It took only fifteen minutes or so and then I was able to stand up again. We brought the pile of blankets back into the room that we’d put Jim into. I looked up into the chimney of the fireplace in the room to see if it was clear. Finding it so I went back into the kitchen where I’d crashed into, grabbed an armful of the wood that had broken when I fell through and brought it into the sitting room.
"Going to start a fire?" Karen asked.
"Yes," I told her, "It’s cold and I want to get warm. We’ll sleep here tonight and figure out what to do next in the morning."
I started a fire and cooked an old can of baked beans in the pot. Karen and I warmed up and ate for the first time since leaving Morocco earlier that day. It was hard to believe that all this had happened in the space of a day.
I checked Jim out to see if he’d made any progress, and it seemed that he was healing a bit. All of the small contusions on his upper body were gone and his lower body was beginning to reshape itself.
Karen and I made a makeshift bed out of blankets a few feet back from the fire, deciding that it would be warmer to cuddle together for the night rather than wrap up individually. It really didn’t matter, however. We both fell asleep moments after lying down for the last time.
Chapter 5
I woke up first and stood up in the relatively cold room. I tossed on a bit more of the wood we’d hauled in the night before and got the fire going strong again. I was hurting for a cigarette, something I’d not had since before getting on the plane in Morocco.
I looked out the window and was shocked by what I saw. I knew that it was late in the year and that the weather was going bad last night, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to see the landscape blanketed in complete white. I had no way of knowing for sure, but it looked like there was about a foot and a half of snow on the ground, all having fallen after Karen and I went to sleep.
I groaned a little, but let myself forget the snow for a minute and checked on Jim. His legs had regained their shape, so I figured he would be waking up before too long. That left me with the more immediate problem to deal with. I had no idea where we were or what to do next. We were in a country that neither Jim nor I spoke the language of with identification that had been compromised because of those stupid terrorists.
I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this one and stick to the local laws, which truly didn’t bother me too much. I didn’t plan on killing anybody, just enough petty larceny to get enough money to get out of town. I just had to find the damned town and figure out how to get there.
I opened up another one of the old cans and heated up another can of beans in the pot over the fire. The smell of the warming food woke Karen up and she cocked her eyes at me like she thought I was insane for being awake. I grinned at her and continued to warm up the beans.
"Take a look outside, kiddo," I told her, "The abominable snowman must have paid us a visit last night."
She looked up at the window lazily, then what I said hit her and she was up on her feet quickly. She was up against the window with her nose pressed to it. I wasn’t sure if she was happy or aghast at the snow, but she did have a little bit of a smile on her face. Evidently she was more pleased with the snow than I was.
"It’s beautiful out there," Karen said, "This is the first time I’ve seen undisturbed snow like this in years."
"Sure," I said, "It’s beautiful until we have to walk in it. We don’t have any wheels out here, remember?"
"Ouch," she groaned, "I’m dressed for the tropics, guy. You’re the only one that’s even got a jacket."
"I know," I grumbled, "That means I’m going to have to go to town and figure out how to get some money quick."
"Drug dealers again?" she suggested.
"If I can," I told her, "I might have to resort to lifting a credit card."
"When are you planning on going to town?"
"Not until tonight," I said with a shrug and sat down in front of the fire, "I’ll look for lights to find the town."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked me.
"Stay here until he wakes up," I said, "Keep on light rations and you should be able to last a week or so. Just keep ripping up parts of the upstairs floor for wood to burn. You won’t starve anyway, so just hole up here until I can get back."
She nodded and sat down with me to eat. We had to wait until nightfall anyway, so we just relaxed for a while. We explored the rest of the upstairs, with Karen taking the lead in the areas where my extra hundred pounds were too much for the old wood. We found little of use, though we found some stuff that would make the wait tolerable.
Just to give you an idea, we found a few decks of cards, four cheap French paperbacks, six bottles of wine, and a French version of Monopoly. The books were useless to me as I couldn’t even order lunch in French. Karen put those aside to read after I left that night. We set up the Monopoly game and played about four games before the sun finally went down.
At nightfall Karen and I went outside to look around. It was pitch black where we were, indicating that we were a good distance away from any town. We climbed the hill, despite the fact that she wasn’t dressed for it. When we reached the top we looked in all directions for light sources.
"I think the biggest concentration is over to the east," I said as I remembered the vague directions from the day before, "Probably about two hours walk or so."
"More like three or four in this slop," Karen said as her breath showed in the cold.
"Probably," I said, "Ok. You ready to hold the fort until I get back?"
"Sure," she said glumly, "How long do you think you’ll be?"
"A day or two," I guessed, "Three days at the outside."
She nodded. She wasn’t looking forward to two or three days sitting in that old house alone. I couldn’t say I blamed her. Jim wasn’t exactly in any condition to be any company for her. I hugged her tightly and decided to give her some last minute instructions.
