Re: The Amazing Adventures of Doc's Boys-Final Chapter
The Exploits, Enterprises and Experiences of DOC's BOYS
Ham, Monk, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny
(as witnessed by your faithful correspondent, Dr. W.H. "Johnny" Littlejohn)
CHAPTER THREE: Endgame
A flock of hand grenades bounce into the room we occupy. As a result, we depart the premises with consummate, but dignified, haste. Fortuitously, the contractor enrusted with the construction of this structure used substandard window glass. I clasp the sand and coarse sea grass outside to my bosom as consecutive detonations tear the room and night apart.
The bombardment does not cool our determination. Even as Renny and rise from the ground, we hear Monk's happy chortle punctuating the stacatto reverberations of his beloved tommy gun from within the abused edifice. Renny proposes an alternate maneuvar to re-entering and in a trice, we are on the roof of the first level, approaching the second floor windows. Below, Ham and Monk can be heard squabbling as they finish the last of the dastardly grenade lobbers.
It is therefore a nigh-simultaneous event when vertiginous waves crash through all our cerebrums, inciting pain and hallucinations of a woebegone girl. The fantastic visions and disorientating paroxysms of pain drive us to our knees and then oblivion.
Roughly five minutes later, we escalade from insensibility to congnizance. The unexplained assault is gone, leaving only a fading migraine. I begin to suspect the Cross of Atocha's powers are not the poppycock and superstition I had conjectured.
We return to our search of the building,only to discover all enemies fled and files aflame. We quench the destroying fires as fast as we are able, and salvage the following from teh scorched remnants:
- Plans for a stupendous zeppellin aircraft carrier, far larger than the US Navy's USS Macon or USS Akron.
- A fragment of a letter bearing a date three days hence.
- An empty chest containing customized slots for a large and a small cross.
Renny recalls a special event hosted by the President and his upper echelon advisors is scheduled three days from now in Washington, DC. The coincidence is too dire to elide.
Further rummaging discovers the secret access to the inaccessible and ulterior first floor wing. Descending, we find an armoured bunker housing its own light source and a sinister laboratory of vivisected bodies.
Before we can comment on the horrific experiments, we are again the subjects of the psychic onslaught upon our ego structures. Ham is cerebrally poleaxed at the manifestation before us. While we three are none too steady, we retain our rationality to try and puzzle the phantasm before us. The young girl returns, still as desperately despondent as before. However, this vision alternates with a vile lizard demon. Both images wear a miniature of the Cross of Atocha about their neck.
Physical responses from my comrades prove fruitless. I pummel my brain for 17th Century Spanish idioms, hoping to match the era of the Cross. I speak in the language of the Iberian Penninsula, speaking calmly and politely. Astonishingly, I capture her attention.
In a manner pointedly discombobulating, her replies echo in my very skull. She pleads for aid and succor, but is frustratingly unresponsive to on details. We can only deduce the Cross is the source of her malaise, but it remains spectrally elusive to our grasp. Finally, in desperation, Renny makes a masterful shot with his firearm and shatters the evil antiquity. The lizard abomination fades in silent rage. The beatific expression of release on the young girl's face makes all our travails worthwhile. Her ascension to a Better Place engulfs us in a transcendent, and restoring, inundation of euphoria.
Words fail me. This will require a great deal of rumination in future days.
For now, haste is of the essence if liberty is to be preserved. To Washington!
We telegraph the capital with our dire news and suspicions, but we have too much savvy to expect the monolithic bureaucracy to act precipitously in the matter. We put our own plans into motion. An aircraft is outfitted with armaments and an ingenious anchor attachment up top. Essentially, we intend to patrol the skies, battle through any defending air support and board the zeppelin via their own docking procedures. Simplicity personified.
Two hours of enervating watching and searching and circling pass before a radio broadcast provides the clue we require. Adventitious cloud cover masks our approach to this leviathan of the skies. It is quite startling how such an enormous thing can float serenely in the firmament. Then admiration is rudely replaced by needs of survival. Ham and Monk man our offenses, duelling with flitting fighter craft. The thunderbolts of the gods could not match the power modern mortals wield in casual carnage. It is difficile to maintain personal morale clutching naught but binoculars as our mechanized pegasus fills with the hot tang spent chordite and light beams pierces the fog from new holes in the fuselage.
However punctured and maimed our craft becomes, the enemy suffers a greater portion. Soon the skies are open for our boarding attempt.
Adrenalin continues to flow freely as Renny and I squat atop our wounded bird, several hundred feet above ground, listening to the fusillade of gunfire around us, applying wrenches to lock dock to anchor.
Secure and safe (though "safe" is an altogether relative term), we scramble, jump and rappel thru the aluminum buttressing and interior superstructure. Echoes of shouts, screams and ringing ricochets abound.
We regroup as the immediate hangar is won, just in time to witness the mass of our aircraft overwhelm the the strength of the docking arm. Plane and assemblage vanish in a single, sharp protest of squealing metal. This could be a concern. The alarm klaxon rumbles through the brobindangnian vessel and we press forward to the Bridge.
I am uncertain whether it is the incessant running battle that saps endurance or the sheer grueling distance. Any air ship of these proportions should provide a taxi cab service.
The final rampart to scale, the door to the Bridge itself. Bursting thru debouches on to a tiny balcony. The capacious space stretching away gives us all a moment's pause. A vast opera house of a cockpit, filled with intense flight crew and veritable horde of Green Serpent Elite Guard at parade rest. Standing with his fellow officers of evil stands another snake demon shifting ethereally with the form of a distinguished man in uniform. The Cross of Atocha gleams prominently on his chest.
The mental assault experienced on the Caribbean Island crashes into our cerebrums anew. The occult miasma clouds our perceptions to a terrifying degree. To our subjective senses, we go from aloft high over Washington to grounded with the debarkation ramp lowered in an eye's blink. Fortuneately, whatever acroamatic forces manipulated us in such a fashion also safeguarded us from harm. We fight our way to normalcy still perched on the entry balustrade.
The Serpent Captain vanishes into thin air before our first offensive effort is begun. The initial exchange is a harrowing event, forcing nimble evasion on our part. Our gas grenades are less than efficacious, but our bullets wreak the necessary violence to allow us to depart our beachhead.
Into the fray!
The savagery of my purloined Thompson Machine Gun is boggling to my civilised sensibilities. Grim necessity forces me to allow the brutal warrior within to stay dominant.
As enemy bodies fall, the implacable force of evil grips Monk in a cerebral vice. His sub-vocalizations reveal the mental invader is commanding him to attack Ham. Fortuneately a first rate brain exists within that simian cranium and Monk mutinies in fine style. The extrasensory dictates fly like machine gun volleys. Ham is ordered to kill Monk. Renny is commanded to kill me!
The unseen mentalist learns that Doc's Boys are unshakeable comrades with pure hearts. Such contemptible commands are ignored with the disdain they deserve. The craven miscreant takes to the physical and stabs Renny treacherously in the back. As I sweep the area behind my stricken ally, I am savagely clawed across the trapezius and spine. I collapse into darkness.
The luck of the Irish, a bucket of horseshoes and the grace of the gods brings me lurching to my feet ere too great a time has elapsed. Monk and Ham are in a martial waltz with a demonic dance partner. A calculated burst draws blood on the monster. A surgical sniper shot from Long Tom drops him to the deck. Victory!
Removing the flagitious Cross of Atocha from around the fallen villain is a ticklish business, but it is secured as USA troops and agents arrive to secure the ship.
The day is saved, the President is spared (we learn that while we fought, the mental puppeteer had attempted to attach strings to the commander-in-chief), and the sun will dawn on a free country.