About twenty feet from the stairway, Mrs. Proper lost the ability to walk, slowly slipped from my grasp, and sank to the floor. The poor old woman became a limp heap on one of the small faux oriental throw rugs that ran the length of the hall. Fate made the decision. The better air close to the ground had rejuvenated Mrs. Prosper enough for her to cough heartily and to moan,“Shouldn’t we keep going, MacKenzie?”
“Right.” As lightheaded as I was, I went down on my hands and knees and told Mrs. Prosper not to move in the most comforting voice that I could fake at the time. “Lay flat on the rug that you’re on. I’m going to slide you to the stairs. Okay?” She nodded.
I took several deep breaths close to the floor. With determination and a brief prayer, I grabbed hold of the rug, stood up, and dragged Mrs. Prosper along the floor. My plan worked, but it wasn’t easy. Each foot of progress made me want to breathe, and each time I breathed, I choked on the smoke. My lungs and throat burned. I was in a race. The nearer I got to the stairway, the nearer I got to blacking out. I really wanted the stairway to win.
Through the accumulating smoke, I thought I saw a shadowy figure at the far end of the hall. I called to it, momentarily forgetting the fact that I didn’t know if the shade were friend or foe, but my call was not reciprocated, and it disappeared. Not wasting the time, energy, or effort with things that may not be real, I carried on with my desperate task.
In a dozen or more steps, we finally reached the top of the stairwell. I was very thankful that the air was less smokey there. I took several well-deserved cleansing breaths and contemplated on our next challenge — our descent.
#
CHAPTER 14
“What in the world do I do now?” I asked myself.
Looking at the semi-conscious Mrs. Prosper on the rug next to me, my instincts didn’t wait for my cerebral chambers to echo a reply. I had become suddenly aware of a great subtlety of nature as to why there are short, small women in the world. Diminutive women are easy to move. In certain situations, they ensure the survival of the species. All I had to do was act. Safety was right down those steps in front of me if I could muster enough strength to get there.
After quickly appraising the conditions of the stairway, I went down three steps. The lower position gave me an advantage to hoist up Mrs. Prosper and sling her over my shoulder. Taking a few seconds to get my balance, I proceeded with our descent, which was slow, arduous, and exhausting. Like a child mastering stairs for the first time, my feet touched each stair step with trepidation. I had my left hand to do double duty. It alternated between holding onto the railing and steadying Mrs. Prosper. Slowly, step by step, we went. And with each downward stride the heat, the smoke, and the threat of unseen dangers seemed to drift away from the confines of my mind. Everything around me slowly began to feel distant. I had the sensation that I was on the verge of disappearing and becoming one with the smoke. Amid a hard coughing fit, a sheer, black, sparkly veil fell between my abused eyes and the chaotic reality around me. Without my consent, my body and brain yielded to the forces of biology and of physics. I started to fall into a black nothingness.
“No!"
The outcry came from out of the void, a command which emanated from everywhere and nowhere, as if it were shouted not from a yard or two away, but from inside my head. At the same time, my left shoulder felt like it had been grabbed or snagged by something on the stairwell wall, but I saw nothing there. Still, whatever got hold of me for that split second had returned my balance. My mind rebounded into clarity and became energized, refocused, resolved once more.
My next few steps down coincided with a sudden burst of showering water from above, drenching us in our final descent. I thought the unruly tempest had successfully breached the building’s roof. Gazing up to the ceiling, I discovered that the emergency sprinkler system had finally gone on. “Ah, this is just great,” I scowled. This added development, though may have been beneficial to the preservation of the inn, made the stairs extremely slippery.
As the ceiling rained down upon us, my burden came to enough to ask, “Are we outside, Fred? You ought to have taken an umbrella.”
Not having the energy to correct Mrs. Prosper’s misconception, I simply said, “No, Dear, it’s just the spray from the sprinklers.”
“Someone’s lawn will be looking mighty fine tomorrow,” concluded Mrs. Prosper and remained quiet.
