3 Hit the Road Jack

by Christin Lovell

  “You ok Lex?” Gabi cocked her head at me. “You seem a little off.”

  “Huh? Yea, I’m good.” I wrung my fingers around each other as I tried to convince myself and her that I wasn’t on the border of an anxiety attack. She frowned, her brow creasing with concern as she looked straight at my hands. I dropped them to my side, rubbing them against the tops of my thighs.

  Kellan came behind me and massaged my shoulders, trying to get me to relax. My mind had already left on the ‘what if’ roller coaster though. All the different scenarios were running through my head as to how this could all turn out. Of course, I was probably way off. Either this would go a lot better or a lot worse than my worst case scenario. Being that I wasn’t as evil and twisted as Jack, I was leaning more towards the last one.

  I needed to stop thinking about it though. I was only projecting my negative energy into the space, making the open, airy living room suddenly feel very tiny and dark.

  “Snap out of it Lex!” Gabi snapped her fingers in front of my face.

  “Sorry.” I looked around the room. Everyone had some sort of wary expression on their face as they studied me. I blushed under the scrutiny. The last thing I needed was them worrying about me breaking under the pressure.

  Something felt different about this mission versus my last though. I guess it could just be the fact that I knew I was walking into a trap this time around. And I wasn’t just walking into the trap alone; I was bringing the people who meant the most to me with me.

  “What do you say we go out and try some authentic Puerto Rican cuisine?” Gabi suggested. “It can be our last little hoorah before we go into the pits of hell,” she laughed, but no one laughed with her. She rolled her eyes. “Oh come on guys. We knew what we were getting ourselves into. We know what we’re facing as well. One way or another we’re going into El Yunque tomorrow and I’d rather go in knowing I’d had some good food the night before.”

  “You’re right Gabi. We should try to relax; we’re sloppy when we go into something on edge and tense, vamp or not,” Al agreed.

  “Let me set up the office first and get the equipment connected to the satellites.” Kalel headed in that direction with three luggage bags.

  “I need to check in on our troops as well. Christian hasn’t reported in over seventy-two hours,” Kai added, quickly following Kalel.

  “Come along love. We can canoodle with a movie until these boys are ready,” Craig said, slinging an arm around my shoulder and leading me towards the master bedroom.

  “Hey man, that’s my girl and only I can cuddle with her.” Kellan playfully punched Craig’s shoulder so he dropped his arm.

  “I’m a frag lonely mate. I only want to snickle with her for an hour.” He sounded so sad and pathetic, but then again, he was a good actor.

  “There’s enough of me to go around boys,” I chuckled lightly, rolling my eyes at myself.

  “I guess nobody wants to cuddle my excess sexiness,” Gabi pouted, quickly coming into the room behind us.

  “Girls in the middle!” I yelled, yanking her onto the bed with me.

  We greedily took up the middle of the king-sized bed. Gabi snatched the remote from the nightstand before the guys could even blink. We smiled up at them innocently, fluttering our lashes.

  “Um, I’m going to go hang with my dad for a little while,” Kellan stated, running his hand through his hair, messing up his Jersey style spikes. We’d had a bit of fun with the styling serum that morning and he never fixed it.

  “Suit yourself mate. Move over ladies and share the love with the Craig.” Gabi and I shifted, putting a gap between us. Craig went to the front of the bed and leapt backwards, landing perfectly in the center of us with his hands behind his head as it rested on the pillow. It was a perfect backwards dive. “Ah, so this is how it feels to be Mr. Hefner,” he grinned from ear to ear.

  Gabi and I exchanged a conniving look. We shook our heads and each yanked a pillow from under Craig’s head and whacked him with it.

  “Hey! Ow! Ow! You’re craggling my pitter putter pipe loves!” He sat up, throwing up his arms in surrender. When we didn’t respond, he snatched the pillows from our hands and tossed them across the room.

  “Hey! We were having fun!” Gabi cried.

  “By abusing poor me,” Craig argued.

