****************
Gerald watched the guard disappear into the next tent.
"Is he there yet?" asked Helga from behind him.
"Hang on." Gerald counted to five. The guard didn't come out. "Ok, come on."
Trying not to look as though they were sneaking out of camp, they stepped out and began walking at a normal pace towards their goal.
There weren't many people on this side of the camp. Gerald was about to hope that they wouldn't see anyone at all when the first worker ambled by. He picked up a crate and glanced towards them.
Gerald tried not to obviously hold his breath.
But the man only nodded at them and went on his way. Gerald had a few seconds to slow his heart rate before a group of people walked by. But they too didn't give them a second look. Gerald and Helga kept out of sight as much as possible, then ducked quickly into the tent.
"We have to do that four more times? We'll never make it." Helga growled. "At least three people saw us."
"Yeah but they didn't go after us. So far no one's recognized our faces. At least there's no uniforms or anything here, so we can blend in." replied Gerald. "Hey," he was about to call for their guard/guide when he realized he didn't know his name. "Uh..."
"Call me Les." A voice from the other side of the tent told them.
"Why do I have the feeling," said Helga as they made their way to where Les was standing, "That 'Call me Les' means the same thing as 'Call me Syl'?"
Les grinned at them.
**********
"Two more tents to go."
"I didn't like the way that one guy looked at us."
"Which one, the guy loading the truck or the one by the well?"
"Actually I was talking about the guy leaning up against the ruins. I don't like this," Helga repeated, "It's too easy. Prisoners don't just walk out of camp, I don't care how careful we're being."
Gerald secretly agreed with her. He wanted to trust Les, after all he didn't have to let them out of the cell in the first place. But something was wrong about this.
Les shrugged. "What else can we do? We'll just have to keep going, and if there's trouble we'll find out soon enough. Let's split up and go one at a time for this one. We're heading for the small tent on the left."
They nodded and he went out. Helga watched him go.
"Uh oh." she said suddenly.
"What?"
"He just got noticed. Someone recruited him to help lift some boxes." She squinted to try and see better in the glare of sunset. "Looks like he'll be busy for a while. Should we leave without him?"
"We can't stay here. They'll be packing this tent up any minute."
Helga shifted her rifle slightly. "Alright, I'm going."
There was a large group of people forming around Les, working on packing up a collection of crates and boxes into trucks. It looked like the tent they were packing was used for armaments. Gerald watched as Helga slipped by them without so much as one person noticing. She entered the small tent.
Ok, no problem. Gerald started to follow her.
"Hey! Who're you?"
A man in a tan shirt had appeared from around the corner of the tent, just as Gerald stepped out of it. Gerald quickly glanced at the other workers. None of them had noticed the challenge. Yet. Gerald smiled broadly at the man and held out his hand as he walked towards him.
"Johansson. New recruit. Are you—" he checked for a name tag but couldn't find one so he made up a name, "Roberts, I assume?"
"No…" the man looked at him suspiciously, "I'm Brockson. But look you can't just—"
"Ah of course, Brockson. Glad to meet you." He grabbed Brockson's right hand with his left one and started pumping it up and down energetically. Five steps to the tent. Or three feet to the ruins if I have to.
But now the man's guard was up. He held onto Gerald's hand tightly. "Tell me who you are, right now, or I will personally dispatch you, got it?"
Gerald held up his right hand in protest. "Hey man, I'm just, uh, selling these fine leather jackets and—"
"Who do you think you—"
But Brockson had to stop talking then, because Gerald had used his free hand to punch him in the face.
*************
He should be here by now. Helga paced the tent nervously but didn't dare risk looking outside. Wonder which way Les wanted us to go from here? She couldn't be that far from the edge of camp, but the ruins were right behind them. Should she head that way instead? Her current hideaway appeared to be storage for various things Phil's men must have cleared out of the ruins, which meant that if she went that way she might run into them. But then if everyone was out packing up camp right now… What should I do if-- Behind her, she heard a sharp crack, as if someone had stepped on one of the pieces of pottery lying on the ground.
"Hands in the air, Pataki." a voice said quickly.
She turned around. One of Phil's bodyguards was facing her. Well, actually what was facing her was the rather long barrel of some kind of gun she didn't recognize. Though she was sure it was quite effective. She slowly raised her hands.
"Put the rifle on the ground, then kick it towards me."
She did so as slowly as possible, hoping either Gerald or Les would get in there soon. They didn't. The bodyguard shouldered her rifle and gestured with his weapon.
"Ok, move. We're going for a little walk. And don't get too close."
Helga took a step towards him. Then another. Saw the long piece of metal on a box out of the corner of her eye. Like a sword. She took another step.
And stopped. Don't think Helga, just act.
"I said move!" the bodyguard demanded.
She did.
*************
"Helga!" Les burst into the tent.
Helga was standing over a very large man. A very large man with something long and shiny sticking out of his chest. Les didn't stop to wonder what it was. She looked up at him.
