by Joyce Armor
* * *
Ellie rushed into the hospital cafeteria, spotting Bonnie and the crew near the emergency exit, where they were dining on burgers, salads, fruit bowls and other offerings. She grabbed a chair from another table and sat, quickly bringing the others up to date on the abduction and Sludge’s threats.
Bonnie sighed and wearily started to rise. “I’ll get the comic.”
Ellie grabbed her arm. “No. There’s got to be another way. We can’t let him win. At least let’s try to come up with some kind of plan.” She pulled out her phone and looked at the time. “We’ve got about 30 minutes. That’ll leave me 10 minutes to get back to the sleazy motel.”
Bonnie sat back down. She looked dead tired, Ellie thought, and maybe a little older. Stark fear will do that to you.
“I know Roger’s doing better. How are you doing?”
Bonnie looked a little surprised and smiled. “I’m hanging in there. This has been so hard. He’s my rock.”
“And you’re his roll,” Ellie said.
“This latest crisis can’t be good for his heart,” Chantella noted.
“No,” Bonnie agreed. “We’ll figure this out on our own.”
They quickly tossed out ideas and just as quickly rejected them. Giving Sludge the comic wouldn’t guarantee Russell’s safety—Sludge had definitely gone ‘round the bend, and there was no telling what he would do. How could he think he could get away with this when they knew who he was? It didn’t make sense, and that was the most troubling aspect of all. Maybe it was less about the comic and more about revenge. Could he really be planning to kill them all along? In any case, he wasn’t thinking or acting rationally and that was downright frightening. That made him totally unpredictable.
The guys favored a frontal assault (no surprise there), and the women counseled caution. While Bonnie was thinking they could really use her brilliant husband’s input, Roger was chafing in his hospital bed. Like Bonnie, he had always been intuitive, and as he propped himself up on the pillows and picked up a dish of applesauce, he had that nagging feeling he got when something bad was going to happen. It was becoming almost as unbearable as his catheter was until they had finally removed it.
He didn’t think he was about to die, not after surviving the heart attack and surgery, although he knew God had a good sense of humor. Of course, he could be wrong about not being at death’s door, but he was pretty much a fatalist anyway. If it was his time, it was his time. Although Bonnie would kill him if he died. Ha!
Roger put down the spoon that held a blob of applesauce he just couldn’t make himself eat and reached over to the side table for his cell phone. They had just moved him from the ICU stepdown unit earlier, or the phone would have been off-limits. He speed dialed Bonnie.
“What’s wrong?” she said when she saw his name come up.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t start playing me now, Bonster.”
And that’s how Roger, on speaker phone, came to add his two cents to the discussion. He agreed that leaving Russell to fend for himself was never a consideration. Giving Sludge the comic was again debated and rejected. Calling the police was also discussed and thrown out. The consensus of opinion was that either the cops might suspect Bonnie and Roger were trying to pull a fast one or that the police department might be too gung-ho or not gung-ho enough and it might get Russell injured or killed.
Ellie had a lot more faith in law enforcement than the rest of the group, but she recognized there wasn’t enough time in this instance for bureaucracy.
“And Sludge might be crazy enough to kill Russell—or Muskman—out of spite if he’s cornered,” she pointed out.
They had just about run out of ideas when Roger had a thought. “Remember “Muskman” #4? The showdown with Dex Druther?”
“Who’s Dex Druther?” Tiffy asked.
Bonnie explained he was one of Muskman’s arch enemies, a man as ruthless in his personal life as he was in business. Dex Druther didn’t even recycle, for God sakes. In the pivotal scene in issue 4, Muskman had faced down Dex, who held Penelope and him at gunpoint.
Wesley perked up. “I know that issue. Penelope pretended to faint.”
“Right,” said Spencer. “It distracted Dex just for a split second, and Muskman was able to jump him.”
“I can fake faint,” Ellie said. “Piece of cake.”
