 
### Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 21

by Christopher D. Carter, © 2016

### Text and Illustration Copyright © 2016 Christopher D. Carter

### All Rights Reserved

### Also by Christopher Carter available at ebook retailers:

### Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 1 – 5 (Book 1)

### Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 6 – 12 (Book 2)

### Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 3 & 13 – 21 (Book 3)

### Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 1 & 2

### Caught in the Neuse

### Android and the Werewolf

### Children's Books

### When Kitty Came to Visit

### Discover other titles by Christopher D. Carter at

 https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SawdustEntertainment

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Epilogue

Afterword

About the Author
Foreword

I wanted to dedicate this book to my sons, Christian and Josiah. They are great kids (and now adults) whom I love very much and hope their adventures in life take them to Tomorrow Mountain and far beyond.

Chapter 1

*

### Dr. Tatum, Seth, Pound, Cindy, and Bat

### *

Pound stood by himself in the concrete room and gaped at the high ceiling that hovered above him. The room had a moist feel, and steam floated through the air, condensing on the cooler walls and dripping to the hardened floor. There was a deep pool of water surrounding the metal fins and pipes of the heat sink, and it reminded him somewhat of a YMCA pool, except that it was in the basement of a nuclear facility and there were no swim lanes or towels.

"You wouldn't want to swim in that," Dr. Tatum said to him, and he selectively tuned out her voice. He was still passively angry with Dr. Tatum over Sherry Lance's disappearance months before, and even though Sherry was back from another dimension, somehow, he wanted to blame the Doc for the mess they were in now. She waited for a congenial reply to her comment, and when he did not reply, she walked over to Seth and Cindy. "It looks like we're at a dead end."

"Thanks, Doc," Seth said with a frown. "You couldn't find a better phrase than 'dead'?"

"Yeah, but maybe she's right," Cindy said with teenage sarcasm. "Maybe this is the end."

"That isn't what I meant," she said to Seth and turned to Cindy. "Don't say that. Never say that. There has to be a way out of this," she reasoned, but the sound of running footsteps told her different.

"They're coming," Cindy replied. "And they're going to kill us." As if to the beat of a drum, as soon as she finished those words, the two STUN agents appeared from the long hallway with guns in their stone-skinned hands. They were in the basement of the nuclear facility, surrounded by hot water, and there really was nowhere to run. Pound stepped over closer to the nervous teenager, and he nudged her to get behind him.

"You're as optimistic as I am, I see," he said to Cindy as he kept himself positioned in between her and the enemy. There was not that much distance between the wall and the heated water of the pool, and he looked down into the glowing red liquid. Then he looked at Cindy's rocklike skin and how close she was to the pool, and he wondered how wise it was for her to be near the water. "I guess I'm not helping you out any by saying this, but rocks sink in water, so you should be careful." Cindy returned a typical dissatisfied teenager smirk, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I'm just saying."

"Have you ever heard the saying, 'Don't throw stones in a glass house'?" she remarked.

"Yeah. I'm not sure how that relates at all," he replied, and she held up a fist.

"Here's how it relates. I'll bust your glass."

Pound laughed at her as he decided that she was fitting in well with them. Cindy returned a smile from behind him, though her joy was only on the surface. When she looked at the two STUN guards coming at her, she could not help but think of all the people that STUN had murdered at Faraway Mountain. Men, women, and children. Except for herself, Princess Beni, and Captain Colere, she did not know of any other survivors from the other side of the dimensional portal, and she was unsure whether the grief over their deaths would ever go away. Her heart was hurting, and she could feel the pumping of blood in her temples, pounding and thumping with every beat. The past was an enormous weight and so hard to carry, and she wondered what the future might hold. At that moment, a new cold, hard vision came to her, and the vision was a clear prophecy, one which brought intense concern and roiled her emotions. Her concern was followed by a powerful fear, and then by overwhelming grief. The enormity of those emotions was all rolled into one concentrated revelation of her mortality. Death was on its way to the nuclear power plant, and it would take her new found protectors away, consumed by a hot, red and white explosion.

She blinked, and the ghastly vision was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She had never seen into the future before, and she was understandably uncertain about whether the prophecy was real or fiction, but she did not like what she had seen, and she believed she had to change it at all costs. She had to make it not happen. At that moment, time seemed to be locked in place for her, and she knew what she had to do. Maybe she could not do anything about the past and the horrible deaths which she had witnessed at Faraway Mountain, but the hot, red and white explosion had not happened yet. She had to change the prophecy so that the tragedies of the past were not repeated.

Cindy then thought about herself and wondered what others saw when they looked at her. She was just one angry teenager with one angry past and one angry future, but did anger really sum up her existence? Did she have to stay on that path forever?

No, and no, she told herself. Her life was a canvas, and like any good artist, she could choose the next color to paint on it. It did not always have to be the pulsing, pounding, thumping, angry color of red. The paint could be sky blue, or leaf green, or daisy yellow, but not always bloody red. For her entire life, it had been red, but it did not always have to be red.

And just like that, Cindy chose another color for her palette; another color for the canvas of her life. Life green was the color she chose. When she did this, the story of her life moved on, and the tale wrote itself as the dark visions of hopelessness and despair evaporated. The call of the DAM whispered and settled into her bones.

That was when time started again for her.

The STUN guards were coming. Seth and Dr. Tatum lined up behind Pound and Cindy, and they braced for the onslaught of the stone men. Rather than draw guns, the guards chose to raise their fists, and they came straight at them at full running speed. Pound watched the men's fists with his eyes as if to try to time when they would smash him head on, and he thought to himself that this could be his last fight on earth. One of the STUN guards was so close that Pound could read the nametag around his neck: Deke Slate. At the last second before Deke's fist connected with Pound's face, Cindy shoved Pound away from her and into the wall, leaving her in front of Seth and Dr. Tatum. The stone guard was caught off balance by the sudden departure of his target, and his fist was aimed too high to hit Cindy's face. She snatched his wrist with both hands and threw him over her head to the back corner of the large open room. The second guard, Carlos Gold, did not see exactly what had happened, and he was running too fast to stop. He was struck in the chin by the heel of his Deke's shoe as he flew through the air. With his chin now up in the air and his eyes at the ceiling from the blow, Carlos did not see Cindy's foot sweep beneath his own, clipping his own feet from under him and forcing him to stumble by them and go face first into the concrete floor. Cindy smiled as she imagined green paint splattering across a small portion of the canvas of her mind, and she felt better to see the contrast with so much red beneath. She wasn't finished yet though. Cindy ran toward Carlos, who was face first on the floor nearby, and she pulled back her fist as if to strike him in the head. Carlos heard her coming, and he reached out and grabbed her ankle, throwing her to the floor.

Pound recovered quickly from Cindy's shove, and he dropped down and threw his knee into Carlos' back, a move which he regretted as soon as he had done it. A jolt of pain shot up his leg, and his knee immediately began to swell with a bruise, but he grabbed Carlos' arms and held him to the concrete floor. Cindy scrambled away from them, and she backed up against the wall. Seth and Dr. Tatum turned their heads back and forth between the two guards, and neither one could decide what to do next, whether to help Pound hold Carlos down to the floor or to try to hold down Deke, who was already getting to his feet. Dr. Tatum and Seth went ahead and ran at Deke, but before they could get to him, he wiped his bloody lips with his forearm and smiled.

"You think you can take me, huh?" Deke said and pulled out a pistol. "Go ahead and try." They stopped a few feet away from him, and they did the only thing they thought made sense. They held up their hands in surrender, and the guard laughed a deep, scratchy cave like sound that came from his chest. "Even if you had a gun, too, you couldn't hurt me."

"We might not be able to, but Cindy sure could," Seth told him, and Deke grabbed him by the shirt collar and raised his feet off the floor with one hand.

"She threw me once, but a bloody lip isn't enough to stop me," Deke said, and with the strength in one arm, he easily heaved Seth across the room and into the glowing red hot water of the pool. Dr. Tatum dodged away from Deke and ran over to the pool. With her thoughts on Seth, she had forgotten all about the threat of the gun Deke had, and she knelt down at the edge of the water where Seth had plunged beneath the surface.

Deke did not seem to care about Dr. Tatum or what she did, and he turned his attention to Pound and his partner. Pound had seen the whole thing go down with Seth and Deke, but he knew he could not let go of Carlos. There were few choices left to him, but he just could not let the second guard loose, even while Deke pointed a gun at him.

"Where's a tree when you need one?" Pound thought to himself, and he shoved Carlos' face into the concrete floor, hoping to knock him out before he would have to let him go. It did not work though; it only pissed Carlos off. Then Deke stepped up close to Pound and pointed the gun at his chest, and he cut his eyes over to look at Cindy.

"You're all going to die down here if you keep wasting time," Deke said, and he cocked the trigger back with his thumb. "Let Carlos go, Pound." Pound did not listen, and he tightened the grip on Carlos and shoved his face harder into the concrete.

"Oh, you know my name. That's nice," Pound said to him, and Deke swung the pistol across Pound's head once, knocking him off Carlos and sending him rolling on the floor.

"I plan on taking the rock-headed girl there with me," Deke told Pound. "We have some unfinished work to do on her. Unless you have objections, of course." Pound laid on his back near the edge of the steaming pool, and he spit blood out from where his busted lip had bled into his mouth.

"You think that leaving us here to die in this facility is the right thing to do, but I'm here to tell you that you're wrong," Pound said back to him.

"Oh, I see," said Deke. He aimed the pistol at him and shrugged his shoulders as Carlos got up from the floor. "I've been wrong before. I can live with it. Can you?"

"No," Pound thought and closed his eyes. It was like what he had always heard happened in the movies; his life flash before him. He had time to say a last prayer before the inevitable, and he squinted his eyelids hard as he braced for the shot. The pistol exploded with a bang, reminding Pound of the starting blast at the beginning of a race, and he waited for the inevitable pain that would follow. Nothing happened to him immediately though, and he heard another muffled bang. Still nothing. That was strange. He chanced to open one eyelid and then the other as he watched Cindy drop kick Deke in the chest with the gun pointing straight up in the air instead of at his head. The teenager had apparently knocked his arm up while he held the gun in the air and then kicked him with some lucky kung-fu moves she pulled out of nowhere. Deke's gun went flying out of his hand with the last kick, and Pound was shocked. She had saved him and disarmed the guard in the process. The other STUN guard barreled at her with his shoulder down, aiming at her chest, and she deftly stepped aside as if she had been expecting Carlos to tackle her.

Meanwhile, Seth swam over to the edge of the pool, and Dr. Tatum reached down and grabbed his arm. The glowing red lights pumped through the water, and steam rose from the surface as Seth kicked his way up the pool wall. The water was hot, but it had not hurt him. She leaned back and dragged him out onto the concrete, and with the pain in her calf, she lost her balance and fell down on her backside with the effort.

"Are you all right?!" she asked him anxiously, and she put her hand on his back to feel the water's warmth. "Are you burned?" Seth rolled over, and he coughed.

"I didn't know you cared," he said, and she leaned back on her hands to listen. "The water's hot as a sauna, but I'm good. Yeah . . . I'm good." He was okay, but when he saw the fighting going on between Pound, Cindy, and the two stone men, the cheerful mood lasted for only a second and vaporized as quickly as it appeared. "What do you think the Neanderthals there want?" Dr. Tatum shook her head.

"I don't know, but they're going to kick our butts," she told him. The alarms were still going off, and he wondered how they had gotten themselves into another serious mess so easily. Seth pursed his lips together. Magic had everything to do with it, he thought to himself, and he sat up on his knees and watched Cindy dropkick one of the stone men.

"They might try," he answered her. "Their first attempt with me was pretty weak, you have to admit. They threw me into a hot sauna, and I don't think that counts as much of an attack. It was more of an inadvertent baptism."

"That's a water cooling vat for a nuclear facility," she reminded him, and Seth shrugged his shoulders.

"Same difference," he told her and pointed at the fist fight raging near them. Cindy was doing all right, but Pound was losing, and they could not allow him to fail. Dr. Tatum stood to her feet along with Seth, and they nodded to each other. Then they both charged at the stone guards at the same time. Deke was off balance from the kick that Cindy had landed on him, and Seth grabbed one of his arms while Dr. Tatum grabbed the other. They started to drag Deke toward the hot pool of water, but he resisted them and pinched his arms down to his sides, nearly smashing their fingers between the stone of his arms and his rib cage. Immediately, they let go of him and pulled their hands away from the pinch points. When they let go, Deke lost his balance and stumbled to the floor with a thud.

"What are you doing?" Cindy said to Seth as he tried to grab hold of anything he could on Deke. Seth pulled out a rope that he had managed to pick up in the mountains and smuggle on his person, and he tried to tie up Deke's arms.

"He's trying to get himself killed," Deke said, and he dug his fingers into the concrete. He would not budge as Seth tried to get the rope around one arm, and Deke rolled over onto his hands and got back onto his feet. "You wasted your time," he told Seth, and Deke threw a swing at him and missed.

"Yep, you got me," Seth said, and he stepped back toward the steaming pool. Deke took another swing which Seth dodged again, and they inched a little closer to the glowing water.

"I'll break your head and grind your bones up into powder," Deke threatened him, and Seth lightly slapped him across the face. With rock hard skin, it was too easy to break bones fighting Deke, and Seth knew it. He realized his best hope was to egg him on and to make Deke tired from throwing so many swings.

"You've been watching too many fantasy films," Seth told him, and he moved back a few more steps. With hatred in his eyes, Deke lunged at him, and Seth stepped to the side to avoid him. He was not quick enough that time. They both went down in a heap, and they rolled over into the pool.

"Oh, my!" Dr. Tatum exclaimed, and she limped over to the edge and looked down into the reddish glow. The men were wrestling with each other and sinking ever deeper to the bottom, and she suddenly cringed as she thought about what might happen to Seth. She turned back to check on Cindy and Pound, and both of them were trying to avoid being struck by Carlos' fists. He was a much better boxer than the other guard, and Pound could only hope to dodge the blows. One good contact of rock to the face, and Pound would probably be killed instantly from the force of the blow. "Everything is going so wrong," she said to herself. "So wrong."

**********

As the alarms continued to blare out, Bat Jackson ran down the basement hallway toward the red glowing room at the end. Beni and Captain Colere followed right behind him, and they all could see the fight going on between STUN and the DAM around the steaming water. The sounds of splashing echoed down the corridor, and Bat cringed to think what that sound meant, what might have just happened. They reached the opening to the crimson room, and they stopped at the doorway to take in the scene before going any further. Bat saw Pound and a teenage girl dodging wild swings from a STUN agent, and at the edge of the pool, he saw Dr. Tatum kneeling down and looking into the bubbling pool. From behind him, Beni and Colere rushed past Bat, and they ran at the STUN guard Carlos as if they had no thought at all about their own safety. Bat stood there, still evaluating it all, and he wondered why they had thrown themselves into the scene so recklessly with no regard for their own wellbeing. He watched Colere throw a calculated punch into Carlos' midsection and then pull back his fist quickly in pain as if he had punched a wall. He considered Beni as she stood off several feet away from the action, holding her hands and fingers up as if she were going to cast a spell on the man. The air around the guard turned a pale green, separating him from Pound, Colere, and the teenager, and when Carlos threw a punch, his fist rebounded off the greenish sphere around him.

Who were these people?

Bat shook his head. It did not matter. He was here for one reason, and one reason only. He was here to bring Sherry Lance back to the Bear's world where she belonged. It was true that she had come from earth, but she was changed the same way that he had been changed. Sherry was a vampire, and she was dangerous. When he looked at Dr. Tatum, a thirst bubbled up from his soul, and he licked his lips as if they were parched and in need of sustenance. The red of the room made the uncontrollable lust for blood seize his thoughts, and he rubbed the back of his neck to feel the cold of his own flesh.

"But, so am I," he thought, and the insatiable hunger for blood began to rise in the back of his mind. He put his hand into his pocket and felt around for the medicine. Before he had departed on this journey, the Bear had pulled him aside and given him two pills, one for himself and one for Sherry. He had taken his, and now he had one more pill left. It rolled around in his pocket between his fingertips, tempting him and making him feel like less of a man than he should. He was not supposed to take the second pill. It was meant for Sherry Lance only. He was supposed to give it to her, but the inner desire to kill was growing stronger, and he had just the one pill left.

"Take these before you go, and then come back with Sherry," the Bear explained. "There's one dose for you and one for her, enough to get you there and back, but don't dawdle. When you get to the other side, take your dose first and when you find her, make her take the other one. They don't last long, maybe a day, maybe less. Now, be gone with you," ordered the Bear, and Bat did as he was told, at least that was how he saw it. Then he had dealt with Revalus on the other side of the portal and had gotten sidetracked at the DAM field office in Baltimore afterward. If it had not been for the chance meeting with Director Roosevelt, Bat would have had to have turned back empty handed. After lagging behind, he was now pitching in to help old friends when his own dose of medicine was giving out.

"Why have I wasted my time?" he thought to himself and clinched his fists. "Why?! If I had tried a little harder, I could have found Sherry already and gotten the blazes out of this world. I could be back with the Bear where there is no blood lust, where there is no desire to prey upon others. But I'm not. I'm here, and I'm down to one pill. I can't break it in two because it takes a whole dose to ease the cravings, and I'm positive that Sherry has been here for far too long. By now, she's a wreck, and I'll have to fight her just to get her in the plane back to Baltimore." He reached in his pocket and pulled out the medicine to stare at it. He held the tiny pill in his hand and was in disbelief that such a tiny object could change things so much about his wretched condition. Such a tiny thing could relieve so much of his suffering, and it was sitting right there idle in the crease of his palm. Right there, and he was not supposed to use it for himself. He was supposed to share it, not hoard it. He was supposed to give it to Sherry, someone that he had spread his disease to in a moment of weakness. Conflicted, his mind wandered back to the moment when it had happened.

In the other dimension, the desire for blood had not been present when he was near the Bear, and he would have never considered biting Sherry Lance. However, that dimension was not free of other forms of evil. Sherry had been out alone on a hike through the forest, and she had attracted the attention of a wachera, a mysterious and deadly creature with the head of a beaver and the legs and body of a spider. Sherry found remnants of its leavings in the wilderness, and she tracked the strange creature's paths by the leftover gnawed stumps in the woodland. She went from stump to stump to find the center of its lair in a deserted valley deep within the dark of the forest. When she had found the artificial dam made of sunken logs and branches, she ventured out onto the makeshift bridge which formed a walkway, and she crossed the dark pool of water. She was astonished at the crude but marvelous ingenuity of the structure. The logs had not only stopped the water from flowing, but a gigantic network of wooden tendrils had been formed which protruded out from the center point of the pool. Sherry gazed at the many logs that had been joined end to end by a sticky material, and she was in awe at the tremendous design and creepy architecture which stretched from the surface of the water all the way out to the sunlight at the tops of the trees. Unbeknownst to her, the wachera had taken notice of Sherry and had followed her stealthily along the treetops. When she had reached the center of the pool, the very center of its universe, the wachera had hovered above her in the treetops and had tied a web to a single oak branch to suspend itself in the air. The fluid of its web surged, and the wachera silently dropped down on Sherry and spun her into a lattice of sticks and webbing. When she had not returned by nightfall, Bat had gone to find her, and on his way, he had also stumbled into the wachera's trap. Bat found her in the mass of branches beneath the sleeping creature, and he could not break her out and he could not wake her up. She had already been bitten by the wachera, and if he did not do something fast, she would die. Before he could get her loose from the tangle of branches, the wachera awoke from its sleep, and it bit him in the back and wound him up in the webbing with Sherry to be eaten in the morning for breakfast. Bat was stunned at first by the bite, but the poison had no initial effect on him. He lay there beside Sherry for an hour, and the thought came to him that his disease must give him an immunity to the wachera's poison. That was lucky for him that the bite did not kill him, but unfortunately, the wachera's poison did have an effect on him. It made him savage and awakened the buried desire to prey on weaker creatures. He fought with himself for another hour before finally giving into the base desire. He placed his lips on Sherry's neck, and he bit down on her with his fangs, piercing the skin just enough to pass the disease to her. The effects were immediate. Sherry's eyes opened, and she looked at Bat first in fear, and then in recognition. She looked at the webbing around them, and she remembered where she was. She was frightened, but she was strong and she was angry. Together, they fought their way out of the wachera's trap, killing the creature and burning its engineered marvel to the ground. Since that time, Sherry had never mentioned Bat's momentary lapse in judgment; she simply accepted it as part of her salvation from a horrible fate. But from that day forward, Bat had never forgiven himself for passing his disease on to her and dragging her into his own personal horror. It was a badge of honor and of shame which he had learned to live with every day, and he loved himself for it and hated himself for it.

