TAKING TO TASK

CHAPTER FIVE
"LET THE GAMES BEGIN"

Nancy blinked through a fog of smoke, dust and ask that flew through the air around her and she lay still on the ground, waiting for the tumult around her to die before she tried to move. She stared uncomprehending at first through her hands at the fire raging just outside of the gas station's mini mart and she closed her eyes again, not liking what she saw.

A few moments – or minutes – later, however, she moved. Nancy got to a kneeling position, careful to avoid the fallen debris and the pieces of roof caved in around her as she looked around for her two companions. She saw Joe nearby, sitting up, blinking owlishly as he rubbed at his face. A trickle of blood flowed from a wound on his forehead and she went to him, tearing off a piece of her blouse so he could use it to staunch the flow of the cut.

"Where's Frank?" Joe coughed as he spoke. "Have you seen him?"

"No," Nancy shook her head. "You stay here, I'll look for him."

The redhead crawled through the debris, moving as carefully as she could toward where she had last seen Frank. She went past the attendant and stopped to check on him. She was able to help him sit up and he leaned back against the remains of the counter behind him, coughing and blinking out with incredulity at the raging inferno outside.

"Are you all right?" Nancy asked him kindly, though she was concerned for Frank.

"Fine…" the attendant said vaguely. "Fine."

Nancy wasn't so sure. She thought he might be suffering from shock – she assumed all four of them were in some degree or other. Nancy continued her search for Frank, though, a little more fearfully because he had not appeared yet.

Where are you, Hardy? She wondered to herself. She continued to search, finally picking up the things she could lift until she came to a fallen rack that had once contained multiple bottles of car oil.

"Frank!" Nancy exclaimed when she saw Frank half laying underneath the oilcans and half underneath a couple of dozen magazines. "Frank, it's Nancy. Can you hear me?"

Frank groaned and Nancy saw his eyes flutter open. She gently chaffed his wrists, trying to aid his circulation and finally he opened his eyes fully and stared up at her.

"Nan?" he asked.

Nancy coughed and nodded. "Yeah," she agreed, smiling. "Don't try to move yet, let's make sure nothing is broken."

"Need to get out of here," the attendant said from behind her. "Place could still go up."

Nancy looked back at him. He nodded.

"Gotta go. Let's go. Please?"

"Joe, I need your help," Nancy called to the younger Hardy. Joe got to his feet and crouched and crawled his way to where Nancy stood. Nancy turned to the attendant. "Where do we go?"

"Back door, through the employee doors," the attendant pointed out. Nancy finally read his nametag – Jeff. "We can get out that way."

"Okay," Nancy agreed. "You go on ahead. Clear stuff out of the way as much as you can so we can get my friend through, please?"

Jeff nodded his agreement and got slowly to his feet. Nancy smiled at Joe as he knelt beside his brother.

"I can get up," Frank said.

"Let's just take it easy here, Frank," Joe ordered. "We all took some pretty good licks. You took the worst, it looks like. Can you feel your arms and legs?"

"Yeah and they all hurt," Frank said. "And I'm laying on something that's digging in, too. Now let's get."

Carefully, Nancy and Joe got Frank to his feet and helped the older Hardy toward the back door. Jeff had obviously cleared some of the rubble he could move out of the way, by picking it up and tossing it to one side or the other and, with Frank leaning on both Nancy and Joe, they were able to get him to the employee doors at the back of the gas station.

"Hold on… a second…" Frank gasped painfully as he held onto his chest. "I think I busted… a rib… Hurts like Hades!"

"Just a few more feet, Frank," Joe said to his brother. "We need to get out of here or we're going to go up with the place."

"Okay," Frank said with determination.

They continued into the employee area of the station and saw Jeff holding the back door open. He motioned them out the door and pointed to a nearby parking lot.

"We should go at least that far," Jeff commented. "That's what we were told to do in case this ever happened. Just never expected it to happen."

"Were you working alone?" Nancy asked Jeff.

Jeff nodded. "My boss would have been there in about twenty minutes. He should be here any minute now, I guess. Damn, what's he going to say?"

