A/N1 "In the jungle, the mighty jungle…" Still can't quite get that song out of my head, even after working it out on the guitar and playing it a few times. (Shout out to Mojo01 and his trombone!) Maybe a new chapter will help. We are past the halfway point of our little Halloween tale.
Thanks for reading and reviewing. And for the PMs too.
Don't own Chuck.
Too Old For This
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jungle Fever
Carina worked alongside Beckman, tracking Sarah and Casey's progress deeper into the jungle and helping Beckman try to work out the radio problem, but try what they would, they could not get the radio to work. The even worse news was that Sarah and Casey's GPS signal was weakening steadily.
Beckman used a portable satellite uplink to put in a call to Cuiaba, and a tech team was going to be dispatched in the morning, but that meant no communication all night. Outside, shadows were beginning to lengthen.
They ate breakfast before Sarah and Casey left, and ate something vaguely fruity and spicy that the villagers had brought them for lunch. Carina had put a bowl of it on the table near Rider's door, but he was still asleep.
Carina now realized that it had been a few hours... She hadn't talked to Rider since just after he went to his room that morning. She hadn't wanted to wake him, so she hadn't spoken to him. She began to feel like a patsy in a scheme. She left Beckman muttering to herself about technology and went to the room where Rider was sleeping. She knew when she got up to the cot that he was not there. Two pillows under the covers and the Doc Savage book, open and strategically placed on top, so as to block the sightline to where Rider's head would be. Gone. He was so good at tending to himself, and she had gotten so caught up in what she was doing with Beckman, and she'd been a little distracted too, lost in missing her own little family.
Carina was both immediately terrified and immediately angry. Damn, damn. She went in to deliver the bad news to Beckman. Bartowskis!
ooOoo
Sarah lowered Rider carefully to the ground. She realized that he was not exactly green and brown, but rather that he was dressed in a green shirt and green pants, and that he had mud caked heavily on all of his exposed skin, hands, neck, face and ears. She checked him over quickly. His pulse was a little weak but didn't frighten Sarah. She could see some bug bites, but not major injuries or even serious scratches.
She was aware, as she examined Rider, of Casey tying up the skinny man he had knocked unconscious. When he finished, he came over and began checking Rider too. After a moment, he looked at her.
"He's ok, Sarah. Dehydrated and hungry, I bet, and maybe a bit in shock from what he did and what he saw. But honestly, he otherwise looks better than we do. We should have thought of mud instead of using that goddamn bug spray. All it did was make me stink like perfume. The old ways are usually the best."
Just as Casey finished, Rider began to come around. Sarah pulled up his pants leg and found a couple of leeches on the back of one of his legs. She grabbed her knife, and before she could ask for it, Casey handed her the old brass Zippo he always had on missions. She heated it up. Rider's eyes focused and she saw him watching her.
"Be still for a minute, Rider. This may sting, but I won't burn you. I just need to get them off you." She flicked the lighter open and began to heat the blade of her knife. Rider nodded. Hoping to keep his mind off what she was doing, she started asking him questions. "You were following us?"
Rider bit his lip and nodded. "So you crossed that little stream we crossed early on?" He nodded.
She and Casey had waded the stream then, in vegetation on the other side, they'd checked each other for leeches and found none.
"I stood in the stream for a few minutes. I got some mud to cover myself, to keep the bugs off me. Like Ranger Rick said." It was Sarah's turn to nod. Rider spent a week last summer at a wilderness survival camp, and Rick was the Forest Ranger who had taken them out for a couple of days during the camp. Sarah touched the heated blade to one of the leeches and it curled, releasing itself from Rider. Sarah flicked it away. Rider grimaced but made no sound. Casey, who was now kneeling behind Rider, encouraged Rider to lean back into him, squeezed Rider's shoulder. Sarah repeated the procedure. She took off her pack and grabbed a tube of antibiotic cream and rubbed it into the red spots. Rider looked at her with so much trust she felt her hands shaking. How had she gotten him into this? How had he gotten himself into this?
"Rider?" She fixed her gaze to him.
He shrugged and grinned weakly. "I hid in the back of the Cruiser when you and Casey were finishing up. I went out the window of my room. When you left the car, I didn't know what to do. I thought maybe I would just wait in the car. And then, a little while after you left, I saw these two guys," Rider motioned with his shoulder, "come out of the jungle at another spot and then follow you. I was afraid for you…"
"You should have waited in the Cruiser. You should never have gotten into the Cruiser." Sarah snapped, her tone sharper than she really intended. Rider winced, but then Casey laughed. Not just a grunt, a full-on belly laugh.
"The size of the kid changes, but not much else for you, huh, Sarah?" He rubbed Rider's curls and smiled. "What's done is done. How are you feeling?"
