Chapter Twenty-Seven – "The Total Eclipse"
Previously: The bomb stopped ticking after Tad cut the green wire. Unseen by Derek and the Posse, Greenlee entered the Big Black Building after a deafening gunshot was heard. Although aiming at Zach, Ethan fired that shot into the floor as David Hayward knocked him out from behind. David was in turn knocked out by Gina, whom it turns out is none other than Ethan's Accomplice. Greenlee wandered into the meat locker, joining Zendall, Simone, David, Ethan and Gina. Ethan continued to threaten to murder everybody in sight, particularly Zach. After Ethan tied up his captives and left to check on why the bomb hadn't gone off, it began ticking again. As today's episode begins, JR has run out of patience.
JR had run out of patience.
"Derek, you've got to send your men in there," he directed. "The longer we wait, the less chance we have of saving anybody!"
"My sister's in there," Ryan added. "Kendall is in there. Greenlee is in there. Both Greenlees."
"Zach is in there" Lily continued. "Tad is in there. And Di. And my first boyfriend, Aidan. And I think Simone is in there too."
"I need backup," Derek maintained. "Most of my men had to turn back in order to drive the Veterans home. You can't expect me to storm that building until I have more people!"
"You've got us," Amanda said at once. She motioned at the concerned faces all around them.
"You're civilians," Derek spat out scornfully.
"We're citizens," Amanda said with real passion."We're Newbies and Recasts it's true, but first and foremost, we're citizens of Pine Valley and we won't be discounted. If some of us are in danger, all of us are in danger. At a time like this, what difference does it make if a person is a Newbie or a Veteran?"
"Amanda, I'm not arguing with you," Derek said, touched to the core in spite of himself. "I'm a Recast myself! You still can't go in there! You're civilians! I've called for back-up. I don't like it either, but we're gonna have to wait until I have more trained actual Policemen!"
"Some folks think we don't belong in Pine Valley," Babe continued, having given the subject a great deal of thought since the Veterans had begun disappearing. "Some folks think we dominate every storyline so Pine Valley doesn't even look like Pine Valley anymore." She shook her head in sad amazement at that. "Like it's our fault the Writers don't write front-burner storylines for the Veterans." She sighed deeply. "Look, there's good and bad all over. Ninety-nine percent of the Newbies and Recasts are wonderful characters and fine additions to AMC. It's that one percent that, along with the Writers and the Powers That Be, ruin it for the rest! Still and all, this is our town, and we're here to rescue our friends and neighbors!"
"You tell 'em, Babydoll," Krystal said loyally, although she couldn't help but wonder who Babe thought was in that one percent.
"Babe's right!" Brooke, unexpectedly moved, told Derek. "To tell the truth, I've resented being swept from the front burner by all the new faces that have invaded AMC these last years. I lost Adam, the one man I have always loved, to Krystal, and nobody could tell me why, including my agent. But at a time like this, whether we're Newbies, Recasts or Veterans doesn't matter! It's all beside the point! Lives are at stake, Derek! Nothing else matters!"
"But you're not Police," Derek said yet again. "That matters!"
"Erica, Brooke, Ryan, Jack and I aren't Newbies or Recasts," Adam came forward to add. "But we're still here to rescue our friends and neighbors!"
"Thank you, Adam!" Erica cried out. "Thank you, Brooke! Thank you, Amanda! Thank you, Babe, although I still hate you with everything that's in me because of what you did to Bianca! And I'm sure Kendall hates you too!"
"You're welcome, Erica," Babe said uncertainly.
Derek knew when he was on the losing side of a fight. "Okay, we're going in. But stay back. Nobody do anything stupid!"
--
"I don't see a blue wire," Tad reported. The bomb was still ticking and the number on the timer was down to 666. "Actually, I don't see the red wire anymore either."
"That 666 probably doesn't mean sixty-six hours six minutes, does it?" Di checked without much hope.
"Six minutes, six seconds and six-tenths second," Ethan informed her, walking through the door and confirming all of their worst fears. "Sounds devilish, doesn't it?"
Tad was actually happy to see him. "How does thing this shut off?"
Ethan grinned. "By blowing up, silly!"
--
Before Ethan left to find the bomb, he had tied Zach and Kendall to the meat hooks.
"You might as well kill them now," Gina had opined. "Why wait?"
Kendall had stiffened as she realized she might die beside the love of her life before she got to live beside the love of her life.
But Ethan had shaken his head. "No time for that now, Gina. I've got to see about my bomb. Something is wrong. It should have gone off already. Even if Tad woke up and pulled the right wire, the built-in failsafe back-up thingy should have kicked in by now."
Zach had looked his son square in the eye as the ropes were being pulled tightly around his wrists, lashing them to the meat hook, pulling his arms painfully up and over his head.
"That's not why you're not killing me, Son. You can't kill me. You can't kill. It isn't in you."
"Zach, don't dare him!" Kendall had cried out shrilly.
"You don't know me, Zach. You never knew me. You never even wanted to know me." The absolute sadness in Ethan's voice made him sound nothing like the Maniac everybody in the meat locker but Zach knew him to be.
--
"Ethan listen," Di was pleading with him now. "It doesn't have to end like this. We don't have to all blow up."
"I'm not going to blow up," Ethan said, as Tad finished tying up Aidan. Waving his gun to convince each of them, he had ordered Erin to tie up Di, Aidan to tie up Erin, and Tad to tie up Aidan. "I'm getting out of here as soon as I've taken care of Tad."
"You can't tie me up and hold the gun on me at the same time," Tad pointed out. "Why not let me hold the gun?"
"Why not kill you instead?" Ethan laughed.
