“Listen doc! We tried and tried and no matter what we did none of us could get the bloody lid off the jar!”
The doctor shouted furiously at him for wasting his time and calmed himself, and told him firmly, “Yesterday I asked what you did in an average day to discover why you were here! So I could determine why you were losing your memory! Now tell me what you do from day to night, and give me what you might think causes your memory loss!”
Chapter 18
The Second Horserace
The sun was blazing down and the scent of newly cut grass was in the air and Cameron admired the racecourse and its construction, across his front, and he watched Willy being brought out by Hanks, going to the starting line, and studied Willy’s facial expression and saw no real danger!
Yet the horse had clearly won the last race with its determination and he knew that they needed to have it there, and he knew that Hanks would use it to win, but how would he control the horse, and he shrugged.
He spotted Hanks looking worried for a moment and Cameron wondered what he was originally like before his memory loss, and realized his future predicament, and what he would have to face.
The doctor had in the end realized his real problem and had given him as much information as possible on the problem.
Yet even with it he could not solve the problem and still had no real solution!
Everything looked perfect at the racecourse and as perfect as they were going to get and Cameron wondered what could possibly go wrong! Even if the horse did not win it was only its second race and he was sure its performance would become far better in the future. But how long could it last? How long would it take to show what it could really run like? The horses at the last race had been rubbish as far as he had seen! The horses this time looked far better and he was sure that it would soon become apparent what Willy was like as a racehorse! The last time the other horses had left it behind at starting line, and he was sure that it was the problem!
Hanks had transformed into something else and now looked like a professional jockey, and not the soldier that he knew, and he even wondered what he was up to! Why had he not just found a professional place to work for? Was he really a good jockey?
He studied the weight of the jockeys and their horses trying to see if he noticed anything, and they were the same, and Hanks was not overweight from all the beer he had consumed, and he wondered what the conclusion would be.
Hanks looked determined and determined to do his job!
He had questioned him more intensely on his knowledge of racing as much as he could, checking if it was a good investment, and for the fun of finding the truth.
Willy seemed to have deep determination and perhaps a plan and he was sure it could be more determined to win, and at the start line it gave vicious looks at the other horses and as though they were different and inferior, and he was surprised to see the others react like it was something, but he could not quite grasp what, and he realized the other horses thought it was a predator!
He stood astonished and wondered how a horse could possibly treat and think of other horses as it did! It ate grass and had the basic horse body, and he wondered if it had been Hanks all along that had done something to it, which had altered it to something else, and that he had trained it to attack them!
The argument over its name occasionally still emerged, as at different angles they could not imagine a horse with such a name could become a leading racehorse! Some places seemed to choose horses by their names! But Hanks had insisted that it was a great horse name and he had given examples!
Willy looked a monster, especially at night, and people avoided going near where it was kept, and while sober he still looked twice at it when he had not seen it for a long time, and he was surprised that experienced people at the racecourse gave strange reactions and many stood staring at it and some recalled its appearance in the newspapers, and some he was sure recalled it at the last racecourse, and there were still the occasional people that thought they were up to something.
As he moved over to the starting line he wondered over and over if it could be a winner and what the outcome of the race would be, and wondered if racehorses did make it anymore and if it was a fantasy and thing of the past.
He spotted how prepared and determined for the race the other jockeys had become and that their horses looked more trained now, and he realized that Hanks might not have trained it enough and tried to recall how much he had been away visiting it.
At the starting line he went beside Fogler and Simpson, at the front of the audience, and they watched Hanks preparing himself for action and he wondered again why he was so keen.
When the starting gun blasted he was surprised at the speed the other horses raced away at, but Willy seemed to be left behind for some reason and he studied Hanks checking if it had been him all along that had gone at the back of the race and had made Willy accelerate at the right time, but he never saw anything that indicated that it was, and he was sure that he had not, and he was sure the horse was deliberately at the back of the horses for some reason that he could not determine other than to surprise the other horses near the finishing line.
Hanks went crazy trying to get the beast to move on before it was too late, and Cameron saw what looked like a glint of satisfaction on the horse’s face, but he also saw something in its posture and eyes that grasped his attention and that it was eyeing up the other horses like it was chasing them like a predator.
Fogler at one point looked furious and clenched his fist and started shouting at Hanks to move it and had to calm himself!
Cameron saw something in Willy’s expression again and watched it speed up and leap forward and grab another horse’s leg in its mouth, sending the horse crashing to the ground, and Hanks fell off its back onto the ground, and it leapt on the other horse’s back and started wildly biting the back of its neck like a beast.
Cameron stood gasping with the others around him, silenced and gaping at what happened, and he wondered if they would have to pay for the damage!