As my feet finally touched down on the ground floor, I took Mrs. Prosper off my shoulder and held her in my arms. I was about to turned to go outside side when I heard an ominous — “Stop!”
From deep inside the smoke filled bowels of the building, emerged Dolan, and he had his gun again pointed squarely at me.
“My God,” he said, “I thought that you two were dead.”
Unthinkingly, I snapped back, “I hoped the same for you.” I should have had more sense at that moment than I had to taunt a killer, but I didn’t. I even added, “I’d love to chat, but Mrs. Prosper and I are getting out of here before this place falls down on us.”
Dolan quickly replied, “So am I, and I’m taking you with me.”
“Me?”
“You’ll be my insurance policy. If anyone tries to stop me, you die. But I don’t need the two of you . . . just you, MacKenzie.”
“And what about the old lady?” My voice cracked. “What should I do with her.”
“Put her down; leave her at the bottom of the stairs. I really don’t care,” he coldly replied. “If she survives . . . good for her. If she doesn’t, well, no skin off my nose.” He waved the gun inches from my face. “Let’s go.”
“But — ”
“ — Shut up; let’s go.”
I gently put down Mrs. Prosper on the floor at the foot of the stairs, whispered a silent prayer for her well being. Before I knew it, Dolan and I were outside in the elements. I heard a number of people yelling not too far from where we were. I also heard several popping sounds which I assumed was gunfire. Dolan and I ran along the soggy path in the direction of the boat house. On the way, I thought I heard the whoop-whoop sound of helicopters somewhere off in the distance, but I wasn’t sure. How long did we run? I can’t say. My awareness of my surroundings was waning. The initial panic that I felt when Dolan found me had melted into a lethargy. I was tapped, emotionally drained. I began to question my wisdom in complying with Dolan’s request to act as his insurance policy. I wondered if Dolan really would let me go free? This was a stupid question to ponder because somewhere deep inside me, I already knew the answer.
Again several voices penetrated through the turbulent ambient sounds of wind, rain, rustling leaves, gun fire and chopper noises. The unfamiliar voices came from the direction of the inn, and they were getting closer. There was no doubt about it, we were being chased by parties unknown, and I hoped, as Prosper had put it, they were the “good guys.”
Arriving at the boat house, we quickly went to the riverside of the structure. There on the riverbank, barely visible through the leafy wind shaken bushes that hid it, the inflatable boat that I had watched crossing the river a little while before.
“Surprise, we meet again,” said a disconnected and familiar voice that wasn’t Dolan’s.
With a few steps more, I was eye to eye with my former captive who came out from behind the craft. He still had strips of gaffer’s tape on his shirt from our last encounter. I gave him a defeated grin and then lied. “Well, it’s good to know that you’re safe.”
“Hum, sure you are,” was his terse response.
During that short meet and greet, I noticed a cable of some sort, that was fastened tightly to a nearby tree. The line passed through some kind of a mechanical device on the boat and then it stretched across the angry river to some undetermined spot that lay in the brush somewhere on the opposite shore. I deduced that the boat made it across the rushing waters like a wet shirt on a moving clothesline.
“Not the safest way to travel,” I said to myself when —
A crack an
d crunch echoed in the forest.
Dolan turned in the direction of the noise. “They are right behind us.”
“We have to get out of here,” said the other one.
“You have just increased in value,” said Dolan. He waved his gun at me as a teacher would wield a laser pointer at a screen and instructed the two of us, “Get this thing into the water.”
With Dolan next to me, Mr. No-Longer-Your-Prisoner and I grabbed the opposite sides of the boat and pushed it almost half way into the rushing flood.
“Stop where you are, put down your weapons, and put your hands up behind your head.”
The command came from some hidden vantage point in the nearby undergrowth. Predisposed to follow the dictates of people with guns, I readily complied. I stood up as straight as I could, faced the bushes, and put my hands behind my head. But in executing that last request, my hand inadvertently rubbed against my head wound, I flinched and let out a groan of pain.