Rider answered Casey but kept his eyes on his mom. "Thirsty. I was scared to drink anything. And hungry." Sarah saw his gaze creep away to the big man, dead on the shag carpet green floor of the jungle.
She grabbed her water and gave it to Rider. He drank deep. Then she handed him an energy bar, tearing the packaging open. He bit into it eagerly.
"So you were following the men who were following us?"
"Yeah, it was kinda funny, like a wet, sloppy parade…" He is your son, Chuck Bartowski. But even inside, Sarah could not retain any anger. She was just glad he was safe. They could have a serious talk about obedience later. Right now, she was relieved.
"You saved me, Rider." She smiled at him. "Are you sure you're ok ?" She noticed that his hands were trembling a little. But he nodded and grinned with a bit more strength. She knew they'd need to talk about what he had seen, too. She was worried about it, worried about it a lot. But there was no time, and this was not the place. Around her, the greens of the jungle were slowly becoming darker, shadows were blacker. The night was coming.
She and Casey looked at each other and he nodded at her. While she continued to check Rider over, Casey got up and moved the big man's body into the vegetation. He carried the skinny man over to a large tree next to the path but at a distance from the body, and propped him up against it. Sarah was calmed a bit by Rider's attention being focused on eating the energy bar, not on Casey's doings.
Sarah got up and walked over to Casey. She kept her voice low. "What do we do, John?"
He gave her an abstracted, calculating look. "I guess we leave that guy here. We can't take him with us, too much potential for trouble, especially now that we have a third. We can mark the spot. He'll just have to take his chances. He'd have killed us.
"We need to get up into a tree, off the ground. It won't be a pleasant night, but I'm guessing we can't be far away now. Wheelwright had to get equipment here somehow; he couldn't have carried it forever. My guess is that he has some other way of getting things in, maybe by air, but even so, he wouldn't have wanted to be too far from civilization. Like Thoreau, just a mile or so from Concord, still able to hear Emerson's dinner bell..."
Sarah's eyes widened. "Thoreau, Casey? Really?"
He grunted. "I told you once before, Bartowski, I wasn't hatched. Who says I can't like the Transcendentalists? Good Americans." He scanned ahead. "Let's try to get a little more distance in and then we'll find a place to spend the night. A tree, if we can find one. Get up off the jungle floor." He paused and made a point of looking back at her and dipping his head in Rider's direction. "You think the kid'll be ok...I mean...seeing that. His mom...well, you know?"
Sarah resisted the urge to turn and look at Rider. "I don't know. But I do know for sure that he is one tough little man." Sarah felt her stomach twist. She hadn't wanted Rider to know about her past, not yet; he had figured it out on his own. She certainly had not wanted Rider to see her do what she had done in her past; he had, though. He'd even been a part of it. She swallowed her worry and turned around, walking back to Rider, who'd finished eating.
"Ok, we are going to have to move on, Rider. We can't stay here. We'll leave that man food and water, but we are going to leave him behind. We can't trust him to come with us. The jungle is barely passable as it is. The other man...is dead." She saw Rider swallow hard, but then she saw his face shift. It became determined, ready, otherwise unreadable. It was the face he had on the day his hockey team won the championship and he turned a hat trick and was named MVP. He could go on; he could cope. He is my son too.
ooOoo
Chuck popped back into consciousness, back in his own body. Pop! Suddenly, there was he was. Nearby, wheelwright was working, moving between open laptops on the table. One, the one not being used, had lots of images on it, all images, Chuck realized with an inner tremble, of spiders. The other Chuck couldn't make out since Wheelwright was standing in front of it. The room was growing dark; the night was coming.
Chuck's thoughts turned to Sarah. He had a sudden on-rush of guilt again, about his secret. About the earliest download. He recalled a conversation with Ellie when he was trying to explain to her why he wanted to keep it secret.
"But, look, Ellie, if it's just in there but isn't causing any harm, and if it would be dangerous to take it out…" He gestured at her, pausing, struggling to know what to say, how to say it.
Ellie jumped into his pause. "But Chuck, that's an argument for leaving it alone, and I agree with you about that. But that's not an argument for keeping it from your wife. The Intersect has harmed you both. Thank God Morgan's kiss idea worked (and who knows how that happened, I sometimes think he's a pint-sized Merlin), but if it hadn't, the Intersect might have cost you Sarah. You have to tell her." Ellie gave him a look like the argument was now over.
Chuck stood there. He looked away from Ellie for a moment, and then back to her. "El, look, I know I am asking you, Beckman, too, to be an accessory to a secret. But you don't really get it. Ever since she dropped into my life, I've tried to understand what she's doing in it, not in the secret agent sense, but in the...personal sense. What is she doing with me? And ever since she dropped into my life, I've had to win her again and again...and again. I told you that once, though maybe then you didn't fully understand it. But you do now. And I'm not complaining about having to win her over and over; she's always worth it; she's worth anything…"
"Anything but the truth, Chuck?" Ellie's eyes were bright and hard.
