No Romance chapter 5

This is the first half of the first major action sequence in the book! The second part, chapter 6, should be posted later this week. 

Also, if you can, I need you to tell me what you think of the whole Annie mystery going on here. It's very important. 

Thanks.

Chapter 5. Escape from One Prison, Still in Another

Peter Patrovich was finally making peace with his brother, Thomas.

Though both had been given saintly names, they had not spoken in two years. Two years, three months, and fourteen days, to be precise (as well as a few hours). Unfortunately, they also happened to work at the same smuggling operation, and had done so for two years, three months, and fifteen days. (No extra hours this time; it was exact, down to a margin of error of about forty-six or forty-seven seconds.) So, for pretty much the entire time they worked at Golbez Industries, they were locked in a clause of silence. It was especially awkward as they belonged to the same toon.

            Two years, three months, and fourteen days ago, their immediate superior, who had just been promoted from the common guards, had been lost in some inconvenient, nomadic quicksand on a routine patrol. (This happens occasionally in such exotic landscapes, especially in adventure-ridden tropical jungles.) And because Peter was the only one not stupid enough to try and help the poor fellow, he had been promoted to the newly open position. By Golbez himself, no less, once Golbez had heard the story. (It made Golbez proud to be alive to hear of Peter’s quick thinking and rational behavior, so proud he even shed a tear.)
            Thomas was one of those who had tried to help their superior, Sergeant Clyde. Thomas had held Clyde’s hand in his own, pulling and tugging with all his might as Peter yelled something at the both of them in the background, something about “wriggling your legs around” and some curses about both of their idiocy. Thomas had always doubted Peter’s pronouncements, and this seemed to be the last straw. Watching a man die in such a horrible way, and feeling his fingers slip from yours as he screams and his mouth fills up with fine sand, clay, and salt water, and that while being called an idiot and some other hurtful words by your own big brother, and then watching as the person who calls you an idiot, your own brother, gets promoted instead of you...

Well, it’s easy to imagine why there would be a fight, and why Thomas would pout for a long time afterward. (“Pouting Thomas” they called him.)

But funnily enough, as these things often go, they had forgotten what they had been fighting over in the first place! They had been brought together by the Head Hermano himself, Amon Dem, who heard about their strained relations and stepped in to unite the brothers. And it was just as they were laughing about old jokes and Uncle Al and cousin Chrissy, and right in the crescendo of a tear-stained embrace, they got the news of a strange and mysterious shipment.

            “Uh, sir?” said one of the brown-skinned slave workers, clearing his throat. His voice was too timid to be heard over the hustle and bustle of the unloading in the receiving bay, however. But then again, he didn’t have to say anything. As Peter, his embrace with Thomas complete, walked out away from the receiving bay, Thomas noticed he was standing in a rather large shadow, and turned around to find the crate. He craned his neck up to see its height, then stepped back several paces and met the eyeline of the worker. The rectangular wooden crate behind him stood twenty feet tall and thirty feet long. A black stenciled stamp on its side read “Some Assembly Required.”
            “Well what the hell is it?” Thomas asked the worker, assault rifle resting casually in his hands.
            The worker shrugged helplessly and mouthed wordlessly.
            “Well where the hell did it come from?”
            “No...no idea, I do not know, sir,” said the worker, his voice shaking. In the background, a group of six other workers watched; they had all triumphed over the one in a rock-paper-scissors tournament to determine who should inform the authorities of this mysterious, mammoth shipment.
            “Open it up and see what’s inside then!” barked Thomas. Then, calling out after his brother, “Hey, Peter! Sergeant Patrovich! Come over here a moment! I think we’re going to need some authority.”
            As Peter heard and made his way back to his brother, the worker motioned for his colleagues to assist him in prying open the crate. One motioned for the crane to pull the top off, and once this was done the workers took up their personal crowbars (which were as standard issue for the slave workers as assault rifles were for the guards) and started prying open each side in turn. When pried enough, they combined their strength to let the particular side of the crate down easy. They took the dramatic route of doing the side nearest the Patrovich boys last, finally exposing, with a great THWAMP, what lay inside.
            A catapult, of all things. Large one, too, with twenty-foot long beam and massive bucket at its end, though the stopping bar was only five feet high. Some parts were loose, confirming the message on the outside of the box.
            They all stood in silence a while, blinking as they took in the sight.
            “We didn’t order this,” Thomas said, finally. “We did not order a giant catapult. I guarantee you, this is a mistake.”
            “We just unload the ships, sir,” said one of the workers helplessly. “We don’t place orders ---”
            “Then tell me where the hell the ship came from!” Peter said, cutting off the worker.