It was in the moment of my self-inflicted discomfort that my ex-captive bounded into the boat and produced, what appeared to me, an Ak-47 assault rifle. Dolan, on the other hand, got behind me and stuck his gun in my temple.
“You out there,“ desperately shouted Dolan a few inches from my ear, “unless you want to have this guy’s brains all over the place, back off. My friend and I will be leaving, and we want no interference. You understand?”
There was only the sound of rain, wind, rustling leafy branches. It was not the response that I wanted to hear.
Dolan’s gun made some sort of clicking sound next to my ear.
“Do you understand!” Dolan shouted.
After too many milliseconds for my liking, came the disembodied answer from beyond — “Yes.”
The responding male voice was unknown to me as was its exact location.
“Do as I say,” Dolan whispered, “or your dead meat.” He then yelled to our unseen audience, “We’re leaving. Remember, no interference.”
With Dolan having one arm grabbing me around my neck and shoulders, using me as a human shield, he and I took several steps backwards, almost as if we were in a dance routine. We moved while always facing the woods and keeping next to the boat — and Dolan’s gun never leaving the side of my head.
But as the poet once wrote, “The best-laid schemes O' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley.” In short, whatever Dolan had in mind, Mother Nature had different plans. The raging, rising waters of the river battered and tossed the boat about, preventing it from being boarded in a manner that would be acceptable to my captor. Standing in a foot or so of water, Dolan held onto the collar of my shirt as maneuvered himself into the craft and in the process, he had to put away his weapon. During the maneuver, his associate trained his gun on me instead.
I was wet, bruised, intimidated and being yanked by my clothes into the boat. I heard a motor kick on. I was on my back against the pontoon part of the craft with me feet still in the water when the boat started to move on its own accord away from the shore. I was looking straight up into the sky and mentally reciting the Hail Mary, when Dolan’s companion yelled, “A Tree coming at us!”
The craft jerked violently. I bounced several feet in the air. My poor head hit landed hard on the pontoon. I heard shots, then there was an explosion. I felt my shirt rip. And then, I was under the turbulent icy brown water. I had become trapped beaten the bottom of the boat and the rock studded riverbed. With less air in my lungs than that would blow out a candle, I frantically struggled to reach the surface, but in every attempt, Dolan’s boat always got in the way.
My chest cavity felt as if it wanted to explode. I’d kill for air. Then from the murky flood, something grabbed my left forearm. What it was, I hadn’t any idea, nor was I in the state of mind to find out. Whatever it was that got hold of me, I fought against it. I needed to breathe. I tugged against what felt like fingers which wouldn’t let go. My right arm uncontrollably tore at the rushing current more out of instinct than forethought, as if it could get some leverage from the fast moving water to pull myself free. The fear of breathing in the muddy water was losing out to my lungs demands for oxygen. My hand shot over my head, and then I felt it — Air!
As soon my hand made its discovery, the unseen snare released its grip. I bobbed to the surface and saw Dolan’s boat, free of its safety line, several yards away as the raging currents rushed me down river. In my groggy, gasping state, I thought I saw the girl from the cellar — wet and bedraggled, half-emerged in the water by a large boulder on the river bank. She was very near the spot where I fell from the boat. Vainly I attempted to reach her, but nature had other plans; the wild waters dragged me away. I called to her, but she just stared at me, anchored to where she stood. She paid me no more attention than if I were a passing bus.
The journey was down river wasn’t any picnic. My legs, arms, and torso banged, bounced, and battered against seen and unseen obstacles in the water. As I tumbled and turned, I constantly fought to keep my head above water and from being crushed. A five foot long tree branch came along and jostled me. In a moment of clarity, I grabbed hold of it. Together we journeyed down river, through gaps between boulders and over newly formed rapids. As luck would have it, the current which caught me, drove me toward a gravelly beach that had been scooped out of the river bank. I kicked and pushed my way to the approaching shallows. I had no difficulty in lodging my life-preserving branch in a nest of debris that had accumulated among some protruding boulders on the shore. Pulling myself out of the river, I crossed the natural breakwater and scrambled up the bank to higher ground.