“Wait a minute,” Bonnie chimed in. “Didn’t Muskman get shot in that issue?”
“Well, yeah, there was that,” Spencer admitted.
“What?!” Ellie felt all the blood leave her head and pool in her stomach. If anything happened to Russell…
“This is different,” Roger pointed out. “Dex Druther was an evil guy who broke girls’ hearts and defiled compost heaps.”
“The bastard,” Wesley said.
“Aren’t compost heaps already defiled?” That was from Chantella.
She’ll make a great mother.
This was all starting to feel surreal again to Ellie, who looked at her watch. “Eighteen minutes.”
“Sludge might be nuts, but he’s also greedy, as we’ve established,” Roger said. “We just have to knock him off his game enough for Russell to jump him and Wesley and Spencer to rush in.”
Ellie was still skeptical. “Do you think Russell will remember that issue and know what to do?”
Tiffy burst out laughing. “Hashtag, Russell could probably recite every issue of Muskman backwards and play all the parts.”
“We have to make Sludge think I’ve brought the comic, or there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“Oh, no,” Bonnie said. “The cops still have the fake cover that was on display.”
Following a long silence, Roger spoke up. “Head over to the Farm Out booth. I’ll call Jasper. He has a printer there, and he can whip you out a copy from our website.” He was breathing heavily and had to catch his breath. “Put the cover on a copy of issue 2. The two issues started out similarly.”
“All my comics are originals,” Spencer said, a little bit miffed.
“He’s going to know.” Ellie couldn’t seem to tamp down her feeling of panic.
“Not until he has it in his hands,” Roger said. “You need to faint before that happens. If you fall with it in your hands, he’ll for sure be distracted.”
“Right.” Ellie could see that. Who do you think you are, Penelope?
“Okay, let’s go,” Spencer said and they all got up.
They all looked at one another, nodding their heads. Spencer put his hand in the middle of the table. “All in?”
One by one, they placed their hands on his and said together, “All in.”
“One more thing,” Roger added. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but at the designated time to meet Sludge, I’m gonna call one of our detective friends. Hopefully that will get the cops there a few minutes later, but not in time to mess up our plan.”
Ellie gave him the motel name and room number and they all started off.
Are you out of your mind? You’re Holly Happy. You should be terrified. You can’t do this. Run! Run like the wind! Ellie had never thought of herself as particularly brave. This was Russell, though, kooky, funny, adorable, irksome Russell, the man she loved…
Not that again.
Good lord, did she honestly, for absolutely sure, love him? She hadn’t even slept with him. Okay, that was kind of a shallow thought, like you can’t love someone for his character. Brian was so perfect, especially on paper. Then again, paper didn’t verbally spar with her so artfully or tweak her conscience. Paper didn’t somehow make her believe in romance and love again. Now that’s just silly. He doesn’t love you. He’s a fly-by-nighter if ever there was one.
Okay, she’d had the love thought three or four or five times now and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she did love him. And Head Voice could bite her. The fact that he didn’t love her should have been a deal breaker
, especially for a relationship and romance wuss like her, but it wasn’t. Love was selfless. She was going to save Russell or die trying. And if he thought she was an idiot for doing it, or if he treated her like his annoying sister, then so be it. Just having the ideal again felt positively renewing. But he better not pat her on the head or she’d deck him.
“You really should be a creative writer.
They got back to the convention center in record time. Bonnie got the fake cover from the Farm Out booth and at the Full Court Press booth stapled it onto a copy of issue 2 that she’d removed the cover from just as Ellie’s phone rang. Ellie pulled her phone out of a pocket, looked at it and ended the call. Bonnie raised an eyebrow.
“It’s Toni. I don’t want to talk to her because I know she’ll try to talk me out of this.”
Bonnie nodded. She understood. Some things you just had to do.
“Group hug,” Tiffy said, and surprisingly, perhaps, everybody crowded in and squeezed. God, Ellie loved these people.