  We shrugged in unison. “Serves you right playboy,” Gabi laughed.

  “Humph. I’ll be joining my mates. I rather love myself and don’t deserve such horseradish.”

  “See you later Craig,” I waved.

  “Later love,” he smiled, waving back before he went to join Kellan and his dad in the living room.

  “Guess it’s just us girls.”

  “Guess so. What movie should we watch Lex? Now that the boys are gone, we can actually watch something in Spanish.”

  “Surprise me. Just no English movies that have been dubbed over with old voices for young stars.”

  “I can guarantee that we won’t be watching any of those. I can’t stand them. I never watch the movie. I always get caught up in laughing at how horrible they sound.”

  “I know, right?”

  We settled on an overly dramatic novella. Right as it was ending, the guys came to get us.

  “Where are we going?” Gabi asked.

  “There’s a restaurant down the street at the bottom of El Yunque. It’ll give us a chance to get a closer look without actually going in,” Kai said.

  “Let’s go.”

  We all shuffled out into two cabs one of the guys had called for. My guess was Al since no one else but Gabi and I spoke Spanish, although most Puerto Ricans knew some English.

  I hadn’t paid much attention on the drive to the condo from the airport, but this time I studied my surroundings. Puerto Rico was different from the US. It held an eclectic mix of old and new, run-down and modern usually along the same road. Even the plazas had mom and pop shops mixed with retail chains. The true vision of this was in the neighborhoods. In the US, one side of the neighborhood was older homes and the other side was new, but they never intermingled. In Puerto Rico, there was a rundown home followed by a semi-structurally sound homestead followed by a mansion, then another decent house followed by another battered one. Regardless of the home’s condition, they all had bars on their windows, doors and garages, and every house was a different color. Miami was truly the closest city in regards to atmosphere and structure.

  We turned down a narrow, rough road, the sign for El Yunque standing off to the side. The houses looked more old than new in this neighborhood. It didn’t matter though because they had a priceless view. I looked out the window and up at the glory that was El Yunque above us. I was still staring up at the mountains when we stopped in front of a restaurant, in the middle of a neighborhood. There was a large wrap-around, screened-in porch, and the windows had only bars on them, no actual glass. Music was playing in the background with patrons standing around eating finger foods like bacalaitos while drinking their Corona of choice.

  We walked up the scuffed white boards and over to the open bar and kitchen. The crowd worked for us and against us. Busy meant good food, but it also meant we had to be more careful with our blood.

  “We’ll go grab a table while you guys order,” Gabi said, grabbing my hand and pulling me towards a pub table in the back corner overlooking the back view. We dragged the high top beside it up to ours so the guys could all fit.

  We both sat down and stared out at El Yunque. “That’s it,” I mused.

  “That’s it,” she stated reverently.

  “Are you nervous Gab?”

  “A little, but the way I look at it is I’ve lived for so long that if I die now I can’t be mad because I got a lot more time than most could ever dream of having.”

  “Hm.”

  “That’s me Lex. You’ve only had sixteen years. If you don’t walk out of that jungle tomorrow, then I’ll be pissed for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Dealing the
cards early?” Craig asked as he approached the table.

  “I guess,” I said, still engrossed in the mountain scape behind us.

  “Food’ll be out in a bit,” Kellan said as he came to sit next to me.

  “What’d ya’ll order?” Gabi pressed. I was learning that she was quite picky about her food, especially for a vampire.

  “A mix of stuff,” Kai shrugged.

  Like a scene in a movie, we all stared out the open back, through the screens, beyond the other homes dotting the mountain floor behind this one and up at El Yunque. It was intimidating, even to me as a vampeen. At vamp speed, it would still take me quite a bit of time to navigate the beast, which was the scary part. I could definitely see and understand how people got lost within it. I was afraid of doing that even with all my vamp abilities.

  “I think we can start by going-“ Kalel started.