"No, no, that's not what I mean. Now that I know I have always had the Intersect, or nearly always, I just worry that I won't be able to...keep her, keep winning her, if I give it up."
"Right, Chuck. But no one is asking you to give it up. I believe you should keep it, just not keep it a secret."
Chuck fell back on empty gesticulations again. He reddened and he stared at the ground. "El, I don't ever want her to wonder if...if…"
Ellie's eyes softened, her posture too. 'Just say it, little brother."
"I never want her to wonder if she really loves the Intersect...and not me. I worry about that enough for both of us. Heck, I worry about it enough for a football stadium full of people."
"But Chuck, listen, please. That's crazy talk. I don't mean to be...mean. But it is. That woman has been in love with you since the beginning.."
"Yeah, Intersected-me. You saw how she was when she lost her memories, when she became the Sarah, the agent, she was before she knew Intersected-me. She had no feelings for me. She told me so. 'I don't feel it'...That's what she said. When she knew me without the Intersect, she was prepared to kill me."
"Chuck, listen to yourself. Now you sound like the one with amnesia." Anger flashed in Ellie's eyes. "Yes, Sarah left. For a little while. Then she came back. Then she took you with her when she went after Quinn…"
"But I had to beg, basically."
"How does that change anything? If she had not felt something for you, the begging wouldn't have worked. Agent Walker, remember? I know what Sarah said, Chuck, but pay attention to what she did. Where did you find her, kiss her?"
Chuck sighed. "On our beach."
Ellie grinned a little. "And did you have to force her to kiss you? Or beg her?"
Chuck had told Ellie this story. He knew she wanted him to hear his own answers. "No. She asked me to kiss her, even kinda told me to."
"And did it feel like she was kissing you experimentally, Chuck, just to see if she could get her memories back as a result?"
Chuck looked a little surprised by the question. It took him a second to answer. "...No. I know Sarah's kisses. That wasn't an...experiment. And if it was magic, it wasn't like Sleeping Beauty. She kissed me too, really kissed me, back."
"So what are you so afraid of? You didn't have the Intersect when she kissed you."
"Oh, yes, I did. I had the first one."
"But," Ellie huffed in exasperation, "Sarah didn't know that. She still doesn't."
"No, but maybe it is the reason she kissed me back on the beach, even though she didn't know it, and maybe it's the reason she's stayed, even though she doesn't know it…"
"You know, Chuck, if Sarah didn't love it so much, I'd pull your hair out. Better yours than mine, anyway, because that's what you make me want to do." She reached up and smacked him on the top of his head. "Sarah wants children with you. Do you really think Sarah wants to have the Intersect's child? Give birth to circuits and wires? A computerized Rosemary's Baby? Do you hear yourself, little brother? You aren't making sense."
Chuck just stood there. At a loss. "I can't help it. I don't want to believe it's the Intersect. But nothing scares me as much as losing her. And if I only get to keep her because of the Intersect…I just don't know how to explain it...How...she...how Sarah Walker, could be in love with me, be my wife."
"Chuck, love is exactly what defies explanation. If you could explain it, it wouldn't be love, it'd be lust or infatuation or something else. Those are explainable, usually easily explainable. The Intersect is not the explanation of why Sarah loves you."
"But what if it is?"
"So you are willing to have her stay with you, in love, not with you, but with the Intersect, even though she doesn't know it? Because then she remains your wife, even though she's really in love with the Intersect? And you'd rather think that's what's going on than risk losing her? Is that the twisty craziness in your head? Did I describe it correctly?" Chuck nodded slowly, once.
Ellie threw her hands in the air, but she stopped arguing. She let him keep his secret, but she was not happy about it. At all.
He was crazy. Ellie was right. Why had he talked himself in circles and twisted himself around? What he said didn't really make much sense, if it made any at all. Yes, he was afraid of losing Sarah. But she had never done anything to make him think there was any danger of that. Most days, he knew she loved him and that she would do anything for him, even die if necessary. But there was that returning, nagging doubt, the feeling that her love for him was an impossibility, that something else was really going on. That being Sarah Bartowski was Sarah Walker's deepest cover, so deep even she didn't know it was a cover...