“We don’t know, we just ---”

“I need you to find out. Now, you lazy bastards!”

            All seven workers jumped, then scrambled off in different directions as ordered.
            Peter turned to his brother.
            “Isn’t it fantastic to be on such good terms again?” he said.
            “Brotherly love is a beautiful thing,” said Thomas, and the two embraced again.

---

“...amen, amen, amen!” Jack sung, finishing his improvised medley of negro spirituals with vigor and vim. In the punctuating silence he blinked, despite the darkness, and looked around, as if waiting, or perhaps hoping, for an echo to his resounding crescendo. Sadly, though, because he was alone, he could not get an amen.
            But he wasn’t quite alone, and he knew that. He was aware of our presence, watching him in the cell, and he was waiting. Waiting for us to do something. Waiting for the narrative to progress. And, continuing to wait, he slid down the wall from his sitting position till his cheek touched the cold stone floor. Here, he waited.
            But we were waiting, too.
            This thought came to him as if he were aware of these very words being written, and he slid right back on up. In that moment he determined that this cell lacked a few too many visitors. Jack had expected them to come shortly after that Vanasmas bloke came by with his threats of death and so forth, but here he was, singing to himself about “peace at last,” utterly uninterrupted.
            “I need to do something,” he said to himself.
            Bother the guard, provoke him into opening the cell to give the brash young man a lesson in pain? Would work wonderfully (as it always has), but there wasn’t any guard.
            Complain that he’s sick to the guard, or that he needed to go to the bathroom?
            No guard, he remembered. Right.
            No one to trick or win over or beat up. No one at all. And no other steps coming down the dark prison hall.
            Jack stood up quickly and went to the cell door. He pushed then pulled. It didn’t give.
            Darn, he thought, and scratched his head. They didn’t accidentally leave it unlocked. That happened sometimes. Apparently these guys here on Rainswept Isle knew what they were doing better than Jack originally thought. They might end up being a formidable enemy, maybe kind of.
            All this meant, of course, that there was some way to escape in this cell, a secret passage or some kind of ventilation shaft he could crawl through. Given that the lighting wasn’t great, he could have easily missed a hole in the wall or a grate he could pull off or some other kind of nonsense.
            He started moving around the cell, beginning with the iron bars, tugging each one to test for weakness. All proved effectively forte, so he moved to the far wall and started groping at it, assertively moving his hands over every inch, feeling for a weakness in the material or anything out of the ordinary at all. The wall was surprisingly smooth but also disappointingly impenetrable.
            As he started on the final wall, the one he had originally been sitting against, he muttered with teeth clenched, “Why else would it be taking so long?”
            Then his fingers, moving from the top down to the bottom, touched his jacket, which lay there on the floor where he had been sitting.
            “Oh,” he said.