Cold, wet, shivering, bruised, and exhausted, I stumbled my way to a large maple. There, beneath that tree, I collapsed. The last things that I remember, as I dropped into a heap of wet leaves, was my mother’s warning, “Don’t play in the leaves; there are ticks. You don’t want Lyme Disease.”
The message was received, but ignored. “Let them bite,” I murmured to my over cautious self. I closed my eyes and drifted down the stream of tranquilly.
#
CHAPTER 15
I know that I must have been out cold for sometime because when the EMTs found me, the rain had completely stopped, and it was getting dark. As my rescuers dislodged me from my dream vacation — my relaxing on some a deserted beach with Morgana — I could feel, and hear the loud, rhythmic pulses of a helicopter somewhere overhead. Though my brain started to fill with a flood of questions, my body resisted the initial impulse to articulate them. I was too cold to ask; my body craved warmth, not answers. One of the paramedics commented to his colleague that I was shivering and shaking like an unbalanced washer machine in a spin cycle. They wasted no time in wrapping me up like a freshly caught fish in what I supposed was a thermal blanket and told me that they were sending me to the medical center at Bennington.
In my pitiful, half-conscious state, I attempted to ask my about Morgana and the people back at the Whyte Post. I wanted to know how extensive was the fire, but thoughts were difficult to organize and words wouldn’t come.
They smiled and said everything was okay without giving me any specifics, and went about their business.
Somehow, I had enough sense not to mention anything about Smith and his cadre of hooligans, the two dead bodies, the many shots I heard. Nor did I tell my rescuers any of my speculations about what may have happened at the Whyte Post Inn. If any intrigue were to be revealed, I was resolved that I was not going to be the person to do it. Instead, I focused on more personal concerns, like my wife, my brother, Mrs. Prosper, and the other people that I had abandoned.
I was strapped to a gurney and slid into the van while I was politely being told not to worry, to be quiet and to remain still. I noticed that I was going into an unmarked, dark green van, not an ambulance. I asked about this and I was told because of the state-of-emergency all medical vehicles were in use. As a result, other governmental vehicles had been pressed into service.
Just as the truck’s back door was about to close, I did not
see any other emergency vehicles around — not a police car, state patrol car, not even a Nation Guard truck. How did these guys know where to find me? It was a puzzle, but I didn’t dwell on it at that moment. Another thing I noticed was that all of Mrs. Prosper’s theatrical blood had washed off me. Any blood that remained on my sorry person was my own.
As we got underway for the center, a woman paramedic in her fifties, was wearing a Red Sox baseball cap. She had salt-and-pepper colored hair which was tied in a French braid that protruded out at great length from the back of her hat. Her warm hand took mine. It felt good. “You are hypothermic and banged up some,” she said. “You may have had a concussion, possibly some internal injuries, and maybe even some broken bones. You are very, very lucky to be alive.”
I again tried to ask about the others at the inn, but my attendant was set in complying with her protocol of procedures.
“No questions.” She warned me, then jabbed something into my arm. “I know that a special team has been sent out to the inn. Now be quiet and enjoy the ride. Whatever is happening back there, neither you nor me can do anything about it.”
I was feeling drowsy. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But my weariness felt different from when I collapsed under the tree. The sensation was similar to the one I had as when I was put under for a colonoscopy. “What is happening to me? Where are — ” Words stopped coming out of my mouth.
The Red Sox fan leaned over me, saying, “Be a good old sport, Dr. MacKenzie, and relax. You are safe. Someone is looking out for you.”
Old Sport? Dr. MacKenzie? My mind vainly tried to grapple to understand the significance of the EMT’s words. Reaching down to my head, she ripped the yellow bandage off my forehead in one fast stroke. It didn’t hurt. Nothing really hurt. I was calm. I felt as if I was floating on air and heading toward oblivion. The world faded away.
FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2) Page 19
