AN – so much for the short book linking Discovery to Repercussions. Eleven chapters and as many words as my other books in this series, I think I covered a little more than initially intended. Thank you all for following it. There is still at least another eleven chapters in the next book and twenty odd thousand words. If anyone has ideas, anything they want incorporated, I'm listening.
The string beans needed harvesting. August all but ended, the last of the summer heat would soon be leached from the early morning and evenings. September would be the last attempt to hoard food for cold season. By late fall the vines would be dormant. When winters cold commenced, they'd wither and die.
Just like us, Trixie added silently, afraid to speak the words aloud. She'd noticed Jim skipping meals recently. Not that he can afford to, he's thin enough as it is. We haven't made love in two months because he doesn't have the energy. Living down here, he works all day and we can't even provide the food to give him a decent meal at night. Doesn't he think I can see his empty bowl and hear his stomach grumble?
'I'm going to have to save these seeds,' Trixie spoke to keep her sanity intact, 'even thought I don't want too. The harvest hasn't been particularly good this year. I wonder if it's something to do with changing the position of the garden. Not enough sun or something?' Sighing heavily, Trix sat back on her hunches and rubbed her back. Looking around at the last of the plants, most lay withered and dying in the exceptionally hot August sun. 'What vegetables we've managed to grow are stored in water cave for the fast approaching winter. I just don't know how we're going to get through this year.'
Feeling heavy and awkward, Trixie sighed once again. Her back had been aching most of day. She had put the uncomfortable feeling down to her garden labours. Standing, her knees felt the strain of hours on the hard packed dirt. Stretching she looked around for her young son. Boredom set in long ago and the toddler left his mother's side for more exciting options. Trixie spied him out of the corner of her eye until a she picked the final bean a few moments earlier. Now she couldn't and began to panic slightly, her mothering instincts on high alert.
Jim would be in the supply cave. As she well knew, they were down to a few tins of canned food. The last of the fresh supplies from the previous year went into the cooking pot affording yesterday's meals. Jim knew about their precarious situation for a while and tried to hide the fact. It couldn't have come at a worse time.
I wonder if Jamie's ambled off to see what Jim's doing, she pondered. Scanning the area, Trixie spotted her son. The colour drained from her face as her heart appeared in her throat. Automatically a hand covered her lips, until Trixie Frayne realised she needed her voice.
'No,' Trixie screamed in a blind panic. Please, I'm just so big I can't… 'No,' the word torn from her mouth a second time as Trixie attempted to run. She fell on her second step and started to weep. 'Help,' she wailed in desperation, a note of terror in her tone, 'please stop him.'
The timber of Trixie's panicked screams echoed off the shear walls of the hole. Intensified by the confined space, Jim heard the ruckus and responded immediately. Above ground the sound travelled several hundred yards in all directions. It attracted the attention of a five man patrol on a military exercise. Lt Tom Newton listened intently before signalling his men to stop. The second cry forced him into action.
Tom Newton and his men trudged through the thick under bush. They'd been at this for hours, ten at least. So far they'd neither seen nor heard Red team. Four days into their two week games and already the recognisance squad wished they could be any place but lumbering through George Washington National Forest in the blazing August sun with forty pound pack on their backs.
'What I wouldn't do,' Henry Lavigne slapped a hand to the back of his sweat drenched neck, 'to be bathing in those Warm Springs.'
'Yo, man,' Jerome Armstrong disagreed, 'honeymooners.'
'Yeh,' Nick Harvey grunted under the extra weight of his communications bag, 'heard it's becoming all the rage again.'
'I'd be happy,' Mick Hastings added, 'to be bathing in a natural spring with an even more natural blond at my side!'
'Quiet,' Tom hissed and signalled at the same time. Listening intently he crouched down, forcing his squad to follow suit. Five pairs of ears hung on every sound.
It came again, over the sound of wildlife. A woman's panicked scream pleading for someone to stop, as though she'd been attacked. Signing to his men, they spread out in the direction of the cries, each maintaining a six foot distance between them. Alert, truly alert for the first time since their babysitting mission began the men could only hear the terrified feminine sobs intensify as they moved further into the under bush.
Disgust, the first emotion to cross Tom's mind, he remembered Red team held a female Marine in their ranks. He hoped this wasn't a set up by the other side to lure them out. All's fair in war, he thought sourly, although this kind of trap just isn't in the sprite of the games. I expect better of Marines.
Five meters closer to the sound, Lt Newton halted his troops suddenly. Once again he considered his options. Then he realised the shriek came from the same direction as The Hell Hole. He'd been specifically ordered not to approach the hole. At the time he'd wanted to question Col. Smith about the out of bounds area. After all, it might be the best location to hide their team's colours and easily defended with minimal personnel. The man had been obstinate in his refusal.
The woman's hysterical sobbing suddenly ceased, leaving an eerie silence. Several team members looked at each other with wide eyes. Unwilling to injure his men, Tom decided on a new plan. Moving at a snail's pace, Tom stopped his team twenty yards short of the cliff edge. Working silently, Harvey, the lightest among them, dropped his pack and communications gear at Big Mikes feet. Securing a rope, Nick Harvey attached the end to Jerome Armstrong. The African America soldier had muscles upon muscles from his hours in the gym. Inching forward, Harvey tested every step as he cautiously approached the drop off.
