Teensy baby itty-bitty bonus chapter because I wanna post this right now. More later.

Disclaimer: I own the characters I made up, but I'll bargain with the real writers to let me have the others!

Rated: T

Chapter 15 – Breakout

The air was thick with the scent of odorous sweat, old cigarettes, and a hint of mildew. An argue could be made that urine was also in the mix. The cold, metallic surface that stuck to his slick, scratchy cheek was vibrating ever so slightly with the clanging of a baton on the bars of his cell.

"Did I wake ya?" a heavyset policeman spoke to him with a thick southern accent. A few beads of sweat could be seen rolling off his forehead, just below where his cap met the brown hairs sticking out of it. He was peeking around the side of the cell and it was clear that he was holding onto another man who wasn't going to make his job easy. The large policeman's mustache moved in sync with the sneer through which he spat his words, "You know, they say only the guilty sleep in jail."

"I didn't do anything wrong," Chris answered back. "And besides, this is just holding." The denounced hiker sulked against the wall in an upright position, glad that he hadn't had the misfortune to fall asleep against any of his other cellmates. He knew he didn't belong in a place like this. For God's sake, he was only going down the road less traveled when he was taken in – or, in this case, hiking up the trail less traveled.

The sweaty policeman ignored his brooding and opened up the cell, pushing an olive-skinned man that had previously been handcuffed into the spot where Chris had been laying minutes ago. A heavy cologne was now mixed in with the strange smells of the room, and Chris would've covered his nose if he wasn't wary of offending his cellmate, whom he noticed had a quite a large fist.

The man next to him thankfully kept to himself, and Chris went back to muttering and griping about how he didn't do anything. Damn those two, he thought. Damn that girl who thought she could steal his dog, and that man who always seemed like he knew everything. What did he have, a damn computer in his brain?

"Disculpe?" said a gruff voice to his right. The olive-skinned man had managed to speak up finally. Chris had taken rudimentary Spanish class in high school, but he didn't understand why the large man had any business speaking to him.

"Que?" Chris asked. A hard stare answered him in return, and Chris realized that he'd actually been complaining aloud instead of in his head. After being handcuffed to his hospital bed and being thrown into a jail cell immediately upon his release, the hiker felt himself going a bit mad.

In Spanish, he rambled to the man, suddenly not giving a damn whether the man cared or not. Besides, he was sure the policemen would eventually break it up if the large man decided he wanted to wring his neck for complaining. "All I said was that this guy acts like he has a computer in his head. And the girl he was with… Ugh, the two of those doe-eyed freaks can go fu-"

"What did they look like?" the man interrupted. Although he listened to Chris' moping, he didn't seem to retain much patience. He clamped a hand on the hiker's shoulder as he continued complaining in a shrill voice that kept increasing in volume until one of the policeman walked by again.

"I heard they took my dog," he continued. "I'll bet they took my cabin, too. Well, the campground probably wouldn't allow that." He finally stopped recounting the week's events to the odd stranger. "Why are you so curious, anyway?"

"It doesn't matter," the Hispanic man glowered, annoyed by the ringing in his ears that sounded whenever the smaller man to his left opened his mouth. The proud hiker certainly knew how to keep a conversation going. "Where's your campground, anyway?"

Chris smiled without a trace of mirth. "Tell you what, big guy," he started, "I will tell you all about it if you break us outta this joint, deal? I mean since you're so interested." At this point, he was tired of having to explain everything to someone he didn't even know.

"Deal. We should be out soon," the large man spoke in an even voice. He glanced at the clock in the hallway, and reached a hand up to smooth back his hair, almost like he was preparing for something. Chis noticed something else odd. While he was licking the sweat off of his upper lip, the strange man seemed to be the only one in the cell not sweating.

"What do you mean we should be…" his voice trailed off when he heard shouting down the hall. He jumped when he heard a shot, two shots, three – soon the whole cell was in a frenzy, pushing out at the bars to get a look at what was happening down the hall. Only the Hispanic man and Chris remained seated, the difference being that only one of them was yawning like he had expected this to happen.

One police man came running down the hall, shouting at the men to step back, keys clanking against his pant leg. In another moment they were clanking against the floor, as a bullet had caught him in the shoulder and caused him to collapse.

A few armed men that shared the same look as Chris' cellmate soon followed down the hall and let loose the prisoners. The large man finally stood up and calmly walked out, Chris at his tail. The hiker looked down at the writhing policeman on the floor, a younger man who looked quite unprepared for what had just happened. Chris wasn't prepared either, but sympathy for the cop just didn't seem to reach him.

He turned back to his cellmate. "So…you have people on the outside? This is good, this is good. Hey, I owe you one," he rambled on madly again, trying to catch up with the man's longer strides.

"Yes, you do," the Hispanic said once they reached the cars outside of the building in a voice that was still eerily calm. "Remember that nice deal you made?" The man smiled and leaned over to one of his friends, saying fast something in Spanish so that Chris couldn't hear what he said.

"Oh, right. The campground. Its nearby here, called Cunningham Falls State Park. They're in the first cabin past the main lodge. That's not really important, though."

"Oh, if you only knew, my friend," the man whispered ominously. He climbed into a car with the other armed men, shutting the door before Chris could even think to follow him.

"Hey, ah, thanks for getting me out," the hiker said, finally finding some semblance of his manners. "What do I call you? Who are you?"

"Oh, my name isn't important," the olive-skinned man laughed. He was well aware that the idiotic rambler wouldn't hesitate to share his name with the authorities when he inevitably got caught again. "I'm just an old guardsman, no one you should be worrying about."

Chris shrugged it off and walked around in the dust that was left by the vehicle that sped off. In his own judgment, the hiker guessed that the guardsman must have to have been a decent fellow despite the circumstances, even though he was a curious sort who poked his nose into Chris' business.

Unbeknownst to the hiker, the guardsman was heading straight for the agents who had supposedly made his life so horrible.

A/N: Like I said, it was a shorty, but I heard you guys haven't had an update in a while so I figured this little baby chapter might do the trick. "But we want more," you say? Don't worry, I'm typing what would have been the other seven pages of this chapter in the morning. XO

Thanks again to those gorgeous reviewers, sunshineforever13, USNeshama, irishcaribou (Nice to know!), clay cowan, Blue Obsidian Butterfly, meghan398 (it's a holiday when you review!), Gaia Janvier, TearsInTheDust, KTaylorCSI, Alara Alonya (No YOU are the sweetest), nrdhrd3, Midgardian Avenger, Zmrzlina763, kwisteria, KVD, and Guest. Keep 'em coming lovelies!