it, apparently for the guard. I wrote a note and taped it to the chair. The note said, “I quitsk. I miss Mama and her large breasts. I'm going home.” I hoped that would fool them for a while. The poor sap in the woods would eventually free himself, but it should take many hours.
I then began my long trek up the steep hill.
(More Elapsed Time)
Halfway up, flat on my back, trying to ignore the constant pain in my side, I heard footsteps. Recovering my senses I quickly rolled over, finding that all that remained between me and planet Earth was empty space. Panicking, I clawed frantically at the hillside, managing to grab hold at the road's edge with my left hand.
Before I could get a better grip, I heard a strange rumbling beneath me. In spite of my precarious position I glanced down to see what was going on. I didn't see anything at all, but I felt something hard step on my hand. I looked up and saw that it was a goat. And it seemed to be taunting me as it stepped on my fingers.
“Stop, Goat! Bad Goat! Bad!” I yelled. This only seemed to encourage him further.
I got my other hand on the rock above me, and he stepped on me again, this time with one hoof on each of my hands, an action which, combined with gravity, sent me plunging downwards. As I hit the stretch of road below me I rolled, as I had been trained to do. Unfortunately I rolled off the edge of the hill once again, and dropped to the next segment of road. Rolling when I hit, the process repeated itself until I landed in the back of a large truck full of prunes.
I crashed into the back of the truck just as the large door was opening at the base of the hill. The truck rolled on in. The prunes had softened my fall nicely, and I felt fine. As I brushed the prunes off of myself I heard the door rumble shut. Then I heard the door of the truck's cab open and close as the driver got out of his truck.
Regaining my composure, I climbed to the top of the truck. I had no desire to be the newest ingredient of laxative gas.
With a quick glance around me I noticed the cauldrons, tubes, compressors and air tanks of the laxative factory. I also saw the truck driver, a guard, and fifty or so workers looking up at me. I flashed my most charming smile and laughed goodnaturedly, gesturing at my stained clothing with one hand and then picked prunes out of my hair with the other. The driver and the guard broke out in smiles, and some of the workers laughed.
“Ha ha ha! Ho ho ho!” I laughed louder as I slid down the windshield and onto the hood. One of the workers was rolling on the floor. Several were in tears. Everyone was laughing.
“Hee hee hee hee hee! Whoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!” as I jumped onto the floor. I pointed at the driver, slapped my knee, then shook my head. I stepped over to the guard. He pointed at my face and laughed heartily. The unrestrained goodwill and cheer made me believe I could learn to like these people.
Nevertheless, I kicked the guard in the knee, sending him into a heap upon the floor. I grabbed his rifle and hit the driver on the head with it. Then I climbed into the truck, locked the doors, and started the engine. Not many people were laughing anymore. I threw the truck into gear and floored it.
Crash! Right into the laxative gas tanks. At this point no one laughed. No one but me, that is. I laughed so hard my sides ached and my heart went pitter-patter. Then I backed up and crashed into a bunch of machinery. The Russians were in shock until they noticed the laxative gas quickly spreading through the factory. For my grand finale, I smashed that poor old truck into the mechanism of the giant door. I then parked it in front of both doors and took the truck keys. Nobody was going to get out that way.
I hopped out of the truck and saw that the slightly purplish gas was everywhere. I covered my mouth with my handkerchief and looked for another way out. If I couldn't find one then the joke would be on me.
I saw two doors opposite the ones I'd disabled. The two doors were about five meters apart. All of the Russians were trying to fit through one, but they couldn't all make it. I figured that that one must be the bathroom, so I headed for the other. I was hoping for an elevator when I opened it, but all I found were stairs going up and around and out of sight. Keeping my handkerchief over my nose and mouth, I looked around again and spotted the elevator. I ran to it, and it opened.
I entered the elevator and hit the first button that was above my current floor. A group of unhappy looking workers was running towards the elevator, and each of them had one hand over his nose and mouth, and the other holding his butt cheeks tightly closed. I repeatedly jabbed the button to close the elevator doors, but one of them got a hand between the doors before they closed. I grabbed the hand and twisted it around until the man's arm was behind his back, then shoved him into his comrades. This time when the doors tried to close they met no resistance. I thanked my lucky stars. An elevator ride with those guys would have been unpleasant in more ways than one.