  “Babe,” Kellan shouted, the alarm in his voice made me jerk towards him. He yanked something off my back, staring around the room as he did it. A moment later I was looking at a white envelope, sealed from Jack. My heart quickened; it felt like every breath was an effort.

  With a shaking hand, I took the envelope from Kellan and slowly opened it. Al stood up. “I’m going to do a walk around.” I nodded, reaching in to pull out the piece of paper.

  Scoping me out?

  -Jack

  “How is he always one step ahead of us? I just don’t get it. You can only have so many –“ A flash of something caught from my necklace. “Oh crap! I’ve been so stupid! This whole time I’ve been wearing this necklace under all my clothes. It hasn’t been working for me, but I’d bet my life that it’s been working for Jack to track me! Is there any way to see if there’s a tracking device inside this thing?”

  Kalel took it from me, passed his phone over the piece and stared at his phone’s screen. Kai and Kalel communicated something amongst each other mentally. “You got it right Leka,” Kalel bit out.

  “That slimey son of a-“

  “Gabi!”

  “What? Sorry. I can’t believe the pendejo would stoop so low as to literally screw over family. Wait until I get my hands on that-“

  “Gabi!”

  “Sorry,” she shrugged. “I have the mouth of a sailor when I’m pissed.”

  “Clearly.”

  “We can’t change it, but what this does mean is that when Ralph built this for you, he embedded the tracking device in it. So either he’s been working for Jack for a while or he had ulterior motives where you were concerned Leka,” Kalel concluded.

  A chill ran up my spine. “Ugh.”

  “Can we please get rid of that thing?”

  “Allow me,” Gabi smiled. She grabbed the necklace from Kalel and forced her way through the crowd and out the back door. She walked down the steps and into the backyard area. She whirled the necklace around like a cowboy would a rope.

  “Woohoo! We got ourselves a cowgirl!” a random guy yelled.

  She turned and winked over her shoulder, earning cheers from several locals. With a quick flick of her wrist, she sent the necklace flying what looked like at least a mile up El Yunque. Whistles and claps erupted all around. She bowed eloquently before returning to my side.

  “Well, now that that’s taken care of, I’m starving. Where’s my food?” she asked.

  Right at that moment, a mountain of food was brought out to us by a man and a woman. If I had to guess, I’d say they owned the place. They looked to be in their late forties, dressed in casual attire. It was a very casual restaurant so it wouldn’t surprise me if the owners dressed like the patrons.

  “Ay que rico,” Gabi smiled around a large bite. We’d had to get creative and mixed our blood with salsa for dipping.

  Silence loomed at the table while we ate. We’d come out to relax, but with El Yunque right behind us, that was hard to do. Tomorrow hung over our heads and weighed us down. I doubt anyone thought about anything else given how many times we all glanced at the rainforest.

  “Ok. I’m done sulking. Let’s get out of here,” Gabi sighed.

  I knew when Craig didn’t do anything to break the tension on the way back to the apartment, that things really were as bad as they seemed. When we got back to the condo, a large box was stationed in front of the door.

  “That’ll be our ops gear,” Kalel stated.

  “Kalel, why don’t you and I study some maps of the tunnels running through the mountains for tomorrow,” Al suggested.

  “Maybe I can pull up images of the interiors from tourists,” he agreed.

  “I’ll join you,” Kai said.

  “Why don’t we all do it?” I asked. “We all need to know where we’re going after all.”

  “I’ll plug the computer into the TV,” Kalel offered.

  We anxiously crowded into the living room space and spent the next several hours studying El Yunque inside and out. The task actually gave us something to focus on and eventually the tension dissipated.

  “So we’ll go in tomorrow at dawn so we’ll have the sun’s light all day,” I confirmed.

  “Right. We’ll drive up so we at least have an escape vehicle, hopefully,” Gabi said.

  “We’ll need to load our weapons before we leave. We can’t leave anything to chance. Jack has orchestrated this entire thing, and once we set foot on the mountain, we’re in his territory with his traps,” Al stated.

