by Phil Wohl
came over to comfort Nicole and Max had had enough, “Okay, mom, let’s move on!”
“Please!” Daniel added.
Then Daniel played a scene that even Nicole was not aware of. It was Drew leaving Nicole’s room with her settling in under the covers and saying, “Can you close the door, Danny?”
Nicole looking at Daniel with amazement, “Did I say that to him? No, I couldn’t have said that to him!”
Daniel simply smiled and then replayed the wonderful slip of the tongue, “Can you please close the door, Danny.”
“Looks like you said it, mom.”
“Well, I’ll be…” Nicole muttered. “Well at least you could see where my head was at.”
“Never had a doubt,” Daniel replied.
Nicole was ready to get back on track and finish her story.
“Then Drew went to the beach to clear his head, because he was so upset that he betrayed Aunt Carla and their relationship. That was about the time that your father descended from the sky and dropped the bomb, and the knowledge, on Uncle Drew that he was a vampire, not a hunter. Andrew became so upset that he wound up releasing Uncle Cal from his watery tomb.”
They witness Daniel flying away and then Drew reacting angrily by soaring up into the clouds as a hawk and then splashing down into the surf and changing into a shark, diving to the depths of the ocean and slamming his hammerhead nose against a huge rock formation.
“Uncle Cal happened to be under those rocks…” she added. She then tried to sum it up like a defense attorney presenting her final arguments, “So you can see that it looked a lot worse than it actually was, Maxwell. None of us were obviously invested in anything else than what the natural order dictated. I’ve always loved your dad from the moment we met at grade school. Cosmically, we are the only parents you ever could have had.”
She then looked at Daniel and he nodded in approval of the statement, “What your mom said..."
Maxwell’s clouded mind finally cleared, as the morning sun started its gradual climb up the morning landscape. He and his parents were no longer at the beach as they all came back on line next to each other on the open Beach Haven Park field. They looked over at Hartwell, who was experiencing a more touching, ice-cube from the eyes moment.
“That was beautiful,” Hartwell said as he had witnessed the entire successful family reunion.
He regained his composure and thought ahead to bigger and better things, “Time to get to work, Maxie,” he said in a stern voice to his grandson.
Max had been reborn during his five hours off the grid.
“I’m ready to rumble, grandpa.”
TWENTY-NINE
An interesting battle took place on day three of the war. Hartwell’s big plan included Samuel’s participation, so he regrettably had to get into Max’s head a little bit to slow him down. A key part to his strategy was to keep Lowery and his people in the dark about the real capabilities they were up against. He had been in Daniel’s head for days already, which stopped his son from attempting to alter gene sequences in order to try the level the playing field a bit. The Hartwell clan was so outnumbered that they could never win a straight battle, no matter what organizational tactics Max employed.
Speaking of Samuel, he retired to his bedroom shortly after dinner and then fell fast asleep a few seconds after his head hit the pillow. This obvious exhaustion was really Max’s internal computer shutting his external body down so it could go to work. It would be a pattern that would continue for the next six days, with Samuel sleeping round-the-clock by the end of the period. Hartwell did his best to keep the attention off Samuel, while also testing some of the other pieces of his strategy in the meantime.
“Are we going to do anything different tonight?” Cal Brewster asked the group a few hours before they were going to head out to Beach Haven Park for the third round of the war. “Because, round two didn’t go quite as well as round one.”
“They adjusted to our strategy and sent the whole army instead of little groups,” Aaron replied. He continued, “We have to find a way to separate the horde into smaller pieces.”
The image of a cheese and cold cut slicer behind a deli counter came into Max’s mind and then the thought made a break for it on the outside, “Deli slicer.”
“What about a deli slicer, Maxie?” Hartwell asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
“Have you ever seen the slicer they use behind the counter at the deli?”
Everyone replied, “Yes,” at different intervals.
“It takes a large chunk and reduces it to thin slices. We somehow have to funnel their width in the air to something more narrow…” he was saying before Cal Brewster tired of the whole thing.