Nancy shook her head. "I don't know but it's lucky he wasn't here. Did anyone see what happened?"

"Sort of," Frank said. "I didn't see the start of the fire but I saw it spreading around the gas pumps – like someone spread gas around all over the place. Anyway, that's when I heard that whoosh and suddenly the whole world exploded around us."

"Why would someone want to start a fire at a gas station? That's nuts!" Jeff exclaimed.

Nancy, Frank and Joe said nothing. They waited as the fire department and police finally arrived on the scene and a paramedic found them in the parking lot, watching the action.

"Let's look you guys over," the paramedic, whose tag read "Chabert" said.

"Who called it in?" Joe asked curiously.

"One of the neighbors, from what I understand," Chabert said. He was checking Frank over, carefully checking for broken limbs. He agreed that Frank had at least a cracked if not broken rib and said he wanted to run Frank into the hospital to get a once over by a doctor. Frank reluctantly agreed and added he thought Joe should get his head looked at.

"I think all four of you should go," the paramedic said. "Even if you aren't obviously hurt there may be something we can't see."

They agreed reluctantly, only because at the moment they had no way to get anywhere.

A police officer named Baker came and took their statements before they were loaded into the ambulance and carted away to the nearest hospital.

"You don't think Ras-Alman had something to do with this, do you?" Joe asked later as they were settled into a room for the night at the hospital. He and Frank were sharing a room and Nancy had been put next door. For now, though, they were all three Frank and Joe's shared room.

"I don't know," Frank said. "It seems a little… obvious… to be an accident."

"The thing is," Nancy said. "How did Ras-Alman know right where we are? He had no way of knowing which gas station we'd stop at or even what town we'd stop in. There's no way this could have been done in the short amount of time we were in the mini-mart."

"That's a good point," Joe agreed. He lay back on his bed and rubbed his head. He had rejected the offer of a painkiller, wanting to stay as clear headed as he could. Frank, however, had accepted a half dose – his chest hurt bad enough to warrant it. "It's not like that was a spur of the moment thing. A fire bomb in the car, maybe, but not a gas station explosion like that. Aren't those gas tanks built like armored cars?"

"That's a good point, too," Nancy said. "There's not enough oxygen down there for them to burn. You'd have to, I don't know, drill holes or something to allow oxygen in for a fire to take and then set the fire itself. Maybe this really was just a bad coincidence."

"Wouldn't that be our luck?" Frank sighed.

"We need to make plans for tomorrow," Nancy said. "Assuming we all get released, we're going to have to get to the store and buy some more clothes and necessities and then figure out what to do about a car."

"Took care of the car already," Joe commented. "I called Dad. He arranged to have a rental car at the rental agency. We'll be receiving a packet here tomorrow morning, it will have new Ids in it since we aren't using our real names to rent the car."

"Good," Frank murmured. He was already half-asleep and Nancy knew he would be out like a light in a few minutes.

"I'm heading back to my room, then," Nancy concluded the conversation. She got up and gave Frank a kiss before she turned and went back to her room.

"Nice girl," Joe grinned at his brother. He closed his eyes as he tried to relax.

"I think so too," Frank agreed.

The phone in their room rang and Joe leaned forward to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Did you like my present?" Ras-Alman asked him. "Rather fiery reception wasn't it?"

"You don't have better things to do than take credit for things you didn't do?" Joe asked.

Ras-Alman chuckled. "You really think I couldn't arrange something like that to happen? You don't give me enough credit, Mr. Hardy."

"No, I think I give you just enough," Joe said. "You're an opportunist. You don't have the creativity to do something like that. Now, do you have something important to tell me or can I go to sleep?"

Ras-Alman's voice was a hiss. "I called to tell you to keep looking over your shoulder. I know where you are and I know what you're doing. You can start counting the hours you left now – because that's how long you have left to live."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Joe murmured and he yawned loudly. "Sorry, phone call must be boring me. Have a good night, Marcius ole pal."

"This isn't the end of it, Hardy!" Ras-Alman screeched. "I'm going to win this little game. You're dead!"

"Yeah, great," Joe said as he hung up the phone. He settled back into his bed.

He didn't even dream that night.