A New Jeopardy

Part Eleven
by Jo Anzalone

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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Joimus, absently rearranging the gossamer drape of her gown, wondered that exact thing. So intensely, in fact, did she wonder this that she completely failed to notice that her Ninjaness was entirely gone, such were the restorative powers of the great General. In the pale light of morning, her eyes searched the tumbled interior of the passenger car. No welcome sign of rust-colored wool, no greyish faux fur, no signs of generalistic presence anywhere.

"Help!" cried Anna, pointing to where Jeffrey lay across a pair of upturned seats. "He's bleeding to death!" Sure enough, a large dark puddle was spreading out from under his back.

Ute sighed. When would the others ever learn to tell soy sauce from blood? "He's just broken his flask," she explained, bending down and wiping a finger tip through the liquid. "See!" she said, licking it off.

Anna, who thought Ute had said he'd broken his back, went slightly weak in the knees at the sight of Ute's tasting what looked to her like Jeffrey's blood. Andy, one of several characters now sporting a cut above his eyebrow, guided Anna down to a sitting postion, hovering over her protectively. His entire set of soup bowls had smashed inside his backpack and he rather tinkled as he moved.

"You...you're...tinkling," Anna said, looking at him with great concern.

"I'm afraid I've broken my...." he tried to explain, but instantly she was on her feet again, running her hands down his arms, feeling his hips.

"Broken!" she moaned. She couldn't stand it. Her Andy was broken. Why, oh, why had she ever left her post at the Canadian border?

Thank heavens by their 4th or 5th flip down the hill, Alex had managed to unduct the FedEx box and stuff a fistful of the toadflax and bindweed powder/willow sap concoction down Jack's unwilling gullet. It was actually a bit rougher due to the continual rotation of the passenger car no matter how slow the motion and rasped off a number of the Captain's tastebuds that, in future, he would sorrowfully discover made him totally unable to discern the difference between liquid dish soap and pancake syrup.

It was, you may painfully remember, only back in the Ugandan jungle clearing that Maximus had squeezed the blue goo down his throat, rather sizzling his uvula and costing him High-C for good and ever. Still standing in the box and manfully unkinking his epaulet fringe in order to appear not only more masterful but, he hoped, at least a bit commanding, he raised one eyebrow whilst squinting the other eye...a thing which only a highly trained telescopist should ever attempt...so be duly warned, dear reader.

 

Gazing thusly about the tumbletudiness of the car, at least one of his seagreen eyes (it was never known for sure afterwards just which) came to rest on Joimus as she stood so completely and utterly unGeneralized.

"JoImUs," he croaked, his throat still raw. He coughed a deep and profound cough as only someone born in the 18th century is able to cough, and tried again. "JoiMus!" he called and despite the strangeosity of the sound of the word, she recognized her name.

"JACK! You're back!" she cried delightedly, well, as delightedly as it was possible for her actually to BE delighted when the whereabouts of Maximus was unknown during a time when she neither hated him, wanted to escape from him, or had forgotten who he was as was so often the case.

"Yes!" said Jack. "I AM back! But where am I back FROM?"

"From the box, Jack," she explained, a slight chuckle rising as he was still quite obviously a Jack in a box at the moment.

"But...," the Captain tried to continue, having no idea of his former Rabbithood or the circumstances that had led to his enboxment, but he was cut off by Joimus, whose great need to find Maximus was ever so terribly unfulfilled.

"STOP!" she said with great firmness of tone. "Do you think all this happily rolling and ploppings about of characters can really continue longer when Maximus may even now as you stand there in your FedEx box be reaching a bloody hand toward some meteor-pocked gateway? DO you?"

The Captain, indeed, did not. He knew well and good that it was time for epiangst to make its appearance. After all, a good 10 epis had now passed with only a smattering of SheriffSuffering. When you wanted TRUE torment, direst distress, the worst woe, the most horrible heartache, piercing pain, or depthless despair...you sent for the General.

And, alas, it was true. Wouldn't you just know it? When the front end of the passenger car had been ripped off as the engine splattered on that giant boulder, Maximus had been flung out in a long arc, the apogee of which took him, thankfully, completely over the still rolling boxcar filled with folded tent canvas from the circus train and landed him flat on his back in a snowbank.

"OOF!" he oofed as the breath was knocked out of him. He lay there, his arms stretched wide, his eyes closed as the sounds of grinding and clanking metal ground and clanked around him and, even at times, seemed to sail over him as the epi made its slow and delicate transition from happy ploppings to anguishing angst. Finally arriving at that epipoint, the General half opened his eyes as a large, dark shape crashed down the slope toward where he lay. Still too stunned to gain his feet in time, all he could do was fling his arms across his face. Searing pain splintered every nerve in his legs and the whole white world surrounding him went black.

Everything was quiet...deathly quiet. Slowly the first of the two tigers shook its head then staggered to its feet. The other lay quiet a bit longer, but large yellow eyes soon blinked open. The floor of the cage was tipped and part of it entirely broken away. Nero, the larger of the two, placed his huge nose near the opening and sniffed. Man! His entire face wrinkled in a feline chuff. The other tiger, Brutus, investigated the wildly twisted bars. Ah, yes! His shoulders could slip right through! His paw encountered a wet coldness and he pulled his leg back inside the cage, puzzled. He licked his paw, not liking the wet nor the cold. His life had been spent either in a cage or on the sawdust covering the circus ring. This was new...and unpleasant! Nero, though, wanted out of the cage...and he wanted it badly. He butted Brutus with his massive head, shoving him away from the bars and slid smoothly through, standing then with all four paws in the snow.