Jim heard the commotion. Fatigued beyond measure, he forced his feet beneath his thin frame. Over the last six weeks, he slowly reduced his daily intake of calories. First a frost decimated the early spring harvest, then heat killed the summer crop, finally something ate the seedlings for a late fall harvest. They had no protein, little in the way of canned stores and three hungry mouths to feed over the winter.
Instinctively reacting to the tone in Trixie's voice, he moved as fast as his emaciated body allowed him. Emerging from the supply cave, Jim had to stop for a moment and allow his eye's to adjust to the bright sunlight. When they did, he added a scream of his own.
'Jammmmmmie,' Jim wailed, sighting his son face down and unmoving in the stream. Willing his body to move, he sprinted across the hard packed dirt. Leaning down, Jim scooped his tiny son into his arms. Tears streamed down his face at the thought of what might have happened.
He couldn't have been in there long, Jim hoped rather than believed. Taking a moment to force his mind to think logically, he looked at the child in his arms. He's still breathing, James Winthrop Frayne realised. Looking up, his green eyes met blue. In that instant, both parents felt intense relief.
Coughing and spluttering, Jamie heaved a stomach full of water. Jim never felt so happy to be vomited on. Looking up at his father with miserable green eyes, he muttered 'Dada,' before curling further into Jim's strong embrace.
Although Jim wanted to yell at the child for the fright he'd given them, other emotions wared with his sense of relief. Jamie knew better than to approach the stream alone. Jim and Trixie drummed water safety into him since the child took his first steps, perhaps even earlier, when he started to crawl and wanted to explore his environment.
He's becoming curious, Jim realised, this is a new phase in his development and something else we will have to cope with.
Shocked to the core, Harvey couldn't utter a word. What he witnessed on the floor of The Hole, made him feel sick to his stomach. A filthy woman, heavily pregnant lay sprawled on the ground by a failing vegetable patch. She wore nothing but he could have been forgiven for thinking a skin tight brown leotard covered her body. A man, wild in appearance with a bushy, unkempt beard stared at the woman and held a small child in his arms. They looked so much alike they had to be father and son. None of them looked well fed or nourished, especially the man. A stiff breeze could have knocked him down, his frame so thin it defied gravity.
How in hell's name did they get stuck down there? Harvey wondered. It's not called the Hell Hole for nothing.
Turning to face his comrades, the young soldier's expression warned the Lieutenant to expect trouble. Breaking silence, Harvey attempted to make the sound describing what he'd just seen. Body tensed, he stated in a harsh voice, 'I think we need a medivac, Lt Newton. There are two civvies and a kid in the hole. Looks like they've been there a while cause the lady's about to pop with another one at any minute.'
Swearing under his breath, Tom signalled to Mick to fire up communications. Handing the stat phone to his leader, Hastings retrieved the first aid kit from his pack. Not a field medic, he had more training in first aid than the rest of the patrol put together. Signalling Armstrong and Lavigne, Mick prepared to repel himself down into the hole and offer the sad couple whatever help he could.
'Have they seen you yet,' Newton barked at Harvey, still waiting for the phone to be answered. When the young soldier shook his head, Tom instructed, 'make them then get out of the way for Hasting to go down.'
Lying sprawled on her back and unable to get up without Jim's help, Trixie spotted the soldier on the rim. 'Jim,' she called in a shrill tone. It attracted his attention immediately. Pointing to the man gawking at them, she finally managed to roll onto her hands and knees.
'Hey,' Jim yelled, immediately coming to Trixie's rescue. He didn't want to lose the only real possibility of escape they had found in three and a half years. However the man moved out of Jim's line of sight. Disappointed, Jamie wouldn't stop clinging to his father's neck, making Jim's job more difficult. Holding onto his temper by the finest thread, he finally managed to get Trixie to her feet and hand the desperate child into her arms.
'We've got another problem, Jim,' Trixie bit her lip with the pain of a contraction. Only now in the middle of this desperate situation did she realise the significance of her back pain. Looking to the ground beneath her feet, a patch of wet earth greeted her gaze.
Nodding his understanding, he took Jamie from her arms before turning back to the direction of their rescuers. Trixie didn't need the added burden when she only just managed to stand on her own two feet. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Jim attempted to make them understand just how desperate their situation.
'Down here,' he called, desperation colouring his voice.
As if by magic, the young soldier reappeared on the rim. Giving them a signal with is hand, he acknowledged Jim's plea. Asking them to wait a minute in sign language, a second soldier approached the drop off point backwards, a rope tied around his waist.
Weak with joy, Jim sank to his knees then collapsed on his rump in the sand. Tears of elation streamed down his face and into Jamie's red hair shining like a beacon in the sunshine. The child clung to his father, frightened by his unusual response. A hand on Jim's shoulder and convulsive swallowing displayed Trixie's ecstasy. Their rescue couldn't have come at a better time.
'Choppers on it way,' the echoing response from another individual atop their prison turned their quiet world upside down.
The end of Revelations