A/N1 "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the spider sleeps tonight…" Everybody sing!
"A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh…"
Ok, ok, so no one's in a singing mood but me? Well, here's some more of our story. If you won't sing, at least leave me a review. Thanks, as always, for reading. Hope no one minds the earlier update.
Don't own Chuck.
Too Old For This
CHAPTER SIX
The Green Hell
Sarah slumped in sweaty exhaustion.
Never before had she hated green this much-not even years ago in when Chuck and Casey and Morgan worked at the Buy More. And she lived in that Oz-green, CIA-supplied apartment in Burbank.
Now, she was ensnared by olive, sage, hunter, emerald, chartreuse, viridian, turquoise: a plenum of greens, tongues of green flame. The Green Hell.
Had she been soaring somehow above it all, not ensnared, able simply to see the colors, she might have found it worth contemplating, gazingstock. Color is its own reward. She'd heard that somewhere. But these greens were up against her, in her face and hair and clothes trying actively and malignantly to harm her. And to harm Casey, who was standing slumped beside her on one of the few bits of relatively bare earth they'd seen in hours.
Casey looked around morosely. He was sweating and grimy, his face streaked. Sarah also knew he was hurting. They'd inadvertently stirred up a nest of bullet ants, and one of them had stung the back of Casey's hand, his gun hand. That kind of ant sting was supposed to be the worst sting on earth, thirty times worse than, say, a wasp sting. And it hurt for a long time, sometimes more than a day. His hand was so swollen and sore that it had become practically useless, at best a club. But, in true Casey style, he'd not so much as mentioned the sting or the pain of it after it happened. He'd cursed a blue streak in the green at the moment it happened, of course. But not a groan or sigh since.
The claustrophobic green hellscape that imprisoned them was exuberantly, ominously fertile, almost impenetrable due to the wild abundance of plants and trees and crawling things. They had trekked into the jungle at first in the all-terrain vehicle - actually an ancient but specially equipped Land Cruiser, somehow kept running for what must have been three decades. Too soon, though, the jungle made traveling further in the Land Cruiser impossible.
She and Casey had shouldered their packs, marked the location in the GPS, and gone deeper on foot.
They'd gotten lucky. Not far from the place where they left the Land Cruiser, they found a trail, recently blazed and even more recently used. They had reason to be hopeful. It almost had to be Wheelwright's trail. Of course, calling it a trail was seriously misleading. It was instead a serpentine, treacherous thread through the green, easy to lose and, although easier to travel than undisturbed jungle, still a constant, almost overwhelming challenge. They were forced to crouch or stretch or jump of crawl just to keep moving. And the creatures...God, everywhere, omnipresent, unavoidable.
Despite her long sleeves and long pants, Sarah had suffered various scratches, bites, and stings. She kept brushing tiny ticks off her. She'd been doing it all day. Her cap, tight cuffs, shirt, and pants, had not kept out the annoying and sometimes infectious sandflies. And the mosquitoes - well, there was little to do except to try to wave them away from her exposed neck, face, ears, and hands. She and Casey were both doing that as they stood there, waving their hands. She smiled grimly. If someone could see them, they probably looked like dueling orchestra conductors in a vast green auditorium.
"I tell you, Sarah," Casey growled, low and soft, "I have a strong feeling that we're being followed. I felt that way since not long after we left the vehicle. I worry that some of Wheelwright's men got behind us and that we're going to get pinched, men behind us, men before us. But there's no way to see what's behind you or ahead of you in here."
Sarah nodded. She'd had the same feeling, though not as strong as Casey, evidently. She peered behind them, as she had off and on the whole time, but she could see nothing more than a wall of plants and vines. She'd thought she had heard a noise, once or twice, but the thickness of the vegetation and the ubiquitous dampness and humidity seemed quickly to smother sound. No sounds carried far. She hadn't been sure she heard something. She was so swamped in plants and insects she was beginning to lose herself, her sense of herself, blinded by encircling green, deafened by the mosquito buzz.
ooOoo
Chuck realized he was talking, having a conversation. With Freddy Krueger.
No, no, not Freddy. But someone who looked just like...Stanley Wheelwright!
The Aisle of Terror.
Jeff and Lester.
Interspecies relationships.
Chuck felt immediately puzzled. Interspecies relationships? Why had that particular video display from the Aisle come back to him, just now?
