Chapter 6: A New Place to Hide
Cami was experiencing a familiar nightmare. She was looking over a high cliff. She knew she should back off, but something was holding her there. Then came the shove and Cami was falling. She flipped over mid-air and looked at the person who had shoved her in. It was Sam and he was laughing maniacally.
"Get yourself out of this, Camille. You always said you could!" Sam shouted through his laughter.
Cami turned back over and saw the ground getting closer and closer. Her voice was gone and her mind was blank. Cami woke up, drenched in cold sweat.
While Cami was having her nightmares, Sam's dreams were equally troubled. It started out nice. Sam was with his family and they were laughing together. Then everything went wrong. First, Sly disappeared. The laughter died and an ominous wind blew. Sam watched as his mother disappeared.
"No!" He screamed.
"Sammy?" It was Cami's voice. Cami was staring at him with a concerned look and then she disappeared too.
"NO!" Sam yelled, as he stood bolt upright in his sleeping bag.
"Sam? You alright?" Cami was next to him. Sam looked at her. Her gray fur was paler and drenched in sweat.
"Yeah, bad dream." Sam said trying to shake it off.
"Me too." Cami said laughing weakly. "Oh my gosh, we must be twins."
Sam punched her lightly in the arm for the quip. "What was your dream about?"
Cami didn't look at Sam. "I dreamt someone pushed me off a cliff." She mumbled. "You?"
"Mom and Dad went missing. Oh, wait, that's reality." Sam growled.
He picked up a box of granola bars and took out one. Sam tossed the box to Cami. She pulled out one to eat and unwrapped it.
"Do you think we can stay here? You did just wake up screaming." Cami asked.
Sam groaned. "Oh, great. You're right. We can't stay here. Come on." Sam stood up and started to drag the sleeping bag across the room.
"Dang." Cami mumbled as she dragged her sleeping bag across the and under some broken wood. "We should keep the flashlights." Cami said to Sam when he picked them up.
"And the granola bars." Sam added as he put the food in his bag and Cami put the flashlights in her bag.
"Let's get out of here." Sam said as he took the window off the frame and slid out into the street. Cami followed him. They blinked in the bright sunlight. Cami kept a lookout as Sam replaced the window.
"Come on." Cami started jogging away. Sam followed.
"So, who are we visiting first?" Sam asked once he and Cami stopped jogging and started walking.
"Well, Panda King is in China. We have no idea where Bentley and Murray are. Dimitri is now a famous diver. Rajan owns a huge series of carpet outlets. Contessa is a very accomplished real estate agent." Cami was reading out of the file.
"Any nearby?" Sam asked looking over Cami's shoulder reading the file.
"Well, one of Rajan's outlets is nearby." Cami said, looking at the name of the outlets. "Maybe we could try there." Cami said looking at Sam.
"Okay, first flaw: what are the odds that he's there? Out of all the possible outlets he owns, why would he be in this one? Second flaw: he was Dad's enemy! Why would he want to talk to us?" Sam looked at Cami like she was insane.
"Well, do you have a better idea?" Cami asked sarcastically.
"No." Sam grumbled. "But we'll need disguises."
"Alright, we're going to need to look older." Cami commented.
"And we need a base of operations." Sam and Cami said in unison. They looked at each other for a moment and then laughed.
"It's always funny when we do that." Cami laughed.
"Tell me about it." Sam said as they rounded the corner. Both of them immediately turned around and walked back the way they came. They had seen a police officer, a familiar one.
It was Officer Kirin, a silver-haired lemur with large yellow eyes. She had a long ringed-tail like Cami and Sly, except hers was longer and thinner. Sam and Cami pressed themselves to the wall when Kirin passed by. She did not notice them.
"I vote we find a place and get in disguise quickly." Cami murmured to Sam once Kirin passed.
"Seconded." Sam said breathlessly. "Any ideas on where we can go?"
"Um, well. We could go walking around until we find some place?" Cami shrugged. "I have no idea where to go."
"Neither do I." Sam shrugged too. "I used my only good place."
"Hm, well there is this one place I've always wanted to go." Cami said looking around the corner. "There's this boarded up building a couple blocks from here."
"You're insane." Sam said, his eyes widening in realization. "You can't mean that place."
Cami snorted. "This coming from the fox boy who feels safe in a place he fell through the floor and got a giant cut along his leg." Cami smiled at him.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. You win that round, but how are we going to get there?"
Cami shrugged. "Beats me. We walk?" She offered.
"Well, we could…" Sam raised an eyebrow and looked at Cami.
"You can do that, but I'm not." Cami said once she realized what Sam was implying.
"Come on, Cam." Sam said calmly. "Just like last night."
"No, Samuel Fox! I can't run across the rooftops again!" Cami said barely able to keep her voice down. "Besides," Cami lowered her voice, "if we get noticed, we will most definitely be in trouble. We will be less noticeable on the street."
"Two kids out alone with backpacks on a school day?" Sam asked skeptically.
"Repeat that sentence in your head, but add 'running on rooftops'." Cami said smiling.
Sam shrugged. "Okay, I see your point. Just pretend we aren't doing anything wrong."
"Deal." Cami said.