"Gerald's in a jam, come on!"
************
Gerald was in slightly more than a jam. He was in an all-out brawl. Although his original attacker was out of commission, the noise had drawn the attention of the packing group, and now Gerald was in the middle of the whole lot of them, just trying to stay upright.
So far he was holding his own, but it wouldn't be long before someone remembered that they were loading weapons onto the truck a moment ago, and then it would get messy. He flipped a guy over his back and stood up to deck another. As that guy fell he caught a glimpse of Helga and Les coming out of the tent to help, but he knew that even with all three of them they didn't stand a chance. What he needed was a distraction…
He ducked a punch and when he raised his head he could see more people running towards them. The alarm was spreading. Any second now Phil was going to show up. Great.
"Decided to keep a low profile, eh Gerald?"
Helga had arrived with Les following close behind.
"Well," Gerald panted as he aimed a kick at someone to the side of him, "I was going to walk away but then someone here said something bad about your mother."
"Can't be worse than what I've said myself," she mused and head-bashed a particularly large fellow who immediately regretted rushing her.
"Any idea which one it was?" wondered Les, who had joined them by this time and was therefore confusing several of the guards by hitting their heads together.
"Um," Gerald watched Helga fell another guy, "Probably that one. Think now might be a good time to make our exit?"
"No hurry," called Les.
"Take your time," Helga grunted and narrowly escaped a blow to her jaw. She returned with a sharp jab to the neck. Another man down.
"Just a minute." Gerald ducked behind the other two long enough to pull the grenade out of his pocket. Then he came back, held it aloft and shouted, "Hey!"
A couple people stopped and looked at him. Helga took advantage of this and took down two more guards. Gerald tried again.
"HEY! PEOPLE!"
This time, most of the crowd around him froze and looked at him. He held the grenade in front of him so they could see it. Then, smiling widely at them, he pulled out the pin.
It takes somewhere between five and fifteen seconds for a grenade to go off after the pin is pulled. It took one second for the people closest to Gerald to realize this. Three seconds for a space to clear around him. Gerald threw the grenade and ran with Helga and Les towards the safety of the ruins. Several people simply stood there and watched the grenade fly right towards them.
Right past them.
Another three seconds later, the tent they had been packing exploded.
A foot away from the ruins, Gerald chanced a glance back. Total panic. Everywhere people were tripping over each other trying to get away from the charred remains of the tent. Well, I wanted a distraction. Still, it seemed a bit much just for an exploded... He stopped suddenly, almost making Helga crash into him.
"What the heck are you doing? Run!" she yelled at him, but he was too busy watching the cloud of green mist beginning to rise overhead. Hot air. There must have been hot air tubes in the tent, and I just broke the glass.
There were three men still standing by the truck when the mist hit them. One of them suddenly screamed, then fell and lay still. His companion heard the cry and turned to help, but all he succeeded in doing was falling on top of him. The third saw the two of them and grabbed a rifle from the truck to fight this new attacker. Then he saw the green cloud and changed his mind, but it was too late. He landed awkwardly while trying to run, his rifle discharging beneath him.
The shot was wild. It wasn't aimed. It shouldn't have hit anybody.
But Les was in the way. And then, in a blur of blonde hair, he wasn't.
Helga was.
Gerald was aware of several things happening all at once. Helga was falling but Les caught her. Her shoulder was bleeding. Someone had noticed the green cloud and was spraying something at it. People were yelling. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the jungle leaves move quickly – was someone there? But Les was pulling at him, telling him he had to leave now. So he scooped up Helga ignoring her muttered curses, thanked Les and disappeared into the ruins.
*************
Les steadied himself against the stone wall and went over his choices. He could stay and try to dig himself out of this mess, or he could run.
Too many people had seen him. He knew at least half of the people they had been fighting earlier. But did they understand what he had been doing, or would they just think he had been confused in the fight? Three more days, he groaned to himself, three more days and I would have been free. But no, I do this instead. He had done the right thing, he knew that. It just wouldn't be easy to explain.
Then again maybe this was his chance. In all the confusion it was entirely possible that Phil would think he was dead, if he thought of him at all. He hoped his wife was ok. Maybe, if he went now he could catch up with Gerald and Helga. He smiled a little at that. Helga Pataki. Of all people to save my life… Yes. He would go. His wife would understand.
But just as he decided this, a voice jolted him out of his thoughts.
"What the hell happened here?" Phil had arrived. He looked from the ruined tent to the almost dispersed cloud, then wildly around him. In this light he looked practically purple with rage. Then he saw Les.
"You!" He marched over to him, gun drawn. "What happened? Why aren't you guarding the prisoners? Why did the tent explode?" He had one hand to his chest while the other began mopping his dripping brow.
Les tried to think of an answer, but he had nothing. However, someone else did.
"I don't know why the tent exploded, but I can tell you why he isn't guarding anyone."
Phil and Les both looked towards the sound. There was a man standing there with a bandage around his head and a newly acquired rifle.