A moment later, Bonnie handed her the comic and squeezed her hand, boring into her face with a look that said “be careful, we love you, bring Russell back, don’t do anything crazy.”
Chantella hugged Wesley like there was no tomorrow, and both Bonnie and Ellie understood her added concern for his safety. He was going to be a daddy.
Ellie took off, moving through the crowd as fast as she could without drawing attention to herself, with Wesley and Spencer on her heels. On the way, she reminded herself that bravery wasn’t the absence of fear; it was moving forward despite nearly paralyzing fear. When they got to her truck, they synchronized their watches, which for two of them was actually the times on their phones. Are watches becoming obsolete? She really needed to shut Head Voice down for a while. An extraneous thought could get her killed.
“I know this’ll work,” Wesley said. Ah, the confidence of youth, my young knight.
Now there was an extraneous thought that made her smile, even in this direst of situations.
She told them where the Conchita Motel was located in case they got separated in traffic and hopped into her truck with a determination that surprised her. Penelope wouldn’t let Muskman down, and she wouldn’t let Russell down. She could do this. The men parked in the strip mall parking lot and would surreptitiously head toward the motel and Sludge’s room. Ellie parked at the motel, gave them a few moments to get closer, grabbed the fake Number One and, her heartbeat escalating—she surely must have used up a year’s supply of adrenaline since she’d arrived in Las Vegas—she headed toward the climax of this frightening drama. However it turned out, she swore she’d protect Russell. Ooh, love is good. It makes you courageous. Even if it makes you stupid, too.
When she knocked on the door, even her knuckles were trembling. Let the play begin. If Sludge had opened the door, maybe she could have shoved it in his face or done something else to disarm him or throw him off balance. But he just moved a curtain aside to peek out the window and then shouted for her to come in. The man has no manners at all. What a lout. As she entered the room, she made sure she held the comic on the side away from him so he couldn’t grab it. Russell, who had been sitting on the bed, stood. To keep Sludge from asking for the comic immediately, Ellie started blabbing as she neared Russell.
“You can’t believe how hard it was to talk Bonnie into giving up the comic. They had it in a safe deposit box at the bank. At first I thought it was Issue Four,” she said, trying to give Russell a look without Sludge seeing that she was giving him a look, but it’s for sure Number One, not Number Four. I hurried as fast as I could, and I thought for a while there I wasn’t going to…”
“…Just shut up and give me the comic,” Sludge ordered, taking a step toward them.
It was now or never. “Oh…of course…here it…oh, dear…I can’t breathe…I’m…” She looked at the comic almost in slow motion and released it. As it fell to the floor, Sludge lurched toward it and Ellie crumpled with an “oh,” falling on the comic as Russell lunged at Sludge. Everything was going according to plan, except the door was locked and Wesley and Spencer couldn’t get in.
She could hear them kicking it or lunging at it or something. Ellie started to get up to help Russell. Now was her chance to wail on Sludge and she wasn’t about to miss it for anything. And then the gun went off and she was back down again. Ow! That hurt. Her breathing became labored. She struggled to get up, but that wasn’t working so well. What was up with that? She looked down and saw blood spreading across her chest. Uh-oh, that can’t be good.
Just then the door crashed open and Wesley and Spencer burst in. Russell had pounded Sludge’s hand on the floor until he had finally dropped the gun, but they were still going at it, rolling around and getting in blows where they could. Spencer picked up the lamp off the nightstand, jerking the cord from the wall, walked over and waited until Sludge was on top. He clunked him on the head with the lamp as Wesley knelt by Ellie. He took off his t-shirt and pressed it to her wound.
She gasped and her eyes fluttered open. “Is Russell okay?” she asked weakly.
Wesley looked over his shoulder. Sludge was out cold, Spencer looked very satisfied and Russell was struggling to his feet. “Although he’s a little beat up, he’s fine.”
