Smith's Monthly #10 Page 6

  The same look the wolves had.

  “I need to ask you something.” He checked the wolves on his right and then on his left. He could imagine his bloodstains on their yellowed teeth. They weren’t giving him a chance.

  They had him surrounded.

  They had won this battle and the war.

  “Debbie,” he said as softly as he could, his mind racing for any other way. Anything. But this was what the wolves wanted. They had him naked, flat on his back, unarmed.

  “Debbie, would you marry me?”

  “What?”

  The wolves all took a few steps backwards. It worked. He couldn’t believe it.

  “What did you say?” Debbie asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Duncan said. The wolves started toward the bed again, all growling.

  “Would you marry me?”

  “Do you really mean it?” Debbie asked. “You know I’ve loved you since the first day we met.”

  “Would I have asked if I didn’t?”

  Damn the wolves anyway.

  She kissed him hard and again started to rub, already trying to polish his rough edges.

  He glanced around. Only the largest wolf remained. It curled up and went promptly to sleep in the corner.

  After a short time, Duncan started rubbing back.

  They were married seven months later in a big church wedding. He was the perfect groom.

  Everyone said so.

  They moved into a house her daddy bought for them on Bryant Street and he went to work for her daddy’s corporation.

  People only thought it just a little odd that he built a dog run in their back yard, even though it matched all the other dog runs on Bryant Street.

  They don’t have a dog.

  No one on Bryant Street has a dog.

  What came before in…

  THE ADVENTURES OF HAWK

  Nineteen-year-old Danny Hawk, his uncle, and his best friend Craig, were in Cairo to look for his missing father. Danny had witnessed the death of his only contact in Cairo, Professor Davis, because the professor had Danny’s father’s journals.

  Danny knows that the men who had killed the professor were now after him and the journals. Danny finds the journals and gets his uncle and friend to safety in an airport hotel where he tells them what happened. They decide to keep searching for Danny’s father and try to rescue him.

  Along the way, Danny and Craig find some help from a street kid named Bud and twins from South Africa who had worked with Danny’s father. They managed to escape the men chasing them twice so far, Danny wasn’t sure their luck would hold a third time.

  And it barely did. They finally decided to head out of Cairo. Beyond the headwaters of the Amazon, in the Republic of Congo, after a few more close calls, they hire a guide to take them into the jungle in search of a lost ancient city.

  Even into the jungle on the Trail of Elephants, they are followed. Then Danny barely escapes death when he falls through a floor in an old temple. The rest rescue him, but when they reach the bottom the men following them throw down the rope and trap them under the ancient city. But what they find next is amazing. An ancient council chamber.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  September 17, 1970

  Under the Lost City of Ishango, deep in the jungle of the Republic of Congo.

  AS DR. HASSATT, Ernie, and Ed studied the rest of the main platform of the ancient council chamber for any other clues to anything, Danny decided that he and Bud and Craig would look for the way out.

  Danny watched as Craig held his torch up. The faint smoke from it drifted to his right and toward the tunnel they had come through.

  The three of them climbed down off the large stone platform. “Craig,” Danny said, “go toward the left wall. Bud, you go up the right staircase, I’ll go up the left. Using the smoke from our torches, we should be able to get some sort of reading on where the draft is coming from.”

  Danny quickly climbed the stone staircase that went upward between the stone benches. Even fifty rows up in the stands, he could clearly hear everything Dr. Hassatt and the twins were saying. Amazing acoustics in this cave, that was for sure.

  He stood about half way up the staircase and let the air around him calm, watching the smoke. It drifted still toward the tunnel, so the entrance was above him still.

  “Nothing down here,” Craig said from down by the left wall. “Smoke just sort of swirls.”

  “Mine shows the entrance is up top,” Bud said.

  “Go slow,” Danny said, turning and starting up. “We may have someone waiting for us up there.”

  Bud nodded and moved at the same pace as Danny up the staircase.

  At the top, there was a wide area inside yet another cavern. The entire floor of this cavern had also been paved with stones. The breeze felt clearly more noticeable, and the air was warmer as well.

  Craig joined Bud and Danny in the center of the room. They let the air settle, then headed to where the wind was coming from.

  At the back of the room were over a dozen tunnels, some made of stone blocks, others cut out of the natural stone. All of them led off the back of the room like spokes on a wheel. Clearly, at one point there had been a lot of entrances to this great chamber, so that a lot of people could come in at once. But now the breeze was only coming from one.

  Bud led the way, moving so silently that after a moment, he motioned for Danny and Craig to just stop and he would scout it out. Danny watched Bud’s torch disappear around a corner in the stone tunnel.

  The waiting seemed to stretch as Danny worked to not hold his breath as he tried to listen for any problems Bud might have.

  Then, after what must have been the longest two or three minutes on record, Bud came back, smiling.

  “The tunnel was blocked at the entrance a long time ago,” Bud said. “Clearly on purpose, so no one would find this place.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Craig said.