She walked purposely out of the alleyway with Sam following closely behind. The paranoia was hard to hide. Cami felt as though every person around her knew what she was doing and was just waiting to catch her. She started to play with her hair. Sam started tapping his hand against his leg. Both he and Cami were fighting to keep their tails from bristling and giving away their anxiety. Every second felt like an hour and a half to Cami and Sam. They kept on crowded streets to hide in plain sight, but they ducked into the crowds every time either of them saw someone familiar.
Cami walked to where an old, shut down, nightclub used to be. She rounded the corner with Sam next to her. It was one of the few places her parents had forbidden her and Sam to go. The windows and doors were boarded up and the fountain in the middle of the square no longer worked. It hadn't worked for years.
Sam had heard stories about the old nightclub. The rumor was that a salamander that was an expert forger had run it and a bunch of vandals had wrecked the entire nightclub and even ripped the giant peacock sign off the building and into the fountain. Sam knew that the sign had been removed before he and Cami were born and that wooden boards covered up the hole that it had made in the fountain.
"You're officially insane, Camille Cooper." Sam said looking at the broken down, old place.
"Yup." Cami said looking at him. "And I'm proud of it!" She slipped around the building and began systematically checking the boards for weakness.
Sam went around the other side and did the same thing. He came across a single board that was looser than the others. Sam tugged at it, trying to determine the weakest nail.
"What did you find?" Cami asked. She had circled around the building and found Sam.
"A loose board. Think you can help me get it off?" Sam asked with a mischievous smile. Cami returned the smile and wrapped her paws around the board.
"One, two three!" Sam counted off. He and Cami pulled at the board together. Nothing happened.
"Okay." Cami said, slipping her backpack off. "We'll try again. Get the backpack off."
Sam dropped his bag next to Cami's. "Okay. We both need to pull where it is the weakest. Right about here." Sam pointed to the top left nail.
Cami nodded and grabbed the board. Sam grabbed it too and counted off again. They both groaned in the effort to pull it off.
"We need a better strategy, Sam." Cami said once they had stopped. "This will only work if suddenly became four times stronger than we are now."
"Yeah. Um, do you have anything metal?" Sam asked. "We could try to use it as a crowbar."
Cami shook her head. "No…Let's come back here later. We need to check to see if this is the only possible entrance."
Cami and Sam went back to checking for weaknesses, but couldn't find anymore on the building. Cami and Sam looked at the stubborn board and then at each other.
"Are you sure this is the only place we can stay?" Sam asked Cami.
"This isn't the only place we can stay, but it is the only place we can think of and that is uninhabited." Cami said bluntly.
"Why do you have to be right?" Sam asked annoyed.
"Because I'm awesome." Cami retorted.
"Egotistical, is more like it."
"Am I really egotistical?" Cami asked as she picked up her bag and walked out into the square (in retrospect, that wasn't smart).
"Yeah, you are." Sam picked up his bag and jogged after her.
"I doubt conceit emanates from me." Cami said back.
"Oh, it flows off you, Camille, like a…fountain." Sam looked back at the fountain and so did Cami.
"You're an annoying genius, Sam." Cami ran back to the boarded up fountain. Sure enough, three of the boards had rotted through due to moisture. Cami and Sam exchanged smiles.
"You go first. I'll keep watch." Cami said.
She turned around and leaned against the fountain rim, blocking Sam from view. She acted as though she did this every day. It was a good thing this place was on the edge of town and not very popular. Behind her, Cami could hear Sam prying the rotten boards off easily. Soon she heard him slip down into the area below the fountain. Cami looked around one more time; to make sure no one else was around, before going down herself.
Cami lightly landed next to Sam. This place was much worst in shape than the other building. (Probably because Sam had not been secretly stocking it with provisions and cleaning it up.) Cobwebs and rubble were everywhere and the dripping of the water had cause mold and mildew to grow.
"This is gross, Cami." Sam said looking at the mildew.
"Well, there is an upstairs." Cami pointed to a rubble-covered staircase. She walked towards it, avoiding all the rubble and rotten boards. She stepped lightly and carefully and made it safely to the stairs. Sam followed very carefully and slowly. He placed his feet exactly where Cami had placed hers.
"Why do you think this place is still standing?" Cami asked as Sam made his way to the staircase.
"Why are there so many abandoned buildings in this town? Tell me that." Sam retorted as he came up next to Cami.
"Well, it suits our purposes." Cami climbed up the stairs just as carefully as she did when she crossed the room.
"I'm still curious why we have so many abandoned buildings that are still standing." Sam said carefully following Cami. "I don't get you, sometimes Cam."
"Well, if you understood me completely, I wouldn't be very interesting to talk to, now would I?" Cami kept her hand on the wall. She could feel the imperfections in the material.
"That's true, but that's not what I meant." Sam was watching his feet. "I mean, you're scared of freaking heights, but you're not scared of walking on potentially unstable floors when it is probable that you will fall through."
"Yeah, so?" Cami asked. She had reached the top and she was looking back at Sam.
Sam sighed and shook his head. "Nevermind."
Cami snorted and turned to look at the room. It had a dusty stage and tables everywhere. There was a big area covered in the remnants of a disco ball that must have been the dance floor. Rubble, dust, and cobwebs were everywhere. Cami walked over to the closest table and started wiped it clean.
"Well, we now have a base of operations." Cami said putting her bag on the, now clean, table.
"All we need right now are some disguises." Sam said, coming up next to her.
"And to find out about where our parents are." Cami added.