It was incredible the horse was trying to kill the other horse and it clearly did not have enough power in its jaws to do any damage to it and the other horse eventually rolled over and got up from the ground and rushed away, while Willy fell over the ground, and his eyes changed from being bloodthirsty to deep disappointment, and they watched the front horses race passed the finishing line, and Willy attacked Hanks and accelerated away into the audience and burst into life, releasing its colossal inner strength, and ran furiously into people and crazily knocked them down!
The audience stampeded away from it, all around it, as it ran after them attacking, and it charged out the racecourse like an angry bull and rushed into a busy high street and jumped through a supermarket window, and ran through it biting, bucking, and smashing everything in its path, jumping on handbags, seats, and anything, and chased people everywhere, as they leapt out of its way, and it leapt on shelves of food sending everything smashing over the floor, and it chased a security guard into a side room and he rushed out and shut the door behind him, and trapped it there!
Chapter 19
The Morning After
The next day Cameron realized it had been a bigger disaster than he had imagined and just about every newspaper around had the story somewhere, and he gasped when he watched it on television and wondered if they were going to get it!
The main headline on a major newspaper had been: MONSTER WILLY ON THE RAMPAGE, with photos of the horse going crazy, and the others were basically the same, and he examined it and with some satisfaction that it had come up as funny rather than a danger to civilization.
He pondered over why they had thought it was some form of ass, and asked the other soldiers at the army camp it that morning and they had just laughed over the event!
The most depressed was Hanks and they mostly felt sorry for him and Cameron wondered if they’d have the horse destroyed!
Simpson, Fogler, Hanks, and Cameron decid
ed early in the morning to remain out of the way until the incident blew over! The damage could have been great, and far higher if they decided to take action over horse attacking people!
He was sure they were still interested in the horse racing but he could not imagine the horse winning anything now! It was crazy and he was sure that they had only allowed it back as it was a special event and occasion! The place got a great advert for future events, but he did not want anything to do with future events as the horse would do something lethal somewhere!
He heard, what he was sure was a rumor, that Malone was so upset by the bad publicity that he was going to order them to have the horse destroyed! Even though he was sure that they could sell it for at least the same price they bought it for, after having been in all the media!
Cameron dreamily rested against his bed when a soldier marched in the tent and told Simpson, Fogler, Hanks, and Cameron that Malone wanted to see them immediately at his tent and they all stood, and Simpson started discussing the incident and the racehorse and what to do if different situations were brought up, and they made an agreement.
Cameron watched the soldier march away and realized he had done something again already and he grabbed a bottle of whisky from the side of his bed and downed three large gulps to wake him, and shifted after the others out the tent, wondering what would happen next!
Once in Malone’s tent they all stood frigid and Cameron realized that Malone was only slightly annoyed this time, and he examined his face and saw he was trying not to look surprised about something, and he suddenly poured a drink to his surprise, and Malone examined his face from the side of his eyes and gasped, and Cameron realized that he was also controlling his temper and that he would do whatever he intended.
“Sit down!” Malone ordered, clearly more annoyed now, and they all took seats and sat about his table.
“Cameron!” he eventually whispered, annoyed. “Are you behind this?”
He stared deeply at Cameron disappointedly, almost jokingly.
“Are you drunk, Cameron?” he moaned, examining his eyes.
All the three other soldiers argued and showed their disapproval of his methods, but he continued and asked, “Well, are you?”
“I had one drink!” he moaned back.
“Well you sinned! Your not supposed to!”
“I have thinned!” he replied.
“You’ve thinned?” he hollered.
“Yes!” he argued, loudly. “I won top prize for drinking the most alcohol than anyone else in the camp at a wild party!”
“I’ll handle your corruption! After this meeting you’ll go straight to the kitchen and squeeze the juice out of five strong citric lemons into a glass and pour in a full bottle of castor oil and add strong chili powder and drink it!”
“Will that wash away me thins?” he muttered, wondering what the hell it meant away, and realized he might have some old religious believes.
“No!” he shrieked. “It’ll stop you being a bloody drunken brainless twit, and someday maybe help you run things the right way!”
His reply stunned him, and he stopped replying, wondering what he meant by it!
“Have I done something ...” he whispered, mainly to himself, not knowing what it was he meant.
“There has been a complaint about you all!” Malone announced loudly, studying them again seeing if they would react. “This time it’s authentic!”
Simpson burst out laughing, at Malone and his ways of doing things, and Cameron realized Malone might be more of a drinker than he realized, which could explain his strange reactions.
“What about?” Simpson joked. “We haven’t met anyone to complain about us!
“Some people don’t like you lot! They complain everywhere about things you do!”
Simpson sarcastically gave an expression of being humiliated by it and tried to get what he was going on about, and asked, “You should send them to us for us to resolve their complaints!”