"So you see, I have made you anew. Part man, part spider. Not that you will sprout extra legs or any legs or get all...hairy." Wheelwright mock-shuddered. "Ha! Well, unless of course, you grow a beard. If you did get hairy...that would be scary, though, and funny. The Not-So-Itsy-Bitsy Spider! You must be what, six-foot-three? That'd be one humongous spider. Shelob! No, no," Wheelwright smacked Chuck's leg with his hand, "Helob! God, I crack myself up." Wheelwright guffawed quietly for a moment, enjoying his joke. Chuck suspected that Wheelwright had cracked himself up, once too often, a long, long time ago.
"You see, Chuck, you will soon be able to communicate with spiders and they with you. They will obey. They will. It's quite the tale.
"You see, I came here to hide, to work, and I gassed a spider with Revoltium quite accidentally. I was so surprised and upset, I got careless; I gassed myself too, just a gasp, really. And for a moment, I could feel the spider and it could feel me. We could become no more acquainted but it gave me an idea.
"I started experimenting on the spiders using the gas. I found that even though I could not direct their behavior, enough exposure to the gas altered their behavior. They became more aggressive, less frightened. They could be trained to a degree, more than a pet rock, less than a pet dog." Wheelwright's chatter slowed as he thought, "Think of an eight-legged...cat, yes, something like that, as trainable as an eight-legged cat. A not-so-pussy cat." Wheelwright cracked himself up again and smacked Chuck's leg. Then Wheelwright started chattering.
Wheelwright's hands were busy as he chattered. Attaching wires, adjusting settings on his primary laptop screen. Tinkering with the nozzle on the gas canister. It dawned on Chuck finally that he was sitting up in a chair, not on the cot. He was not in the cage and no longer inside the giant plastic sandwich bag.
But he couldn't seem to will his body into motion. He was not even in control of his blinking, although he did blink from time-to-time. He was having an inside-of-body experience, and it was much weirder and more upsetting than an out-of-body experience. Not that Chuck had had many out-of-body experiences, other than during sexy times with his wife. Like last Friday night.
How long ago was that? Sarah! Every fiber of him wanted to find her, get back to her, but he could not initiate any motion, not even in a finger.
It turned out that Wheelwright could initiate Chuck-motion, however. He told Chuck to raise his arm, so that he could attach a wire to the side of Chuck's chest, and Chuck's arm went up. He told Chuck to shift his leg, his leg shifted. Chuck realized with a horrible, sinking feeling that his current situation was roughly that of a puppet if it were suddenly gifted with consciousness, but lacked volitional control of its puppet body, no way to pull its own strings.
But just as his heart sank, Chuck's mind filled again with what he had seen on the screen when he downloaded the Intersect the very first time. The spray of images moved quickly, but there were fewer than in any later download, Bryce's or afterward. Something about the images seemed suggestive, significant, meaningful, but he could not quite capture it. Then the memory disappeared, leaving Chuck stranded, entombed in his own body once more. And then he felt himself slipping away, even as he heard his own voice, responding to a question from Wheelwright. Slipping, slipping...slipping.
ooOoo
It happened again a little later. He was suddenly there, trapped in his body once more. Wheelwright was still talking. "So, while you were out, I dosed you heavily with Revoltium. After it had done its work, I let my little friends feast on you, then I administered...just the right amount…" Wheelwright's voice climbed in pitch and he held his hand between his face and Chuck, placing his index finger close to but not touching his thumb, "...of anti-venom. And then I engaged your father's legacy to you, your Intersect…" Wheelwright paused and looked toward the ceiling.
"I suppose it must puzzle you, how I could have known you still had the Intersect. You see, I found files of your father's. Pure serendipity. It took me a little time to suss out what he was doing, but eventually, I did. He and I faced the same problem, but from different angles. What problem does a man have outside a closed room he wants to enter, and what problem does he share with a man inside the closed room who wants to leave? Oh, come now, Chuck, you must have an answer." Wheelwright started humming the Jeopardy theme music. Chuck knew the answer but couldn't move his mouth and it did not move on its own this time.
"The door! Oh, sorry, the answer must be in the form of a question. 'The door?' You see, your father wanted to put things into the mind, knowledge, skills; I wanted to bring things out of the mind, fears, nightmares. But we both faced the closed door. I realized your father had found a new and fascinating way to open the mind, and thus a new and fascinating way to unleash its horrors. In his notes (why do you think the CIA had them? Why did they throw them away?)," Wheelwright shrugged at his own parenthetical questions and went on, "in his notes, he entered that you had downloaded the Intersect. He also had continuing observations about your health and behavior. You accepted it well, even seamlessly, you know."
