J.M.J.
Author's note: Thanks for reading! Thank you especially to Candylou, caseykam, max2013, ErinJordan, and MargaretA66 for your reviews on the previous chapter! God bless!
Chapter XXV
Joe groaned as he hit the floor when Alyssa roughly pushed him into the room serving as his and Frank's prison. Frank was also shoved by his escort and, having no way to catch himself, he hit the floor hard next to Joe. Alyssa then unlocked their handcuffs, but any thought of using the opportunity to escape was squashed by her companion covering them with a gun. Then the two of them backed out of the room.
"Don't be too jealous of your brother, Frank," Alyssa warned as she closed the door. "He's going to wish he was dead before we're done with him. But that can still happen. We'll be right outside. All you have to do is try to escape."
Once the door was closed and locked, Joe ripped the duct tape from his face with a grimace and then spat out the gag. "Ow."
"Are you all right?" Frank asked, crawling to his brother's side and looking at the lump that was starting to form on the back of his head.
"I'm fine," Joe replied. "This is all Alyssa's fault. If she hadn't gagged me, I would have said something before you, and then I'd be the one…"
"Hey, it doesn't really matter," Frank told him. "You heard Alyssa. I'm better off than you are in some ways."
"In some ways," Joe conceded. "What about you? Are you okay? You took a pretty good knock on the head, too."
"I'd say I'll live, but…"
"We've got to get out of here." Joe struggled to his feet. "What time is it? We've only got till midnight."
Frank glanced at the dark window. "It's hard to say. It could be almost midnight or it could be hours yet. The sun goes down so early this time of year."
Joe limped to the window and looked out at the ground two stories away. "I've heard of people jumping from the second floor and not getting killed."
"Yeah, all they get is a broken leg or hip or shoulder or all of the above, and then we still wouldn't be able to get away," Frank pointed out.
"There's a lot of snow out there. It might work like a cushion." Joe tried to open the window but it wouldn't come. He looked for a lock on it, but he found nothing. Apparently, the window wasn't made to be opened. "We could break it," Joe suggested.
"Then Alyssa and her friend would be in here before we'd have a chance to jump," Frank reminded him.
Joe looked around the room. The only possible exits were the door and the window. "Maybe we could trick Alyssa and the other guy into coming in here and then we could jump them."
"They're not going to fall for anything," Frank pointed out.
"What difference does it make?" Joe argued. "They're going to kill you, anyway, and if I can have a one-in-a-million chance of getting away without getting brainwashed or whatever they're planning for me, I want to take it."
"Okay, maybe." Frank put a hand to his head. "I need a minute first." He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his head in his hands.
Joe came and sat down next to him. "Are you sure they didn't do some serious damage when they hit you?"
Frank shook his head. "It's not that. These people are really crazy."
"Yeah. I always figured they were, but…" Joe shook his head, thinking of the meeting they had just been removed from. "I didn't realize they worshipped their leader."
"Some of them do, anyway," Frank replied, thinking of Alyssa. His thoughts didn't linger on her long, before they drifted to other matters. In particular, he thought of Callie and wondered what was going to happen to her and their child. They would be all right. He didn't doubt that. Callie was strong, and she would have a lot of family and friends to help her. But he still wondered how it would be for them. Then his focus began to shift some more. He wondered what awaited him when midnight struck: what kind of tortures these maniacs had planned and then…what? Frank could feel himself standing before the veil, about to have it pulled away and see what lay beyond it. He had some vague ideas about Heaven and the afterlife, but now it was something real that was facing him within a few hours. Without completely realizing that he was speaking, he said, "I wonder if this is how Tony felt when he knew he was going to…die." He hadn't meant to pause, but the word was harder to say than he had expected.
Joe closed his eyes as the reality settled on him, too. When he had said that there was a one-in-a-million chance that they could escape, that had been true. Very likely—almost certainly—they wouldn't make it if they tried it. They'd be killed. When the sun rose the next morning, they wouldn't be there to see it. They'd never see the sun again at all. They'd never see the ocean or a mountain or trees again. They'd never see Bayport or the house where they'd grown up again. Most importantly, they'd never see their family again…their parents…Aunt Gertrude…Callie…their friends…Iola. There was so much left unsaid with all of them and it would remain unsaid forever now. Everything that was wrong would never be put right. It was almost tempting to ask Frank that they not try it after all. But then Frank would still die, and whatever tortures Black Rose could devise for Joe couldn't be worse than that.
"I'm sorry, Joe," Frank said after a few minutes.
"For what?"
"For this whole last year, silly," Frank replied. "For the way I've acted, the way I've treated you. It wasn't fair. You didn't deserve it."
Joe chuckled slightly. "I'm not so sure about that. I'm sorry, too. I've been an immature idiot most of the time."
