A New Jeopardy

Part Ten
by Jo Anzalone

"Ack!" said Teller. "Now there's nothing keeping us from plummeting!"
He, however, had no way of knowing just how very, very, very...wrong...he was.
*****************
As glad as everyone was to have their beloved Biebe back aboard, they all well knew, too, that plummeting must inevitably be coming sooner than later. If only a few MORE characters had fallen off the train...sigh. Still, having to deal with six different ways to reboard characters was actually quite enough, authoressly speaking, of course. There was a general level of added concern amongst the cast due to the fact that the extended version of The Return of the King had just been watched and fear of orcs in the bottom of the Bottomless Gorge was growing. Of course The Flight of the Phoenix had just crashed in the Gobi and some were of the opinion that Mongolian raiders were more likely than orcs. It all, though, remained to be seen...now didn't it?

Buggie let her basket slip from her fingers and it bounced to the floor, rolling down the aisle where it was quickly snatched up by Steve, who flushed it. Did the Floridian actually think fruit photographers did not recognize cobra baskets disguised as fruit containers? Steve was always very wary. He had to be since he had no female companion to watch his back, or other parts. He, along with Johnny and Kim, waited month after month for some female to agree to companion them, but no one ever wrote in requesting one of them and so they continued in their limbo of love.

        
Biebe lifted his lips from her hair and slid around the seat, gathering Buggie into his arms. Such togetherness was always extremely touching when it came like this just before imminent doom. He tried to explain to her where he had been, how he had come to be in the locked steamer trunk in the baggage car, but somehow large dogs and daisies just didn't make sense, not to him, not to her.

"I don't care how you got here," she murmured, burying her nose in his beard, "I just want you to hold me and never let go."

Wanda looked sadly at Lachlan. "I didn't think it would end this way," she said softly.

"End? No, the journey into our new jeopardy doesn't end here, " he replied hopefully, if a bit naively.

"I'm glad to be here, with you, at the end of all things, " she said, her words betraying that she, too, had the extended version imprinted on her brain.

"My God!" exclaimed Ute, overhearing. "This means there WILL be orcs!"

When her very own Jeffrey replied, "Certainty of death? Small chance of success? What are we waiting for?" she knew beyond all doubt that doomnation and probably black gates were awaiting at the bottom.

She said, "I don't want to be in a plummet, but to be waiting on the edge of one I can't escape...." Suddenly she realized that she, too, was doing KingSpeak and bit her lip to stop further wordage from spilling out of her mouth. Seeing the small drop of blood resulting from her selfbite, Jeffrey poured a little cool soy sauce onto his handkerchief and pressed it gently to her lip, daubing it lightly.

Hando and Ando arrived back in the passenger car, due both to his having given up on unwrenching the wrench jamming the brakes and to the fact that it seemed better somehow to have all one's eggs, er, characters in one basket. "I will NOT let this train plummet into the gorge!" he shouted upon re-entry.

        

Joimus just eyed him and remarked, "It is not given to you to deny the plummeting of the train."

Ute paled. KingSpeak was in full swing.

"Are we in Kentucky yet?" Eryn asked.

"No," replied Colin, "we've just crossed into West Virginia."

"Who knew West Virginia looked so much like parts of New Zealand?" she commented, gazing out the window at the dimly lit mountains.

                                    
Meanwhile, chugging with all its strength up the other side of the mountain, came the little blue engine, pulling along its gaily decorated series of circus cars. "I think I can...I think I can..." its wheels clackety clacked on the iron tracks. The animal cages were tied securely to the tops of the flatcars and the tents and poles and all the other circus exquipment were loaded into three boxcars. Some dire how it had completely escaped the attention of those who managed the railway systems that the Polar Express was coming up one side of the mountain while the little blue engine pulled the circus train up the OTHER side.

              

The steep ascent had slowed the onward rush of the Express somewhat and there was a bit of hope that hurling oneself off into the snow might result in something less than dismemberment. Indeed, Sid had gone out onto the rear coupling of the passenger car and was contemplating that very thing. In spite of having fallen down several stories in the interiors of large buildings, he was not eager to plummet into something described as "bottomless."

  

Bunny came out onto the coupling beside him, rested her hand on his shoulder, and said Ringishly, "I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me." He nodded at her mutely, struggling to maintain his balance with one foot on either side of the coupling. "Are you really going to jump?" she asked. When he inhaled hugely, she knew it was the deep breath before his plunge...so she grabbed onto his bicep with all her strength.

He looked down at her, all his mounting affection for his English wabbit gleaming in his eyes. "Don't you let go!" he cried. "Don't let go!" Even though it was snow and not flowing lava that lay beneath them, her lips trembled at the fervor of his cry. He wanted her with him. He really, really did! She gathered her leg muscles, muscles that she had gathered for years in her many bungee jumps from the hour hand of Big Ben, preparing to leap with her Chipman into the soot covered snowbanks lining the railroad tracks.

Wouldn't you just know that it would be at that very split second of epitime that the cowcatcher of the Polar Express came into contact with the cowcatcher of the little blue engine? The cowcatchers folded like the snapped fan of a displeased courtesan in some back hallway of Versailles.

The two engines reared up against one another, looking for all the world like two dueling mustangs, pausing a long moment, almost hovering there, then crashing over on their sides, beginning a long roll down the mountainside, pulling the rest of their cars with them.