  “There was a cave-in just short of the blocked entrance,” Bud said, smiling. “We can climb up the rocks and get out just fine.”

  “Okay, so we can get out,” Craig said, clearly feeling as relieved as Danny felt. “Now what do we do next?”

  “We look for treasure,” Bud said, smiling.

  “Besides that,” Craig said, laughing.

  “I think that’s a discussion for everyone,” Danny said. “But I’m voting for South America.”

  “Yeah,” Craig said. “Why did I know that?”

  Two hours later, sitting on the benches of an ancient civilization’s Great Council Chamber, they worked out their plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  September 22, 1970

  Bunia, Republic of the Congo, on the shores of Lake Albert.

  FOUR DAYS AFTER leaving the Great Council Chamber, they made it back down the Trail of Elephants to the shores of Lake Albert.

  Dr. Hassatt left them almost at once, headed back down the Nile. He didn’t dare stay since he was easily recognized in the area. He planned on holing up in an apartment in London and writing up his notes and publishing a few papers on the great lost city. He had enough pictures, enough evidence, that he hoped to get some decent publications, even though his name had been discredited.

  Danny wasn’t happy with him leaving them, but they really didn’t have any choice if they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. With luck, they would meet him in London after they had found the next Hydra Journal entry in Machu Picchu.

  The problem they faced was how to get out of Africa.

  At first it had been suggested by Bud that they try to make it across the Congo and to the west coast, but that was ruled out by everyone. Even Danny knew enough about that jungle and the tribes and governments of the Congo to not go that way.

  And none of the boys wanted to try going back down the Nile to Cairo, following Dr. Hassatt. Going that way felt to Danny like walking into a huge trap.

  Right now, he was convinced that if they stayed hidden, they wo
uld have a head start on the Hydra League men still guarding their old camp up in the ruins. It would still be days, maybe weeks yet, before those men discovered that they hadn’t died in the cave, but had escaped.

  After leaving the cave, Bud had worked his way back down into their old camp in the ruins. The two Hydra League men had been sleeping close by, so Bud had managed to get all their money and a few personal things in packs that the two men wouldn’t know were missing. So at least they had money for whatever they needed to do.

  “We go east,” Ed said after they had all stared at the maps for a time.

  “Aren’t we trying to go west?” Craig asked. “Seems that South America is west of here, if I remember my world map correctly.”

  Danny agreed. “Going east across the Indian Ocean and then the Pacific is a long ways out of the way.”

  Ed nodded. “But we need to go east to get out of Africa. Then we go south and west.”

  “I agree,” Ernie said. He pointed at the huge body of water on the map. “We need to cross Lake Victoria and get into Kenya.”

  Ed traced the path they were proposing with his finger on the map. “We land in Kisumu in Kenya, take overland transportation of some sort to Nairobi, then a train down to Mombasa on the coast. From there we can get a ship to take us down the coast to South Africa. In Cape Town, we know people who will help us get to Brazil.”

  Danny looked at the two twins shocked that they would even think of the idea. “You can’t go back to South Africa.”

  “Yeah,” Bud said. “They were shooting at you in Cairo, remember?”

  Both Ed and Ernie nodded. “We don’t have a choice. It is our best chance from here.”

  Danny didn’t like it, but after a few hours of studying the maps, he knew they were right. The twins had to go right back into what might be a death trap if they were all to get out of Central Africa and get on with the search for the Hydra Journals.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  October 2, 1970

  Cape Town, South Africa.

  THE FREIGHTER DOCKED at just after twelve noon in what was clearly a huge, industrial port to one side of Cape Town. From the deck of the freighter as they moved into the harbor, Danny could see at least a hundred ships of all sizes, if not more. It was a very busy international port.

  The city itself looked beautiful, tucked in under a long mountain with a flat top the twins said was aptly named Table Mountain. Ernie pointed out Devil’s Peak and Signal Hill to the right of Table Mountain. The place would have been interesting to explore if it wasn’t so deadly to the twins. They had to get in and out of this port fast.

  The sun was high overhead and the air was hot and thick with the smell of oil and sewage. Hundreds of workers swarmed over the docks, loading and unloading the ships.

  Danny and Craig were standing on the deck as the crew finished the tying up of the ship. Ed and Ernie had insisted that as a group, they couldn’t be seen together. Only Danny and Craig dared do anything, so the twins, with Bud, had stayed hidden below decks, with Bud standing guard for them.

  With the apartheid form of government, and the high levels of segregation, two white boys and two black boys were not allowed together. Just doing that would be enough to get Ed and Ernie tossed in jail, and then once the police discovered who they were, they would be killed without trial.

  So it was up to Danny and Craig to find a British ship of some kind and book them all passage to Brazil. Danny had no doubt, looking at the busy docks, that wasn’t going to be an easy task.

  An hour later, they finally found the headquarters of a British ship company, tucked just off the docks on a side street.

  The man inside, behind the desk, was dressed in a blue uniform of some sort, with a tie and hat. A fan was working hard in the window to keep the air in the room moving, but it still felt like a sauna bath in the small office.