"Ok," I said, as I got ready to go, "If I’m not back in a week and Jim has woken up by then make your way to Paris. Go to the little motel that we went to last time."
"The place that we hid at last time we had problems there?" she asked me to make sure we were on the same page.
"The one and the same," I confirmed and continued, "If he hasn’t showed any life by then stick around until I come back. I’ll come back here before I go anywhere else anyway."
She nodded and that was it. I smiled and hugged her one last time before trudging through the deep snow in the direction of the lights. Karen turned around and made her way quickly back towards the house. I continued trudging on through the deep snow.
Chapter 6
There are very few things in this world that I truly despise. Child molesters, stupid people, rapists and kidnappers are high on that list. During the five hours I spent walking through the snow towards the lights, however, snow moved rapidly up that list. I did little but dream of going somewhere tropical as soon as we were out of the mess we were in.
I finally reached the little village sometime around midnight. I think village may have been an overstatement. There were several shops and a little motel. At least I called it a motel. I had no idea what the locals would call it. Now I just had to figure out what to do next.
I didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do next. I have a peculiar morality when it comes to ways of making money quick. I don’t steal from average people because they work too hard for their money. I try to steal from criminals if at all possible. I have no qualms whatsoever about appropriating funds from drug dealers.
If there are no criminals around, or if I don’t have the time to track them down, I go for the extremely rich. Corporations are usually good targets, especially credit card companies. I figured that I was going to have to go the credit card route this time. This town was too damn small for anything else, really.
I walked around the village to get the lay
of the land. There were some food stores and some decent restaurants. At least I assumed they were decent. They looked expensive at any rate. The only thing that surprised me was the lack of activity. The little village had all the earmarks of a perfect tourist trap.
I looked for anything that might still be open because I was thoroughly frozen and probably was frostbitten. Frostbite was not a serious problem for me, it had happened before and healed within minutes, but I wanted to be functional. Finally, as I turned around a corner I heard a place with at least some music going.
It dawned on me why the area was dead when I walked up to the discotheque. Snow had fallen and the tourist season was over. I had seen it before in the states. There was no reason to believe that things would be any different in a similar little town in France.
I saw a sign on the door that advertised a cover charge. I looked to the back of my mind for any scrap of language that I may have picked up over the years. The cover was dix Euros. Dix… dix… It came to me that dix was ten. That was just great. I knew how much I needed to get warm, now I just had to figure out how to get it.
I was standing off in the shadows scheming when a couple of young men came out. I didn’t know who they were, but their type was obvious. Young, macho, thinks that the world should bow to him. I’d seen the type many times during my extended stay on the mudball earth. I didn’t think I needed a confrontation this early, but luck wasn’t really on my side that night.
They were a real Mutt and Jeff pair, the taller one looking like he could have been Andre the Giant’s younger brother. He was wearing a windbreaker and a T-shirt, trying to look macho in the face of the wind. The small one was dressed to the hilt, trying to make up for lack of stature with style. He was also the mouth of the bunch because he spoke first.
Not speaking a lick of the language I don’t know what he said to me. It was obvious, however, that he was offended somehow by my presence. I wasn’t a fashion plate by any stretch at that point, but Karen and I had washed using melted snow that afternoon in between Monopoly games.
I tried to back away noncommittally, trying to duck into an alley. I didn’t want to have to lay them out, mainly because I wasn’t particularly certain that I could even lay a hand on the big one. My limbs were nearly frozen through from being out so long that any fight I got into would most likely be a losing one.
Unfortunately the two young men were too drunk to have enough sense to let well enough alone. The big one came over to me and put a very rough hand on my shoulder. He started squeezing and said something that I guessed was probably something akin to ‘Answer my esteemed friend’s question’. I knew that if I revealed myself as American in origin the likelihood of me getting a rather nasty beating was good. I decided to try speaking in German, which was the only other language than English I could speak like a native.
"I’m not looking for trouble," I said in German, "I don’t speak French."
The smaller one laughed and said something to his friend that was most likely a command to hit me. I tried to dodge the clumsy right hand blow, but my reflexes were slowed enough by the cold that I didn’t make it in time. The little one got in it then and started kicking me. It was luck on my side that they didn’t hit me near the groin. If they had found my gun I could have been in deep shit.
I let myself fall quickly, knowing that if I showed my skills I would still lose and take an even worse beating. They tired of the game soon after, letting me fall bloody and battered to the ground. I let them rummage through my jacket and take my wallet. Hearing someone coming out of the disco, they decided they’d done enough and took off.
Not wanting to be found while healing, I pulled myself up and got into the alley. I waited a few minutes and watched my hands heal up in front of my eyes.
Even as long as I’d been living with the effects of the serum, it still amazed me to watch my skin and body heal in seconds. As soon as I was able to move again I went back out into the street.