---

            The catapult had come from a ship called the Ex Nihilo. Beyond that, the workers had found out nothing, as there were no crewmembers on the ship. It gave them an ominous, creeping feeling to explore what could very well have been a ghost ship, piloted by the spirits of the dead. They did, however, discover a note left in the captain’s quarters door saying, “That one big package is meant for Golbez, for a science project of Dr. Aperture’s. Toodles!”
            The workers had brought the note with them.
            “I don’t recall Golbez ordering a giant catapult, but it does seem like something he’d do, doesn’t it?” said the superior, Peter Patrovich.
            “Mm. I wouldn’t be surprised,” said the inferior, Thomas Patrovich.
            “Are you disrespecting our leader?” Peter said angrily, bringing up his automatic to aim at Thomas’s belly.
            “No, no!” Thomas said with alarm. “I just mean...once I heard him as he walked by saying something about Hampshire and potato-berries.”
            “So? I bet lots of people talk about Hampshire and potato-berries.”
            “But right after that I heard him putting in an order for a stretch Hummer from America. And both times he was completely alone.”
            “Just watch your tone, little brother. We can get along easier that way.”
            “Fine, fine,” said Thomas.
            All present stared at the catapult silently for a moment.

“Well, get to putting it all together, then,” Peter barked to the workers. “And when you’re done, put it in the Protected Zone.”

“Curious place, that zone,” said Thomas. “What with the mines and that weird window in the warehouse right next to it. The only window in the whole west warehouse.”

“Fascinating, brother. Now get to work, you bastards!”

            The workers somberly played rock-paper-scissors again to determine who would take it into the Protected Zone. The one who lost before and had to deliver the news of the crate lost again. What an unfortunate day he was having. His name was Gilbert.