He looked longingly at the little pink tablet, and he sighed. If he did not take the pill, then he would likely lose himself along with losing Sherry. On the flip side, if he did take the pill, then he would be fine for another day at least. He would have time to find her and drag her back to the Bear's dimension. But if he failed to find her after the last of the medicine wore off, then the world would be on its own against himself and Sherry Lance. That would suck for them if it came down to it, but he had a job to do, and he could only do the best he could with the time allotted to him. Right now, it looked like his old acquaintances needed whatever help he could offer, and he was willing to push his time on earth to the edge if necessary. He placed the last pill on his tongue, and he swallowed it down. He did not have any water, and the little pill scratched as it went down. Just that quickly, his stomach rolled with indigestion, but he started feeling the effects immediately. The medicine acted fast, and he felt the blood lust dissipate. His desire to bleed someone dry was driven off into a dark corner where it would stay until the medicine wore off, he hoped. By the sound of the alarms and the appearance of the ever-reddening room ahead, he estimated that he would die from radiation exposure before the medicine actually wore off.

That is assuming that he would die. It was possible that if he was in the vicinity when the meltdown happened, it was really, really, possible . . . that he would simply be an irradiated vampire, doomed to walk the earth like an escaped zombie from Chernobyl. What would that mean? He did not know, and he NEVER wanted to know. Bat had a time limit, and he had to find Sherry and force her to return to the Bear's dimension where they belonged. This whole calamity was Crush and Pound's fault; they had brought Sherry back with them to earth, and he considered whether he should get involved in either of their problems. It was their lapse in judgment that had led to their own misfortune. On the other side of the coin, if they had not brought Sherry along with them, she would not have had a chance to wreak havoc on STUN, and this nuclear facility would not have been compromised. Most likely, they would have already been tortured for information, or worse. STUN was not known for placing a high value on life. He looked ahead and saw the fight that was going on in the room, and he took in a deep breath as if he had come to the end of an important decision.

"How dare they reach out for help? And to ask for it from a former friend, to boot," he said to himself sarcastically, and Bat threw up his hands in surrender. The medicine had helped him remember right from wrong, and he recalled the kindness which the DAM had shown to him in the past. The Bear's wishes would have to wait for a little while longer. He would help Pound out, and then when he was finished, he was getting Sherry and going back home with her where they belonged.

**********

"Get out of here while you can!" Pound yelled at Dr. Tatum as he ducked a punch from Carlos. She shook her head and then watched Seth try to swim to the surface of the pool. Deke was on the bottom, and she saw Deke's hand grab Seth's ankle to pull him down. If he stayed down there much longer, he would drown, and she was not about to let that happen under any circumstances. Cindy distracted Carlos with a chop to the back of the head with a loose pipe, and he spun his attention on her. Pound used the distraction to get away from the fight for a moment, and he rushed over to Dr. Tatum's side and grabbed her arm. "Didn't you hear me? You need to get out," he ordered her, but she jerked her arm loose from him, and she pointed down into the pool where Seth was beginning to drown.

"He needs our help!" she begged him with fear in her eyes, and when he saw Seth fighting to get to the surface, Pound understood her concerns.

"All right," Pound told her. "But this place is going to overheat, and anyone left inside will die anyway," he explained. They could already feel the air temperature rising in the room. "I'll take care of Seth. Get Cindy, and get out!" Dr. Tatum appeared confused, and Pound held both of her arms in his hands and looked her in eyes. "That is an order, Doc, and don't tell me you won't follow my orders. I'm the senior team member here, and since you're no longer a manager, I'm in charge. Leave, and that is an order!" He then dove head first into the steaming pool and swam down into the deep.

Dr. Tatum turned to find Cindy, and she saw that Carlos was holding the back of his head and grimacing in obvious pain. Cindy was twenty feet away against the wall, and she was hunkered down low as if she were going to start a sprint. Carlos saw Dr. Tatum looking at him, and he started marching toward her, a determined frown spreading across his face. Dr. Tatum was still standing at the edge of the pool, and she had nowhere else to go. Carlos marched at her, and he was just about to seize her arm when she drew one step away from him. When she did, she saw a body and the bottom of a shoe coming at Carlos' back. Cindy had ran and drove a kick into his back, and Carlos flew by in a blur and skipped across the surface of the water before sinking below the surface. Cindy then skidded to an awkward pose at the edge of the pool, and she smiled at Dr. Tatum as she tried to regain balance while she slid.

"That was cool, huh," she said and tried to smile, but her body was still wobbling toward the water, and she lost balance on the lip of the concrete. Cindy had an uncertain expression on her face as her foot slipped on the wet edge, and she tumbled over into the pool.

"No!" Dr. Tatum yelled, and she stood there looking down at her three friends in the steaming pool with the two evil guards. She felt helpless, and she wandered nervously back and forth along the edge, not knowing what to do. Princess Beni and Captain Colere came running up behind her, and she backed away from them. Her adventure into the Sierra Nevada Mountains had started long before Crush and Pound had returned from the mines with the refugees, and though she recognized that the prison uniforms were the same as her own, they were no more than strangers to her. She braced for them as if she were getting ready for an attack. And then she saw Bat Jackson, which made her tense up even more.

"What are you doing here?!" Dr. Tatum exclaimed at all three of them, but her eyes rested on Bat. For her part, Beni knelt down at the edge of the pool and looked into the water, being careful to give plenty of space to Dr. Tatum. Bat matched eyes with Dr. Tatum, and though the medicine lessened some of his abilities to an extent, he was still able to influence her just by eye contact.

"It's okay, Dr. Tatum. These two are acquaintances of Crush and Pound, and they are enemies to STUN," Bat explained, and he gently placed a calming hand on her arm. She looked down at his hand, and she visibly relaxed at his touch, though her eyes left his own and stared hard at Beni.

"I know you, but I don't know these two," she commented uncertainly to Bat, and Beni glanced back at her and got to her feet.

"I am Princess Beni," she told Dr. Tatum, and then she waved her hand at Colere. "Captain Colere and I came to earth with Crush and Pound from our home world. We were captured by guards from STUN, and we were among the fortunate ones. That young lady, Cindy, was brought with us also, and this man, Bat Jackson, broke us out of our cells to escape. I see now that escape from this place is easier said than done."

"You got that right. We may all die," Dr. Tatum told her, and bubbles came to the surface of the pool above where Seth had fallen into the water. Everything was happening so fast, and her friends were drowning, and she felt so helpless. Dr. Tatum bit her lip, waved off the newcomers, and dove into the heated water. The temperature was getting way too high for comfort, but she swam down and latched onto Seth's limp body. With Seth now unconscious, Deke had let go of him and had sank to the bottom like the stone that he was, and Pound must have been somewhere down there with him. Though he had tried, Pound had not been able to save Seth from breathing in a lungful of water, and he had been dragged to the bottom along with the STUN agent. Cindy must have also sunk to the bottom, but the crimson dark water was too cloudy at the bottom for her to make sense of anything. Dr. Tatum could not help the three of them at once, and she was almost out of breath, so she tugged Seth to the surface where Bat stuck out his hand to help her to the edge. With Beni and Colere's help, they all lugged Seth out of the pool and onto the concrete where Dr. Tatum could give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Before the others could say anything, Colere stripped off his prison shoes and dove into the water after Pound and Cindy, and he swam deep into the bottom of the pool where the two stone skinned guards walked along the bottom.

"Crazy," Bat said a little louder than he would have liked, and with steam coming off her clothes, Dr. Tatum turned a cold eye his way.

"At least he's trying to save someone," she snapped at him between breaths into Seth's airway. Beni placed a calm hand on Seth's forehead, and her hand began to glow with a pale green light. Almost instantly, Seth's chest expanded, filling with air to mix with the water, and Seth puked up the filthy water from his lungs just before Dr. Tatum could blow into his mouth again. "Ugh! I think some of that went into my mouth," she said and spit to the side. Seth opened his eyes weakly, and he laid there looking at Dr. Tatum with a cough and a mischievous grin that spread out across his wet face.

"I've been waiting for that to happen for a long time," Seth said and coughed again until he was almost blue in the face. Beni removed her hand from his head, and Dr. Tatum cleared the water and grime from his face.

"What? To throw up on me," she said with a gentle tease, and he placed his hand on hers.

"No. You know," Seth replied, and he left it at that. He sat up and propped himself on his hands, still coughing. "This trip is going to kill us yet. Where's Pound?" Dr. Tatum hesitated and shrugged her shoulders.

"He went in after you and hasn't come up, but we're going to get him," she said and looked up at Bat and then over to the pool. "Cindy and the other guy are trying to bring him up. I promise," she told him, but she really was not sure at all what was going on beneath the surface.

**********

Pound dove into the reddish water, and he swam after Seth and Deke as they fought with each other and sank into the pool. He swam deeper and deeper, fighting the increasing pressure and his own buoyancy to descend in the hot water. His eyes were open, and the heat was affecting his vision as his eyes were trying to adjust to the heat, but his vision was so blurry that he could not tell one person from another beneath the surface. The heel of a shoe kicked him across the face as he neared the combatants, and he snapped his head back just in time to avoid the other foot. He steadied his place in the water while the two men continued to sink. He could not tell one from the other, but he guessed that Deke was the one sinking to the bottom and Seth was the one who had kicked him as he fought to swim away from Deke. Regardless, Pound was uncertain who was who, but the air was beginning to burn in his own lungs, and he could not afford to wait to act. He kicked his legs together and with both hands open, he sprang forward and grabbed the leg that had kicked him. He leaned back and kicked his legs to take himself upward, and for a second, he felt the pressure on his chest decrease as he ascended a foot higher in the depths. Then he sensed the downward tug of the stone man's gravity pull them both deeper and deeper into the red pool. The one good tug he had made on Seth must have only served to stretch his sinking body out, and now Seth was stretched like a piano wire, and with the slack gone, they were going down with gravity. Deke must have clamped onto Seth and refused to let go, Pound thought, and he held on as the weight of the stone man took them into the midst of the dark red murk at the bottom. Their descent stopped soon enough, Pound could not see anything more than shadows, but he held his breath and tugged on Seth's kicking leg. He figured Seth could not tell who was pulling his leg, but he hoped that his friend put two and two together, that a person floating above him had buoyancy and was definitely not a stone guard. Seth's legs flailed, and Pound got the distinct impression that his friend had gulped a mouthful of water. Bubbles rose up and had the lighter shade of pink as they traveled up toward the surface, and Seth's foot pulled out of his hands as he panicked. Pound snatched the foot again and jerked Seth's body toward him, and luck was with him as Deke must have lost his hold on Seth. Seth twisted and turned and threw his arms in every direction to struggle to the long distant safety of open air, and he swatted Pound across the face and was overcome by the fear of drowning. Pound pushed away for a second, and though he was confident he could hold his breath for a little longer, he was shocked by Seth's behavior.

"It's no less than I would do if I were drowning," Pound thought to himself, and he stiffened his resolve. Seth swam higher for a couple of strokes and then went limp as a dishrag. The last of his energy had gotten him away from Deke, but it had not been enough to save his life. Pound shifted his body to swim upward, and he felt something strong and hard clamp down on his ankle. It was Deke that had gripped his leg with hands that crushed like a vice, and Pound was dragged further down into the murk.

"How long can this guy hold his breath down here?" he wondered, and he fought to get away, but it was too late. Deke had dragged him to the bottom and held him there to drown. He sensed the vibrations of other swimmers diving into the water above him, and when he looked up to the light of the surface, he saw Seth's limp body being pulled upward by someone. With any luck, it was one of his companions, but there was no way to be sure. His chest ached, and it crossed his mind that if he went limp also, maybe Deke would let him go. Every second he was under water was a risk, but as it was, he was doomed to drown if he did not try something. Pound relaxed his mind, rested his arms and legs, and let himself float in the depths. He counted to five in his mind, and he forced his lungs to stay flexed with the last remnants of oxygen left, but Deke did not let go of his ankle. His ruse had failed, and the carbon dioxide level was building as the last of the pure oxygen was disappearing from his lungs.

"It is such a little thing that keeps a man alive," his last thought came to mind as he blacked out.

**********

Cindy's balance rolled out from under her, and she saw Dr. Tatum's mouth fall open as she plopped into the hot, reddish water. She tumbled down through the water, and she could not see either Carlos or Deke. They were somewhere lurking on the bottom like bad catfish, but she was able to see the Pound and Seth struggling in the water as she passed them to the bottom. When her feet touched down, she looked up and saw two men fighting with something or someone on the bottom, possibly one of the STUN guards, and she was clueless as to what she could do or even what she should do. She knew that if she did not find a way out, she would drown, but she did get some comfort in knowing that the murderous stone men would die with her in all likelihood. She did, however, feel terrible inside about Seth and Pound, and she purposed herself to do what she could to help them. She slogged along the murky waters until she was almost beneath Pound and Seth. There was a struggle which stirred the dirty bottom, and she saw that two of the men floating above had changed places. She could not guess which was which, but it did not matter since both were friends, and so she lowered her head and ran forward through the soupy water, connecting her rock-hard skull on something equally as hard. An air bubble floated out of whatever it was, and she guessed that it was Deke. Two hands then grabbed her and squeezed, and she hoped that meant Deke had let the men go. Deke got her into a headlock and tilted her head back to see the light over the water's surface, and she saw Pound and Seth above her more clearly; neither man was moving. Then she saw someone else plunge into the water, and the man nearest to the surface, Seth, was dragged away. Someone else, maybe Dr. Tatum, had dove into the water to help, and she was glad even though she was being choked. Cindy brought her elbow down and back as hard and fast as she could, and she heard Deke let out another burp of air. She then checked her hip into him and pushed herself away from him while she had the chance. He let go, but she could feel him swiping the dark water around him, searching for her, and she ducked her head down and ran toward the wall of the pool. When she reached the side of the pool, she looked up and saw two people getting out of the pool, and then she saw someone else jump back in after the last man left behind. It was too dark to tell anything looking ahead, and she placed her hands against the wall and felt her way toward a corner. She thought that she remembered a handrail and a set of steps in that direction, and she believed that was her only hope of ever getting out. When she reached the corner, she looked back and saw the shadowy forms of men walking along the bottom. It was her turn to get out of the pool, and there was no one who could save her but herself. Cindy latched onto the ladder, and she started to pull herself up when Deke grabbed her calf with his fist. He squeezed, and it hurt, but with her rock-hard skin, it did not hurt that badly. It hurt just enough to tick her off though. She used her free heel, stomped down on his fingers, and felt the tension of his fingers release. Then she climbed as quickly as she could up the ladder, wondering why it was the pain of holding her breath for so long had never occurred. When she popped her head out of the water, she was no more in need of air than she had been before she fell into the pool. That made her happy, but it also made her sad because she thought that if she could hold her breath so easily, then so could Deke and Carlos. Sooner or later, they would find their way out of the pool.

Dr. Tatum and a couple of newcomers were helping Seth get to his feet by the poolside where she had fallen into the water, and Seth looked like he was going to be okay. Pound was nowhere to be seen, and she suspected he was still in the water, maybe even drowned. The alarms were still ringing, the strobes were still flashing, and the room was getting hotter by the minute. There was little time left to do anything but evacuate before the meltdown occurred, and Cindy ran toward them on the damp concrete floor.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to run around a pool? You might just fall in," Dr. Tatum said to her. It was said in jest, but there was no smile accompanying as Dr. Tatum stared over into the deep. She had to be as worried about Pound as she was.

"I was able to get him loose from Deke, but Pound's still down there," Cindy acknowledged, and Dr. Tatum merely nodded with a blank stare. Seth pointed toward the rising bubbles in the water, and Colere came to the surface with a limp Pound in tow.

"Help me get him up," Colere said when he got to the pool side. Beni and Dr. Tatum reached their hands down and helped lift Pound onto the concrete, and then they helped Colere out. Beni immediately rolled Pound onto his stomach, straddled Pound's back, and placed her hands on the middle of his back and pushed. Brackish water spilled out of his mouth and spread out onto the concrete, and she repeated this procedure a couple of times more until no more water came out of his lungs. Then she rolled him over onto his back and began giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation, repeating what she had witnessed Dr. Tatum doing for Seth. Nothing happened, and Beni glanced up at Dr. Tatum.

"Can you help, please?" Beni asked and moved out of the way, and Dr. Tatum knelt down and went to work. After several tries, nothing happened, and Beni placed her hands down on Pound's forehead and her lips silently moved as she began to pray. Nothing happened. Cindy looked over at the ladder in the corner of the pool and felt a tingle run up the rocks of her spine.

"We should get moving, guys," she insisted, though she knew they had to help Pound.

"We're kind of busy, here," Dr. Tatum snapped, and she immediately regretted it but was working too hard on saving Pound to worry about it. Cindy took her meaning, and she ran back to the ladder and sat down on the floor to wait. She leaned back on her hands and stayed there like a conflicted teenage statue. Dr. Tatum kept working while a greenish glow spread out beneath Beni's hands and onto Pound's face. Dr. Tatum bent down to breathe into Pound's mouth again, and when she did, Pound coughed up a fountain of water in her face. They turned him over onto his side so that the water could drain better as he breathed on his own, and Dr. Tatum wiped her face off again.

"Twice in one day," she said and stood up. Seth cracked a smile and grabbed Pound's arm to lift him up.

"Thanks for helping me," Seth said, and he patted Pound on the back. Pound nodded and shivered a little, even in the heat of the room.

"Say your 'Cum by yah' and get moving, guys," Cindy yelled, and they all looked over at her to see a head pop out of the water at the ladder. Cindy leaned back on her hands and raised her feet in the air. With a swift kick to the head, Deke fell backward into the water. "He won't be down for long," she reminded them, and she ran to them and put an arm around Pound to help him move. "Gotta go!" she said and got him walking a few steps. Bat looked them all over, and he was satisfied that he had done his part in helping them escape.

"Get to ground level and get as far away from this place as you can," Bat told them and turned his back on them. Before he could get very far ahead, Pound called after him.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going, huh?" Pound asked. He had a sneaky suspicion that Bat's appearance had something to do with taking Sherry back to the Bear. Bat turned his head around but kept moving.

"To fix your screw up," the vampire said matter-of-factly. "Sherry has to go back with me before she destroys your world." Pound's strength suddenly came back, and he sprinted at Bat and tackled him from behind. The men slid on the floor, and Pound held him to the concrete with both fists tight around his collar.

"Now you listen to me, you creep. We went a long way and through a lot of trouble to bring her home. The last thing you're going to do is take her away," Pound said in anger. Bat grabbed his arms and flipped him off his chest as if he were a paper bag, and Pound flew across the room and stopped when his shoulder met a wall. Bat rolled onto his feet and pointed at Pound.

"This isn't a contest of love, you idiot. And this isn't a battle you can win. Think with your mind and not your heart!" Bat scolded him. "Sherry is a full-fledged vampire, as am I, but she doesn't have the years of experience along with the extra help from a special medicine to curb her desires. At this very moment, she's draining everyone in this building dry, and we need to stop her and take her back to where she can be treated."

"What are you talkin' about, creep?!" Pound said as he stood to his feet and wiped the dirt from his uniform. "What did you do to her?!"

"Never mind the past, Pound. Sherry has to be stopped," Bat explained, and he only infuriated Pound more. Pound ran up to Bat and shoved him against the wall with both fists at his collar again. "I thought we established a few seconds ago that maneuver won't help you," he said as he grabbed Pound's wrists and squeezed, putting the right amount of pressure in just the right places. Pound let go of his shirt and jerked his hands out of Bat's.

"Whatever happens here is your fault. Not mine," Pound told him. "We work together to find her, but she isn't going back with you."

"There's no choice in the matter."

"There's always a choice! We find her, and we find the child of stone, and we get out of this place," Pound insisted. The crowd of other people surrounded them, and Beni came between the two men. She looked at each of them, and she placed a hand on both.

"Together," she told them, and both of the men were silent in their stewing anger, but both of them nodded their heads in agreement. "Good. Perhaps it would be better if we split into two groups, one led by Pound and the other led by Bat." Pound agreed, and he quickly chose his own group: Cindy, Seth, and amazingly, Dr. Tatum. Bat was left with Beni and Colere, and the groups split up as they went down the long corridor and up the stairs to ground level.