I looked at the tracks leaving the disco and found the pair that I was looking for. I followed their footsteps until I heard their voices loud and clear. They were laughing and congratulating themselves for beating up what they thought was a helpless tourist. I chuckled and figured that I had found my targets. They may not have much, but I figured that I had just earned it.
As I followed them back to their home I found the remains of my wallet. I picked it up and was surprised at the fact that it was nearly intact. Then I realized that there were no credit cards and they weren’t smart enough to realize that Moroccan money could be changed if you dared to go into a bank. I smiled and put it back into the inside pocket of my jacket.
Their home was little more than a hovel, a simple cottage on the outskirts of the little village. I guessed that they worked on the surrounding farmland during the warmer months. They stumbled into the house and went out of sight, though they turned on some lights. I pondered shooting them both briefly, but even in my book being assholes doesn’t qualify them for the death penalty.
I crept around the house looking for anything of value, figuring that I could leave them alone if I found anything. Unfortunately they were as poor as I was at the moment. I went into a tool shed and found that even his tools were old and broken. My guess was that the one of them that lived there was only barely getting by.
I did take a crowbar from the shed, figuring that if I wasn’t going to kill them I could at least make them think hard about doing that to anybody else. I looked in the window and saw the tall one lying on the couch finishing off some sort of bottle of liquor. The small one was dancing around to some really bad American music. I decided to make my approach from the back.
I checked the back door and found it unlocked, unsurprising considering that the guy had nothing worth stealing. It was a simple four-room cottage, it seemed, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room that contained the two bozos. I checked the bedrooms and made sure that they were both empty. Luckily for me there was nobody else home.
I slid into the kitchen quietly, though the loud rock music would have drowned out a freight train. I peeked through the connecting door to the living room again and the scene hadn’t really changed. The small one was still dancing and the big one was on the couch, probably just about passed out from the liquor.
I waited until the little one had his back to me. He was moving around like a moron and I took the opportunity to unleash a sidekick to the back of his head. He wasn’t expecting the blow and went tumbling head over heels towards the front door.
The big one took a second to figure out what happened, which was a second too long for him. I was across the room before he could look up and bringing the heavy rusted crowbar down on his kneecaps. The big one screamed as both of his knees shattered at once.
The small one was resilient, but no match for me alone. He tried to come at me once with a very wide right hook. I dodged it easily and let loose with the crowbar to his ribs. I had a hard time feeling pity for either of them after the way they beat on me needlessly in the street earlier.
When the crowbar struck his rib cage the little guy literally collapsed onto the floor. I let him fall, knowing as he did that he was out of the fight with several broken ribs. He wasn’t even able to scream, unlike his large friend.
I walked back over to the big one and looked at him. He tried to get up, but I had done a number on his legs. Neither knee was going to be able to hold his weight. He used his arms to try to get at me, but without his legs for mobility it was pretty one-sided fight. I tried not to hurt him too badly, figuring the knees were punishment enough.
I did knock him out with a right hook to the side of the head because I wanted him to shut his mouth. Once he was out cold I searched him. As I expected, he was the poor one. He had little but a billfold with a five Euro note. I shook my head and tossed it back on his chest as an insult.
The little one was a bit better of
f. I pulled his wallet and found just what I needed. The little punk was carrying about a thousand Euros. I didn’t know how that translated to real money, but it was certainly enough for my purposes at the time. I left the house quickly and took the crowbar with me. I had used my jacket sleeve to touch everything else as a matter of habit.
I didn’t encounter anyone on the way out of the area. I washed the crowbar off with snow and then abandoned it in a trashcan, which I also filled with snow. The snow would have gotten rid of most traces of prints. I made my way back to that little discotheque and prepared to go inside and warm up.
I went up to the door and entered into the anteroom. It wasn’t particularly different from any of the other discotheques I’d been in. There was a room to contain the rowdies that were denied admission. I pulled a ten out of my billfold and slid it over the counter wordlessly. The comely young woman smiled, said what I assumed was thank you, and buzzed the door. I smiled back and entered what could have been a flashback to when I worked vice in the late 70’s.
Disco had died in the United States by 1980, but it was still alive and well in the various parts of Europe, most notably France and Germany. For two countries that hate each other so much they are remarkably alike in a lot of things. I walked in and had to suppress a chuckle at the old fashioned disco ball.
The music was a bit more modern, some form of electronic disco beat, but the people were still the same. The ugly girl dancing alone, the swinger with the two young ladies, even the wallflower guy sipping on his drink made this place a typical disco.
It really was dead season, for the place was less than a quarter full. I decided to throw caution to the wind and go up to the bar for a drink. The bartender came over eagerly and started saying stuff in rapid fire French that I wasn’t even sure that Karen could have accurately translated.
"Do you happen to speak English?" I said with a Russian accent to throw people off my trail some more.
"I speak some," the bartender admitted, "Normally I wouldn’t admit it, but it’s slow tonight and I need the business."
"Vodka," I said, continuing with the ruse, "Nice town you have here."
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