"Joe, we don't have to do this. If we don't, you'll live, at least. Whatever they do to you, you're strong. You'll recover. It's better than…" Frank stopped when he saw Joe was shaking his head.
"No. If they killed you, there wouldn't be any recovering from that."
Frank took a shaky breath and wiped a tear from his cheek.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Joe asked, thinking of how unlike his brother it was to see him cry.
"No. I'm not okay. It wasn't supposed to end this. It doesn't have to for you. It might make it a little easier if I knew you were going to live."
"It wouldn't be for me."
"You know, even if we do this, one might survive and the other not."
"I don't really see that happening," Joe replied. "Either we take them down in the first surprise or we're both goners."
Frank took several deep breaths, trying to steady himself, but he didn't have much success. "Do…do you think they'll find us? The police or Dad, I mean."
"I hope so. I hope it's the police instead of Dad. This is going to be rough enough on him without that." Joe let out a long breath. "Poor Dad. I hope this doesn't send him over the edge."
Frank didn't reply. He wanted to say that of course it wouldn't, that their dad was stronger than that, but he wasn't sure. "Do you think they'd give me some paper and a pencil if I asked them for it? I'd like to write something to Callie and to…"
"I doubt they'd do anything so humane." Joe looked at Frank curiously. "Who else were you going to write to?"
Frank ran his hand through his hair. "We hadn't told anyone yet. We're going to have a baby."
Joe blinked in surprise. "Really? Wow. Okay. Now there's no way I'm going to let you talk me into not trying to escape. I'm not going to go back to Bayport and try to explain to Callie and someday to your son or daughter why I got to come home and you didn't."
Frank buried his face in his hands even further. "I'm never going to know if it is a son or a daughter. Or what Callie is going to name it. Or what he or she is going to be interested in. Or what they'll look like. What if Callie marries somebody else eventually and my child grows up calling someone else dad? Or what if she doesn't remarry and they'll have to grow up without a dad at all and Callie will have to be a single mother? Either way, my own kid isn't going to know me at all. I'm not going to even be a distant memory. They'll have their whole life, and I won't be any part of it." His tears were flowing freely now and by the last few sentences, he could barely get the words out.
"You'll be a part of their life, Frank. Even if we don't get out of this alive, I don't think Heaven is as closed off from this life as I used to. I don't know how it all works exactly, of course, but I think in Heaven we're still going to be able to see and hear and know what's happening to the people we loved here and that we'll be able to help them in different ways. I mean, you think about it, and here in this life, we can do so much good for other people, even though we do a lot of harm, too. Why when we're not going to even want to do something the least bit harmful anymore would we not be allowed to do anything good? So, again I don't know exactly how it will all work, but you'll be able to do things for that kid and be a part of their life, even if they don't realize it. You'll know whether it's a boy or a girl and what Callie names it. Although I can tell you that already. She'll name it Francis, whether it's a boy or a girl. That's one very good reason why we need to get out of here alive, so the poor kid isn't condemned to life as Frank Junior."
"I don't care if she does name him Frank Junior, I just want to be there."
Joe leaned his head back against the wall again. He was having trouble keeping back tears himself. "I'm so sorry, Frank. This is all because of me. You didn't have to come looking for me."
"Of course I did." Frank attempted to wipe his tears away and to prevent any more from coming. "We'd better get this over with." Yet he couldn't make himself try it just yet. "Maybe…maybe we should say a prayer first."
"Yeah, we should." Joe closed his eyes. He wouldn't have been able to think of anything spontaneous at the moment, so instead he began to say a few short prayers that he had memorized. Frank followed along with the ones he knew or could guess the words.
"Joe," Frank said when they had finished.
"Yeah?"
"What you said earlier, about people in heaven being able to help us out here on earth? Does that mean Tony…"
Joe managed a faint smile. "You know Tony as well as I do. If he can do anything for us, he will. In fact…" He stopped himself.
"What?"
"You'll think I'm crazy."
"Come on, Joe. After what happened down in that secret room, nothing could seem crazy."
Joe chuckled slightly. "Yeah. Well, I know you're skeptical about what I saw in Ziyou."
"You're sure about it. Since I wasn't there, you know more about it than I do."
Joe raised an eyebrow slightly, but he didn't comment directly. "On the way to that cabin, while Alyssa and Angelo were debating whether to kill me then and there or not, I could feel that same…spirit, I guess would be the only word for it. The evil one that attacked me that time. It terrified me for a minute, but then I thought I heard a voice; Tony's voice telling me not to be afraid. That was all there was to it, and I know I could have imagined it, but I don't think I did. So anyway, I think Tony will help us out, as much as he can. And even if we don't make it, I'll bet he's the first one to meet us."
"Maybe dying wouldn't be all bad then." Frank took in a deep breath and then started to stand up. "All right. Let's do this."
Joe stood up, too, and looked toward the door. Then he looked back at Frank. "One more thing." He wrapped his arms around his brother. "I love you, Frank."