“I think I’m lying on the comic,” she said before he started to fade away as the blackness overtook her. She was out cold before Russell rushed to her side. He took one look, pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.
About that time the cops burst in and put everyone except Ellie in handcuffs until they could sort out the situation.
* * *
It took nearly four hours at the police station to untangle the day’s events, which entailed starting the story in the 1970s, when four friends put their heads together and created a company to publish underground comix. The process involved separate interviews of Russell, Spencer, Wesley and Sludge, who had regained consciousness in the hospital but had a concussion. He was lying anyway, so the Full Court Press guys couldn’t see why that interview even mattered. Fortunately, Sludge’s cousin Stewie sang like a canary, and the police bought the true version of what happened.
Russell had checked in periodically with Bonnie to see how Ellie was doing and was relieved to hear the prognosis was good. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but doctors had removed the bullet and sewn her up. She was still unconscious from blood loss but, barring complications, she was expected to make a full recovery. She had risked her life to save him. He was humbled by that. What a woman.
When the cops released him, he headed straight for the hospital, not bothering to stop at his hotel to change out of the costume. If he got strange looks anymore for wearing it outside the convention hall, he didn’t notice. Come to think of it, he never had. He just needed to get to Ellie and see for himself that she was all right. She had somehow broken through his defenses, and he was through pretending she hadn’t. Funny, he hadn’t thought about Tiffy in ages. Tiffy was a great girl. But Ellie was…Ellie. Mine, he thought.
As Ellie struggled to open her eyes the next day, it took her a minute or two to realize she was in the hospital and to remember what had happened. Muskman was the one who was supposed to get shot, doofus.
“Hashtag, you look awful.”
She slowly turned her head, knowing she would see Tiffy, who was wearing a cute little orange shorts outfit and looked like she had just stepped out of a teen magazine. She had her hair in a side ponytail and was filing her nails.
“What are you doing here?” Ellie said weakly. “You don’t like hospitals.”
“I told Russell I’d sit with you until he got back. He was here all night, you know. Hashtag, I know I hate hospitals, but I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Thanks, Tiffy.” Why did it hurt to move? God, even her hair hurt. “I really appreciate it.”
“Do you want some water or juice?”
She started to shift her position and grimaced. Must remember not to move, she note
d. “Maybe just a chip of ice.”
Tiffy used tongs to place a few ice chips from an ice bucket into a glass and hand it to Ellie. It took a surprising amount of effort to get one of the chips into her mouth. She sucked on it gratefully and waited for it to melt.
“How long have I been here?”
“Since yesterday afternoon. You got shot.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Tell me.”
Just then the door opened and Russell walked in carrying a white bag. “I got your jelly donuts,” he said to Tiffy, then looked at Ellie. “You’re awake.”
She smiled. He was still dressed as Muskman. But of course. She wouldn’t be surprised if the costume was starting to get a little gamey, but he sure looked good to her.
Tiffy grabbed the donut bag. “Ooh, I love these. Thank you, Russell. I’m going back to the hotel. I told Spencer I’d meet him at the pool.”
“Thanks for coming, Tiffy,” Ellie said. “It means a lot to me.”
She waved and headed off, her jaunty ponytail bouncing along beside her. By that time Russell was leaning back in the chair, his head to one side, watching Ellie. She smiled. If she saw him 30 years from now, she would still picture him in this ridiculous costume. He’d finally convinced her. He was Muskman. She inhaled a bug or something and started coughing. Ow! That hurt. It also concerned Russell, who leaned forward.
“Are you all right?”
“I will be,” she said, taking in a ragged breath. “Tiffy said you’d been here all night.”
“Well, somebody had to make sure you didn’t fall out of bed.”
She looked down at the bandage on her left side.
“The bullet lodged in your shoulder, but it missed the bone.”
She tried to sit up but it hurt too much. “Feels like it’s still there.”
He fluffed a couple of pillows behind her and helped her sit up. “The doctor said you’ll make a full recovery. You want some water?”