A head popped out of the water by the ladder, and Deke crawled out of the steaming pool. He reached down into the water and helped Carlos onto the concrete floor.

Chapter 2

*

### Roosevelt and Sherry

### *

Director Roosevelt stood between Sherry Lance and Huit Brighter, and he was intent on keeping Huit away from her. His eyes became opaque with a cloudy mist, and he stared through her with smoky eyes. Sherry went to step closer to them, and when she went to lift her foot, Director Roosevelt squinted his eyes in concentration. He used his mental powers, and he connected to the outskirts of her complex mind. He projected himself into her thoughts, and the borders of her mind were surrounded and protected by a sphere of cruel thorns. Roosevelt placed one of the hands of his astral body onto the surface of the thorns, and he pulled it back in pain just as quickly. There was no way to pierce her thought processes with his astral body; he was not strong enough to take over her mind, but he floated around the circumference of the sphere, searching for a weak spot or a gap where he could penetrate. He found nothing, and fearing an attack on his physical form, he withdrew his astral projection back into his own body.

For an instant, his vision went black as his spirit melded with his physique, and he saw nothing. When the light went back into his eyes, there was no one in front of him. A tingle ran up his spine, and he felt the cold fingertips fold around the back of his neck. He turned with a start and saw the gaping mouth and glistening fangs coming at him, and Roosevelt threw an open hand up to catch Sherry beneath the jaw. She was strong, and though he held her mouth at bay, she closed her fingers around his neck and tightened them around his windpipe. He did likewise, and the two monsters held each other by the throat in a mock dance of death.

"You cannot win this fight, vampire," Roosevelt spluttered and gasped. Sherry smiled with her fangs cutting into her own lips, and she laughed at Roosevelt's weak attempt to choke her.

"You think I'll die without air, sorcerer? Don't be ridiculous," she said and threw him across the room with one hand. He slid across the floor and struck the wall with a thud. "I was going to bite this man first," she said as she pointed at Huit. "But now, I think I'll try a little sorceror's blood. Juice of the arrogant," she said as she laughed alone, and she marched toward Roosevelt as he lay on the floor with his head against the wall. At first, he did not move, but then he sat up on one elbow and cast a spell at her with the other hand. A fiery beast with the mane of a lion, head of a squirrel, and the fangs of a rattlesnake burst out of his palm in a fiery burst, and the beast wrapped its body of heat and flames around her arms and chest. Though it wrapped her tight, her clothes did not burn as the monstrous head hissed at her with a wide open mouth, large enough to swallow her whole head with one bite. For a moment, fear may have passed across her face, but it was gone so fast that it was hard to tell whether she was afraid of the mystical creature or whether she was afraid of the director's power. Either way, the moment was fleeting, and the fear was gone. She flexed her arms against the burning flames, and she broke its body into shards of flaming glass. With a last attempt at destruction, the gaping mouth of the fanged squirrel bit down on her head and exploded in an eruption of sparks and ash. The smoke swirled and then settled to the floor, and Sherry's face, head, and chest were covered in black soot, but she was intact. The whole incident had certainly shaken her and stirred up her emotions, and a strange mixed look of discontent and disbelief spread across her face. Director Roosevelt expressed very similar emotions, and he had difficulty hiding them from her. He immediately moved onto casting another spell, but it was clear, that last one had been his best, and he was scrambling for anything he could pull out of his arsenal. He spread his feet and waved his hands again, but this time, Sherry did not wait for the full effect to rain down on her. She lunged at him with both hands, and he stepped gracefully to the side of her attack, just escaping injury by a fingernail.

"I never liked you when I worked for the DAM, Roosy," Sherry snapped at him with a nickname they had dreamed up at the office.

"Roosy? Where did that come from?" he asked with indignation.

"That's what they call you. I've heard everyone refer to you that way when some stupid order came down from your office, and believe me that was frequent."

"Well, stop it. Roosevelt is my name," he told her.

"Why? What are you going to do, bite my head off? Fire me? No, wait, you just did both of those things with that flaming squirrel thing," she said to him, and she grabbed his wrists and slammed him against the wall. "You won't be missed," she growled at him, and she went for a bite on his neck. Roosevelt head butted her and then shoved her away from him with a foot to her stomach.

"Neither will you, bucktooth," he said and snatched the handles of Huit's wheelchair. Sherry was on the floor, and Roosevelt pushed the wheelchair toward the open door. He was almost out of the room when Sherry came up behind him, grabbed his shirt, and flung him back into the room as if he were a ragdoll. She then sprung into the air and landed on his back, smashing him into the hard floor and knocking his breath out. She grabbed the sides of his head and shoved his face into the concrete, and Roosevelt's body went limp. Sherry rose triumphantly over him, and she hissed at him as she walked away and went for Huit. She made it a few steps before Roosevelt's hands twitched, and he rolled over onto his back and gasped for air. He came to his senses and sat up on his elbows, and when she placed her hands on the handles of Huit's wheelchair, she gave Roosevelt a crooked smile.

"You're not much of a protector," she told him. With blood running down his face, he considered her comment carefully.

"No, I guess not, but you won't be able to let go of the wheelchair," he told her, and she tried to ease her fingers from the handles, but they would not budge. By some spell, her hands were glued to the wheelchair.

"That won't stop me," she growled at him with her mouth open and fangs dripping, and when she turned to bite Huit, the wheelchair was empty. She roared in anger, and she spun the empty wheelchair around and ran full force at Roosevelt with it. As she pushed it, she was surprised that the wheelchair still seemed to have weight in it, yet it appeared empty to her eyes. Roosevelt held up one hand and using magic, he stopped her where she stood, anchoring her feet to the floor.

"Are you ready to give up?" he asked her with blood dripping from his nose and onto his shirt. He did not look quite as threatening as he once had; in fact, he looked like he had been put through a blender face first, but Sherry knew that Roosevelt was not someone to be taken lightly.

"No, I think not," she said, and she tilted the wheelchair backwards and leaned her fangs over where she thought Huit's neck should be. Director Roosevelt's eyes gave him away, and she knew she was correct. Though she could not see him, Huit was still in the chair. She bit down, and she tasted the blood of the ageless man as it seeped into her mouth ever so slowly.

**********

When they reached the top of the stairs leading out of the basement, the two groups split up. Bat Jackson went one way with Beni and Colere, and Pound went the other with Seth, Cindy, and Dr. Tatum.

"Good luck," Dr. Tatum said to Bat. He saluted her lazily with one eyebrow raised and half of a smile showing. Pound walked off in the opposite direction without saying anything, and Dr. Tatum knew he was still ticked off. She also knew that by speaking to Bat, she had not won any brownie points with Pound. She did not care though. If he still carried a grudge over Sherry's first disappearance and apparent death, then so be it. She was not sure she could carry Pound's burdens for him, and since she had been recently demoted to field agent, she really did not see the importance of bending over backwards to suit his grudges. He was a grown man, and as the senior member in the rag tag group, he should act like the senior agent. As Bat and his group disappeared around the far corner of the corridor, Dr. Tatum considered that maybe she should have gone with them instead. For a blood sucking vampire, Bat was all right in her book; she just hoped her book was not Bram Stoker's "Dracula".

She followed Pound around the bend, and she nearly ran into him as he stopped suddenly in his tracks. Down the hall, they could hear the sounds of scuffling, and it was apparent that there was a fight going on inside one of the rooms ahead. Pound cocked his head around, and he had one finger lifted to his lips, the universal sign for silence, which, coming from Pound, probably meant 'Keep it down! Do you want to wake up the whole power plant?!' Pound hunkered down on one knee with both hands splayed on the floor, poised as if he were going to run a sprint, and he fixed his eyes on a room at the far end of the hall with moving shadows and funky lights. He looked around at Seth, Dr. Tatum, and then finally Cindy, and he motioned for the teenager to come down closer to him. Cindy bent down, and he whispered something in her ear, too quiet for the others to hear. She withdrew and nodded so that he knew she understood. Then Pound turned to Seth and did the same. Seth nodded and placed a gentle hand on Dr. Tatum's arm to guide her into one of the nearby closet rooms. Dr. Tatum did as Seth asked, but she was unclear about what was going on. When Seth hid wither her in the dark and closed the door behind them, he whispered to her.

"Pound is taking Cindy, and they're going to see what's going on down the hall," he explained. "He doesn't know what he will come across, and he doesn't want for us to get caught waiting out in the hall for the two rock brothers to find."

"What?? That doesn't make any sense. We're both trained agents, and he's taking a teenager with him instead of us," Dr. Tatum complained. "What kind of plan is that?"

"A good one. First of all, Cindy isn't just a teenager," he countered. "She's a superhuman, and she's tougher than either one of us. We would still be locked up if it wasn't for her." Dr. Tatum could not disagree with him, but she still did not like being left out of the action. "Besides, Wither may still be roaming around here, with the charm that she stole from you."

"If she's got any sense in her head, she's a hundred miles from here by now. The meltdown, remember?"

"I remember," Seth told her. "How could I forget with all of these alarms?"

"Yeah, true," she sighed. "I really goofed this assignment up royally."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Doc. Crap happens," he told her, and he cracked the door and peeked out.

"Do you think it's wise to have the door cracked like that?"

"We've been dropped out of a plane, attacked by mountain lions, taken prisoner by a monster, held at gun point by soldiers in a cave, kidnapped by helicopter, imprisoned in a basement, and nearly drowned in hot water. Peeking out a cracked door just doesn't seem risky to me anymore." He made a good case for his curiosity, and as their other luck went, he was right. The flashing lights of the strobes sliced through the crease in the door and highlighted Seth's face, and Dr. Tatum saw his eyes grow large all of a sudden.

"What do you see?" she asked.

**********

Bat walked confidently down the corridor with Beni and Colere following, and he reached out with his instincts to try to find Sherry, but all that he could sense was a being of extreme power getting further away from him. His senses were somewhat dulled by the medicine he had taken to ward off his blood lust, but he thought that he should still be able to find Sherry wherever she hid in this building. He stopped in mid-march, and he wondered if he had chosen the wrong way.

"Why are we stopping?" Colere asked him, and Bat took in a deep breath and scratched his chin.

"I . . . well, I should sense Sherry in this building, but the farther we walk in this direction, the farther away she feels," Bat told him, and Beni placed her hand on his shoulder to get his attention. She gazed into his eyes, trying to read what was there, and a look of surprise grew in her expression.

"This one that we are looking for, Sherry. I recognize her from your thoughts. She is the one who came by my cell door earlier, and she has killed others in this building," she said with a gasp. "I have seen it in your mind." Bat silently nodded, and Beni took her hand away quickly. "I don't want to see any more," she said in horror and backed away from Bat. "You are just like her."

"No, I . . . ,"

"Yes, you are. And you made her," she said with certainty.

"That I did. It was not on purpose, and if I could take it back, I would. She will not get better on earth, and I need to take her back to our new home world. If you saw the other things in my thoughts, then you know that what I have said is true." Beni kept the distance she had made between them, but she eased her shoulders a little. Colere could not read minds, and he was puzzled by the change in attitude between Beni and Bat. More importantly, he was concerned about their time ticking away.

"Are we going to continue?" Colere asked Beni.

"Of course, of course," she said, and she motioned for Bat to lead the way. "Let us not hold up what must be done." Colere looked Bat Jackson over carefully, and as a member of a royal guard and experienced with mercenaries of all kinds, he did not see a murderer when he looked at Jackson. He had seen the lady that they spoke of, Sherry, and he had not gone to the front of his cell when she called. He had a bad feeling about her, and he was not sure that it was a good idea at all to be hunting that lady. Rather, he thought that she belonged on the other side of the prison bars, and it would be hard for him to believe that Bat would be able to subdue her alone.

"Let's go," Colere told Beni, and she went with them as they turned around and went toward the hall where they had split up.

**********

"What the heck is going on in here?!!" Pound yelled into the room where a bruised and bloodied Director Roosevelt was facing off against Sherry. It was a stupid question that he had asked, he knew, but he simply could not believe his own eyes. Blood was dripping down Sherry's chin, and she stood over a wheelchair with a handicapped man seated in it. The invalid had blood marks on his neck. "Sherry! Did you bite him?" She grinned and licked the blood from her lips, and she tasted power like she had never tasted before.

"Come here," Sherry called to Pound, and she made solid eye contact with him. He immediately fell into a daze and stepped towards her. Cindy grabbed his arm and pulled him back, and Pound tripped and fell to the floor, all the while mesmerized by Sherry's call. Cindy bent down and grabbed him by the armpits, and she dragged him out of the room and into the hallway. Pound fought her, but he was not strong enough to escape from the teenager's grip. When she had him out in the hallway, she slammed the door to the room shut, and she dragged Pound down the hallway to escape. Seth burst out of the closet, and he tried to lend a hand, and though Pound was not as strong as Cindy, he was more than a match for Seth. Pound got in one good kick to Seth's lower jaw, and the battle veteran shied away until he could better figure out what was going on. Cindy worked her judo skills, and she flipped him onto his belly and held him on the cold floor. Pound fought her and kicked and flailed, but she tightened her hold on his arm and twisted his fist higher up into his shoulder blades. He groaned and spit and cried, and the odd switch of emotions freaked her out somewhat, but she did not let go of him. A hand tapped on her shoulder, and Cindy whipped around, ready to strike Sherry with a rock hard backhand. She stopped her hand just in time before it struck Dr. Tatum across the face, and a look of fright swept across the Doc's face.

"Sorry, sorry," she apologized, and Dr. Tatum stopped her.

"Don't worry, I'm not hurt, but I am definitely confused. What's wrong with him? Why is Pound fighting you?" Dr. Tatum asked.

"I took him away from Sherry. I guess that was enough to really piss him off," Cindy explained, but neither Seth nor Dr. Tatum really understood. "When he stepped into the room, Sherry did something to him. I can't explain it; it doesn't make any sense to me. She just looked at him and called him, and he went crazy." Dr. Tatum saw how Pound was crying and spitting and gnashing his teeth, and she thought that he needed a straightjacket. It was just too crazy to understand, and when she saw how close the room where Sherry was hiding was, she looked at Seth for advice.

"Don't ask me," he told her as he rubbed his sore chin, and he stretched the muscles in his mouth to see if anything was broken. His jaw was sore, but nothing was broken. "Man, that hurt."

"If we're stuck holding him down, then we won't be of any use here," Dr. Tatum noted, and Cindy laughed.

"No kidding, Doc," she said sarcastically. Suddenly to her great surprise, Pound stopped struggling and laid his forehead down on the floor.

"Kid, why are you on my back and trying to break my arm?" he asked. He seemed to have come to his senses, but Cindy would not let go that easily.

"Because you've been a handful, and you're in timeout right now," Cindy told him, and Dr.  
Tatum laughed under her breath. Pound heard it, and he turned his head so that he could see her. She was behind him somewhere out of his sight, but he gave a mean look.

"What's so funny, Doc? Did you put her up to this?" he asked, and Cindy loosened her grip slightly.

"No, no. You put her up to it, in a manner of speaking," Dr. Tatum explained.

"What?" Pound asked and laid his head back down on the floor. Cindy then let him go and got off of his back.

"Dude, you went psycho on us. You kicked me in the jaw," Seth told him, and Pound stood up and wiped the dirt from his shirt and pants. He looked as if he really did not remember what had just happened, and the wrinkles on his forehead showed how confused he was. Just then, Bat Jackson, Beni, and Colere came around the corner where they were, and Pound leaned up against the wall of the corridor with his hands over his face.

"It's coming back to me now," he admitted, and he rubbed his temples with his fingers. "Sherry got to me."

"Where is she?" Bat asked, and Pound frowned at him.

"You're not taking her away again," Pound insisted.

"You think _you_ can control her?" Bat asked him, and then Beni jumped between them with her back to Bat. She placed her calm hands on either side of Pound's face, and a green glow came from her palms and covered his head.

"Pound. Listen to me. As long as she is on this world, Sherry will never be herself again, at least not what you approximate to be herself," she told him as he closed his eyes and relaxed. "I have seen what she is capable of, and her place is in the Bear's world where her desires can be held at bay. It is the only chance she will ever have at normalcy, and the longer we wait to send her back there, the worse she will become." With her hands still on Pound's head, Beni transferred thoughts and a few of the memories which she had gleaned from Bat's mind, and Pound saw what she had seen. When she had finished, she removed her hands from his head, and Pound's chin sunk to his chest.

"All right," he muttered. "You win."

"No one wins. It's a crappy situation, Pound," Dr. Tatum told him. "We all loved Sherry," she said, and this time, it seemed to her that Pound may have believed her. Bat took Cindy by the hand, and he led her a few steps away, separating her from the group.

"Cindy and I have the best chance of subduing her," Bat explained. "We'll go first and see what we can do." Pound did not argue, and he told Dr. Tatum something else that she did not know.

"Director Roosevelt is in there with her, and he didn't look like he was having a good time either. Not that I really care," Pound said.

"Just so you know, I've never trusted him either, Pound," Dr. Tatum told him, and Pound finally cracked a smile.

"Good to know that we agree on something then," Pound said to her. Bat and Cindy went down the hall to the door, and they peeked inside. They must have been more confident than he had been because they walked right into the room with their guard down. "What do you think that's about, Doc?"

"I don't know," she said to him, and she crossed her arms. "I'm about ready to go home though. I never realized that field work was this difficult or demanding."

"Vampires are old hat, but I'll admit, a nuclear meltdown is new for me," Pound told her as he looked at the strobes blinking on the walls. "We might not get home, Doc."

"Shush. I didn't make it this far to give up," she said to him, and his eyebrows rose in annoyance.

"Do you have the child of stone? Do you have Wither?" he asked her as he rubbed the arm that had taken the most twisting from Cindy. Dr. Tatum smirked and let out a sigh.

"No, but that doesn't mean we won't get to go home. If we can stop the meltdown, then we can look for the child of stone. As far as Wither goes, we'll just have to track her down some other day. We're really lucky Cross didn't show up, but my guess is that he took a helicopter and is long gone from this place," Dr. Tatum hypothesized. Pound was not so confident about stopping a nuclear incident or in catching the escaped mercenary, but he did not feel the overwhelming need or desire to argue anymore with the good doctor. Beni had healed his headache, but his heart was just not in for an endless argument with his former manager. He knew that none of them were nuclear scientists or engineers, a fact Dr. Tatum would figure out on her own soon enough.

"Right this second, I'm more than a little concerned about Cindy's safety. Sherry is a tough customer," Pound said, and he felt himself drawn toward the room with curiosity. He walked down the hall to the door again, and Dr. Tatum shook her head in disbelief at his recklessness. Here he was, a few minutes removed from a beating, and his inquisitiveness had already taken over. Not to mention, there was no concern expressed by him for Bat's safety, but they did not really expect Pound to drop his grudge so quickly. He was determined, brave, and stubborn all rolled into one body, and she admired him for those attributes because that was what made him so good at what he did.

Beni and Colere followed Pound, and they stopped behind him at the edge of the doorway leading into the room where Sherry Lance was inside. Then they saw why Bat and Cindy had walked into danger with such boldness. Sherry had her arms spread wide, hands in the air, and she appeared to be frozen in place with Bat and Cindy admiring her statuesque form with uncertainty. Director Roosevelt stood by Huit's wheelchair with a bloody rag pressed around the invalid's neck, trying to stop the bleeding from an injury while sporting a bloody and possibly broken nose of his own. The director spotted Pound's familiar face peeking around the corner, and his leadership instincts kicked in.

"This man is dying, and those two are just staring at Ms. Lance," he said as he pointed at Bat and Cindy. "Are you guys just going to stand there gawking, too, or are you going to help?" Roosevelt asked and wiped the blood from Huit's neck. Pound, Beni, and Colere walked into the room, and soon they were followed up by Seth and Dr. Tatum. Roosevelt noted their prison uniforms as they congregated in the room, and he put his hands on his hips as he looked them all over. "Good to see that we have a whole room full of convicts present to watch a man bleed to death." When she saw what had happened to Huit, Beni came over to Roosevelt's side to help, and she placed her hands over the bloody rags, not showing any worries whatsoever that she could pick up some blood borne disease. Director Roosevelt stepped out of her way and went over to Sherry Lance's strange version of a freeze model.

"What the heck happened?" Pound asked, and Roosevelt choked back a laugh.