Carlos. Oh no.
Carlos pointed at Les. "He let them escape. No, I'm wrong. Actually he helped them escape. And he knocked me out with a rock." He indicated his bandage. "And he owes me a game of checkers," he growled to himself.
Phil stared at Les. "You…" he gulped in quick breaths of air, making him look like a mutated fish trying out lungs for the first time. "I…" He lifted his gun.
"Please," it was Carlos again. He looked grimly at Les. "Allow me." Phil nodded and Carlos leveled his rifle at Les. He smiled.
"Thanks for the game, friend." he said, and shot him in the chest.
*****************
A few hours later, Phil was standing at the edge of camp. It had taken them far too long to pack and clean up the mess, and they were now behind schedule by at least two hours. But that was the least of his concerns. Not only had he lost two important prisoners, but an entire shipment of activated hot air…this wasn't going to be easy to explain. He needed time to get a story together. But he was not granted that time.
"Hello Phil."
Phil spun to see the tall man he had met the last time he had reported in. He struggled to remember a name but failed.
"Hello, er, Doctor," he recalled in a memory flash.
The doctor smiled and came to stand next to him. He looked out into the jungle. "Any word on the prisoners?"
So he knew already. This was not good. "Ah no, but we'll keep looking. They can't have gone—"
"No, they cannot be far. But you have wasted too much time already. I have ordered the camp to disperse. We will deal with them another day."
Phil rankled at this undermining of his authority, but made himself answer calmly. "Oh?"
"Yes. Tell me Phil, what would you do with someone who had bungled every single order given to him in the past, oh say, three months or so?"
Cold fingers wreaked havoc on Phil's spinal cord. He stood with his mouth slightly open, unable to think of anything to say. The tall man turned his head to look at him, then smiled again.
"I'm only joking, Mr. Briteon. The camp is awaiting your orders." He jerked his head in that direction.
Phil didn't stay to laugh at the joke, he turned and moved as fast as he could without breaking into a run.
The doctor watched him for a moment, then looked back at the jungle. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded into the darkness. He waited a few seconds for the scream, then leisurely went back into camp, pausing only to remove the long silver knife from Phil's back on the way.
**************
"We're lost, aren't we?"
"No."
"I've seen this wall before."
"That's because it looks the same as every other wall we've passed."
"So we're lost."
Gerald sighed. "Basically."
They had managed to stop the blood flowing from Helga's shoulder, but it was obvious that she needed to get to a doctor, soon. She insisted that she was capable of walking though twice now Gerald had had to balance her when she lost her footing on the stone floor of the ruins.
And they were lost. Gerald didn't mention it to Helga, but he was sure he had seen "that wall" before also. He was just about to suggest turning around when something caught his eye. He started to mention this but was interrupted.
"Gerald, are my eyes playing tricks on me or is that a light up ahead?"
"Looks like a torch." Hope it's not the camp.
"Should we shout or run?" she wondered.
Just then whoever was holding the torch must have heard them however, because the light began moving rapidly towards them. Gerald looked at Helga. She leaned against the wall and he knew that she couldn't run anymore. Ok then, let's hope this person is friendly.
Apparently she was, because a minute later Gerald found himself holding the torch while the person bear-hugged a very surprised Helga.
A/N: Ok, one more chapter and then the epilogue. Oy, I'll finish this thing by the end of the year if it kills me! Btw, I saw the Two Towers Tuesday at midnight, and let me just take this moment to say – go see the freaking thing. Especially if you love Legolas. It was absolutely incredible. Ok, I'm fine now. ~PJ
DropsofJupiter: Well, I did keep you waiting for a while, sorry, but this is an 8 page chapter which sort of makes up for it, eh? And hopefully the next will be up soon, I'm past the really super hard part now, lol.
Miss Matched: Ah, a fish…erm, thank you. ::gives Miss Matched a full set of croquet mallets:: Happy Christmas.
Snow Lane: Worry not! I always finish my stories. It may take me several years longer than I had planned, but I always finish them. So you know who Syl is now, right? :)
Maxine: Phoebe's dream has a lot of meanings, some of which I'll be sure to point out in the epilogue…and some of which you may be able to figure out before then…and some of which you may not understand really until the sequel. Sorry.
Luvya: You know I don't do plot hints but I will make one slight exception this time. It is not Curly. I love Curly too much to make him be the bad guy. Psycho guy, maybe, but not bad. ;)
Poison Ivory: ::looks over her shoulder for Kate:: I'll be careful…and ha, I put up a chapter! Your turn! ;) ::starts involuntarily at small noise by the window::
Momolove: My sister always wanted a bulldog. Of course, she's a college football fan…SEC champions this year…yes, well. Nice bulldog…nice… ::tries to sneak out of house:: Ouch! I put out a chapter already! Hey! Eep! ::runs back into house::
pogo: Oh good, it is my life goal to drive others crazy. :) Enjoy the insanity. I do.