The screeching and clanking and grinding and grating of metal sounded through the cold night air as they flipped over and over in the deep, deep snow. Sid and Bunny were hurled off the coupling as the connected passenger car and baggage car arched completely over them, starting their roll down the slope. They landed side by side and sat quickly up, holding onto one another in shock as they watched the two trains descend . The cars flattened clumps of small evergreens as they rolled, on their roofs for a second then rolling and flipping over and over.

 

Then it was silent on the mountain except for a distant roaring of several upset large felines. Sid looked at Bunny. "We may have to carry on with epilife alone," he remarked.

She ignored the fact that he did not look particularly unhappy about the concept and scrambled to her feet. "We've got to get down there!" she cried.

                                     

Sid stood too, brushing snow off his purple suit. He was actually smiling. "We don't have to plummet now," he remarked as he flicked a flake off his lapel. But she was already making her way through the waist-deep snow, struggling and falling as she went down the steep mountainside. He joined her. “All right! All right! I can’t have you being a hero all by yourself."

 

"Heroine," she said, not taking her eyes off the bulky shadows of the train a quarter of a mile down the slope. The Polar Express had broken into three pieces, the engine and baggage car crushed against a tall outcropping of bare rock, the passenger car lying in deep snow on its right side. The circus train was scattered here and there, cages snapped loose from their bindings to the flatcars, their bars bent and twisted. It looked to Bunny like the depth of the snow had cushioned somewhat the impact on the passenger car as it rolled down the mountain. She could hardly breathe, both from her efforts to make her way through the snow and her anxiety. She did not want to be the last epiwoman standing! She did not want Himself to be flattened, never to make another film. She needed her cast to be all right. All of them!

As the epi up until this very point had been written a good 4 days before Christmas 2004, we are absolutely forced to presume that the Polar Express rolled down the mountainside in such slow motion that not only Christmas Day itself but also New Year's Eve passed by during its descent. Such, alas, are the perils of real-time writing. Ando, needless to say, was not pleased. She had had far different plans for her New Year's Eve than wrapping her thighs around Hando's head and holding on for dear life as the passenger car flipped over and over. Though, on second thought, were it not for the flipping itself, the thigh part was not that bad for a New Year's Eve activity. Indeed, as she recalled her last New Year's Eve amongst the Cuban jellyfish and, how, at the stroke of midnight when her bicycle had bumped over that hand grenade and she had fallen off, breaking her elbow just as the volcano erupted, all in all, she considered rolling en-thighed down the mountainside in the snow not to be ALL that terrible.

                                     
Not everyone was in complete agreement with the former Welshwoman about that, alas.

Things were even more dangerous now because not only had the extended version of The Return of the King been viewed, but also the extended version of The Two Towers REviewed. Could it be any worse? Given a bit of thought, doubtless it could.

The good thing about the overly long, slow motion roll down the hill was that, thusly, the passenger car turned and flipped at such a tortoise-like pace that those within its confines were better able to avoid the severest forms of dismemberment. Amongst Hando's stronger reliefs was the fact that it had been some months since Ando's last use of her thighmaster exercise equipment and, as a result, the circumference of his skull was only diminished by the merest centimeters and so not a very large proportion of his brain actually pooched out of his ear canals. When the passenger car finally came to rest on its side and he ended lying on his back across one of the windows with Ando slipped down to his chest, the first thing he did was to take both his forefingers and poke the pooched parts back where they belonged. This resulted in a bit of scrambling of certain cells and he suddenly found himself with the unexpected ability to yodel in Portuguese, though he wisely decided now was not the time to reveal to his fellows this new skill. Instead, wishing to get to his feet, he said to his Ando, "By all you hold dear on this earth, I bid you stand!"

Thusly it was that our dear lady knew for good and certain that KingSpeak had infected even those from the seamier regions of Melbourne. Not to be outdone nor wishing in the least to arise from her seat upon his chest, she replied, "My path is hidden from me." She indicated the 90 degree-angled aisle with a nod of her head.

The perpendicular aisle held no fears for one such as he and so he merely scowled slightly, commenting drily, "It is already laid before your feet. You cannot falter now."

Ando studied the aisle, now become a wall instead of a proper floor. "Toss me," she said, a bit flippantly due to her having been so very flipped and all. "I cannot jump the distance. Toss me...but do not tell the Vile One."

He lay there watching her slowly lick her lower lip. He grinned. He knew from years of experience how much the Welsh, especially the women, loved to be tossed. He was quite enjoying himself and, so, relaxed, folding his hands under his head. "My Lady, you are fair and brave...with much to live for and many who love you."

She lowered her lids, looking down at his recumbant, sweaty, greasy form. Placing her palms securely on each of his pectorals, she leaned way forward, her lips hovering just above his. "Do you remember the taste of strawberries?" she asked, her voice gone all husky.

 
His seagreen eyes sparkled. "No," he replied truthfully, "I can't recall the taste of food." Suddenly his greasy arms were about her as he pressed her to himself, laughing and kissing at the same time so that they rolled together a bit, plopping over the edge of the baggage rack and quite atop Sue the Vile and Cort, who glared at them.

Ando, even then not letting go of her happy mood, cried, "Sue! I come back to you now at the turning of the train!"

Sue, rather in the manner of a former queen of her homeland, was not amused. She had been pleasantly occupied untangling the young sheriff's vest buttons from the lacy lining of her new leopard-print dress and had hoped to be left alone for some while longer. Surely with a train wreck there could be something more dire, more serious to write about than a happily rolling Ando plopping atop her? Surely Maximus must be in some terrible trouble and great suffering and even angst could be filling these paragraphs? Come to think of it, where WAS the good General?

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