"What do you think? She tasted his blood, of course," Roosevelt replied as if they were supposed to understand. The rest of the group all looked at each other as if that statement had no meaning, and the director frowned at them. "Never mind, it's above your pay grade. Suffice it to say that she mis-stepped," he told them, and then he turned to Bat. "Stop gawking. You need to get her out of here before the effects wear off." Pound was visibly ticked off at the director for talking about Sherry that way, but he was more confused by the idea of Sherry biting someone in the neck and sucking out their blood. If he had not seen the evidence right there in front of him, he never would have believed it.

"Sherry must go back with me while we still have time. Everyone that she has bitten will turn into vampires as well if something isn't done," Bat told the director, and Roosevelt listened to him. Not everyone received the message so calmly though.

"Everyone else?! You're just telling us this now!" Pound yelled at Bat, but he kept his distance from him.

"So, you do believe me then," Bat replied. He then held one finger up and pointed at the ceiling, and he said one word that jogged Pound back to his senses. "Meltdown."

"Not to mention the stone twins from the basement," Seth said as he stepped into the argument between the two men.

"You, too, huh," Pound said to Seth, and he felt a twinge of guilt as soon as he had spoken the words. He knew Seth would not have given up on a healthy Sherry Lance either, but he admitted to himself that the blood and bite marks were just too incriminating, not to mention creepy. He had not seen the other victims, or his feelings may have been different. "Fine then, take her back," he relented and let Bat by him to get to Sherry's frozen body. "But I'm visiting as often as I like."

"She would appreciate that," Bat told him, and he stood there for a moment staring at her as if he was undecided about what to do. He looked back and forth between the wheelchair and Sherry, and then he looked at Roosevelt as if he had something to ask. Roosevelt read his mind.

"Sure, take the wheelchair if it will make it easier to carry her. After what Sherry did to Huit, I'm not sure he's going to make it anyways," Roosevelt told Bat.

"That's a poor attitude," Dr. Tatum told him, but Roosevelt acted like he did not hear her. There was a lot of that going on that day. With Beni's help, they all lifted Huit out of the chair and laid him out on the floor where Beni could work on him. Bat then placed Sherry onto the wheelchair and rolled her out of the room and down the hallway. A few seconds later, Pound stepped to the doorway to look for them, but they were gone. Knowing how strong the magic was in the Bear's world, Pound figured that they had already made the crossover from one plane of existence to another, and she was gone from his life again. That quick and that easily, Sherry Lance left his life. Again. Deep inside, the decision to let her go had cost him dearly, but he would not let go of the hope that he could see her again someday. Without the vampire fangs, of course. What he did not know was that Bat would have to take her back on a plane to Baltimore, and then down to Revalus' hideout. If he had known, he would have insisted on making the trip with them. In the end, it was better that he missed the plane ride with Bat and Sherry.

A gentle hand sat on his shoulder, and rather than turn around and let whoever it was see the wet build up in his eyes, he lowered his chin and looked at the person's fingertips. He recognized the hand as Dr. Tatum's, and he pretended to scratch his ear and brought his hand across his eyes to wipe the extra drops of moisture away without anyone noticing. Dr. Tatum did not say a word. When she was done standing there with Pound, she went back to check on Huit's condition. Pound took one last look down the hallway, and he rubbed the itching in his eyes one more time before he stepped back inside.

Huit was sitting up, and he was cognizant of his surroundings. Fortunately for him, the bleeding from the wounds in his neck seemed to have stopped. As Pound got closer, he could tell that the fang marks were gone from his throat. Whatever magic Beni had used on him had done the trick, and he was healed of the wounds, yet it was not a good sign that he had been bitten by a vampire. Pound looked at Beni, and he asked her the question that was probably on everyone else's mind.

"Is he going to become a vampire?"

Beni was exhausted from all of the recent efforts at healing, and she had to take a seat on the floor with her back against the wall to rest. Sleep was coming over her, but she saw the concern in Pound's expression, and she gave him the easiest and most honest answer she could.

"I can only heal the external wounds and mend the fabric of his body. I cannot change the disease that has entered him by the vampire's bite," she told Pound, and she closed her eyes to rest. Thoughts ran through his mind, and he remembered his own encounter with vampirism in Franklinville. With the defeat of the colonial David Fanning, he had returned to normal. Could it be the same for Sherry? If so, who should be destroyed in order for that to happen? Bat Jackson? Or was this disease something different altogether?

He shook his head. Too many questions, and really, if the nuclear plant melted down, none of it would matter anyway. He could not imagine anything inside the building surviving the heat and radiation. Director Roosevelt was oddly silent as he hovered nearby, and Pound tried to block the bureaucrat's existence out at first, but then decided he should have a say.

"Any comments from you?" he asked the bloodied Roosevelt.

"I'll tell you what, Pound. Since your partner didn't make it here and the good doctor has lost her management position, I think I'll let you make the decisions," Roosevelt said and looked down at his watch. "I've got places to be," he said and walked toward the door to leave. Pound shook his head and wondered why anyone worked for that guy.

"That's it. You're just leaving," Dr. Tatum said to him before Pound could protest, saving Pound from saying the same thing. Director Roosevelt turned around at the doorway, and he finished wiping the blood from his face with a rag.

"You're forgetting. I am the boss," he said to Dr. Tatum and a crooked smile ran across his face. He pointed to his chest and said, "Thinker." Then he pointed to Dr. Tatum and added, "Doer." He wound one hand in a circle around his body, and a black mist consumed him in a fog. His body began to dematerialize, leaving only that crooked smile.

"What the hell?!" Pound said, and the teeth showed through the remnants of the smile.

"Exactly," the teeth said, and then the whole black cloud evaporated and he was gone.

"You know, I really hate that guy. If there wasn't a paycheck associated with this job, you can bet I'd be out of here," Seth commented, and Pound only shook his head in disbelief.

"You and me both," Pound replied. The alarms were still blaring, and the shock of seeing the mysterious man disappear in a black cloud faded quickly from his mind. He had seen stranger things, and as long as he worked for the DAM, he was certain there were more oddities to come in the future. He looked over at Huit and Dr. Tatum as she bent down to speak with the invalid, and he watched her as she took in Huit's extremely slow conversation. They did not know that Huit preferred to write down his conversations on paper rather than speak, but there was no paper available where they were. When Huit had finished speaking, Dr. Tatum looked over at Pound, and she motioned for him to come near. Cindy, Seth, and Colere gathered around as well, and Dr. Tatum explained to them what Huit had told her.

"Huit says that he knows how to turn off the nuclear plant," she told them. "He has to be taken to the control room and then we have to leave him there."

"Leave him? Then where are we going?" Seth asked.

"We have to get as far away from the plant as possible," Dr. Tatum answered, and everyone looked puzzled. "This is all coming from him. Don't ask me anything else because I don't know anything else."

"That I believe," Pound replied, and she gave him a hardened look. "Just kidding, Doc. So you're telling me that we have to trust a prisoner that none of us know anything about. A prisoner who has just been bitten by a vampire. We have to trust him with our lives."

"It isn't much to go on, I know, but what else is there?" she replied. They all looked at each other, and Seth shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm good with it. You?" he asked Pound.

"Nuts. Never a fairy tale ending," Pound said. He snatched Huit up and cradled him in his arms, and they all started for the door when two hulking figures overshadowed the doorway, blocking their exit. Deke and Carlos were back, and they had steel wrenches for weapons.

"Nobody's going anywhere," Deke said, and he entered the room while Carlos stood by the door.

"You're all wet," Pound told him, and Deke's fist tightened around the wrench in his hand. "We had so much fun playing in the pool together. Are you going to throw that all away? Seriously, guys, can't we talk this over?"

"We can talk when you're back inside your cells, the boss . . . ," Deke started but was interrupted by Dr. Tatum.

"Look, this place is going to explode, sending you guys back to the Stone Age. Literally," she told him, and Deke let her continue speaking. They had seen the temperatures rising themselves, and they knew something serious was going on with the facility. Not to mention the blaring, flashing alarms. "We think we have a way to stop the meltdown and to save your lives as well as ours. If you're interested, let us through to do what we need to do." Deke seemed to consider her plea, and he looked back at Carlos who shook his head as if he was not convinced. Unfortunately, it wasn't a consensus among the bad guys, and that's part of what made them bad.

"Carlos and I, we see what you're saying, right. But, we have a job to do, and STUN has expectations from us that you cannot begin to understand, lady," Deke explained. "I'm not saying we would, but if we let you go, how could we be assured that you're going to do what you say you're going to do."

"Because if we don't do something, the place blows, and we all die. There really is no choice but to let us try," she told him, and he tilted his head back and let his chin go up as if he was thinking it over. Deke looked back to Carlos again, and Carlos nodded.

"Okay, you get a free pass. You better not let us down," Deke said.

"Or what? You're going to kill us after the place has exploded and burned us all up?" Pound said to him sarcastically.

"Something like that, yeah," Deke replied and slammed the steel wrench across his palm as Pound stepped by him. Pound did not bother paying any attention to him, and the rest of the crew followed him down the hallway and through the facility following the signs to the control room. The two stone guards shadowed them, keeping a distance between them and the DAM, and when the DAM had entered the control room full of dead bodies and closed the door behind them, the goons were conveniently locked out. To Deke, that did not matter. If he really wanted in, he would just break the door down with his shoulder.

"It looks like a morgue in there," Carlos told Deke.

"No doubt," Deke replied, and then he slapped Carlos on the shoulder. "Hey, you wanna go get a cream puff and some coffee from the vending machine?"

"Yeah, why not. Maybe go outside and get some relief from these alarms. They're really starting to hurt my ears," Carlos said, and they both left the scene.

Inside the control room, the depressed mood was as pervasive as the alarms. There were dead men and women everywhere, people that Sherry had drained the blood out of, staring back with hollow eyes and looks of horror spread across their faces. From Pound to Colere to Cindy and everyone in between, all of them were sickened, and except for Seth and Captain Colere with their battlefield experience, it was the most difficult event that any of them had had to work through. Ever. Very shortly after entering, Cindy had broken down in tears, and she hid her face behind her hands as she began to sob. Dr. Tatum went immediately to her side and comforted her as best she could while the others worked to clear the room. Pound sat Huit down in an empty roller desk chair, and he then pushed another chair containing a body away from the main control board to make space for the invalid to work. Huit, moving as slow as a sloth, placed his hands palms down onto the control panel and closed his eyes. For several long moments, he sat in that still and steady position, and Pound gave him his full attention, waiting patiently there with him as the laboriously long process took place.

"Pound," Dr. Tatum interrupted. He turned his head to look at her, and she saw a different and complicated look behind his eyes that she had never seen before. She could not know precisely what was going on his mind, but if she had to make an educated guess, she would bet that he was dealing internally with the shock of seeing firsthand the destruction that Sherry Lance had caused. There were other matters to consider for the living though, and after a small pause, Dr. Tatum continued. "If it's okay with you, I'm going to take Cindy outside into the fresh air. Maybe the others should go as well," she said, and he understood her meaning and quietly nodded. Then he did something that was out of character for him. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder, and he looked into her eyes as he spoke sincerely.

"Doc, you're right to do so. And also . . . also . . . you _were_ right about everything," he said to her, and then he focused his attention back on what Huit was doing. The comment was so short and small, and yet meant so much, and Dr. Tatum felt that possibly a barrier had been lowered between them. She was touched, and she watched him continue working with Huit, wondering whether this was the start of the restoration of their strained relationship.

Feeling a bit more confident, Dr. Tatum then herded the rest of the group out of the room, leaving Pound and Huit alone inside the control room. They somberly walked down the corridors and found their way out of the complex to the sunshine of the outdoors. To their discontent, they soon discovered that they were not alone. Unnoticed, Deke and Carlos sat on adjacent benches nearby, and they kept a dutiful eye on the DAM.

"Are you finished so soon?" Deke yelled out and startled them. "I still hear alarms, you know. That means get back inside and do what you said you'd do." Dr. Tatum stiffened the frown of her lips, and Cindy balled her fists in anger.

"If you chicken suits were worth your weight in stone, you would have found a way to stop the meltdown yourselves, instead of harassing us," Cindy snapped back, and Dr. Tatum's eyes suddenly grew large with surprise and, should she dare think it, pride. "You two are nothing but murdering thugs, and if we make it through this, I'm going to see that you're thrown into the bottom of the ocean where you belong." However true her judgment was of Deke and Carlos, those were strong allegations and promises coming from a teenager. The two muscle-bound thugs did not take her sharp words sitting down.

**********

Huit's hands slowly moved back and forth across the control panels, and he seemed to have a grasp on whatever it was he was doing to the nuclear control systems. Despite his steady efforts, the temperature kept rising, and Pound was afraid that this was their last day on the planet. He was very glad that he had sent the others out of the room; being this close to the action could be deadly for him, but maybe they would survive the overexposure to radiation. He knew that was wishful thinking though. He had seen the films with the cancer patients from Chernobyl, the ones that died from thyroid cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, and brain tumors. Cancer, cancer, cancer.

He closed his eyes and said the Lord's Prayer. It was an all-inclusive prayer, and he really felt that he had to cover all the bases right then. When he opened his eyes, he was startled to see Huit looking right at him.

"It's time to go, Pound," the man said very slowly to him. Pound looked at the computer screen doubtfully; he knew that Huit had been working steadily, yet there seemed to be a disconnect between the evidence on the screen and what Huit was telling him.

"You're finished? But the temperature's still too high according to the digital gauge on the monitor," Pound told him, and Huit agreed.

"Oh, yes. There is more I can do, but you must go," Huit instructed him.

"Hey, now, we came too far to lose you, too. No. My main mission was to bring you back to safety. Nuclear meltdown and safety do not match up, so I'm not leaving you here alone," Pound informed him, and this time, Huit told him some things that he may not have realized, the most important being that Sherry's victims would all become vampires, including himself. Though Beni had healed the wounds on his neck, the infection would spread through his body, and he could count on the same thing happening to all of the bodies which Sherry had killed and accumulated in the facility. The beginning of an outbreak had started, and Huit believed that if it was not contained here and now, it would spread across the world so quickly and so thoroughly that there would be no one left who was not a vampire within a year. Pound understood the severity of the situation Huit had described to him, and he lost himself for a moment in wild thoughts.

"You must go and lock the doors behind you on your way out," Huit urged him. "I can contain the radiation within these walls, but you must leave. Now."

"I can't leave you behind," Pound insisted, and he went to pick up Huit from the control chair, but Huit held onto the controls tightly. He may not have been able to move at normal human speed, but he was incredibly strong and according to government records, his brilliance was beyond that of any living man. He was, in his own right, a super human, and if he set his mind to a task, it would take more men than Pound to change his course. His eyes burned with a hot flame, and his body began to radiate a reddish glow throughout the room, and Pound had to let go of him.

"I have lived a good life, Pound. You have done all that you could do, and I thank you for it, but you must leave now or die," Huit told him, and though Pound had some strong reservations about abandoning the former hero of the Great War to such a miserable fate, he knew that he could not survive a nuclear meltdown either.

Without another word of argument with him, Pound left the control room and ran down the corridor to find his way out. All along the way, to his left and to his right, doors began to creak open, and pale, cold bodies were stepping out into the corridors and staring blankly at him as he passed. Apparently, Sherry had been busy feeding when he had thought she was being tortured by Wither. He now knew that he had been wrong on her account, and that Bat Jackson had done the right thing by taking her away while she was still immobilized by Huit's blood.

"This can't be real," he thought to himself, and a hand reached out to him from out of nowhere and snatched his collar, nearly ripping his shirt. It was a STUN agent with a pruned, blue face who had him stopped in the hallway, and Pound twisted his wrist and kicked him in the midsection, knocking him against the wall and staggering him. The newly born vampire stumbled to get its balance, and Pound took off in a sprint when the fangs beneath his lips showed through his frown and glistened in the strobe lights. "This can't be happening! This can't be real!" Pound told himself again, and the adrenaline pushed him further up the hallways and stairs toward the ground floor.

**********

"That's it, you little creep!" Deke barked, and he got up from the concrete bench where he sat and stomped over to Cindy. She reared back her fists and leaned her head forward as if she was ready to deliver an uppercut to his square jaw, and he stopped within a few feet of her, not quite within her reach, but close enough for discomfort. "I told Wither we should have smashed you into pebbles, but she had to have it her way and keep you alive."

"She still needs all of us alive," Cindy said. She was thinking that maybe she had made a mistake by yelling her frustrations at them, and she thought she should try to say something to persuade the guards to let them be. It didn't work. Deke threw a fist at Cindy's face, and she ducked beneath the swing and grabbed his arm as it passed over her head. Then she threw him into the bushes where he slid on the ground and struck the brick wall of the building. Carlos punched once and connected with Cindy's chin, and she fell to her knees.

"Stop it! All of you!" Dr. Tatum shouted, and amazingly, Carlos was so caught off guard by the order from her that he actually did stop in his tracks to look at her. "We don't have time for this. Just settle down, please," she begged, and Carlos stood tensely, ready to throw another punch if necessary. Deke scrambled to his feet, slightly dazed and shaking his head. "I'm sure Cindy didn't mean what she said. She's just as frustrated as you two are that all of this is happening." Cindy's mouth dropped open when Dr. Tatum apologized for her, and she rubbed her aching chin with a scowl.

"Like we said before, you're not in a position to throw out orders, lady," Carlos told Dr. Tatum, and he grabbed her wrist and twisted it. "Your death means nothing to me."

"What about your own death, huh? Don't tell me that you don't care whether you're destroyed in the aftermath. If you did say didn't care, I wouldn't believe it," she told him and winced as he tightened his grip. "Please, just think about someone else besides yourself." Carlos stared her down for a moment, and everyone watched to see what was going to happen next. Except for Cindy, the rest of them had no hope of standing up to them, but Dr. Tatum was undaunted. Somewhere in the back of Carlos' mind, the wheels were turning, whether it was because of her honest appeal for help, her fearless strength of will, or something oddly matriarchal in her request, Carlos did not let on.

"Please," she finally said, and Carlos let go of her wrist and crossed his huge arms across his own chest.

"Go on," he said, and Dr. Tatum rubbed her wrist where his fingers had pressed indentions in the skin. She gulped once, and she steadied herself as Deke stumbled over behind his partner. "We're listening." She rubbed her hands nervously together, and she tried to think of something to say that would keep the STUN guards from killing them all, but her thoughts were a jumbled, nervous mess. "Today," he added and laughed at her. By that time, Deke had shaken off the beating from Cindy, and he laughed, too.

"In the course of human history," she started and cleared her throat again. "There comes a time . . . ," she continued when the front door flew open, and Pound came running out from the inside of the building.

"Guys! We have to get the ducks in a row and get the flock out of here!" he yelled at them, and everyone including Deke and Carlos looked at him like he had two noses and four arms. "No, really. Everyone that we thought was dead inside, well, they're not dead. They've turned into vampires." Dr. Tatum and Deke both answered him at the same time with the same word.

"What?"

"Hey, I know it sounds crazy, but look behind me if you don't believe," Pound said, and he grabbed a heavy potted plant from nearby and blocked one of the glass front doors of the entrance with it. He braced the other swinging door with his own body as one of the many vampires slammed into the exit and tried to push it open. He leaned against the door with his back, and he pressed against it with his legs and feet tight on the sidewalk. "Are you going to help and at least be more useful than this potted plant?" he said to Deke sarcastically, and Deke grabbed the handles of the other door to hold it shut.

"Hey! Get over here and hold the other door," Deke ordered Carlos, and Pound moved out of the way while they held the entrance. "This plan ain't going to work for long, you know. There are emergency exits everywhere," he said. Pound corralled all of his friends and pushed them out toward the parking lot. He turned around and complimented them on their efforts.

"Just hold it as long as you can. If you get tired, just remember that they want to make lunch out of you," Pound reiterated.

"That's my motivation?!" Deke said angrily, but he was too busy holding back the growing mob inside. "Where the heck are you guys going?!"

"We're double parked, so gotta go," he told them, and then turned to the group. "Stay together, but get away as far as you can."

"What about the guards we locked up in the basement?" Beni asked.

"I don't think we can do anything for them now," Colere told her, and he urged her toward the parking lot. Beni looked back at the building, and there was an expression of deep sorrow on her face. She was a healer at heart, and knowing that her magic had trapped the men into sharing the same fate as the vampires was difficult for her to live with.

"Where's Huit?" Dr. Tatum asked, and Pound shook his head.