It was a relatively long elevator ride, so I guessed that the floor at which I disembarked was in or just below the building at the hilltop. I stepped out of the elevator and saw a long hallway with doors on either side, and the hallway appeared to end in a tee, with another hallway stretching to the left and right of the main one.
There was a secret signal that we used when we wanted to communicate but didn't want others to know. It was an animal call, and we practiced it until our calls were indistinguishable from the animal's own call. Frequently the animals would even come right up to us, offering us gifts of insects in exchange for the privilege of mating. I myself wasn't tempted, but I can't say the same for Blackie. We probably left behind more than a few broken hearts, but it was a sacrifice we were willing to make.
This seemed like an appropriate time to use that signal, so I cupped my hands around my mouth and cried, “Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Lookee-Lookee-Loo! Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Lookee-Lookee-Loo!”
Immediately a door opened in the hallway and three guards ran out. They looked up and down the hall, spotting me in a flash. In retrospect, perhaps the call of a South American jungle bird was not the best choice for a mission in Russia, especially indoors. In any case, I'd left the Russian guard's gun in the prune truck, and my own gun must have fallen from its holster on my journey down the side of the hill. With no weapon and no time, I foamed at the mouth, made the craziest face I could, and ran at the guards while I screamed at the top of my lungs and gestured wildly.
They were unarmed, and my desperation maneuver was effective. They were confused long enough for me to disable them with a quick 1-2 punch combination, followed by a 3-4 combination, concluding with a 5-6-7-8-9 combination.
With my sleeve I wiped the saliva off of my chin and from around my mouth, and I looked into the room they had come out of. It appeared to be sleeping quarters.
I began to walk up the hallway toward where it ended in a tee, listening for any tell-tale signs of my companions, when I heard a faint cry of “Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Lookee-Lookee-Loo! Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Loo, Kookee-Lookee-Lookee-Loo!”
I ran up the hall to the left and followed the sound to the last room on the right. The door was locked. I slammed into it with my shoulder, but the door didn't budge. My shoulder budged, however, and I nearly blacked out from the pain. Humbled, I knocked at the door.
“Who is it?”
“It's me, Professor. Can you open the door? It's locked.”
“We're chained to the beds! Use your knife!”
Ahh, my knife! The razor sharp super kill survival knife. It had been designed and built for me by my scientist girlfriend, Adriana Goodbody. It would cut through nearly anything, including my grandmother's pancakes.
I pulled the knife from its sheath and sliced off the doorknob. Then I jammed the knife into the locking mechanism and pushed most of it through to the other side. The door would probably have opened with a gentle push at that time, but I kicked it as hard as I could to avenge the grievous injury to my shoulder, and to my pride. I imagined that the catalog girls were wat
ching me, and that they were quite impressed.
Tokyo and Professor Liverwort were chained to separate bunk beds, and Black Death was locked in a cage. I freed them all with my knife, explaining what had happened so far.
“Splendid work, Chuck! Splendid! Then we must vacate these premises immediately.”
“You're right, Professor. Where are we now?”
“We happen to be located in the basement of the building, where they housed the workers and the guards. You'll never guess what those fiends were planning to do! For tomorrow they had planned to drain Tokyo of his knowledge of the Martial Arts by hypnotic means! And then those scoundrels were going to secure Black Death to a helium balloon and toss him off of the building! They were also going to force me to submit to laxative gas experiments! Though I really don't know why they didn't want to hypnotically extricate my own store of knowledge. It is rather vast, you know. I have two Ph.D.'s, six master--”
“Shhh!” I interrupted. “I hear something!” Thankful for a break, I tiptoed to the doorway, from where I had actually heard something. Footsteps! And lots of them.
I quickly closed the door, leaving a tiny crack to peep through. The footsteps stopped, and I slowly eased out of the room, gesturing for the others to follow me. We