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A New Jeopardy Part Seven
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A New Jeopardy...part 7 Maximus looked around at his fellow epians in the passenger car. "Unless we run into something that will stop us," he said somberly, "this train will crash off the destroyed trestle into Bottomless Gorge." ********** The last
thing Cort remembered was Terry's snow-muffled, "DOWN!" He
had no idea of how long he had been cradled in the soft blackness
that enveloped him. The only sound that came to his straining ears
was a whispery creak of leather. He decided he must be all right
because the creaky noise was exactly the same thing he heard when
Sue breathed, that familiar sound of her black leather bustier
rising and falling. Cautiously, he reached out his hand in the
darkness, but his palm encountered something tapered and sharp.
Again he presumed it was Sue, for her polished blood red nails were
like that. "Sue?" he whispered softly. She did not respond and so he tried again, a bit more loudly, "Sue!" The leathery creaking grew in intensity. Was she slipping out of her black leather pants? It was hard to move. Had she wound her whip about him again in that way that so amused her? With some difficulty, he turned his head, hoping to discern her lovely English features....but....no. "AIEE!" he cried as a set of large yellow eyeballs stared at him. He jerked and twisted, but seemed quite contained in a leathery reticule of some sort. He straightened both arms, pushing hard, but to no effect. Another set of yellow eyeballs joined the first, and then another. Where WAS he? And what were these things surrounding him in the darkness? His heart began to beat rapidly and he closed his eyes, trying to regain control. What had happened to him? He had been on the roof of the passenger car with Bud, desperately trying to maintain his balance in the deep snow as the train jostled along. Then Terry had warned of the tunnel. That was it! The tunnel entrance had been right behind his back! Was he dead? He shuddered at the thought that that might be so and he had ended up in a place like this.
A sudden
rapid, high-pitched sound emanated from beneath the yellow eyes and
he flung his hands over his ears. Something very wing-like brushed
his cheek and another shudder took him. He was being moved, passed
along somehow down a seemingly endless row of yellow-eyed beings. He
was so disoriented in the complete blackness that it took him a
while to realize that he was upside down. After some time, he saw
what looked remarkably like the dim light at the end of a
tunnel...as, indeed, it truly was. Then he knew that he must be
inside the tunnel that had loomed behind him while upon the roof of
the passenger car. The blood had been rushing to his head for quite
a while now and his thoughts were growing as blurry as the
snowflakes that fell upon the mountain. The movement continued, a
shuffling, raspy sort of movement toward the far end of the tunnel.
He closed his eyes, letting the darkness envelop him.
The young
sheriff had no way of knowing how truly fortunate he had been. Being
a desert dweller, he was not familiar with the ways of Pennsylvania
mountain railway tunnels and how they were inhabited by multitudes
of residents of the order Chiroptera, otherwise known by the locals
as Giant Pennsylvania Railway Tunnel Bats. No one ever knew quite
why they had mutated in the special way they had with their constant
watchfulness over the railway tunnels of the Keystone State, but
many a desperate traveler, finding himself upon the roof of a train
that was rapidly entering such a rock-hewn passageway, had been
thusly saved from certain besplatterment. And, so, Cort had been
snatched quickly up by the membranous wings of the tunnel bat
currently on guard duty, flattened securely and safely within their
leathery bonds close to the ceiling as the train whooshed by mere
inches below, then transferred from bat to bat to bat down the
length of the tunnel. Totally senseless by the time he reached the
far entrance he was, thusly, unaware of how the solicitous, though
quite ugly, bats then grouped themselves together, carrying him
gently through the night, following the train until they were, at
last, able to deposit him on the little back platform of the baggage
car.
Sue was not
only sad, she was angry...so angry she began to floss her teeth with
her whip in an effort to find some outlet for her tension. Why, Cort
had not even been properly dusted when she had lost him! It was more
than she could be expected to take sitting down, and so she stood,
striding rapidly toward the rear of the passenger car. Pausing for a
moment on the coupling, her eyes were attracted to the sight of a
large group of black things, flapping away in the night, only
discernable because of the whiteness of the flakes filling the sky.
Then she entered the baggage car, standing in the darkness, studying
the piles of duffel bags, the stacks of ironing boards leaning
against the wall, the poorly bundled anvils. A musty smell of old
feathers came unpleasantly to her nose and she decided to go out
onto the small platform at the rear that she might breathe the fresh
night air. Something was partially blocking the door and she had to
shove hard to open it far enough to exit. Barely managing to squeeze
through, she stepped out onto the platform, the toe of her boot
encountering something hard. Looking down, she gasped. It was Cort's
head! Instantly she squatted beside him, all her leathers creaking
loudly with her movement.