---

            Jack had been sitting on the jacket, not wearing it. But he hadn’t realized this, of course; it was just how he had woken up in the cell. Someone must have removed it from him while he was unconscious.
            But who would have the foresight to do that?
            Probably both Paula and Vanasmas, actually, Jack thought reasonably. No mystery there.
            So now the question was whether or not he should put on the damb thing.
            After staring at it for a while he still felt unsure about that. He knew he wouldn’t get out of this cell until he put it on, but...but that would mean giving in to the gods once again. Once more they had him frustrated, cornered. And so Jack frowned and sighed...at the same time.
            ...before putting on the jacket.
            At that instant the out-of-sight door creaked open, and did not close. The lights didn’t come on this time, but a slice of daylight from the door lit a few inches of Jack’s cell. Someone started walking down the stairs, then down the hall getting closer and closer to Jack’s cell, short little steps, moving at a quick pace. Then the person entered Jack’s vision, crossing in front of his cell. The light illuminated a tan-colored trench coat, a bowed head of short brown hair, and a face trying to keep hidden for just a fraction of a second before entering the darkness again. Just before exiting stage right, the figure tossed a couple of things that sounded like keys and something made of steel through the bars of the cell. They clattered on the stone ground in the shadows.
            “Hey, hey!” Jack shouted, moving toward the bars. But Annie didn’t stop, instead quickening her pace and starting to run. The steps grew fainter and fainter as they went deeper into the prison. In the near silence that followed Jack heard a distant door open and close. So apparently there was a way out that end, too.
            And now Jack had keys. And a gun, as he found out. Annie had delivered Wrench to him. Jack sighed again, though this time in relief and pleasure as he picked up Wrench, admired it for a moment, then stuffed it into his belt.
            But as he picked up the former from the ground, shouts and sounds of marching men mingled with the jangling of the keys in his hand. Now they were coming. Right when Jack would have expected them to be there had he not been trying to figure out the Annie angle.
            He muttered some adorable curses under his breath as he fumbled with the various keys on the ring. Per usual, the last key Jack tried on the padlock opened up the door. As it swung open and he started dashing down the prison hall, empty cells on either side, he thought about the possibility of tricking his would-be executioners into entering the cell, then locking them inside somehow. But unfortunately the plan didn’t come into his mind fully formed, and he didn’t have time to develop it properly. Plus, it would just be a whole lot more complicated than running and shooting. That he could do, and he knew that either way it would work out the same. Whatever the gods wanted, right?
            Damb them, he thought as he came upon the end of the hall and found the stairs and door Annie had taken. He paused with his right hand gripping the steel door handle. Behind him he heard more yells, something about an escaped prisoner or summat. Jack wondered why they all wanted to kill him so badly, then remembered that he was a main character and those are always in danger so why should he be any different and what would happen if he just stood there and waited for them to come across him...But then a few gunshots went off and he jumped and pulled open the door, and after all that, he finally stepped into the sweltering heat and the sunlight.
            Which, of course, burned his eyes and gave him an instant, searing headache. As he blinked and gained his bearings, he discovered he had emerged from underneath one of the warehouses, the basement of which must have been the prison area. In fact, he was in an alleyway between two of the three warehouses, rather fortuitously deserted for the moment. He was just about to remark on his luck by cursing the gods once more when we caused a loud noise to start blaring. It didn’t use any words, but if it did it would be saying this:
ESCAPEDPRISONEREVERYONELISTENTHEREISANESCAPEDPRISONERHEYGUYSDOYOUHEARWHATIAMSAYINGTHEREISAN ESCAPEDPRI ---
            That’s about the gist of it, and when that blaring sound started up, the whole smuggling operation dissolved into chaos. In the midst of all that noise---random gunfire for indiscernible reasons; shouts and yells (“What the heck is going on?” being one of the more common lines); the alarm pounding in everybody’s ears---and, in the midst of all that noise, Jack heard Paula’s voice loudest and clearest of all.
            “He’s going out between the warehouses, you idiots! Numbskulls, cretins, do-nothings---” and then it devolved from there into rather salty language that made even Jack McDowell blush and grow astonished that Paula could ever possibly be related to Annie. Maybe they were lost, estranged twins who were separated at birth and raised by different parents, Annie by a quaint little family and Paula by the kind of people who steal babies from bassinets.
            In any case, all that sound and fury, signifying nothing (as pulp fiction goes), convinced Jack to leave the place he was in, as it was about to be invaded by guards with guns and the ability to use them (though not, he knew, the ability to successfully aim them at such a figure as he). And to his pleasure, he spotted a side door into the other warehouse he could zip through, which he did.
            The sound of the incessant alarm deadened, as did the gunfire and shouts, and inside Jack found rows and rows of merchandise piled up near to the fifty-foot-high ceiling, nice orderly aisles neatly dividing them, looking, in all, like a large hardware store Jack had once entered in more civilized parts. Back then he had come in needing to buy a literal wrench. Remembering this, he brought out his figurative Wrench, then put it back in his belt. He had just needed a reminder that he possessed a firearm. The firearm.
            Good to know, he thought.
            But now where to go? He sought a way out, or a place to hide, or...well, he wasn’t really sure what he wanted right now. So he just kept moving through the warehouse as he surveyed the whole place. Though Jack kept to the shadows, the warehouse was strangely empty. Maybe all the workers had heard the alarm and moved out in attempt to catch the escaping hero, not having heard of his exact whereabouts in the facility. In fact, Jack concluded this was probably the case.
            Bad AI, he thought. But he did take note that this would be a great place for a firefight, should he return here later in the story. All these crates and aisles and corners to turn...
            He heard the door he had entered through kicked open, and a few gunmen troop in. By now he was sufficiently embedded amongst the crates, but he knew that he would be found eventually, and the situation would indeed turn into a firefight if he didn’t get out soon. And he didn’t really want to be cornered here with the entire smuggler army searching for him and yada yada yada.
            (He didn’t feel like completing the thought.)
            The first movement a crouching man must make is standing up. (While this is not universally true, it’s what Jack did, and that’s all that counts, right?) As his feet pushed upward and the knees locked into place, Jack questioned what made him stand up right then, because he stood in plain view of a pursuer at the far end of an aisle. They stared at each other. Jack waved.

Then strolled out of view.

After establishing this stylistic flair, Jack bolted. Not towards anything in particular, just away. Then a window caught his eye. Straight ahead of him, actually. Suspiciously placed. And it was because of that suspicious placement that Jack knew he was supposed to jump through it. He brought up Wrench to fire some bulletholes in it,

but they bounced off.