  Kellan squeezed my hand, offering me a bit of reassurance. He’d been quiet most of the night, silently absorbing everything. I knew he was paying attention; he just wasn’t jumping in like the rest of us.

  “Tomorrow’s the day mates.” Craig looked around at all of us. He almost seemed excited about it.

  “He’s an adrenaline junkie,” Kellan chuckled, patting his friend’s shoulder.

  “I’m never cluckin’ drab,” he replied.

  “Isn’t that the truth.” Gabi shook her head.

  I looked at my watch. “Wow, it’s already three in the morning.”

  “You should go catch some Z’s Lex. I’m sure you won’t miss anything,” Gabi said.

  “I won’t sleep long; maybe an hour. Wake me up when it’s time.”

  They all nodded and began conversing amongst each other about approaches and what area to hit first.

  “I’ll come with you.” Kellan led me to the bedroom and closed the door behind us. We both plopped down on the bed and I immediately snuggled against him.

  “I can’t believe it’s almost time.”

  “Everything will work out babe. We’ll be fine.” He kissed my brow as I closed my eyes, trying not to worry about the things unknown.

  Chapter 29

  “We’re driving up to about fifteen kilometers. Brace yourselves because the air thins and the pressure rises,” Kalel warned.

  Kalel and Al had thought of everything. We were all crammed into a Hummer which basically made it impossible for any cars to pass around us on the narrow road winding up the mountain. We adorned our ops attire and had weapons stashed in nearly every pocket, an assortment varying from gas bombs to knives and dart guns. Once loaded, I didn’t know how the spies ever got used to the weapons all around them. I found myself walking a little funny to keep a star from slicing my thigh.

  “You know, if we weren’t going into battle, I might actually like to explore the rainforest. It’s a lot more than I expected. It’s like the magic of nature is palpable up here.” I looked out the window as we narrowly missed a branch jutting out above us. Leaves beat the side of the vehicle as we remained glued to the side of the mountain.

  “Sorry babe, but I won’t be coming back with you for that one.” I chuckled nervously, reminded of the day ahead and the question mark it held hostage.

  We came to a clearing with a waterfall on the right and a small parking lot on the left. We were just about to pass the waterfall when the car began to roll backwards and collapsed.

  “Oh shit,” Gabi said, eyes wide as she looked around.

  “Mary P
oppins!” Craig exclaimed as he opened the back door and got a look at the vehicle outside.

  “I guess we’ve reached the point that he wants us. We’re on foot from here guys,” Al stated.

  I stepped out of the car and looked at the deflated tires and now snapped in half rims. I walked around the car, but didn’t see any nails. I didn’t even see how or why the tires deflated at first.

  Kai pressed a hand on my shoulder, stopping my movement. He placed a silencing finger in front of his puckered lips. I nodded once. He bent down and pointed to a thin dart poking out of the tires. It was barely visible, merely a single porcupine.

  We all grouped together, our backs against the Hummer as we looked around, searching the jungle for any movement. I listened, but the birds cawing in the distance made it hard to hear anything else.

  My head flew upwards as I heard something being carried by the wind. I saw no one; only the white envelope that was sinking through the sky from above. I looked at my companions, whose eyes were glued to me and the envelope. I snatched it out of the sky when it was within reach. I ripped it open and pulled out the paper.

  Welcome to my jungle. Let the games begin.

  -Jack

  I read it aloud. The moment I said Jack, the ninjas fell all around us. This time they had weapons; this time we were fighting dirty.

  Simultaneously we withdrew our weapons of choice. We broke out around the vehicle as the assassins drew closer; the inner circle versus the outer. We were surrounded by at least fifteen of them. Given how many we’d gone through, it had me wondering just how big Jack’s operation really was. He seemed to have an endless supply of them. Given that all we could see of them was their eyes, I couldn’t decipher whether they were the same ones from the warehouse or not.

  They came at us in twos, swinging their wood and metal bars. I couldn’t help but feel like I was in the final levels of Super Mario Brothers, facing off to the mini Koopas.