Her inadvertent headkick had jarred him back to consciousness. The first thing he heard as he attempted to lift his lids was the loud creaking of leather. "NO!" he shouted, flinging his forearms over his face protectively. Terribly concerned, Sue leaned closer, her leathers creaking even more. "Go away! Leave me alone!" he cried, his body shaking in terror. Startled, she leaned back, creaking more. "Don't touch me!" he moaned, curling into a fetal position. She reached her hand out toward his shoulder...creak...creak...creak. He shuddered from head to toe. "Cort!" she called softly. "Cort! It's me...Sue." Slowly he moved one arm away from his face, his seagreen eyes still filled with some great panic. He saw her then, looming over him blackly, creaking like the things in the tunnel. "S...Sue?" he murmured puzzledly, his lips dry and cracking with the effort to form words. "You? Here? In the tunnel?" "No,
darling," she said, "we're on the back platform of the
train."
"Train? How...?" he gasped, his mind reeling. Sue moved, creaking loudly. "No!" he cried. "No leather!" He looked at her then, his eyes desperate and pleading. "Things," he said. "Leather things. In the tunnel." He shuddered again. "No leather," he begged. Her brow furrowed. She didn't understand. Somehow her leather clothing was disturbing Cort. Recalling the leopard-print dress lying atop the pile of video tapes in the baggage car, she slipped quickly back inside, changing her garb. When she came back to the platform again, the gauzy material of the dress made only a pleasant, soft swish in the air. This time Cort permitted her to bend over him, caressing his cheek with her fingers. "What happened to you, my darling?" she asked. "I...I don't know," he said. "Everything was so dark...and...strange." "Do you think you can walk?" she inquired, still worried about his condition. Carefully,
in easy stages, she helped him to his feet. He swayed a bit and so
braced himself for a moment against the railing, letting his eyes
take in her leopardy form. "I like it," he said, managing
a small grin as he ran his palm down the curve of her waist, letting
it remain on her hip.
Annsmac was concerned. Terry's equipment had been blunted before, but never so severely as this. How many miles, she wondered, had it boinked from tie to tie? Not to mention its thrust through the solid steel flooring of the passenger car. Would her unblunter be up to its monumental task?
Cort and Sue entered, hand in hand, through the rear door of the passenger car. The young sheriff paused, taking in the scene that greeted his eyes. Terry lay, limp and quiet, his eyes closed, across annsmac's lap. Phyllis was still busily engaged in doing, um, warming things to the shivering Himself. Jeffrey sat atop a large FedEx box with black boots protruding at an odd angle from beneath it. Just then Maximus caught sight of the young sheriff and, a huge smile breaking across his face, called out, "CORT!" Berti turned quickly in her seat, hoping that Bud might be with him. "Still alive?" the General continued. "Yes," Cort replied, returning the smile, "still." Consciously
avoiding the old 'the gods must love you' line, Maximus asked,
"Where have you been? How did you get here?" He then
noticed a certain haunted look lingering about Cort's eyes and his
own brow creased in concern. Cort slumped down onto the arm of a seat, his legs still in the aisle, and shook his head slowly side to side as he looked at the General. "I was on the roof...and the tunnel was coming up." He looked then at Terry. "He warned me, but it was too late, the tunnel was too close. Then...." "Then what?" prompted Maximus as Cort paused, unsure of how to continue. "It was all black...and leathery. There were yellow eyes...lots and lots of yellow eyes." "Good gravy, it's TRUE!" Joimus exclaimed. Maximus turned, fixing his gaze on her. "The legend. The legend must be true!" At the cock of his eyebrow, she continued, "The tunnel bats! There really ARE tunnel bats!" "Bats?"
Cort gasped. "Those were BATS in the tunnel?"
"I...I was rescued by a....bat?" Cort grimaced. "You had rather been splattered?" she pointed out reasonably. Just then the FedEx box jumped, almost sending Jeffrey crashing to the floor, Terry moaned, and Himself shivered mightily. Berti looked from character to character. Terry, Cort, Himself, and Jack had all been on the roof with Bud. If this was what had happened to them, her mind reeled at what had possibly befallen her cop. How she wished she could somehow know his fate before she herself ended up in Bottomless Gorge! He had not been hanging off the side of the car, freezing in the wind, like Himself. Nor had he been clinging mile after mile to some cable underneath the car like Terry. Stephen had not saved him and taped him inside a box like Jack. "Did the bats save Bud, too?" she asked hopefully. "Alas,"
Joimus replied, "the bats are able to save only one roof rider
per tunnel." There it was. No side hangings, no cable clingings,
no box stuffings, not even a bat saving. She sighed. Just how many
ways WERE there for one not to be splattered against a mountainside?
She gulped, her mouth hanging slackly. Perhaps there were only FOUR
ways not to be splattered? Perhaps being the fifth man on the roof
was one man too many? Was there, even now, on the rocky wall above
the tunnel entrance, cop juice freezing in the cold night air?
Next
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