Di looked stricken.
"Ethan, Tad doesn't deserve to die!" she cried out. "Nobody here deserves to die!"
The bomb ticked on, but Ethan made no move to leave.
"Who gets what they deserve?" he asked, sounding rueful and introspective, which surprised them. "Did I deserve to be denied by my Father?"
"You have every right to be angry at Zach," Di said. "But why take it out on all of Pine Valley?"
"I didn't deserve the way all of Pine Valley treated me," Ethan answered bitterly. "They threw me away like a used Kleenex. There could have been a major storyline with me trying to win Kendall back from Zach. But the Idiots in Charge went another way. They may as well have killed me off. There's no place for me in Pine Valley."
Di saw an opening and dived through it for all she was worth. "Ethan, Pine Valley isn't the only town in the world! Actually, Ethan, a man with your appeal is wasted in this hick town! How can you expect stodgy old Pine Valley to understand a man of your, your, what's the right word, Tad?"
"Schizophrenia?" Tad guessed.
"Sophistication," Di said quickly. "There are other places, better places for you to live, Ethan!"
"Really?" he asked, having never having thought his problems might have a geographic solution.
"Of course there are!" Di cried out. "There's Port Charles! There's Llanview! And that's only the towns on ABC!"
Erin saw where Di was going and followed along. "Ethan, any Show in its right mind would want you! There's Harmony! There's Oakdale! What am I leaving out, Aidan?"
"There's Springfield!" Aidan picked up. "There's Genoa City! What's the other one, Tad?"
Tad felt a sudden surge of admiration for Di. She never gave up and she never gave in. Then he realized it wasn't only admiration that was surging in him. Oh, no. Was he in love with her again? How could he be in love with the woman who pretended to be Dixie and then to top it all off neglected to tell him that the real Dixie was alive?
"Tad, what's that other town?" she prompted him desperately.
"Salem! " he called out, remembering. "There's Salem! Sounds right up your alley, Ethan!"
"Salem," Ethan repeated thoughtfully, as the bomb's ticking grew louder. "That does have a ring to it!"
--
As Zendall stood side by side, tied to their respective meat hooks, the only thing there seemed left to look forward to was blowing up together.
"I loved you, Zach Slater, from the second I saw you," Kendall told him quietly. "And as hard as I tried to stop loving you, I never could." More than anything, she wished she could turn her head far enough to see his face one last time. "That's all right," she comforted herself, picturing him now, even as she spoke to him. "I know his face by heart." His tragic, beautiful, sensitive, expressive, gorgeous, perfect face.
"I'll love you for all the time there is, Lovely," he replied, trying not to focus on how little time that might be. Should he have shot his son to save their lives? He couldn't let himself think that. Not yet. He had to keep believing that Ethan couldn't actually murder anybody. He hadn't killed anybody before he left to restart the bomb. That was good. He hadn't gone through with Plan B. But had he reset the bomb? Was that Plan C? He couldn't allow himself to regret not having shot Ethan when he had the chance. That wouldn't do anything but drive him crazy, and what good would that do them? To stay sane, he had to concentrate on Kendall. He couldn't see her face, but that wasn't so bad he told himself because he knew her face by heart. Her tragic, beautiful, sensitive, expressive, gorgeous, perfect face. He was picturing her now, even as she spoke to him.
"We were great together," she was going on, her voice breaking only slightly. "We made history! We were a supercouple. We were ZENDALL! And we were first-rate detectives!" She stopped, realizing she was talking about them in the past-tense. "Well, we would have been first-rate detectives, if we had more time."
"We certainly solved this case, Lovely," Zach agreed, although he guessed Lily Montgomery had probably been the one who solved it.
"And we found a way to tell each other the way we feel about each other," she went on. "And I found a way to trust you. Zach, you taught me how to trust!"
Since he was powerless to save either of them physically, Zach wanted to give Kendall something to cling to, to save her emotionally as much as he could for as long as he could.
"So I've taught you how to trust," he said to her. "Have I taught you how to hope? Can you hope, Kendall? Even here? Even now?"
"Yes," Kendall said because she knew that was what Zach wanted to hear. And it was true. At that moment, she was hoping her hardest that Ethan would fall on his gun and shoot himself to death before he reset the bomb.
"And we nearly got to make love, Mrs. Slater," Zach added, distracting her completely from her homicidal fantasy. "Although every time we were together, no matter what else we seemed to be doing, we were really making love."
"Every word you ever spoke to me was a kiss," Kendall said softly.
"Shut up!" Gina shouted. "Nobody wants to hear you idiots blathering on and on!"
"Such a romantic!" David marveled. "Where did Ethan get her?"
"It's been nice knowing you, David," Greenlee said, following her own thoughts. "I'm sorry we didn't get to say good-bye before I left the Show."
They were on the floor, side by side, bound head and foot, but to Gina's growing annoyance, not gagged.
"You should have said good-bye to me too," Simone called out from the corner, where she sat similarly trussed up.
"I was too mad at Mrs. Slater," Greenlee called back. "And Ryan, of course."
"MY Ryan," Gina sought to make clear.
"You can have him," David snickered.
"No!" Greenlee said.
"YES!" Gina said.
"No," Ryan said.
--
"No," Ryan said? Are the Meat Locker Hostages about to be rescued or is Ryan about to be captured? What color wire will defuse the bomb for once and for all? Can Ethan Cambias find happiness in a Soap that takes place in Salem? Or will his new home be Statesville? Please come back next time when these and other questions will finally begin to be answered. Always remember: your review is the cream in my coffee! And they're telling us now that coffee is GOOD for us!