Bulletproof.

“OH THIS IS GONNA---”

Because of his hero-ness, he dived anyway, and the glass shattered anyway, and he didn’t break his neck anyway. Post-impact, he didn’t have the presence of mind to purposefully do a shoulder roll, but he did that anyway, too. And he landed it all on his feet, striking a picture-perfect pose for the finish. The gods were truly and obviously with him.
          Damb them.

Then he gauged his surroundings. Thirty feet ahead of him a tall chain link fence with barbed wire atop it barred his way forward. Just on the other side of the fence lay the jungle, deep, dark, foreboding, and to Jack, liberating, but impossible to reach. To the right the fence lined the border of the jungle, curling around to enclose a mysterious compound just a bit out of Jack’s view. He quickly determined that he was on the far west side of the whole smuggling complex, at its very edge. The route to the right that would take him along the fence opened up into the receiving bay, and the docks themselves, though, as mentioned, the farther side. Lots of guards that way. Lots of guns. Lots of noise, including the increased volume of the alarm. But Jack felt safe for now, as few knew his exact position at that moment. Except, obviously, for those guards who had followed him through the warehouse.

So, covered in sweat from both the heat and the chase, Jack ran to his left, the opposite direction of the receiving bay and the weird compound. This juncture’s increased depth of the sand stunted his steps, slowing his speed significantly. Not a good thing, and rather annoying, to be racing on the beach. He didn’t realize at first why the sand had suddenly gotten sandier, not until he rouned the corner of the warehouse and emerged into full view of the entire smuggling base. Everything stopped for a full eight seconds, and all the noise fell silent. This included the alarm, increasing the odds in Jack’s mind that it was operated by a sentient computer system, though a sentient computer system with a lot to prove.

It was like somebody had pressed the pause button.

Jack took this time to realize that he was not meant to go this way. So at the conclusion of those eight seconds, he whirled around and sprinted back through the thirty-foot-wide alleyway between the warehouse and the ugly chain link fence. The sand and dirt got sturdier here, giving him better traction and better purchase with each step. Yes, this was certainly the right way to go. The gods had led him here.

---

Thomas and Peter Patrovich had been alerted by the worker that the catapult had been built and deposited in the Protected Zone. The worker, Gilbert, seemed to be relieved. Probably because he had survived the Protected Zone.

            “Not done yet,” said Peter to a dismayed worker. “Show us. You could be lying and then go off and blend in with all the other of your people. Impossible to tell apart, these slaves.”
            Gilbert, feeling very sorry for himself, led them to the Protected Zone. En route, the alarm started ringing out, quite loudly and quite annoyingly.
            “What the hell is that?” Peter said, letting go of his rifle to cover up his ears. Most of the people around him in the receiving bay did the same, although the workers had no rifles to drop.
            “The escaped prisoner drill,” said Thomas. “I remember from Orientation Day when we first got hired.”
            “Just a drill?”
            “I think so. We’ve never had actual prisoners before. Not that I’m aware of.”
            “Well, let’s continue on then,” said Peter, gruffly, picking up his gun with one hand. “It does sound like a lot of hullabaloo over on the other side of the warehouses. I can hear gunshots.”
            “They said the drills might be like that. I’m not sure if those are real guns. Might be just sound effects. Golbez said in the orientation that he wants the drills to be as realistic as possible.”
            “I tell you, brother, I’m glad we’re best friends again, because I forgot about all that stuff in training. I’m more of a practical kind of guy, and you remember the theory. Well done.”
            “We make a great team, I agree,” said an agreeable Thomas.
            They made it to the Protected Zone, the worker ahead of the guards. Just as Thomas opened his mouth to grudgingly give praise to the worker on the truly fine job he did, they heard the sounds of a chase behind them, and turned around, taking their guns in hand instinctively. Unfortunately they only had time to see the flash of a black jacket and two discharges of a steel revolver before they died.
            As a team.
            As brothers.