He knew he was starting to spiral, twisting himself again. He forced himself to recollect the download from his dad's lab, what he had seen on the screen. He had seen more than just a spray of images. But what more?
ooOoo
Casey found a huge tree, with a thick trunk and heavy limbs, covered round in ropey vines. He cut large green fronds from some of the smaller trees and he and Sarah working together were able to get them up into the tree and to make a kind of padding in the section of the tree where the heaviest limbs parted company from the trunk. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
They clambered up and into their makeshift perch. It was nearly dark by the time they situated themselves. They shared some water and each ate an energy bar. Sarah found a spot where Rider could be near her, and she could wrap him and her in her mosquito netting. Casey wormed into his. As the darkness became inkier, Rider snuggled against her. Sarah felt her heart ache. She was worried about him, about what he had seen, about where he was.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Rider spoke to her in a whisper. "It's ok, Mom. Really. That...today was scary. But I am still not scared of you. It's ok, Mom. That man was going to...hurt you and Casey. I had to stop him...help you."
"I know, honey. I know. Don't dwell on it now. It's over. Let's concentrate on finding your dad."
Sarah reached out in thought to Chuck, her husband. She needed him so much, loved him so much. She loved him more now than in Burbank, more now than on their wedding day, more now even than that day on the beach when she found herself again after that world-restoring kiss.
Holding her boy and thinking of her husband, Sarah fell asleep. Casey and Rider were asleep, too.
ooOoo
Chuck was back in his body again. But also back in his cage and in the plastic bag. The room was dark, except for the weak light from a couple of naked bulbs. Chuck wondered how Wheelwright was powering them. He noticed then noticed another voice in the room, a voice he had heard before. Wheelwright was talking to...Sarah? No, not Sarah, but another tall blonde woman. He didn't recognize her voice when he heard it before, but he should have. He knew her, though it had been years since he'd seen her. Robyn Cunnings. But wait, she's supposed to be in prison. But so is Wheelwright. The years had hardened her, the look of her, and the fatigues she was wearing did not help.
"I tell you, you owe him to me, Wheelwright. I funded all of this. That has to be figured into my bid for him and has to make it the highest bid. You will not sell him out from under me." Chuck listened helplessly. He remembered Cunnings' taste for torture. He fervently hoped she would be outbid.
Cunnings and Wheelwright left the room, walking out into the dark. Chuck took the time to get back to his remembered images. He was close, close to something. At a certain point, though, he became exhausted trying to find a way to study each image.
He stopped attending to them individually, and without meaning to, he recollected them as a whole, instead of attending to them as distinct images. Huh? How is that possible?
When he remembered them as a whole, quelled the spray, the movement, he saw himself, or rather, himself as a boy. All those images were somehow images that composed a larger image of Chuck, of him when he was not much older than Rider. It was like a puzzle in which each puzzle piece was itself a complete image, and yet together they completed another image, an image of Chuck. What did that mean?
He lost the question for a moment, though, when he realized that he had moved one of his fingers. He had done it. There had been no command from Wheelwright. He couldn't move anything else, but he moved that finger again. He felt as though his consciousness, drawn up into a ball of light in his interior darkness, was slowly diffusing itself back through his limbs, reclaiming his body. It wasn't happening fast, but it was happening.
And then Chuck noticed. Spiders.
They were coming in from the outside, through holes in the walls and the roof. They came in a legion. They gathered on the ground outside his cage.
They stared at him. He could hear a strange sound, but not with his ears. In his mind. Strange sounds like a dark, primitive murmur, a chant of murmurs. They were waiting.
But for what?
ooOoo
Carina and Beckman got back from scouring the village. There was no sign of Rider. No one had seen him. They were both sure he'd gone after Sarah. They could only hope it worked out. They had no vehicle that could get them in as far as the Cruiser had gotten. Beckman had requested that the team coming tomorrow bring a smaller, lighter all-terrain vehicle, but there was no guarantee one would come and no guarantee they could find Rider even if they had it. Sarah and Casey's signal was weaker yet than it had been earlier. Weak, the signal had stopped, suggesting they had stopped for the night. They were not far from the center of the vicinity that Chuck's tracker had led them to. Tomorrow would likely be the day they found Wheelwright, fingers crossed. But Carina and Beckman were in effect deaf and blind. And they were a man down, a boy down, rather.
Carina gritted her teeth, staring out the window toward the dark jungle. C'mon, Rider, be ok. Find your mom. Bring her home and your dad, too.
ooOoo
Sarah woke up, cramped and achy. Itching and burning, burning up. But then she realized the burning up wasn't all her; it was coming from Rider. Mostly from Rider. She put her hand on his forehead. It was hot. She felt him tremble, a chill.
Rider had a fever. She frantically fished out a bottle of medication from her bag, and she woke him and got him to take it. But even in the weak morning light, she could tell that his response was uncomprehending and that his eyes were glassy.
This was not good, not good.
A/N2 Cough, cough. Ahem. Well, more to come next time in Chapter 8, "Chief of Spiders". Leave a review, please. I'd love to know how you rate the spinning of this spidery web.
More soon.
Zettel