“People should stop complaining about nothing!” Fogler quickly replied, backing him up. “They should save it for all the real things!”
“The people of this country could do without you all!” he muttered, staring at Cameron. “It’s over a reported racing horse!”
“What horse is that?” Fogler continued.
He stared deeply at his eyes again, and looked away.
“Well, don’t let it happen again!” he replied, tired of beating about the bush. “You were lucky this time!”
“Yeah!” Simpson replied, realizing they had got away with it.
They had a future problem, as they were all wanting to continue racing, as Cameron could not see how they were going to solve the problem of it going crazy.
He wondered why the hell they never just got something to put on the horse to stop it at the finishing line and if it attempted to go crazy and charge into the audience.
“Cameron there was another complaint from the disabled pensioner you dragged out the bar and rolled about ...” Malone stated. “I think you should apologize to him!”
“Apologize!” he replied, gasping at having to meet him again, and decided just to avoid it.
Chapter 20
The Accident
The next they decided to start properly training the horse as it had to be fitter, and though it went along with the idea it soon started doing the opposite and even started not running and they tried forcing it and had to stop before they damaged it!
While driving back it went crazy and started smashing the back of the truck and Hanks accidentally crashed into a tree!
The next morning Malone had them brought to his tent again, and Cameron realized immediately the horse idea was a bigger disaster than he had imagined and Malone had the newspapers all over his desk with the story of its rampage at the racecourse and it had clearly drastically altered Malone’s view of the incident and the racehorse, and he was shouting loudly at them, and at the roof of the tent, where he now seemed to have an imaginary person, and he informed them that people higher up had recognized them and their horse and had complained!
He finished by gasping at a newspaper article about their crash, which he had found before they entered, and it had the headline: MONSTER WILLY ON THE LOOSE AND CAUSES CRASH!
Going by what they wrote they believed it was a normal horse and that they had done something to it, and that they were the ones guilty of the occurrences!
Simpson, Fogler, Hanks, and Cameron stood silent and just took what was coming! The damage they could get for it was high, especially if they decided to take action over the horse attacking so many people!
None of them could imagine the horse winning now! It was crazy and Cameron was sure that they or the horse would be banned from ever racing again, and he felt sorry for Hanks as it could be the end of his career as a jockey!
He was sure Malone was so upset by the bad publicity he was going to order them to have the horse destroyed! Even though he was sure that they could sell it for far more than the price they had bought it for, especially with having been in all the media!
They all stood frigid and he realized that Malone had run out of things to say and had planned on getting them replying, and Cameron examined his face and saw he was trying not to look surprised about the affair in the newspapers, and he suddenly poured a drink, and calmed himself.
“Sit down!” Malone eventually ordered, clearly less annoyed now, and they all took seats and sat about his table.
“Cameron!” he eventually whispered, annoyed. “Are you behind this?”
His stare went deep into his mind and Malone realized by the reactions of the other three soldiers about him that it hadn’t been Cameron, and he joked, “Are you drunk again, Cameron?”
“I’d a drink before I came in here!” he moaned back, annoyed at being accused of the whole problem when it had not been his horse or idea and that he had been talked into it all!
“Perhaps you can explain how a horse crashed the vehicle?”
“Well!” he moaned, angrily. “You know how it is! We were racing back here at a hundred mile an hour in the horse vehicle, which has a Ferrari engine, and a woman with no clothes on jumped out in front of it and it smashed into a guardrail at the side of the road, at just the right angle causing it to fly away up in the air, but miraculously landed on all four wheels!”
“Ferrari engine in that old banger truck!” Malone gasped, examining his eyes.
“But it continued on going, with its acceleration, racing forward and hit the guardrail again, bounced off and furiously flew around like an airplane propeller blade, bouncing against a wall, consistently smashing parts from the front and back off sending them flying through the air, over to the other side of the road, with them hitting objects all across the road and into other vehicles and house windows, landing on top of people in bed and watching television, with glass shattering and exploding in everywhere!”
“They must have been flattened!” Malone silently moaned.
“It landed on its wheels again, and never stopped and went on at full blast, continuously exploding forward and hitting objects in its path, which bounced away across the road, and it finally flipped through the air and did another cartwheel all over the road, hitting a guardrail, until it finally smashed away the body and rolled down a steep slope below, doing cartwheels and bouncing up into the air, bouncing off the sides of trees, and it finally landed on its wheels on a road below, and a cop in a police car raced out from the side of the road and stopped at its side!”
“So you had to have been charged?”
“He told us how dangerous our driving had been and I explained that it had occurred for a good reason and that there was an emergency!”
“What was so urgent?” Malone asked curiously.
“I told him that we were late for work!”
The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition) Page 55