"Your father hypothesized early on that removing it would probably have been a good idea only if it had been done immediately after the download. Think of it like this Chuck, as your father did: you were still growing, and your mind grew up into and all around that early Intersect. The later ones sat atop your grown mind, as it were, but that first one, no, it was inside you, deep inside. Your father's thoughts about all this were fascinating. I have the file here somewhere. Perhaps I will read some of it to you later. Perhaps as a bedtime story?"
Chuck groaned, but only inwardly, of course. How had his life gotten so screwed up? How?
He was going to have Freddy Krueger read him Intersect tales help him go to sleep.
ooOoo
While Sarah and Casey finished loading the Land Cruiser, and not long after Sarah kissed him goodbye, Carina had gotten Rider to agree to go to his room and read. The boy was worried sick, and still tired, and Sarah had asked Carina to try to get him to rest, and think about something other than Chuck and the rescue.
Rider headed to his room, picking up his Doc Savage book from the spot where he'd put it on the table, next to Beckman's topographical map. He went into his room and shut the door. A few minutes later, the Land Cruiser coughed to life and Casey and Sarah were gone.
Carina and Beckman had been able to keep track of them for a while with radios, but then the signals faltered, died, and the radios became useless. It was unclear what the problem was. Their GPS trackers still seemed to be working, though, so although they were not in voice contact, they could follow as the two trekked into the deeper jungle.
Carina peeked into Rider's room. He had fallen asleep on his cot, burrowed beneath his covers, his book on his chest. Smiling to herself, she thought about the visit she and Bryan and Simon visited Chuck and Sarah and Rider in Montana. It had been a blue and golden summer, the boys tearing around outside or tearing up inside, constantly talking, playing basketball or video games. Being boys and best friends. She and Bryan had spent long cool evenings outside on the deck with Chuck and Sarah, grilling, laughing, drinking and talking. The deck faced the mountains, and there was something about those mountains under that sky that affected a person. It affected Carina. She looked forward to going back, and she knew Bryan and Simon did too.
Carina went back into the main room to help Beckman keep track of Chuck and Sarah's progress in the jungle.
ooOoo
Sarah trudged behind Casey. She could see his back and the green all around him. She was bone-tired. It felt like every part of her either ached, burned or itched. She'd mostly stopped fighting the mosquitoes. She'd wave her hand distractedly by her face now and then, but it was more reflex than anything else. She found it hard to believe she was trekking through another jungle looking for Chuck. Thailand should have been enough for a lifetime.
"Casey, you remember Thailand?" Sarah asked, not because she thought he was likely to have forgotten, but rather to give herself and him something to think about for a few minutes other than the dank misery of putting one foot in front of the other.
"Sure, Sarah. Morgan and I found you in that pit, with that cobra." Casey grunt-laughed. "Giant Blonde She-Male."
Sarah smirked sweatily. Chuck rather liked that title, and she didn't mind it, especially when he used it, whispered it in her ear during...certain private moments.
"Right, and Morgan was the Magnet."
Casey grunted again, but it contained no laughter. He kept marching. "Yeah, but Morgan's always the Magnet. It's the role nature intended." Another grunt-laugh.
Sarah couldn't help herself. "Seems to have been the Magnet for Alex, too." Casey stopped and turned on her slowly, wiping sweat from his eyes. He tried to glare at her, but couldn't summon up the energy.
"Look, Bartowski, I live with my daughter's choices, I don't make them…"
Sarah took off her cap for a moment and waved it in front of her face, hoping to cool herself and perhaps interrupt the mosquitoes' blood quest. "Oh, C'mon, Casey, you know you love the little, bearded guy."
Casey was about to speak when his eyes got big. He tackled Sarah to the ground, just before an arrow whizzed through the spot where she had been standing and embedded itself with a powerful thwack into a tree trunk.
Casey managed to turn her and himself as they went down so that when they hit the ground, he was not on top of her, but beside her. Their old teamwork kicked in. Sarah rolled into the heavy vegetation one way, Casey the other.
The backpack she had on made rolling a challenge but she did it, praying that she wouldn't roll into onto or into some venomous creature. She got her gun out of her shoulder holster and waited. The wet quiet of the jungle took over. Nothing happened.