"He's buying us time. Let's not waste it," he told her and gently urged her to get moving.

**********

Huit Brighter spread out his hands across the control panel, and he projected himself into the computer system. His body was already running red hot from the direct connection to the system controls, but he had quite a ways to go if he was going to do what he needed to do to contain the imminent nuclear catastrophe. With sweat rolling down his forehead and dripping from the end of his nose, he concentrated until his mind had traveled through to the control relays and semiconductor devices located within the proximity of the core reactors, and he attached his psyche to the thermal pathways of the pool's heat sinking at the phononic reactions in the basement. With a jolt of intense heat, his body flared white hot as he absorbed the reaction load and transferred the energy through himself and back into the floor of the building. He was channeling the intensity of the nuclear reaction through himself, becoming a living filter for the transfer of energy.

Outside in the corridor, the bodies that had been carried out of the control room had already begun to twitch, to flex, and to move. Like marionettes, the men and women stood, unbalanced and weak, and they leaned their hands and legs against the walls for support. "Where am I," they each wondered.

Thoughts ran through their heads, but their minds were clouded. Their mouths were dry and cracking, for they were thirsty. Their stomachs growled and churned in a sickening symphony, for they were malnourished. Together, they were wretched, and they were weak.

They were . . . starving.

The guards down in the prison corridors soon found themselves surrounded. They had not awoken in time to escape, and they were subdued by a mob of hungry vampires. Anyone else who had been left inside the building found themselves cornered with no hope of freedom.

Fists pounded the door to the control room, but Huit kept working, all the while feeling the infection grow within his own body. The extreme heat would kill the spreading disease eventually, probably along with himself, but he would not let go of the controls. Huit knew that he would not live forever, and he had this one opportunity to make a difference. He would not go back to the nursing facility to lay in bed and eat stale cereal while someone stole his only pair of shoes again. On this day, it would all end here in this room. Huit Brighter was going to die, and he was going to lose his life so that others could keep their own.

With a kick, the control room door flew open, and the vampires stood watchfully at the opening. They felt the rush of the scorching heat blow past them, drying their skin and singeing the ends of their tousled hair. The man formerly known as Steve Roberts stepped into the room, and he hissed violently at Huit with his mouth wide open. Huit turned around to see him bare his fangs, but the war hero was glowing white hot with energy and cared very little about Steve Roberts' hunger. He turned back to the panel and continued to absorb the thermal waves of power from the nuclear reactions. He was trying to save this part of California for future generations, and only a maniac would attack him in his current state. It surprised him when he felt Steve's hand on his white hot shoulder, but he knew the vampire would not be able to touch him for long. When Steve suffered through the heat and bit him in the neck, Huit could not believe his own bad luck. Bitten by a vampire, twice in one day. Much like Sherry Lance, Steve's body froze once he drank Huit's hot blood, and the extreme heat did the rest of the work for Huit. The vampire's skin charred black, the cells of the body released their hold on one another, and Steve Roberts' body, piece by tiny piece, caught the hot air currents and sailed out the control room door and down the hallway. The other vampires who wandered the hallway took the warning to heart, and they avoided the control room and headed toward the other open rooms.

The pain in Huit's neck throbbed, and the glow of the nuclear heat lessened to a dull red for a moment. The break in intensity did not last for long. The temperature on the plant's gauges began to go up again, and the thermal runaway started up. He concentrated as hard as he could; he imagined the pulsating heat waves thrumming through the pathways of his nerves. The pain of his wounds distracted him from using all of his abilities, but it did not stop him from pushing on with his goal. Slowly but surely, his body began to turn from red hot to orange, and the soaring temperature on the gauges started to stabilize once again. Blood boiled from the jagged holes in the side of his neck, and he gritted his teeth with the tremendous exertion.

The floor of the building began to creak and moan with the tremendous heat transfer, and the drafts of searing air churned through the vampire-filled corridors, charring their undead bodies and reducing them to no more than ash. The halls became ovens, and the stairwells became chimneys. Huit soon grew white hot once again, and the control room was a churning furnace. Just before they melted, the computer monitors showed the temperature falling in the reactor, and before he disappeared in the blinding flare of energy, Huit Brighter thanked the Lord that his life had found some meaningful purpose in this final act of bravery and self-sacrifice. For all of his many long years of life, Huit's last moment was his brightest.

**********

Pound and the entire group ran as hard as they could through the parking lot to the outer perimeter of the facility grounds. There were fire trucks, police vehicles, and ambulances gathered on the other side of the high security fence, and when everyone but Cindy had reached the locked gate, Pound waited as patiently as he could while Colere and Seth each helped Dr. Tatum and Beni climb the fence. The barb wire at the top was particularly difficult to climb over, but with the last of her energy, Beni was able to cast a spell on the barbs to make them disappear from the three sets of twisted wires. Colere and Seth went next, but Pound stayed as he waited for Cindy to make it to the fence. She was very strong and very solid, and the solid part of the equation was causing her problems. Her new density meant that in order to run long distances, she required a large amount of energy to be expended to complete the process. In other words, it was a lot of work lugging her stone frame that far, and by the time she reached the gate, she had to stop and catch her breath.

"Come on, we can do this," Pound told her. She was bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. A drip of sweat accumulated on her forehead and rolled down her face, and Pound snickered a little under his breath. Cindy looked up at him as she was bent over, and she huffed.

"What?"

"Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. I was just thinking about the old saying, 'Getting water from a stone.' That's all," he told her. By the look on Cindy's face, she did not find any humor in it at all. In fact, she stepped back and then sprinted right at the locked gate, busting the chains and tearing a gap in the chain link. She went right through the new jagged opening she had made, and she turned around and looked back at the facility. Pound shrugged his shoulders and followed, and when he was on the other side, he scanned the front of the building to see if Deke and Carlos were still there. From this distance, they were specks against the tiny doorway, but he could see them.

"The vampires are going to overrun us," Pound said to no one in particular, and Seth rested his hand on one of his shoulders.

"We did what we could," Seth told him.

"It wasn't enough . . . ," Pound started to say when a concussive blast of energy blew out from the facility and knocked everyone off their feet.

**********

"Hold the door, dammit!" Deke told Carlos. "I mean it! Some fingers got through that time!" he exclaimed as they both leaned back on the swinging glass doors. "There isn't much hope of keeping them inside, but we have to try."

"Why?!" Carlos said as some fingers probed through a gap between the doors. He shoved his massive weight against the metal door handle, and the handle bent inward until it touched the glass and then the frame of the door pressed back against the crowd of hissing vampires. The fingers fell to the ground and twitched and hopped on the concrete like crickets on a hot plate.

"We've got stone skin, but I don't want to find out if they can bite my neck and turn me into one of those things!" Deke huffed.

"You let the prisoners get away," Carlos told him and leaned with all of his might against the door. Every now and then, the frame would give an inch or two and then slam back shut.

"Do you think I care? That guy Pound said that if we could keep the door shut for a little longer, something big was going to happen," Deke said as he leaned his back against the other door and watched Dr. Tatum and the gang climb over the fence. "I'm beginning to think that he was lying to us and just trying to get away. Fat lot of good that's going to do them." He saw Cindy bust the gate open, and he knew that the emergency personnel on the other side of the fence would take over. "They've still got prison uniforms on, so they'll end up . . . ." Before he could finish his sentence, a bright white light flashed from the inside of the building, and heat and a strong wind blew them off their feet. The sound wave was fast but tremendous in volume.

BOOOOMMMMM!!!!

**********

Pound was lying face down on the ground, and his ears were ringing. He looked around, and everyone around him was in various positions on the pavement, except for Cindy. Somehow she had managed to stay on her feet, and she was looking down at him with her lips moving, but nothing was coming out except muffled noise.

"What?" he said to her, and he could hear his own words inside his head, as if he had earplugs stuck in his ears, blocking the sound. She reached down and helped him to his feet, and he saw that the policemen, firemen, and emergency workers were also frantically scrambling to recover from the shock of the explosion. "Was it an earthquake?" he thought to himself. His back had been turned to the building, and he had not seen the explosion take place. "I mean, it is California," he reasoned, but he did not think an earthquake would have damaged his hearing. Slowly, the ringing in his head started to dissipate, and he was hearing the words that Cindy was yelling at him.

"The place blew up!!" she said with her mouth wide open and her hands pointed at the nuclear facility. He could hear her words a little better, and he was beginning to be able to process information outside of his own head. He rubbed the sides of his head and ears, and he moved his lower jaw around to try to get his ears to pop.

"Look!!" Cindy yelled at him and gently turned his chin toward the facility. The impressive glass front was completely blown out, and powder and dust flew all up into the air around the inside and outside of the damaged building. He turned his head to see if everyone else was okay, and Seth was helping Beni get to her feet while Cindy wiped the dust off of Dr. Tatum's back. Captain Colere was already standing up with his feet spread apart and looking intently at the source of the explosion in a very Romanesque pose. Dirt and dry powder crumbled off of his skin, but otherwise, he seemed genuinely unaffected by the sudden explosion.

"Tough guy," Pound said to himself, and he brushed dirt off of his own arms. Behind him, he heard someone shouting orders into the air, but he could not take his eyes off the mesmerizing destruction of the building. Lights flickered inside, and except for ceiling tiles falling to the floor, he saw no movement whatsoever at the plant. Deep down, he knew what this meant, and he wiped the dust from his hair as he thought about Huit Brighter and the sacrifice he had been made. It truly bothered him, but the loud orders coming from behind him were beginning to become coherent, and he turned around to see the many guns that were pointed at them.

"All of you, put your hands in the air and get down on the ground," the police officer said from behind the safety of her open car door. She and every other police officer had their pistol drawn and pointed at the entire crew of the DAM and their associates.

"What is this about?" Dr. Tatum asked as she knelt down on the ground with her hands up in surrender. Seth put his hands in his pockets instead. No one knew why, maybe it was a nervous reaction, because there was nothing in his pockets. He just did it. A shot rang out. Dr. Tatum's mouth hung open, and she looked at the hole in the chest of Seth's prison uniform. Seth looked down at her, and then his eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell to the ground. Red blood covered his chest, but the blood had stopped pumping out of the wound. She ripped open his shirt, and she saw why. The bullet had struck his heart.

There was no grand orchestra music. There were no last words to remember him by. Seth Hogan was dead.

"Put your hands on your head, lady!" the officer screamed at Dr. Tatum, and she did as she was ordered while she sat in the dirt next to Seth's body. When all of the prisoners' hands were on their heads and the police officer felt it was safe, she came out from behind the protection of her car door with her pistol pointed directly at Dr. Tatum. She cautiously walked over to the Doc, pistol in hand, with a pale expression on her face. It was obvious that the officer had never shot a person before, and she looked down at Seth's body as she walked by and got behind the doctor. The Doc read 'Lt. Laramie' on the shiny nametag.

"What did he do Officer Laramie?" Dr. Tatum asked. "Why did you shoot him?"

Lt. Laramie reached down to get her handcuffs from her belt, and she clipped a cuff on the Doc's wrist. Then she brought the other wrist down and clipped Dr. Tatum's wrists together behind her back. Dr. Tatum still could not understand what was going on, why Seth had been shot.

"You have the right to remain silent . . . ," Officer Laramie began, and she stuttered a little as she looked down at Seth's body again. "Anything you say . . . ," she continued, and Dr. Tatum twisted her head around and looked at her as if she really was baffled by what was going on.

"What did he do . . . ?" Dr. Tatum started, but Lt. Laramie cut her off.

"I'm asking the questions here. Not you," she told Dr. Tatum, and she looked over at her partner who stood on the other side of her car. He opened the back door to the cruiser, and Laramie escorted her into the backseat.

Other police officers moved in on the rest of the apparent escapees with pistols aimed at them. Captain Colere was the last to raise his hands, and his countenance gave no indication that he was afraid of these uniformed men any more than he had been of the STUN guards. They thought he was the most dangerous of the crew, and two men approached him carefully; one kept a pistol trained on his chest, and the other took handcuff duty. After they had loaded him into the back of a cruiser where he could be kept under control, the police handcuffed Cindy, Pound, and Beni. They all complied with no other incidents, and Pound found himself in the backseat with Dr. Tatum. He looked over at her.

"What just happened?" he said to her almost in a shout. His hearing was still off, and she just shook her head and bored a hole through the back of Lt. Laramie's head with her eyes.

Chapter 3

*

### Crush

### *

The three lions sailed through the air, and Crush jumped straight up into the sky. The lions passed harmlessly by him, missing each other, and most importantly, missing Crush. But it was the beginning of a battle of four against one, and Crush did not like his odds. He landed full force on the back of Pueblo, and he chopped down on the lion's neck with the side of his fist. The blow was hard enough to knock out a man, but the big cat hissed, turned his neck around, and bit at him with a snap. Crush was quick enough to move his hand out of the way, but the lion brought both of his front paws around to try to clamp down on him as if he were a pesky mosquito.

As they fought, the other two lions prowled around them in a circle and waited for a chance to strike. Crush was still standing on the lion's back when Pueblo rolled over and threw Crush's feet off balance. Crush's face was falling down toward Pueblo's open jaws, and all he could think of was guarding his head. He quickly threw his elbow into Pueblo's throat, and the big cat snapped his mouth shut as an involuntary response, just before Crush fell into the jaws. Scared and injured, the big cat splayed out his paws, rolled onto his feet, and scooted away to hide behind Felino. The other two cats prowled around Crush in a circle, and he expected them to pounce on him while he was on the ground. A throb stung him in the ribs, and he felt the sting of claw marks in his midsection. It was a delayed reaction. When Pueblo had thrown his paws out, his claws had been out as well, and the big cat had torn through Crush's shirt and scratched the skin beneath. He placed a hand on the area of pain and winced at the touch, and he withdrew a bloody palm. It was extremely sore, but the wound was not very deep, and he kept eye contact with the circling lions.

"Cherokee and Blackfoot! Heel!" Felino ordered the two lions, and the big cats broke their circle and went to sit at his side. The stranger rubbed their heads, and their tails danced with his touch. Felino gazed down at Crush on the ground, and he grinned.

"Do you want to know your past, old friend?" Felino said to him, and Crush crawled over to the edge of the freezing cold water and scooped a handful onto his open wounds. The blood and the cold water cleansed the wound and soothed the pain, and Crush took another scoopful as he waited for Felino to talk some more about himself. He was not interested in anything his enemy had to say; he just needed some more time.

"You were too young to remember when we came to this world, Crush. I was young myself, and you were an infant," Felino explained, and he sat down on a waist-high boulder on the shore of the frozen river. "The world we had lived in, the world that we were born into was filling up with water. It was a great flood that drove us here. Two by two, you might say. Wasn't that how the history of this world said it had to be?"

Crush kept his eyes fixed on Felino, but he made no effort to reply.

"Hales Noggin, our teacher, our mentor, could not save our home world," Felino said and paused for effect. Crush recognized that last name, Noggin, and he wondered if that was the same spirit that came to him in his dreams, the same spirit who roamed the halls of the white space between portals. He listened, and he continued to scoop the ice cold water until he could not feel his fingers any longer. When the wound was clean, he stood up on his feet, and the lions' ears went low as if they sensed the danger. Felino rubbed their heads and calmed them, and then he looked to Crush. "In the end, he was just a man, and really, what can a man do? He can walk. He can talk. He can lie, he can cheat, he can steal. Nothing that either of us should get tangled up with."

"Just a man, huh. A man can kidnap, a man can torture, a man can kill," Crush said to him, and Felino understood. He was wise; he recognized what Crush meant, and he laughed to himself.

"Don't accuse me, brother. They came to my land, and they brought their weapons with them. They were holding you hostage, as I recall."

"Things aren't always what they appear," Crush told him. "You said 'our home world'. I don't remember anything about being from another world."

"I was old enough to be away in school, but you were just a baby. Our father had sent me off to practice magic, while you remained at home. Our mother was gone; father never told me why or how, just that she was gone," Felino said.

"You mean to say that you really are my brother?" Crush asked, and Felino nodded yes. This struck him deeply, and Crush wondered what else he had missed by being in the orphanage. He also wondered why it was that he was part cat while Felino seemed to be normal, except when he transformed into an ogre. Crush pointed to his catlike ears and asked, "Why this?"

Felino grinned.

"I don't find it so funny," Crush told him. "Why am I like this?"

"Our father made many friends with animals. I was away at school when mother had left one day and never returned, and father looked to one of his friends in particular for help in caring for you. Her name was Snow Lynx, and she was one of the cat people who lived in the woods on the island of our home. She had kittens of her own, and she nursed you once a day," Felino explained, and his lip curled up in disgust. "I can't imagine what it's like drinking cat's milk," he said as he stroked Pueblo's fur. "You really were father's pet."

Crush went from introspective to pissed off in 0.1 seconds, and he grumbled inside his throat.

"Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?" Crush snarled.

"No one living," Felino replied, and he paused to let the words sink in. "We may be brothers, but we are not family. Pueblo, attack!" The big cat lowered itself to the ground and then launched itself at Crush with its mouth wide open. Crush rolled to the side into the stream and escaped the cat's claws, and he could not help but shiver in the mixture of ice and freezing water. When he came out of the water, he kept his eyes on Pueblo, but he flicked his eyes back and forth to see if the other cats were going to join in. Pueblo lurked around the edges of the creek, and Crush tried to get onto the nearby rocks and get out of the freezing cold stream. As he had been since he used the eye amulet to transport instantly across the country and appear in the wilderness, he was fighting the weather as well as his enemies. The icy rocks were extremely slippery, and the only way to get out of the stream was to go back onto the shore where the big cat was prowling. It was dangerous, but he would rather be on the semi-dry, snowy shore than in the freezing cold of the moving water. Pueblo held his body low to the ground, and he backed away from Crush, allowing him to get out of the rushing waters. By this time, Crush had turned his back on Felino and the other two mountain lions, and he raised his hands over his head and yelled at the top of his lungs. That was a maneuver that he had been taught in survival classes, and this seemed like the appropriate time to use it. Pueblo jumped back quickly but never broke eye contact with Crush, and when Crush took a deep breath to yell again, Pueblo leaped at his head. Crush brought down his right hand against Pueblo's face, and then Pueblo's body collided with Crush, and they both rolled in the thin snow of the shore. The big cat lay on its side and wiggled its legs on the ground, and Crush pushed away from him and stood over the cat's body with a rock in his fist. He had picked a smooth stone up from the bottom of the stream, and he had brought it with him to shore. When he had brought his fist against Pueblo's head, he had actually smashed the cat's face with the only weapon he could find: a hard, smooth stone. He had not killed Pueblo, but he had knocked the mountain lion unconscious. Crush looked down at Pueblo's head, and for a second, he thought he saw a lump appear on Pueblo's forehead. When he drew closer, he saw that the big cat had a mysterious third eye centered in his forehead.

Snow crunched behind him, and Crush whipped around to find that Felino had snuck up on him. A powerful fist slammed the side of his own head, and he stumbled with the blow. The cold water had numbed his body and senses, and Crush staggered backward and fell onto his rear in the snow. The other two lions leaped onto the snowy shore, and they crouched menacingly behind Felino.

"How dare you!" Felino screamed at Crush, and he stomped one step closer. His body began to shiver and quake all over, and Crush watched as Felino's height became larger and larger until he found himself sitting in his enemy's shadow. The ogre had returned, and Crush jumped to his feet and ran from the open shore to the densely packed underbrush of the forest. A blood curdling cry of savage fury followed him, but Crush refused to turn around and look at his pursuers. He was tired, and he was cold. If he had to die out here, he would make Felino have to work for it. In the distance, through the scattered trees and bushes, Crush could see the edge of a precipice, and he darted between trees and under low branches at a full sprint in hopes of getting there. The ominous sounds of pursuing footsteps followed him, and he could feel the earth shake as the ogre's enormous feet pummeled the ground behind him. Felino closed in on him, and the ogre swung his hand to smack Crush in the shoulder as if he were a gnat, but a pine tree blocked his swing. Bark flew, and his fingertips swept harmlessly across the back of Crush's wet shirt. Felino roared with rage, and Crush pushed his legs to run even faster through the snow and thorns. He could see the edge of the mountainside approaching, and he watched the land drop away to emptiness on the other side. He had a chance to be free, and Crush cheered a little under his breath as he saw the ledge become a cliff. He was out of the woods and into the open. He was almost free.