Maximus lay, his arms curved close to his head, his cape spread out beside him to his right. Nero lifted one paw and shook it, then lifted another. When he set that foot down, it accidently touched the warm, dry wool of the cape. Quickly he stepped completely onto the cape then turned to look down at the man. Gingerly, he reached out, giving a slight exploratory bat to the man's head, which only lolled a bit more to one side. Brutus, deciding he didn't want to stay longer in the smashed cage, jumped down beside Nero, silently watching as his fellow carefully sniffed the fur drape. Nero had never smelled wolf before and he didn't like it. His lips pulled back from his teeth and a low, rumbling growl came up his throat.

Bunny and Sid made their way to the opened front end of the passenger car just as Joimus and Jack stepped out into the snow. "Joimus!" cried Bunny, ever so relieved to see that her friend had not suffered any noticeable dismemberment. "And your outfit!" she added. "You are gossamered again!"

"Surely that's not important now," Joimus said somberly. "The General is missing."

As shocked as she was to hear the news, Bunny was terribly disappointed to be addressed as Shirley. Bunny's face fell. Jack, seeing that, and remembering the many epis wherein Maximus had been missing whilst with the Village People on the Plains of Sheba, commented, "Surely you are not ALL that surprised?"

Bunny's teeth bit forcibly into her lower lip. WHY were the both of them calling her Shirley??

"What terrible thing may have happened to Maximus?" Joimus continued, shivering and realizing that Ninja night mission garb was really a LOT warmer than sleeveless gossamer.

Sid grinned. He simply couldn't help himself. The words "terrible thing" and "Maximus" in the same sentence were just too delightful not to.

Meanwhile back in the passenger car, Susan was tugging at the two seats that were wedged over Zack's chest in an inverted "V" or which might also be described, were one so inclined, as half of an inverted "W". She stepped back to survey the situation...not no way back, yet still back enough to affect her dialog. "I might be wrong here," she pronounced, "but I don't think you're going anywhere."

"I'm stressed out," he no way backed back at her.

She shook her head thoughtfully. "No more bathroom privileges," she said.

"What?" he gasped. "Give me another option!" he continued in Back-Speak, ignoring the
current tendency toward more Kingly ways of expressing oneself.

"You could visit spectacular Eagle Rock," smirked Marti, unable as she was to resist entering into the backiness of it all. He glared at her and would have suggested she go spoon seeds out of a kiwi, but his pager went off. He couldn't reach it under that inverted "V" or that half of the "W" and all, so Susan slipped her hands under the seats, exploring and exploring and exploring for quite some time until she finally produced the pager. It was the West Virginia Department of Tourism. He frowned, tossing the pager out a broken window.

"Why did you do that?" Marti asked.

"It wasn't a good time to page me," he shrugged.

Susan whispered in Marti's ear confidentially, "It's never a good time to page Zack."

Bud, hearing the word "Confidential", waded out into a deep snowbank near the
car. He turned, encouraging Berti onwards. "Do you follow my drift?" he called to
her.

"In technicolor, Sir," she replied, always having been one to prefer confidences to backiness. They made their way over to where the Captain, Joimus, Bunny, and Sid were discussing how best to find Maximus.

"I checked the inside of the car carefully," Joimus was saying, "and I'm sure he must have been ejected."

Again Sid grinned. He had wanted to eject the General for years now. Sometimes, though, he even wanted to inject him. Either would do. Really. "Maybe he's dead?" he commented a bit too hopefully.

"I do not believe it. I WILL not!" cried Joimus, indicating not only Ringishness but a Return to KingSpeak.

Bud, looking to the dawn in the east even though it was not really the 5th day and all, observed seriously, "A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night."

Sid licked his lips. "Oh, goody!" he murmured under his breath.

"We must go now!" Joimus cried. "We must find Maximus!"

Bud's shoulders drooped a bit. "Look for your friend," he said, "but do not trust to hope."

     

"What's this?" exclaimed Bunny, picking up a bit of something greyish atop the snow.

"Oh NO!" moaned Joimus. "The tufts of faux fur do not lightly fall!"

Berti shook her head. "It's all wrong," she said. "By rights we shouldn't even BE here...but we are. It's like in the great epis, the ones that really matter, full of darkness and dastardliness they were and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?"

"CAN the end be happy?" Bunny wondered, looking around her at the scattered wreckage, hearing the growlings of tigers from just beyond that boxcar. Growlings of tigers?!? "ACK!" she shrieked. "I hear the growlings of tigers!"

The six of them exchanged the required meaningful looks. "Courage!" Jack said. "Courage for our friend!"

                                    
Together they made their way around the boxcar, pausing, aghast, at the sight that greeted their eyes, though "greeted" was probably not the right way to describe it as "assaulted" would doubtlessly be the better way to go...and, so, they paused, aghast, at the sight that assaulted their eyes, only half of which were seagreen. There, on his back in the snow, lay the General, the lower half of his legs pinned beneath a smashed cage. Two large tigers stood beside him, the larger of which had his face close to Maximus', his lips pulled menacingly back from his fangs.

                                  

Sid's eyes widened. My, my! Look at that! Not in his fondest daydreams had he ever.... Bunny's elbow in his ribcage broke his happy contemplations. "Hurry!" she cried, yanking then on his arm.

He remained where he was standing, trying hard not too look overly pleased as he remarked, "My dear, never come between a tiger and his prey."

Jack's cutlass rasped metallically in the frosted air as he unsheathed it. Looking at Bud, he said, "So it begins." But...then...the epi ended.

Was the Captain ...wrong?

                      

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