Frank hugged him back. "Love you, too."
They remained that way only a moment. Then they let go, took in deep breaths, and nodded to each other before they went to stand next to the door.
"Alyssa?" Frank called. "Alyssa, come in here."
There was no answer. He tried the door, but it was securely locked. The brothers looked at each other in consternation. Their plan wouldn't work if they couldn't get Alyssa and their other guard to come inside.
Frank pounded on the door several times. "Alyssa! Hurry! Alyssa!"
"She suspects something," Joe whispered when there was still no answer. "Do you think she could have heard us talking?"
"Not well enough to catch the words." Frank frowned and glanced around the room for inspiration for something else to try. He noticed a bulky piece of agate sitting on the desk. It was probably meant to be a paperweight, but it could serve their purposes perfectly. He pointed it out to Joe. "While I pound on the door, throw it out the window. They might think the pounding on the door is just us trying to cover the sound of the glass breaking, so they should come running."
"And if they don't, we can still climb out the window," Joe pointed out.
"I don't think we could be that lucky," Frank replied.
Joe picked up the agate. When Frank began pounding on the door and calling for Alyssa again, Joe hurled the agate at the window. It shattered with a loud crash that Frank's pounding didn't even begin to cover.
Instantly, the door was flung open and Alyssa and the other guard came in, guns drawn. Before they knew what was happening, Joe had tackled the male guard and was struggling with him for his gun. Frank pounced on Alyssa as quickly as he could, but he had had to step out of the way of the door which slowed him down by a crucial second. Alyssa had time to react. She jumped back out the doorway and got a shot off. It missed him, but it was still enough to make both Hardys freeze. The guard who had been struggling with Joe managed to throw him off and then back out of the door himself, wiping the sweat from his brow.
"Sorry, Frank," Alyssa said with a taunting smile. "You've still got another hour. No fair trying to speed it up. And Joe…"
She never had the chance to finish her mocking. Several gunshots were fired in succession from somewhere else in the house. Someone screamed in the distant and several other people were shouting.
"What's happening?" the male guard asked.
"I don't know," Alyssa replied. "Maybe Angelo's finally staging his revolution. You stay here with these two. I'm going to check it out."
She ran from the room, leaving the other guard still watching Frank and Joe. He stood there several seconds, looking undecided.
"It's probably the police," Frank said. That was a guess, although he hoped it was the truth. In any case, it could throw a scare into the man.
Sure enough, he licked his lips nervously. Then suddenly, he said, "Look, I've had enough. I'm getting out of here."
He dashed for the door and slammed it shut. The key turned in the lock.
Joe ran his hand through his hair. "I'm starting to think this is some kind of crazy fever dream."
Frank shook his head. "I don't know, but now we've got our chance to get out the window. Maybe we can get out of this still."
They ran to the window amidst the sound of shouting from downstairs. They pulled the remaining glass out of the window and looked down at the ground below again.
"Our nice cushion of snow is going to be all full of broken glass now," Joe said. The glass that had remained in the window after it had been smashed was now on the floor, but the glass that the rock had broken through would have fallen to the ground.
"It's either some cuts and probably some broken bones or waiting around for someone in this madhouse to come and kill us," Frank pointed out.
"Maybe we're the ones who are crazy," Joe said as he climbed into the empty window frame and looked down. "On second thought, there's definitely no 'maybe' about it."
Then he took a deep breath and jumped. The fall couldn't have lasted more than a second, but it was one of the longest seconds in Joe's life. He hit the drifted snow with a much harder smack than he expected and it stunned him for a moment. As his sense returned to him, he found that he was half-covered in snow, every inch of his body ached from the impact, and Frank was frantically stage-whispering his name. Despite his protesting limbs, Joe picked himself up and realized that he didn't seem to have any broken bones after all.
"I think I'm alive," he said to Frank. "I don't even think I cut myself on that glass."
Frank then jumped. He purposely aimed a little to the right of where Joe had landed so that he would land where the snow wasn't already packed down. Like his brother, he was momentarily stunned by the impact, but then he picked himself up with Joe's help.
"Any injuries?" Joe asked.
Frank groaned as he tried to stand up straight. "I'm probably going to have to be on ibuprofen for a month just to be able to move, but otherwise I think I'm okay."
"If I ever complain about snow again, remind me how it saved our lives this time," Joe said.
"It might still claim our lives," Frank cautioned him. "Now we've got to try to get away from here in the dark and the cold in an unfamiliar place with no coats and try not to freeze to death."
Joe frowned as he realized he hadn't thought of that part of the plan. "Maybe they've got a car we can take."
"We might as well try it."
They started to make their slow and painful way around to the front of the house, but as they neared a side door, it burst open. Angelo came out, wielding a gun.
"So, you didn't get away after all. You're not going to. Come on."