And then Felino's fist piled into the small of his back. Instead of climbing down the face of the cliff, he found himself sliding uncontrollably over the edge. He was lucky enough to notice a small bush growing on the rock face a few feet below the cliff edge, and Crush reached out to grab it in a panicked struggle. The fingers of one hand wrapped around the curls of evergreen leaves and thorns, and he gripped the small but tenacious plant as his body tugged against the roots. The plant did not give way, and Crush dangled from the side of the cliff. Being part cat, he was unable to fight his own curiosity, and he looked down between his feet to see the rocks on a mesa two hundred feet below.

"Fudge," he said to himself, not really wishing for his final words to be the swearing he would have normally used out of habit. Dirt and pebbles fell into the hair on his head, and he looked up to see the ogre's gnarly toenails jutting out over the edge. Felino grinned and chuckled to himself at his brother's predicament, and Crush's hands began to sweat with fear. His grip on the shrub was beginning to fail, and he swung his feet forward to stretch out and touch the cliff wall for stability. Unfortunately, the rocky wall was at an acute angle with the ground, and it rose from the stones below with a slant so that the top of the cliff projected out over the earth with an overbite, making it even more difficult for Crush to reach the rocks to steady himself. If things did not change soon, he would plummet to his death.

The ogre growled, and a giant hand reached down and covered his own. Felino squeezed his wrists, and he pulled Crush up from the brink and held him effortlessly over the sheer drop with one hand.

"ROWRRRRR!!" the ogre thundered, and he flung Crush into the air over his shoulder and away from the cliff. Crush's stomach swirled inside as he tumbled in an arc through the sky, and flashes of trees, sky, and snowy earth skated before his eyes until he heard a loud slam of bone on wood. The impact was followed immediately by the bright lights of an explosion of fireworks, and the ground came up and slammed Crush in the face. He laid there stunned for a moment, unable to move, and his thoughts lingered on the white stillness of the snow in his face. He heard the crunch of ice crystals compacting beneath approaching paws, but he did not care. The shock of the impact had numbed his instinct for survival, and the feeling of touch began to dissipate from his extremities. Crush knew that he was going to freeze to death lying face down in the snow, but his mind was so cold that he could not concentrate enough to care. Shadows gathered on the peripherals of his vision, and he knew the lions had surrounded him. A wet, scratchy pad of material scraped across his cheek, and hot breath blew into his eye. The lion panted, and the stench of its breath was awful, but it had the unexpected effect of warming his freezing face. In a crumpled heap on the ground, Crush twisted his neck to see Pueblo licking him all over, and it made him feel helpless and sick with fear. He was afraid, and the big cat sensed it. The lion's head turned to face him, and the rough tongue lolled with saliva while the third eye blinked at him. Pueblo stuck his head down in Crush's face, and the cat gently nudged Crush's wet cheek with his nose. The big cat purred. Crush found the energy to sit up, and Pueblo licked the wet snow from his face. The malice that had been there before was gone, and there was a peace between Crush and the big cat that he could not understand. The lion continued to lick Crush's wounds, and he felt as if he had the will to live for just a little longer. Crush reached out his hand to touch Pueblo's fur, and when his fingers stroked the cat's ears, the purring grew louder.

"RRRROOWWWWRRR!!" the ogre screamed and stomped through the forest towards Crush and the three lions, and the other two cats laid their tails down low to the ground and fell in behind their master. Pueblo stayed by Crush's side, and he sat confidently on his haunches and licked his own paw to rub the wounds on his own head. Felino stayed ten feet away, and he roared at them where they sat in the snow. The third eye disappeared from Pueblo's forehead, and the big cat yawned wide, bearing his fangs and stretching his neck as steam billowed out of his mouth. When Pueblo closed his mouth, he stepped over Crush's legs and sat down on all fours at his feet, positioning himself in a protective stance between Felino and Crush. The ogre spit and gnashed his teeth in rage, but Pueblo did not budge.

"What are you doing, cat? I don't understand," Crush said to the mountain lion, and he got no response. Somehow or other, he did not know how, but he had made a friend of the cat. Perhaps it was Crush's physique, being part cat himself, but that had not seemed to help him at all before. No, it must have been the blow to the head with the rock that had rattled something loose in Pueblo's consciousness. At any rate, the battle had changed in his favor, from four-to-one to three-to-two. Those still were not great odds, but any improvement was welcome.

"You know we're going to get our asses kicked, don't ya?" he told the big cat. Pueblo kept his unblinking eyes on Felino, and the giant yelled at him repeatedly but was careful not to come too close. Though he was cold and smelled like bad lion breath, Crush got to his feet and crouched in the snow by Pueblo's side, and together they watched the monster with a careful gaze.

"Felino, it looks like you lost a friend," Crush told the ogre, and Felino glared at him with yellow, jaundiced eyes.

"Pueblo, come to your master," the monster ordered the big cat, and Pueblo began to pace back and forth in front of Crush. "You do not belong to him. You belong to me."

If Pueblo thought that were true, he did not act on it, and the big cat continued to pace with his tail whipping back and forth, like a snake.

"You had best let us go," Crush told the ogre, and he flicked out his claws from his fingertips. "It would be wise." Felino dropped his big fists down to his sides, and he yelled at them again with spit flying from his lips.

"What do you know of wisdom, little brother? When I smash your brains out on the ground, the snow will turn red with your knowledge. When spring comes, the ants can feast on your gray matter," he snorted, and he sent out the other two mountain lions, Cherokee and Blackfoot, to pounce on them. Cherokee crept up slowly on the left while Blackfoot paced to the right, pinching Crush and Pueblo between them. Crush turned his back to Pueblo and faced Cherokee, and the reddish-tint of the big cat's fur bristled as they measured each other for weaknesses. Seconds passed and seemed like hours, and then Cherokee leaped into the air. With renewed energy, Crush sprang into the air to meet him, and they struck each other in a tangle of fur, claws, and spit. Crush held one arm up to protect himself, and Cherokee's fangs bit into the meat of his forearm. The claws on Crush's other hand reached forward and under Cherokee's claws, and when he felt the tender fat and soft fur of the animal's underside, he ripped into the skin as deep as he could dig. Cherokee wailed in pain, and when the big cat's mouth released Crush's arm, Crush smacked the big cat across the face with his wounded arm. Crush staggered back on his feet, and Cherokee ran for cover behind Felino to lick his wounds, moaning and growling in the snow.

Blackfoot, the largest and cruelest of the three mountain lions, waited patiently for his chance. He was the dominant cat of the pride, and he paced back and forth menacingly. He had fought Pueblo before as a youth, and had dominated him easily. Pueblo had sustained grave injuries from that encounter, and if not for the intervention of Felino, he would have surely died from his wounds. Now, the big cat sensed he had no real hope of living through this new encounter with Blackfoot, especially with Felino against him. Blackfoot growled, narrowed his eyes to dangerous slits, and waited.

Crush had won the first round with Cherokee, but he had turned his back to Blackfoot with only Pueblo to protect him. When Crush staggered feebly from Cherokee's bite, Blackfoot tensed his leg muscles and launched himself at Crush's exposed backside. This was his kill. The big cat had an open shot at the back of Crush's neck, and he bared his fangs as he sailed through the air at his unsuspecting prey. Crush never would have seen it coming. Blackfoot would have clamped his stout jaws tight around Crush's neck, driven his needle sharp incisors into his arteries and tissue, and snapped his spine in two, killing him instantly. Crush was weakened and exposed, and the big cat would have killed him as easily as taking another breath.

Crush was no longer alone in this fight, however. The strike to the head must have had something to do with it, but it was hard to tell why Pueblo had changed sides. Whatever the reason, he had thrown his lot in with Crush. Pueblo, the cat who feared Blackfoot, was there by his side. With his strong back legs, Pueblo sprang straight up into the air and caught Blackfoot mid-leap in the ribs with his front paws. Blackfoot kept moving forward with Pueblo attached to his mid-section, and their bodies slammed into Crush's back in a misdirected jumble. The three rolled in the snow toward the cliff, and Crush scrambled away from the fray as Blackfoot pinned Pueblo to the ground. Blackfoot bit down on Pueblo's face and neck, and Pueblo screamed and snarled beneath him. The wounded lion dragged his head against the tug of Blackfoot's teeth, and he somehow managed to slip out of Blackfoot's jaws, but not without a cost. Streaks of blood lined the back of his neck where the teeth had refused to let go of the skin beneath, and still yet, Blackfoot was not satisfied to let Pueblo go that easily. He pushed against Pueblo's face with one dark paw to hold him back and lashed at his belly with the claws of the other paw. Pueblo hissed and scooted back against Crush to avoid the slashing nails, and Blackfoot pushed Pueblo's snapping jaws to the ground. Lord Felino, the ogre, stood back with his arms crossed and watched the end of the struggle with interest. He had never believed that any human could come between his long standing relationships with the big cats, and he was ready for Blackfoot to kill the traitorous Pueblo for turning on him. And then he would allow Blackfoot to kill his own kin.

"Prepare to meet out father, Crush," Felino snarled as Blackfoot prowled over him and the dying Pueblo. "Please give him my regards."

On one side of Blackfoot's paw, Pueblo clenched a desperate set of teeth. On the other side of the paw though, there was the bloody and weakened neck, waiting to be bitten down on to finish the kill. The problem for Blackfoot was that the neck was under the wrong side of his paw and out of reach of his mouth. He would have to hold Pueblo down while changing positions, a move that was risky but would end the fight if he did it right. It was too much of a temptation for him to resist, and the big cat swayed his rear legs and body around so that he could complete the kill.

Under the black paw, Pueblo fought and fought against the bigger lion, but the pain of his wounds had weakened him. When Blackfoot pressed down on him with all of his weight, Pueblo felt the paw slipping on his bloody fur, and he saw the underside of Blackfoot's jaw move over his own teeth. Blackfoot was pivoting on the one front paw which held Pueblo's head against the snow, and he had neglected to protect his own neck from being exposed. With the last bit of adrenaline he had left, Pueblo rolled his face and caused Blackfoot's paw to slide past his ears and into the snow. Then Pueblo thrust his jaws up under Blackfoot's head, and he snapped Blackfoot's throat between his fangs. There was a nauseating crunch as Blackfoot's windpipe and arteries collapsed in Pueblo's viselike jaws, and Blackoot's eyelids closed and his body went limp. Pueblo held the big cat in the death hold of his teeth for more than a few seconds and then broke Blackfoot's neck with a sharp, final twist.

Crush slid out from under Pueblo's hind legs, and he shifted his gaze to the ogre. Felino stood silent in the same spot, unmoving and speechless, like a dead tree in the breeze. Pueblo closed his eyes and laid his head down in the snow. Felino's forehead wrinkled, and his eyes shot past Pueblo to Crush.

"You! You've ruined my pets!" the ogre yelled and took a step forward.

"Really, because it seemed like they ruined themselves," Crush said, and he started to back away towards the cliff again. "Hey, now, just remember, there are other people looking for me. Dr. Tatum, Pound, Seth, STUN. You really don't want to do anything that you're going to regret."

"There won't be enough left of you for anyone to find. And I'll kill the rest of them like I should have before. Except for Dr. Tatum, she can stay with me here as long as she obeys me," Felino said with a fierce growl. Crush believed that Felino would make good on those promises; he had heard the crunching of the bones in the cavern the day before.

"You said it yourself, I'm your brother. Why would you kill your own brother? Isn't there any shred of humanity left in you," Crush argued as he stepped closer and closer toward the cliff.

"Let me think about that. Am I human? Hmm," Felino said and stepped over Pueblo and Blackfoot. "No, I am more than human."

"But I am your brother!" Crush shouted.

"Truly, have you not studied the earth's history, brother? The very first set of brothers on this planet had a similar occurrence, and they found a way to settle their disagreement. So let's keep to tradition," Felino snorted. Crush stepped all the way to the edge of the cliff, and he hunkered down on the snow and rocks.

"You're referring to Genesis. Cain and Abel," Crush replied.

"You know it. 'Am I my brother's keeper?'" Felino quoted Cain, and the ogre thrust one foot out to kick Crush off into the chasm. Crush's energy was ebbing, but he twisted to the side to let the huge foot pass over his head. Then he reached up and sliced the skin of Felino's ankle with his claws. Blood poured out and spilled on the snow, melting it on the rocks, and Felino yanked his foot back and stomped closer to Crush. The ogre whipped his fist around to hit Crush with an uppercut, hoping to send him off the cliff, but Crush dodged again and slashed his forearm open, spilling more blood everywhere.

"Is that the best you can do?" Crush taunted him, and Felino flexed his muscles and roared over the chasm. The roar echoed through the valley, and Cherokee, the last cat left, skittered away into the forest to hide. Then Crush stepped to the side and felt his foot slip on the blood and wet snow, and he lost his balance and teetered on the edge of the rocks. Felino's shadow covered Crush, and the ogre grinned and reached his hand out to push Crush over the edge. Crush dug his claws into the dirt beneath his feet, grabbed Felino's little finger, and pulled the hand over his head. It was a simple wrestling move: use the opponent's own weight against them. The blood ran down Felino's ankle and under his own foot, and Felino slipped and lost his balance, falling forward over the rocks. He was going over the edge, and he grabbed at Crush to take him down as well. Crush ducked and fell into the snow and rocks, and Felino's fingers pinned one of his legs to the flat stones. Crush grabbed the rocks on the ground and pulled himself out from under the fingertips, then dragged himself out of reach. Gravity tugged Felino away, and the ogre's fingers slipped over the edge, empty handed. Another roar rang out through the canyon, and Crush waited for the inevitable sound of the ogre's body colliding with the rocks below. To his great surprise and even greater disappointment, there was only silence, and he waited a little longer for confirmation. Nothing happened, and he thought maybe the bottom was too far down for the sound to carry. He crawled over to the edge and looked over, only to see an empty snow bank far below. There was no body to be found. He was curious, and he considered stretching out a little farther to get a better look, but his leg was throbbing so badly where Felino had pressed it against the rocks that he was having trouble even crawling.

"It doesn't matter," he told himself out loud. With all of his enemies defeated, he was unafraid to make noise, and he twisted his body around in the snow and got to his feet. He was only able to put pressure on one foot, and he shook his head. "Limping again," he mumbled, and he looked down at the odd angle of his leg. If that leg was ever going to be useful again, he was going to have to straighten it out somehow, but he would have to lean up against a tree for balance. He had no walking stick, and he limped slowly along the dirty snow path they had made during their fight. When he stumbled across Pueblo's body, he saw the periodic steam of breath arise from the lion's mouth and nostrils, and he sat down by his side in the snow. Pueblo opened the slits of his eyes, and he looked at Crush through a glossy film. The cat's eyes looked strong, but the mysterious third eye was nowhere to be found. Crush rubbed the fur between the lion's ears, and he stayed with him for a few moments as they rested together.

"You're going to freeze to death if you stay out here," Crush told him, and Pueblo's mouth opened slightly as if the cat was going to make a sound. Crush kept scratching his head, and a soft, low purr passed from the lion's chest. The cuts and wounds on the animal were deep, and he did not think the big cat would survive the night out in the open, especially if Cherokee decided to come out in search of food. With his own broken leg, he barely had the ability to carry himself, let alone another animal. Pueblo then twisted his neck toward Crush, and he licked him on the face. When he did, the third eye appeared again on the cat's forehead, and the pain in Crush's leg lessened. He looked down at his bent leg, and the bones began to set themselves straight. The sound of his bones setting was nauseating, but he was relieved to know that he could walk out of the wilderness on his own. There was another lick of Pueblo's tongue on his ear, and the leg clicked together as the bones were miraculously healed.

Crush was speechless, and he was afraid to try anything with his leg. At first, he tried wiggling his toes, and when that was successful, then he tried his foot. Everything was completely healed, and immediately he tried standing up. He got to his feet and stretched on his tip toes to test the movement in his ankles and toes, and it was as if the ogre had never touched him.

"How did you do that?" Crush asked the wounded lion, and Pueblo closed his eyes. The third eye disappeared, and skin and fur took its place on his forehead. Then Pueblo's neck went limp, and his head fell into the snow. Crush knelt down, and afraid to touch the cat's wounds, he scratched him between the ears again. The purring had stopped, and he feared the worst. He placed his hand in front of Pueblo's mouth and felt for the warmth of his breath, but nothing came. After a couple of minutes of waiting, he scratched the big cat's head one last time, and he said a prayer over him. He had no idea whether or not animals were allowed in heaven, but he thought that the Creator of the universe could do anything that He wanted to do. So maybe there was a chance.

Crush then stood up and look around in all directions to see which way to go. Then he placed his hand in his pocket, and when his fingers touched the plastic of the casing, he remembered the satellite phone he had taken from the deceased STUN soldier. He took it out and thought about what he might do, and he flipped it open and turned it on. He did not think that numbers would be available to him, but he thought it was worth a try. He pressed the 'SEND' button, and he found that the phone was unlocked for anyone's use. He had hit the first lottery. A list of recent phone numbers with names came up, and he found the first one belonged to Wither. That was the second lottery win. There were no bars for service, however, or else he might have called her to taunt her. He scrolled further down the list, and he came across something that struck him funny.

"Roosevelt," he said to himself as he read the name. He knew a Roosevelt. Was it possible that there was one in the STUN organization, too? Suddenly, there was a drop in the pit of his stomach, and he scrolled down the list to the end. He found a 'Douche' and a 'Tool' repeated several times, but there were no other repeats of 'Roosevelt'. Crush did not like the Roosevelt he knew very much, and he thought that all three names could be interchangeable. The phone numbers and area codes were too different from each other for that to be the case; so 'Roosevelt' wasn't a 'Douche' or a 'Tool' in the former owner's phone book.

Suddenly, there was a crunch of snow coming from the forest behind him, and Crush quickly swung his head around, expecting to see Cherokee coming back for more. But it wasn't Cherokee, and it wasn't Lord Felino.

It was Director Roosevelt, and Crush was startled to say the least.

"I didn't hear a helicopter fly by, so how did you find me?" he asked the director, and he was extra careful to place the phone into his back pocket without letting Roosevelt see what was in his hand. Roosevelt's eyes caught the movement of Crush's hands behind his back, and he grinned.

"I find it fascinating to travel with others in planes or helicopters, but I don't always need one myself," he told Crush as he gazed down at Blackfoot and Pueblo. "Having a problem with the indigenous population, I see."

"Yeah, they get hungry in winter. Then they have the habit of tracking larger animals like myself for food," Crush explained. "But you know how predators can be." There was silence between them for a moment, and it was Director Roosevelt who finally broke the awkward moment.

"Walk with me," he told Crush, and they walked to the edge of the cliff and looked out over the valley. "All of this territory belongs to the United States of America. A great country in its own right, but really, what are a bunch of fat bureaucrats going to do with all of this rugged land? Do you think that they deserve to rule over every single rock and stone out here? I don't personally think that they should be allowed to do so."

"Do you think STUN should?" Crush asked, and Roosevelt paused as if he were considering his next words carefully. He wet his lips and then grinned deviously at Crush.

"Don't be ridiculous. Why do you think I sent you out here, hmm? It wasn't just for Huit Brighter's sake, though saving him would have been a plus," Roosevelt lamented.

"Would have been? That's past tense you're using. You say that as if saving him is a lost cause," Crush replied.

"In a manner, it is lost. STUN has lost control of their nuclear plant, thanks in no small part to your old friend, Sherry Lance. She single handedly ruined any prospect of them bringing a cheap and constant supply of energy to their endeavors on the west coast. Even as we speak, STUN's nuclear plant is melting down."

Crush's eyes opened wide at the prospect of a Chernobyl event happening in California, and he desperately wished he could have been there to help his friends. Maybe if he had been there, things would have been different.

"Oh yes, maybe you could have changed the outcome, but don't be so hard on yourself," Roosevelt said as if he had read Crush's thoughts. "That wasn't in the cards when I sent you guys out here," Roosevelt added. "You did manage to do something right today though. By killing Lord Felino for me, you have done me a great service, Crush," he said and swept a hand out across the horizon. "All of this could be yours to roam if . . . ." The thin clouds in the sky began to thicken, and a great storm took shape on the horizon.

"It seems I've heard something like that before," Crush said, and he thought to himself: "What did he really mean?" He was tempted to turn his head and look at him, but Crush did not take his eyes off of the horizon to look at Director Roosevelt. Instead, he listened to the dangerous beauty of his surroundings and heard his own belly growl.