  Danny introduced himself and Craig and told the man that they and three other friends were looking for a way to get to Brazil.

  “Americans?” the man said in a fairly proper British accent.

  Danny nodded. “Washington State.”

  The man nodded and chuckled to himself. “We get a lot of American boys these days, traveling the world, trying to stay out of your infernal war in Southeast Asia. Do you have money or do you need to work your way there?”

  “We have some money,” Danny said. “But we don’t need anything fancy. In fact, we would rather not be on a fancy ship.”

  “Hiding are we?” the man asked, looking at them.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Danny said, letting the man go ahead and think they were running away from the draft. It was easier than telling him the truth.

  The man nodded. “I have a freighter leaving in two days for Brazil. It will be running mostly empty to pick up coffee. I have two spare crew cabins you could have.”

  “That would be perfect,” Danny said.

  “All five of you need to be on dock 86-B before seven in the morning, October 4th, with your passports.”

  “Not a problem,” Danny said.

  “See to it that it isn’t,” the man said.

  The five tickets cost Danny almost half of the money he had left, but it was worth it. And once in Brazil or Peru, he could wire Uncle Bill and get more.

  “That went surprisingly easy,” Craig said as he and Danny headed back toward the freighter.

  “Yeah, now we just have to hide for the next two days. And try to keep the twins from being spotted.”

  “From the sounds of it,” Craig said, shaking his head, “just being seen with us could be just as bad.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said.

  In America, he had watched night after night of civil rights demonstrations on television. He had watched the replay of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Being part Indian, he understood some of what the blacks were going through, but not much. He had been lucky to be raised where he had been raised.

  And until Ed and Ernie had mentioned that they couldn’t be seen together, Danny hadn’t even thought of them as anything but two others his age. Sometimes the world was just a stupid place.

  As Danny and Craig moved between two large crates and were just about to step into the open in front of the freighter, Bud appeared beside them.

  “Stop! Hide!”

  He motioned for them to duck back in behind the crates.

  Just as they did, two white men in brown dock police uniforms escorted Ed and Ernie past the crates.

  Both men were carrying guns, and had them pointed at the twins.

  Danny could feel his stomach twist. They couldn’t lose the twins now. They had to do something.

  “What happened?” Danny whispered.

  “Captain turned them in as being suspicious,” Bud whispered back, spitting on the ground in disgust. “I barely got away.”

  “As soon as they find out who they really are, they’re dead,” Craig said.

  “I know,” Danny said, doing his best to keep his heart from beating right out of his chest. He was sweating harder than he should be in the heat. “We follow them.”

  Bud nodded and led out, motioning to them when it was clear or not.

  They didn’t have far to follow the two policemen. The twins were taken into a large warehouse two ships down from where their freighter had docked. On the small side door of the warehouse, a sign said simply, “Port Police.”

  Danny had no doubt that the twins were as good as dead unless he and Craig and Bud could do something, and do it fast.

  But what? Danny had no idea.

  Continued in the next issue…

  Challenged by another writer to do a story about piranha poodles, Captain Joe-Jim Bob appeared from the depths of my fevered mind, to fight for what seems right against all odds.

  Or something like that.

  And no, I am not writing the novel.

  CAPTAIN BOB

  In His Most Recent Story

  THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

>   March Issue

  THE PINK-COLLARED MENACE

  IN LAST MONTH’S thrilling episode, Captain Joe-Jim Bob, with the help of his son, Carl, defended the Shady Hills Nursing Home from the rabid looters and pillagers after the simultaneous collapse of the US monetary system and the public water works.

  In this months spine-tingling story, Captain Bob faces a far greater threat to Shady Hills. Pouring out of the suburbs is the Pink-Collared Menace: Six hundred piranha poodles, led by Mrs. Dorthey Gillman Dickenson, III.

  Captain Bob’s only hope is to capture the famed, but very flammable, K-Mart Zeppelin before his son and Shady Hills residents become only so much dog food.

  ...story to be continued next month.

  April Issue

  THE GREAT WHITE

  REMEMBER IN LAST month’s cliff-hanging episode, we left Captain Joe-Jim Bob surrounded by meat-crazed piranha poodles, his right arm missing after having been savagely ripped off and devoured by the Great White Piranha Poodle.

  The loss of blood was making him faint.

  He only had two bullets left in his gun.

  His only hope of rescue, his son at the helm of the very destructible K-Mart Zeppelin.

  Captain Bob fans, this month, follow the one-armed Captain Bob as he and his son, Carl, with the help of Grandma and Grandpa Jones as tail gunners, set out in the rather shaky K-Mart Zeppelin to track the 541 remaining piranha poodles, their leader, the Great White Piranha Poodle, and its owner, Mrs. Dorthey Gillman Dickenson, III.

  An action packed story for the entire family.

  ...story to be continued next month.

  May Issue

  PRISONER IN THE BEDROOM