And then she heard muffled footsteps coming toward her. She knew the vegetation and her green clothes together made her hard to see. They would know approximately where she was at best; they would not know exactly. She was able to see through a kind of tunnel in the leaves. The face she saw was unfamiliar, big, heavily-jowled and pasty, sweating profusely, his clothes all soaked and sticking to his thick body. He had a pistol in his hand, a bow on one shoulder, and a quiver of arrows on his back. He gestured behind him, gave a signal to be silent.
He started moving very slowly, closing in on Sarah's hiding place. Step, step. Sarah steadied herself, her breathing. She could kill him now, but she did not know how many others might be with him or what weapons they would have. If she could stand it, wait it out, maybe those he signaled would show themselves, and she and Casey would know the odds. Maybe they'd even show themselves nearer Casey, naturally dividing themselves as targets. Step, step. She waited.
She could smell the man, not figuratively, but for real. He reeked of sweat and tobacco. He was only a few steps from her. At this point, she would have to shoot him at point-blank range. She wished she could get to her knife, but she couldn't risk the noise it might make or the time it would take. Then she saw another man; he was over closer to Casey. The man was skinny, with dark hair and eyes, and several days growth of beard. He had a pistol in his hand too.
When Sarah looked at his hand, she realized that she and Casey had a problem she had forgotten. Casey's hurt hand was his gun hand. He was not going to be able to fight that way; he'd have to risk melee. Damn. That meant Sarah would have to be sure to drop her man so that he could not get a shot off when Casey exposed himself.
She had just had the thought when the big man fired into the vegetation surrounding her. He had seen her, or he had guessed well. He missed, but only barely. Sarah scooted back into the vegetation as much as she could without creating too much of a disturbance. But she could see that the big man had his gun trained on her. On her. If he fired again, he'd hit her.
"Ok, girly," his voice was heavy and oily, "get out of there and I won't plug you."
Sarah hoped Casey was still hidden and ready. She stood up out of the vegetation abruptly, making sure she made as much noise as she could, hoping to startle the two men, delay their response. At the same moment, Casey lunged out of his hiding place and drove himself into the midsection of the skinny man. Sarah's pistol caught in a thin vine as she stood up, and although the vine snapped, it delayed her. A mere moment, but...she realized she was too late, too slow. The big man had had his gun on her all along, She saw his eyes narrow.
She thought of Chuck and Rider.
But before the man could pull the trigger, a large branch crashed down on his head. Sarah fired into the big man's chest as he lurched to the side, his lurch more from surprise than the strength of the blow to his head. Behind the man, Sarah caught a glimpse of a jungle creature, quick and green and brown. It swung the branch again, knocking the gun from the big man's hand. The big man went down to his knees. Sarah fired once more and the man fell face-forward onto the mucky ground.
Sarah wheeled toward the creature, gun up. It was small. And then she noticed its blue eyes.
"Don't shoot, Mom! It's me!"
"Rider?"
Then Sarah heard Casey's voice, her echo. "Rider?"
The skinny man was out cold on the ground. Casey was still seated on top of him.
The green and brown creature smiled a weak, white-toothed, blue-eyed smile. "Yeah, Mom. It's me."
He swayed a little. Sarah ran to him and caught him as he collapsed.
ooOoo
"I know you are gone now, old Chuck. The new Chuck has taken your place, spider-Chuck. Too bad, in a way, I'd have enjoyed your reaction to your replacement. I wonder how your blonde bride will like her new insectoid husband? Probably not as much as the woman who married Doctor Frankenstein in that Mel Brooks movie liked the altered Doctor. What was that movie? Young Frankenstein, right? Well, your having gotten Intersected and insected isn't going to result in that anatomical enhancement. No enlarged stinger. I suspect she will be quite disappointed...overall…" Wheelwright turned back to his computer.
But Chuck, the old Chuck, knew that he, the old Chuck, was not gone. I'm here, Sarah! I'm here! Find me!
Whatever Wheelwright had done, it hadn't worked, or it hadn't worked as Wheelwright expected. The screen on Chuck's father's computer appeared again before Chuck's mind's eye. The spray of images. He started concentrating on them one-by-one. He had a growing conviction some kind of answer, some kind of answer, was hidden in them.
A/N2 Oh my! I hope everyone is enjoying reading this as much I am writing it. If so, please leave me a review, even if that's all it says. Tune in next time for Chapter 7, "Jungle Fever".
"A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh…"