"I doubt that Felino is actually dead, so don't thank me yet. I didn't see his body after he fell, and he was a big fellow and should have made a remarkable splash on the rocks," he told the director, and he held back from mentioning Felino's reference to Crush as being a 'brother'. As long as Roosevelt did not read his mind, then that was his own little secret. It was only fair since he thought that Roosevelt had a substantial stash of his own surprises; what did it matter if Crush kept a few to himself.

"Look, I'd love to stay out here and chat, but I'm hungry and I'm cold. The only things I want right now are food and a warm fireplace," Crush said to him, and the director held up one hand and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, they disappeared from the cliff's edge and reappeared inside of a darkened room with dusty stools and a wooden bar. There was a warm fire going in the corner, and they were surrounded by either the head or the stuffed body of every kind of critter imaginable placed throughout the dusty room. The floor was heart pine with gaps where the wood had dried and shrank after it was installed a hundred years ago. There was a spittoon on the floor at each corner of the bar, and Crush guessed from the appearance of the place that he had been transported back in time. An old man hiding beneath a cowboy hat sat in a corner recliner which looked completely out of place for the period setting, and Crush could not see the man's eyes for the shade. The recliner had a handle on the side, a feature not available to the old west, and that was how he knew he must not have gone back in time. There was a short-haired tan Labrador Retriever sprawled out comfortably on the floor by the recliner, and it lifted its eyes to look at him without even moving its head. Whatever the dog thought of Crush, it wasn't important enough to even deserve a yawn. Neither the old man nor the dog moved from their spot, and Crush wondered if maybe they were part of the stuffed gallery.

"Have a seat," Roosevelt said and pushed a stool over to him. He sat down on the stool and crossed his arms on the bar. There was a giant glass mirror which stretched across the length of the back counter, and Crush looked at himself in the reflection. After his most recent adventures, he looked like hell frozen over, and he noticed that there was no reflection returned for the director. From the mirror's point of view, he was alone. He looked to his left, and there sat the director beside him at the bar. He was not imagining things; Roosevelt had no reflection. He should have known.

"Bartender! We'll have two dips of chocolate, each on waffle cones, if you please," Roosevelt said to the old man, and the cowboy squeaked the handle of the recliner down, stood up, and stretched toward the ceiling. Silently, the cowboy slid in behind the bar, and he pulled two cones down out of an oversized box in the corner. Then he carried the cones to the center of the bar and set them down on the dusty surface of the counter.

"You're going to love this ice cream, Crush. Earl serves the best this side of King's Canyon," the director told him.

"I've been in these mountains for a couple of days now, and I'd have to say it's the _only_ ice cream out here," Crush replied. The cowboy heard their comments, but he did not seem to mind their small talk. He rolled back the top of the hidden freezer, and he bent over and dug down deep into the bottom with a dull scooper. He took his time chipping away at the hardened chocolate as if he were mining for coal, and he scooped out a small bit at a time and dropped it down into the cone. Crush could not see inside the freezer, but he thought Earl must have been running low on chocolate because he did not press the ice cream in place to fill the air gaps in the cone.

"True, but it gives Earl here a competitive advantage. That is something that you're going to have to become more familiar with, Crush. I could use a man like you to help me out here," Roosevelt explained.

"You could?" Crush asked. He was warming up from the cold, and his fingertips and toes were aching from the warming effects of the fireplace. He was listening partly to the director, but most of his attention was focused on the cheap cone and sparse chunks of chocolate that were slowly building up on the cone.

"Sure. You're resourceful, and the most important part is, you're a survivor," Director Roosevelt said to him as the cowboy handed them each a cone full of pieced together and frozen solid chocolate ice cream.

"Thanks," Crush told Earl, and the cowboy simply grunted at him. The director whipped out a ten dollar bill and handed it to Earl, and Earl took it over behind the curtains and held it up to the sunlight, inspecting the money as if he had never seen a ten dollar bill before and only the sun could tell him whether it was real or not. He must have liked what the sun had to say because he folded the bill up and stuffed it in his front shirt pocket. Earl did not say anything else as he wandered back over to the recliner and tilted it back to rest. "Tell me something. Did you send me out here just to fight with Lord Felino, without any warning about what I was stepping into?" The director took a careful bite of the ice cream, trying hard not to push over the fragile mound of icy brown chocolate as he ate it.

"I have seen your record over the years. You're resourceful, aren't you?"

"But you used me. As field agents, we're supposed to go where our leadership sends us, and we're supposed to be able to trust our leadership," Crush said, and he sniffed the chocolate before he took a bite. "I'm not saying that every Secret Service leader that I have worked for has been completely honest, but I never had one send me out into deadly peril without letting me first know the risks. Director, I don't trust you, and I see right through you," he said and pointed at the director's absent reflection in the mirror. The director grinned and sucked down the ice cream quickly in one large slurp. He swallowed it whole, and he crunched the entire cheap waffle cone in one bite as if it were only a small wafer.

"Don't say that I wasn't hospitable," Roosevelt said to him.

"What are you going to do? Kill me?" Crush asked as he took a crunchy bite of the hard ice cream and savored it. The director stood up from his stool, and he wiped the crumbs from the sleeves of his overcoat.

"I said that you did me a favor by stopping Felino," the director said. "And now I have done one for you in return by bringing you out of the cold. Two, actually, if you count the ice cream. Also, the flip phone in your back pocket may not be working. Earl here can lend you his phone, and you can call for assistance if you'd like." Roosevelt started for the door, and Crush grabbed him by the arm. Roosevelt's expression went dark, but Crush did not let go of him.

"Look, I don't know everything yet about you, and I probably don't want to know any more than I already do. But there is something else that you could do for me before you go," Crush told him, but he conveniently kept quiet about Roosevelt's name appearing in the phone. That was a matter that deserved more investigation. Roosevelt shook his arm free, and he listened. "I lost that amulet you gave me back in the cave. I guess I should say that Colonel Lowe took it from me at gunpoint, but 'lost' sounds better in a report. Anyways, before you head off into the sunset, I could use your help in recovering it."

"Don't take me for an idiot. I knew you lost it the minute he took it from you, Crush," Roosevelt sneered. "Find your own way back," he said and pushed the door to the saloon open. Cold snow blew in through the opening, and Roosevelt stepped out into the weather. Crush grabbed his arm again, and this time, Roosevelt did not turn around at all. He just stopped.

"I am just asking for your help," Crush admitted. "Please." Roosevelt's shoulders relaxed and dropped slightly, and he turned his head again.

"Really? It might interest you to know that I found out that you call me 'Roosy' back at the DAM. It seems like if you want someone's help, you shouldn't call them names." Crush was surprised that someone had let that slip. He had no idea the director was sensitive about his name, but if he was, then Roosevelt had a point.

"Ah, sometimes people get carried away when they're joking around, you know? Don't take it personal, okay?"

"Very well. Once I drop you off at the amulet's location, you will have to find your own way back from there. That should be easily done if you don't lose 'Bob' again," Roosevelt said, and they both disappeared with the door wide open.

Earl sat quietly in the recliner as if nothing had happened, and he lifted his hat off of his eyes so he could see the snow blowing in. He got up, walked over to the door, and pulled it closed. Then he sat back down in the recliner by his dog, and he went back to sleep until the next customer came by five hours later. With Director Roosevelt gone, the quality of the establishment improved considerably; the quality of the ice cream, however, did not.

**********

Crush wondered what was going to happen, but he did not have to wonder for long. They vaporized from the store, and everything went dark. Then there was a blue flash of light, and they appeared in a desert. There was daylight, and the air was pleasantly warmer there than in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Crush let go of Roosevelt's arm, and Roosevelt straightened his jacket. They were on a red plain of sand, standing at the base of a tall red spire of rock, and there were mountains surrounding the valley in a circumference around the valley. A dry desert wind whipped through the valley, and Crush covered his face to keep the sand from abrading his eyes.

"Where are we?" Crush asked.

"Does it matter?" Roosevelt said, and he snapped his fingers and disappeared. Crush looked around quickly, but he was gone just that fast.

"Well, this sucks," Crush said, and he kicked the soft sand under his feet. He looked straight up at the peak of the spire, and the best that he could tell, it was just a tall spike of rock protruding up from the desert with a platform, a small mesa, bulging out at the top. He put his hands on his hips and looked around in all directions, and there was nothing but sand, rock, and dry winds as far as he could see. He sat down in the shade of the spire, and he started to think that none of this made any sense.

"Why go through all of the trouble of sending them out for Huit Brighter? Why did Roosevelt want to get rid of a lonely ruler like Felino in the middle of the wilderness?" he asked himself.

The answer to the second question really was not all that hard. Roosevelt was not much of a people person, as evidenced by the fact that he dumped Crush out in the middle of the desert. No, it was possible that Roosevelt had had enough of Washington and wanted somewhere else to retire. Maybe that was it, but who knew. For all Crush cared, he could have those deserted mountains all to himself.

The answer to the first question eluded him though. The director must have wanted to use his old friend Huit for something, some hidden agenda. That part of the mystery he would try to find out some day, especially if Roosevelt pulled some of the same stuff on his friend that he had pulled on the DAM. Crush was certain that the director was behind the dead agent who was stuck in a web in the Baltimore field office. It was also curious that Roosevelt's name popped up on the phone he took off a STUN agent. Those things were too common to be coincidences for Crush. He thought that he could expect answers from Roosevelt someday soon for his role in spying on his own team. For now, Crush needed to find a way out of this desert, and as he was thinking, his eyes passed over a lump in the sand at his feet. He reached over to the lump and pushed the sand that covered it away, and he found something that he did not expect. It was the amulet with the eye. Crush picked it up and blew the sand off of the eye lid, and when the dirt was all gone and the surface was clean, the eye opened.

"Fancy finding you here, Bob," Crush said, and he decided that Roosevelt had brought him here and made good on his promise. The thin necklace was still intact, and he placed it around his neck. He tapped the eye as if he were waking it up from a long sleep. "But if you're here, then where is Colonel Lowe?" He looked all around him, but there was no one. Then he looked up to the top of the spire where the mesa spread out, and he had an inkling of where Lowe might be. He placed his hand over the amulet, and he pictured himself on top of the mesa. The magic worked much faster than he would have anticipated, and the scenery around him changed from red sand to mostly blue sky. He was at least a hundred feet up in the air on top of a flat rock surface, and the open desert sky surrounded him on the tiny space no larger in surface area than a bedroom. A dry breeze whipped the dust around at his feet, and he let go of the amulet around his neck to let it fall to his chest. He did not see the colonel at first, but he felt the sharp edge of the cool blade as it parked gently against the skin of his neck. A whisper blew across his ear, and he knew he was caught.

"I've been waiting for someone to show up. I just didn't expect it to be you," Colonel Lowe told him in a scratchy voice. Crush did not move; he did not wish to give a desperate man a reason to do anything rash. Lowe reached around with his other hand and felt for the necklace on Crush's chest.

"Careful, this is only our second date," Crush told him, and he grabbed hold of Lowe's hand and the necklace.

"Thanks for bringing that trinket back up here to me. When I first showed up here, I dropped it, and it rolled off the edge of the rocks. Funny though, it was almost like it was trying to get away from me. As you can see from the view, I couldn't just go down and get it," Lowe explained, and he went to tug the amulet away from Crush's neck, but Crush did not ease his grip. Lowe dug the edge of the blade harder into Crush's neck, and reluctantly, he let go of Lowe's hand. "That's a good boy," he said and slipped the necklace between the blade and Crush's neck.

"You won't get away with this," Crush told him, but he was not so sure of that himself.

"Really? 'Cause it seems like I'm the one with the edge in this disagreement," he told Crush as he clutched the eye of the amulet in his hand. Then he shoved Crush away from him, and he tried to think of where he wanted to transport himself. He did not think fast enough because Crush whipped out his claws and swiped across Lowe's forearm, tearing through the fabric and drawing blood. The colonel reeled back in pain, and he was so surprised by Crush that he dropped Bob on the rocks. Bob rolled toward Crush's feet, and Lowe jumped on it first as if he were covering a grenade. Crush tackled him on the ground, and they fought for the amulet, wrestling and rolling on the hard stones until finally Crush found the eye resting in his own hands while Lowe still had the necklace tight in his fingers. Lowe had weapons, but he dared not let go of the necklace for fear of losing his one chance of escaping this open air jail cell suspended high in the sky.

"Are you ready?" Crush said to him, and the scenery around them immediately changed from the bright blue desert sky to pitch black.

"Where are we?!" Colonel Lowe snapped, and he was so stunned in the change that he made the mistake of letting go of the necklace.

"You wanted to take control of the DAM, right? Here's your big chance," Crush said as he backed away from Colonel Lowe in the dark, leading himself with his hand as he went. Then like the white flash of a light bulb in the dark, Crush disappeared, leaving Lowe to his own devices.

"Crap," Lowe muttered under his breath. His time on the mesa in the desert had been tough, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw light pouring in from beneath the bottom edge of a door. Lowe still had the knife in his hand, and he crept forward two steps toward the door. He felt something like a thin net come across his face, and when he tried to back away, it stuck to his skin. He remained calm, and he struck at it with his knife to see if he could cut it away, but the knife slid past the thin strands as if even the sharpest edge would not cut through. He took his free hand and reached for the flashlight in his belt strap, and he clicked the button only to find that the batteries had dried out from the arid desert environment.

"Double crap," he whispered, but he held onto his cool. He stood very still for a moment because he thought he felt movement in the strands stuck to his skin, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled up. There was complete silence for a moment, and then the HVAC unit in the building kicked in, and warm air began to blow through the room. With the low hum of the fan, he could hear even less inside of the room, but he suspected that he was alone nonetheless. He put the useless flashlight away, and with his free hand, he touched the strands that were stuck to his face. The thin cords were fibrous and sticky, and when he tried to move his hand away from his face, he found that his fingertips were stuck to the thin lines of string. His hand was in an awkward position next to his nose, and if someone had turned the light on, they would have thought that he was picking his nose, with strings of snot connecting his nose to his fingertips. He pulled as hard as he could to get his fingers away from his face, and the fibers stretched a couple of millimeters, just enough to give him hope, but then the thin skin of his fingertips felt as if it was tearing away from the lower layers beneath. He eased up too quickly and poked his cheek so hard that it felt like a punch to the face. He winced, and it seemed that no amount of effort short of ripping off his own skin would relieve the adhesion of the mysterious fibers to his body. In short, he was stuck in a nose picking position in the dark of a building.

"At least it has heat," he thought to himself. The fibers were thin enough to allow him to breathe; he smelled the air around him, and it finally struck his senses like a hammer. A horrid odor of rotting meat wafted pervasively in the air. He had not noticed it right off the bat; it just kind of snuck up on him, and when he took another deep breath, he had the overwhelming urge to puke. He had been in worse situations before, primarily in the desert and mountain regions of the Middle East, but he had never been stuck in what seemed to be an office overrun with the smell of road kill. It seemed ridiculous on the surface, but Crush had indicated to him that he may be in a DAM facility, though other than the brightly lit edge of the door and the stench of something quite dead, he could not make out his surroundings well enough to know exactly whether that was true or not. He let the tension out of his shoulders, rested for a minute to try to gather his thoughts, and he held back the urge to chuck up the last MRE he had eaten. The background noise of the heating system numbed his mind almost into a trance, but his stomach rolled mercilessly, even when he breathed through his mouth. It was then that he felt the ever-so-slight tremor ripple through the fibers, hit his skin, and then reflect back out, passing back and forth and diminishing with time until the tremor finally died out. It was against his better judgment, but he could not overcome the temptation to say something out loud, to try to connect to his surroundings like he had on the tiny mesa.

"Hello," he said aloud, and his voice did not echo, but was absorbed by the hidden objects in the peculiar dark room. He hoped that whatever was dead would not decide to talk back, and he was not disappointed as silence was the only reply. "Hello?" he questioned again, and the fan circulated the stench and waved the fibers across his face in response. Nothing. Sweat welled up in his palm as he gripped the knife, and Colonel Lowe grew more impatient the longer he stood in what seemed more and more to him to be a trap. He decided that the hunting knife may not be the best alternative, and so he carefully placed it into its holster on his belt. Then he reached for the holster next to it where he kept his pistol, and it was empty.

"What the heck?!" he said out loud, and he patted the area around his side, but he could not find the familiar piece of hardware on his side. He thought back to the last time he remembered feeling it, and it was on the mesa just before Crush had appeared with the amulet. He had been laying on his side, and the pistol had been poking uncomfortably into his hip. It was gone, and he could not explain where it had gone except to suppose that Crush had slipped it away from him during their brief struggle for the amulet. With nothing else to protect himself with, he started to reach for the knife again, and then he remembered that he had a lighter stuffed in an extra pocket on the side of his pants. It was on the other side of his body, and he had to squat down so that his arm would reach across easily. He tugged and shook the fibers which held him, and luckily they stretched just enough to allow his hand to reach almost to his other knee where he could feel his pants for the buttons of the pocket. The fibers vibrated back and forth from his own movement, and with his hand deep in the pocket, he paused to wait for the motions to stop. The springing action of the sticky cords dissipated to nothing, and at last, the creepy feeling of horror he had sensed before in this dark and close environment was gone. He felt safe.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he clutched the lighter and drew it out with one hand. Lowe sniffed in the warm, putrid-smelling air, and the odor brought back a memory from deep in his own mind. He thought back many years to when he had been in boot camp at Fort Bragg. The drill sergeant had made them march all night in the dark with one hand placed on the back of the man in front in case they fell asleep. Good for the guy in back; terrible for the guy in front. Lowe had been in the middle of the pack, and he did fall asleep several times that night, for God knew how long, only to be awoken when his boot sank into ankle-deep swamp water. The rancid smell clung to those boots for months until they were worn down to nubs on the soles, but he knew that there was no real danger in stepping in the sulfurous water that long night of marching. Lowe trusted the man in front of him with his life, Private Billy Joe Hill, otherwise known as Hillbilly Joe at the morning roll call, and he knew that if anything serious had been going on during the march, Private Hill would have taken care of him. Hill, after all, was a good soul, but an idiot. Lowe prided himself on being a great discerner of spirits, and he also knew that like Hill, and unlike himself, Crush was not a cold-blooded killer. Crush was an honorable idiot above all else; formed from the same mettle as Private Hill, who had led him through a night maze of swampy low country to come out alive on the other side. Crush would do no less.

Colonel Lowe knew that he had nothing at all to worry about. He might even make Crush regret that he had dropped him off in a DAM facility. Lowe lifted the lighter up to his face, and he flicked the roller and pressed the red tab. The sparks flew from the flint, but the flame did not take. He flicked it again, and the same. No flame. He shook the lighter to stir up the liquid inside, and then he struck it again. This time, a one inch flame held in the dark, and he could see the shimmer of the cords stretching out from his face to the ceiling like tight fishing lines in the mouth of a hooked fish. He lifted the flame up to the thin, strong cords, and the transparent strings vibrated, not, he thought, from the flame but from some unseen movement nearby. The first string melted and snapped in two, and one end dangled away into the dark while the other end balled up and slapped him hard in the chin. The strings began to dance up and down, tugging his head like a marionette on strings, but one-by-one, he burned the lines apart that held his face. When his head was free, he lifted the flame up higher to loosen his hand, and he glimpsed something dark stuck to the back of the door. It was hard to tell what it was because of the light pouring in from around the door frame, but it piqued his interest. Forgetting his hand for a moment, he extended the flame out toward the door so that he could get a better look. His hand danced with the movement of strings, but when the colonel deciphered what it was that was stuck on the back of the door, he no longer thought about the strings. He only thought about Private Hill and about Crush, how they may have been more different than he had discerned. He breathed in deep with a rush of adrenaline, and the stench almost burned his nose hairs. He quickly lifted the lighter above his head to burn the remaining strings apart, but the movement was too quick, and the flame went out. He flicked the lighter again and slowly lifted it above the other hand, and when he did, he saw the distorted reflection of the light in many tiny bubbles hovering in the air.