Although Hartwell did not enjoy seeing his grandson be cut down to size, he nonetheless counting on the most abrasive of the hunters to want to pursue instead of purely reacting to every little thing their opponent did.
“I really miss the days when I could walk up to one of you and just… what are the words I’m looking for?”
Drew filled in the blanks for his uncle, “Throw down?”
Cal nodded at Drew in approval, “Yeah, we threw down!”
“Like when we both punched out that annoying protector a few weeks ago?” Thaddeus added.
“Yes!” Cal replied. “Just like that! I knocked him down, he got up, and then you pulled out a pair of brass knuckles and knocked him out!”
“And again at the bagel store,” Garrison added.
“But, if we engage them in hand-to-hand combat, then there is no chance we can win,” Hartwell stated, knowing that the collective pride of the group would be overwhelmingly in favor of dropping the gimmicks in favor of going out fighting the old-fashioned way. It was just ironic that Hartwell now had the opposite view in his older years – that pride had nothing to do with it and you should try to win by any technologically means at your disposal. When it was just he and Garrison fighting Thaddeus, and even Emily and Cal, there was so much less on the line. But, now that the family had grown and even integrated, it didn’t really pay to take chances and be focused on pride as a directional factor.
Thaddeus was now on center stage for a change as he turned to long-time opponent Garrison, “Didn’t that look like it felt good?”
Gary smiled, “Yeah, I would like to take a shot at him.”
“Count me in!” the largest member of the group, Aaron, enthusiastically shouted.
Maggie had heard enough of all of the club-dragging and drooling of the cavemen in her midst.
“So, what you saying is that we have no chance without a plan, but you guys don’t care because it doesn’t look manly?”
Thaddeus looked at Garrison, Cal and then Andrew, and they gave a collective “Yeah.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Belinda chimed in, calling on a bit of sarcasm.
The tide was turning and the women appeared intent on jumping off the sinking ship.
“It always sounds like you don’t even need us there," Carla said.
“Yeah, then why do we even have to go?” Nicole added.
Emily finally caved and got fully in touch with her softer side, “Hey, we could work on knitting that quilt for the winter!” she said to the other woman.
“Yeah, I just went to Beach Haven Knitters and got us all new needles and supplies!” Sharon happily chimed in.
“Can you teach me?” Kayla asked Sharon.
“Of course!” Sharon replied.
Fellow knitting enthusiast Valerie Winters finally had a reason to enter the conversation, “You guys knit?”
The women left the room and the sounds of dissension were music to Hartwell’s ears, better than any Vivaldi concerto.
Agent Blake turned to Joe Winters, “This isn’t good.”
Joe replied, “My sentiments exactly.”
Hartwell made sure the men stayed sufficiently macho in their pursuit of engaging in a ‘real’ fight for a change. A few hours later, the
men were in the main room of the house, while the women were in the newly-built knitting and crafts room in the west wing of the house. While they cared about their men and the cause they were fighting for, their thoughts couldn’t have been further from the battle that was scheduled to take place that night. When they heard hard rain falling on the roof of the room, their plans for the night were sealed.
“Is that rain?” Nicole asked.
The women looked up toward the ceiling to gauge the weather, “Sounds like it,” Sharon stated.
“I just got my hair done this morning,” Belinda said.
Carla chimed in, “Just put a fresh coat of polish on my nails.”
Maggie was up next, “Deep-conditioning my hair.”
“I like to knit,” Valerie added.
Then the group looked at Emily because she was the consummate warrior who would never back down, at least under normal, dry circumstances.
She was in no mood to stop such progress, “I’m just sick of dying!” she said while holding a spool of yarn for Valerie.
Back at the front door, the men felt like they had a job to do.
“We’re leaving!” Cal Brewster yelled loud enough so the women could hear from the other room.
“All right!” Emily yelled back. “We’ll see you in the morning!”
“Call us when you have a strategy again!” feisty Belinda added, as the women enjoyed a good chortle.
THIRTY
It rained hard the next three nights, as the women continued their knitting crusade while the men remained steadfast in their position to prove a point. After the first night and then the early morning, the men