"Who the hell blew bubbles?" he said aloud, and a breath of air came down from above, and the light in the tiny bubbles flickered but did not burn out. The bubbles hovered, together, as if they were a part of each other. A oneness of shiny bubbles, unmoving in the breath of air, boxed around the perimeter by asymmetrically spaced hair. The sight was alien to him, but it made him feel claustrophobic, and so he dragged the flame over to the strands pasted to his hand. Another puff of rotten, filthy, stagnant air, blew out the flame before the strands could melt. The hand with the lighter flicked and flicked and flicked the flint while the other hand was raised up into something warm and wet. He pulled down with his weight, but the hand held. With an audible crunch, his arm was free of the sticky string, but when he moved his fingers, he could not feel the joints. He flicked the lighter again, and the flame hovered in one hand while wet droplets leaked down his other forearm. He brought the lighter over to see his other hand and inspect it, but there was no longer a hand there, only blood pouring and jagged wrist bones protruding from the nub that remained. The crunching sound continued, like the munching of crisped rice, and then a hairy, heavy weight fell on him. He dropped the lighter, and all was dark as he suffocated beneath. His last thought was that Crush was not like Hillbilly Joe.

### *

Epilogue

*

Dr. Tatum stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling of the jail cell. She had been there for ten days, and she had missed the funeral service for Seth. His family had requested that his body be flown back to their home on the east coast, and he had been given a veteran's honors. Uniforms, flags, and rifles. Even trumpets to play 'Taps'. The works, and he deserved it. She would have gone if she could have gotten out of this stinking jail cell, but there was too much bureaucracy tied up with the events at the nuclear plant. She was tired and dirty, but at least the temperature was warm enough to keep the bugs active. She watched her only roommate, a cockroach, meander from one corner of the ceiling to the other and back. She had named the bug "Bruce", and this particular cockroach had maneuvered the obstacle course of upside-down peeling paint chips like a marathon runner, and she wondered if anyone had ever considered opening up a website dedicated specifically to creepy crawly Olympics.

"It would be curious to see how Bruce would fare against the competition in Baltimore," she thought as the bug wound heroically around the curved walls of acrylic. She envisioned a whole east coast versus west coast competition with bugs from up and down each shore, maybe even include the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes if there were enough entrants. New Orleans, Chicago, and Detroit. Oh yeah, there would be enough for those coasts, too. Just one of the many things she looked forward to when she got out of the hole.

The familiar echo of a key inserting into a metal lock resonated down the hall, and Dr. Tatum watched Bruce stop all of a sudden with the sound.

"You were doing so well, young one," Dr. Tatum said, and she cut her gaze towards the bars of her cell. She could make out the shadows of someone walking down the hall; she just could not hear their footsteps quite so well since the explosion at the nuclear facility. Her ears were still ringing, but unless it was one of the few DAM lawyers that the Secret Service had assigned to her case, she really did not care who was passing through.

"It's okay, Bruce," she told the cockroach. "Proceed."

"Bruce? Who are you talking to, Doc?" came the familiar raspy voice. The words sounded like they were coming out of a pipe, but she could hear them well enough. Dr. Tatum glanced down from the ceiling, and her lips turned up at the corners into a thin smile. She thought that she had never been so glad to see those cat ears as she was now.

"Hi, Crush. Let me introduce you to Bruce. He is my cellmate and an extraordinary competitor," she said as she pointed to the ceiling. "I feed him crackers at dinner, and he runs from wall to wall like a machine all night long. If he were human, he'd make a good husband," she said and rested her elbow on the bed and her chin on her palm as she looked at Crush. "Are you here to chit chat?"

"Sure. Guard, can you please open the door?" Crush asked the guard, and the officer with the last name of Matthews unlocked the door and slid the bars to the side. Crush entered the cell in his best suit, and Dr. Tatum hardly recognized him in a three-piece.

"I'll be back in five minutes," the guard said and locked the door behind him.

"Make it fifteen, Matthews. We gotta catch up on old times," he debated with him, and Matthews gave him the 'yeah, right' look.

"Ten minutes max, fur face. I'll go get some crackers out of the vending machine, and then I'll be back."

"Promises, promises. I could use a can of tuna if they have it," Crush told him, and Matthews waved him off with the universal number one salute. Crush then leaned his back against the bars and crossed his brown leather shoes. "Hi, Doc."

"It's good to see you, Crush," she told him, and she stood up from the squeaky bed and gave him a hug. He really was not expecting the physical contact, but she had been through a lot and he returned the hug.

"It's good to see you, too," he said, and she limped back and forth in the cell.

"How's your leg?" he asked. She shrugged.

"A shot through the muscle. It looks worse than it feels, but the doctor they brought in said it should heal up within another month." Crush could see the path she had made in the small cell, and he knew that she had been pacing nervously, probably starting from the time they locked her up. "I was worried about you for sure when you didn't show up at the nuclear facility. I thought they had done something awful to you," she said as she bit her nails.

"They probably intended to, but you know me, I just wouldn't cooperate. After they took all of you guys away, STUN was going to put bullets in me and leave me for dead. Sounded painful to me, and I'm allergic to bullets, so I dodged them for a while," he told her as she marched back and forth.

"You know about Seth then, I guess," she said, but she already knew the answer. He patted the mattress of the bed and gave her an honest smile.

"Do you want to sit down? You're making Bruce look lazy." She crossed her arms and rested one hand on her cheek as she caught herself mid-step in her pacing, and she realized just how nervous she really was to talk to him. She decided that she must have looked foolish making tracks in the small cell, and she decided to take his advice and have a seat on the bed. The springs squeaked with her weight, and she tried to relax just a little, though her leg bounced up and down with nervous energy. When she realized he was staring at her knee, she caught herself and stopped. "I heard about Seth," he said. "I told Director Roosevelt to bail you and the others out for the funeral, but he said they couldn't. He said the charges that you're looking at are related to nuclear terrorism, and there was _no way_ they were going to let any of you out this century. Since I was never at the nuclear facility, they've got nothing on me. I went to Seth's funeral myself, and I had 'Taps' recorded for you."

Dr. Tatum's lip quivered, but she didn't cry.

"Listen, I'm going to get you out of here," he said to her. "I promise," he added with his hands in his pockets, and he bent down to look in her eyes. His eyes were so strong and reassuring that she believed him. It was then that she noticed the amulet hanging down from his tie.

"What's that?" she enquired, and his smile grew bigger. He stood up straight, and with his hand, he combed the amulet into place on his chest.

"This little thing? Well, let's just say that if the legal system doesn't work to get you out, then this will." Dr. Tatum did not know exactly what he meant, but she had a good idea that the amulet was magic. Her eyes opened wide when she remembered how Colonel Lowe had taken it from him and disappeared.

"That's the amulet you had in the cave. The one that Colonel Lowe stole from you. How did you get that back?!" she said, and she went rigid with fear.

"Roosevelt. He took me to it and dropped me off in a Utah desert," Crush told her.

"And Lowe? What about him? Was he . . . dead?"

"Oh, gosh no," he started and then his head bobbed back and forth as if his mind was debating with itself on a tennis court. "Not when I found him. I can't say for sure anymore."

"Oh, um, okay. Maybe I don't want to know," she said with nervous energy. "He was a villain all the way down to the core, but you, my friend, are not. Please be careful with it," she warned him. "It was one of those magical things that got me into so much trouble at the start, and here I sit with no 'Get out of jail free' card," she explained and filled him in about the magical charm that had dropped her out of a plane and into the Sierra Nevadas to begin with. "When we fell out of the plane, my notebook was left behind as part of my carry-on bag. There were some things in it that STUN could use against us."

"Don't worry about it. Anything they could have gotten from the notes, they could have gotten by simply listening in on us," he reassured her.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I had a lot of information about magical items in our possession in Baltimore. That could prove to be disastrous." He nodded silently because on that account, she could be right. She then told him the rest of the long story, and he listened patiently with his back leaned up against the bars of the cell. Just as she finished, the clanking sound of the Matthews' key inserting into the hall door clanked down the corridor.

"Well, our friend is back, so that means our time is up," Crush said, and he glanced down the hall. "I've visited the others, and they've all told me similar stories. What bothers me most is how Wither got away with the charm she stole from you." Then his eyes turned more serious, and he leaned over to whisper into her ear. "There's something else. The government sent a team of scientists in to check the meltdown site, and the whole place came up clean for radiation. Nada. Nothing, which means you all have nothing to worry about in the way of cancer. And they dug up a vault where they thought the child of stone would have been kept. There was not even a hint that it had ever been there."

Dr. Tatum's eyes nearly popped out of her head when the implications hit her.

"That thing spawned all kinds of abnormalities in people, including Cindy," she said as she watched for Matthews. His nervous whistling told her he was nearly there. "We have to get it back and hide it."

"Someday. That's an adventure for another time though," Crush explained, and then he clammed up as Matthews stopped just behind him.

"Don't mind my interruption," Matthews said. "I'm finishing my crackers," he said and stood there munching the crunchy nabs. All they could hear was his loud chewing, and Crush turned around and stared at him.

"How do you whistle with those dry things in your mouth?" he asked the guard, and Matthews shrugged his shoulders.

"Talent. Pure talent," he said to Crush, and the cat-man grinned.

"You've got a dry sense of humor to match. I also see that you forgot my tuna," Crush said, and Matthews silently ignored him as he unlocked the jail cell. "I guess that's my cue," he said and stepped out of the cell. Matthews shut the door and locked it, and Crush asked him, "Are you taking me to see Pound, now?"

"Grab your ankles and hold on tight," he told Crush, and they walked further down the corridor to see the remaining members of his team. Before he left Dr. Tatum's sight, he turned around and gave her a wink as if he had a plan. She laid down on the mattress and watched Bruce maneuvering the maze of paint chips on the ceiling. She tried not to think about Seth, but she didn't believe that was possible.

**********

Later that evening, Officer Sevier took over second shift duties, and he brought a plate of dinner for Dr. Tatum. He handed it to her through the open slot between the bars, and he gave her a friendly smile as she took the plate.

"Do you want to have dinner together, hun?" he asked with a grin of yellow teeth, and she shook her head 'no' with a worried look on her face. He looked both ways to see if anyone was coming, and he took out his keys and started to unlock the cell. Dr. Tatum stepped backward nervously with the plate of food in her hands, and she thought that this was going to be the beginning of a really awful encounter.

"What do you think you're doing?" a voice came from behind her, and she whipped around and spilled the beans and gravy onto the floor. It was a tall, dark stranger hovering in the rear corner of the cell. He was hooded and cloaked, and he did not budge an inch as Officer Sevier pulled his gun. Dr. Tatum did not remember him being there; he had simply just appeared, and now she found herself in the line of fire.

"Who are you, and how did you get into this cell?" Sevier barked from a tense stance, legs spread apart and both hands on his pistol.

The stranger did not move.

"Answer me!"

The stranger disappeared as easily as he had appeared, and Officer Sevier blinked his eyes. Dr. Tatum dropped the tray of food, and it clattered to the floor, sending the reconstituted mashed potatoes and the rest of the beans all over the cell floor. Sevier nearly jumped out of his skin with the clatter, and he misfired his weapon into the ceiling, making a new pit for Bruce to contend with on his many journeys.

Too upset and afraid from what had just happened, Officer Sevier backed out of the room without a word and locked the cell behind him. Surely the gunshot would bring questions from the department, and he would have some explaining to do.

"What had he been up to anyway?" she said to herself and shivered at the implications. Officer Sevier was obviously not as law abiding as the others in the department, and it was clear to Dr. Tatum that she had avoided a very bad situation with the stranger's help. There was something familiar about him that she could not quite place, and she did not see his face beneath the hood. But he reminded her, a little perhaps, of Seth.

She sat down on the hard springs of the squeaky bed, and she buried her face in her hands and began to cry. Officer Sevier and the stranger both had upset her, but she had come out of a terrible situation unscathed. She felt goosebumps pop up along her shoulder, and she peeked out between her fingers to see Crush standing there in the cell. He was clothed in a DAM uniform, and he held the amulet which was draped around his neck in his hand.

"I'm here with Bob," he said and held up the amulet in his hand. "Ready to get the heck out of this place?" he asked, and he reached his other hand out to her. He saw that her eyes were puffy, and he could see that she was upset.

"Yes," she answered with hesitation. "Was that you here earlier?" Crush looked puzzled.

"You mean when I visited you in my suit today?" he asked her. Dr. Tatum shook her head 'no', and he had no idea about what she was referring to, but when he saw the mess of food all over the floor, he considered whether he had just missed a moment of great consequence. He waited patiently, and she pushed back her hair with her hands and stood up from the bed.

"But where would we go?"

"We can't go back to the DAM. Anywhere is better than this place though," he reassured her and held his open hand out to her.

"What about the others?" she worried, always thinking about someone else rather than herself.

"I've taken care of the rest. You're the last," he reassured her. She heard some commotion out in the corridors of the jail, and she knew the other officers would be here soon enough to investigate why Sevier had shot his weapon inside of a cell. Hopefully, they would ask him why he had his gun out in the first place. She did not want to be there when that happened. She took Crush's hand, and they disappeared.

Bruce crawled down the wall and parked by a puddle of gravy. He enjoyed the mashed potatoes and gravy at any rate, so not everything was a bust.

**********

Tomorrow Mountain Research Facility, Albemarle, NC

Crush and Dr. Tatum reappeared inside of a dimly lit warehouse. Light from the setting sun broke through the painted windows of the historic facility, and there was a musty odor that wafted through the air inside of the building. Dr. Tatum took one look around, and though she was not repulsed by the facility, it felt foreign to her. Crush let go of her hand, and he placed his fingers to his lips.

"You might want to cover your ears," he instructed her, and she did as she was told. Crush let out an earsplitting whistle, and the doors to one of the rooms in the far corner opened. There was a light on inside of the room, and it was hard for Dr. Tatum to tell who was standing in the doorway. Three people walked out of the room, and she recognized one of them by his gait.

"Pound!" she hollered, and she limped across the empty space to give him a hug. Another man who was with him introduced himself to her as Burt. A teenage boy was also with them, and he told her his name was Wilbur. The two of them had been brought back to this world from the mines by Crush and Pound, and they had survived the attack by STUN on Faraway Mountain. Then she turned around to Crush with a smile. "You really did it! But where are we?"

"We're in North Carolina again. This is an old Secret Service facility that was used for the investigation of counterfeiting way back during the prohibition era. Moonshine transport was rampant around here, and counterfeiting was one of the many underground activities that branched out from there," Crush explained.

"Yeah, and we've got some awesome hiking trails nearby," Wilbur jumped in excitedly. "You know I think you'll like the view from the nearby mountaintop. Come on, I'll help you get to the top before the sun disappears behind the horizon," he told her and pulled her toward the exit. The kid was so excited to have a new face around that he just could not wait to show her everything he had discovered there. Dr. Tatum went with him, and they left Crush and Pound and went out the side of door of the warehouse. The calls of robins, mockingbirds, and cardinals passed through the door as they went out.

Pound looked over at Crush, and he shook his head with a half-smile.

"Never thought I'd see us all together again," he said with a shake of his head.

"Who knows how long it will last, but I hope we can make a go of it here. Experiences like we had, they kind of either pull people together or rip them apart," Crush replied and crossed his arms. "We'll have to see how it goes."

"Simon's enjoying it, that's for sure. We let him out into the forest, and he hasn't been back in two days," Pound said.

"He deserves a good forest, and the oaks out here should remind him of his home," Crush said.

"Did you check out Faraway Mountain while you were gone," Pound said and placed a firm hand on Crush's shoulder. "Burt and Wilbur told me that Andrew Hunter had been shot by STUN out there."

"They mentioned it to you, huh?" he said somberly and fingered the amulet nervously in his hand. "I went to see him in the hospital, and he's doing fine. You know how I know? He asked me for the money that we owed him, and I paid up."

"Cash is king," Pound replied.

"Indeed. I also went out to the mountain to see if there were any other survivors, and I hiked the trail from the road to the mountain and back to the road again. I saw all of the burnt places in the ground, where STUN had, well, you know. It's hard for me to say it," he told him. "Anyways, that's why I was gone so long getting the Doc."

"Oh, man," Pound said under his breath.

"Those people were my friends. Seth, too," Crush said and rubbed the temples of his forehead with his hand.

"Mine, too," Pound added.

"Yeah," Crush agreed, and he looked away from Pound for a second. No words passed between them; they both grieved for their lost friends in a moment of unasked for, but necessary, silence. "Anyways, I made a call to the local authorities with a STUN cell phone I had lifted at the cave, and I let them know there had been trouble down on one of the hiking trails."

"Do you think they'll blame us for it?"

"Without a doubt. They're blaming us for the destruction of a nuclear facility. They've got us in hiding until it all blows over. Why wouldn't they just include that, too?" Crush said pessimistically. "But I did plant some evidence while I was at the mountain. I lifted Colonel Lowe's gun at our last meeting, and I left it on the site, out in the open. If nothing else, it will give them something to chase in a different direction."

"That's pretty slick. And you never found Cindy, huh?"

"No. When they arrested you all after the explosion, they must have taken her off in a different direction. Somebody else knew how special she was."

"Who?" Pound asked.

"I don't know, you're asking the wrong man. She was too valuable for either the government or STUN to ignore. After losing Huit Brighter, my guess is she's a new pet project for one of them. They never found the bodies of the two men you said held the doors to the facility shut. What were their names?" Crush asked.

"Deke Slate and Carlos Gold. They had skin like Cindy's," Pound said. "She was tougher than any of us, I'll say, but they could have taken her."

"Maybe. It's a good place to start anyhow. What you should be most worried about is Sherry Lance," Crush explained, and Pound looked at him as if he was clueless. "Word from Roosevelt was that the small private plane he had rented to bring Bat across the country went down on the return flight over Death Valley with Bat, Sherry, and the pilot all on board. Only the pilot's body was found." Pound's eyes grew as large as saucers.

"You don't think those two are loose, do you?" Pound asked, but really did not expect an answer. "Of course they are. That's how crap goes for us."

"Listen, I know how much you liked her . . . ," Crush said with sympathy. Pound waved him off.

"I'm over it, I'm over it. It's hard to like mosquitoes, and that's what she turned out to be. We should have left her where she was," Pound said.

"She had her part to play. She sure wreaked havoc with STUN, and it's possible you guys would never have escaped if she hadn't taken out the guards inside the building," Crush stated matter-of-factly.

"That's harsh, but it did play a part in our escape. We could just have easily have been tortured and killed if she had not been along," Pound said, but the subject was raw, and he walked away without another word. Crush understood, and he let him go. After a moment, he walked toward the exit, and he ambled outside. The wind was cool, the leaves had fallen, and he could see the top of the nearby mountain.

He looked at the closed metal door behind him, and then he gazed at the clear blue sky above. A path led up the mountainside to a picnic table at the top, and he could see that there was no one at the summit. He patted his pocket, and he felt the book that he had recently bought inside. He pulled it out and looked at the author's name.

"John Muir," he said to himself and put the book back into his pocket beside the flashlight. He would read it in the dark when he found a quiet place at the top of the mountain. Crush hiked up the mountain alone that day and left the cares of a troubled world behind.

On top of Tomorrow Mountain was the place he wanted to be. At least for today.

###

Afterword

This issue ties up the end of the third novel in the series. I wanted to thank all of the fans of Crush and Pound for their many kind words on the series, and I hope that the stories have been as enjoyable for you as they have been for me. If you liked Crush and Pound, then never fear, I have a feeling that if our heroes tarry for too long at Tomorrow Mountain, new villains will rise and old villains will return. If that happens, Crush and Pound will find a way out. In the meantime, if you have a craving for a story with Crush in it, check out "Caught in the Neuse". The cat man makes a brief appearance somewhere near the end of the story, because all roads wind their way together in this universe. During their brief hiatus, two other novels have made their way onto the page.

The first novel is a tale set in the future and takes place primarily in the great void of the Andromeda Galaxy, a place where even the famous MIT grad Howard Wolowitz has never visited. The preliminary title is "Android and the Werewolf", because there are things that haunt us on earth and in space. If you don't believe it, ask R. J. MacReady and Elwin Ransom.

The other novel is set in the Old Testament during the reign of King Ahab of Samaria. I filled in the blanks between verses with fantasy, because . . . well . . . why not? The title for that one might be "Fall of the King", if all goes well.

With all that said, I want to thank my wife Brenda for taking the time to read the material before I publish it. She has a keen eye for when I screw things up, and she helps keep the car between the ditches. She also lets me get away with writing fantasy when I should be mowing the lawn. For all of these things and many more, I'm truly grateful.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope this story and all of the others have lived up to your expectations. If not, then there's always tomorrow on the other side of the mountain!

About the Author

Christopher D. Carter is an engineer by day, and transforms into a writer and artist by night. He lives with his wife and cats in central North Carolina.
