THE UNKNOWN PLOT

By Jo

PART FIVE: Playing Chicken

Wadsworth hadn't liked getting Marshall up the tall fire escape. It was the first time he'd

ever been on one of those and the protective responsibility he felt for the team he and his

master were had been greatly challenged by the awkward ascent. Then, too, there was the

fact that now another large male German shepherd had suddenly joined the cast. Thalamus

had gone quite easily up the open-meshed metal steps, accompanying Doree, the Swiss

policewoman, who took the stairs two or three at a time. Dee had followed closely behind

Marshall and Wadsworth, very tense herself as she watched the pair deal with the constant

switchbacks of the fire escape. She would much rather someone had taken a crowbar to the

nailed-shut first-level door, but as no crowbar had been written into the epi, the top of the

fire escape had strangely proven to be the only way into the brick building.

Marshall was now seated on the tree stump that grew in the middle of the floor. No one even

asked how there could be a tree stump coming up through the neon-pink linoleum for it was,

after all, an epi and such things had to be quietly accepted. Wadsworth sat, pressed close to

Marshall's legs, watching Thalamus nose at a wandering yam, probably checking it for

explosive devices. Each dog represented the pinnacle of dog training, but in different ways.

Wadsworth's brown eyes widened (yes, in epis even dog's eyes widen) when suddenly Thalamus'

head jerked up from the yam and turned toward the four-paned window with one missing pane

in which a squirrel had appeared. He stood, and wishing to attract Doree's attention to the

hideous threat, right before Wadsworth's startled as well as still-widened eyes, turned into a

Deutsch Kurzhaar German shorthaired pointer and, well, pointed quite intensely at the

invader.

Wadsworth blinked. He couldn't do that, but then, unlike Thalamus, who had spent many

years with the Swiss Bureau of Secret Central Intelligence, he had no need for the ability to

disguise himself as anything but a guide dog.

Doree, highly-attuned to Thalamus' actions, instantly nocked an arrow, but before she could

draw the 789 pound bow, the squirrel had disappeared. It was only then she noticed the sign

under the window.

"NO!" Himself shouted, turning to glare, as usual, at Joimus. "Not invisible squirrels!"

"Maybe just the one?" She tucked herself in the General's armpit. Not that she needed to,

mind, but that, well....

Himself was distracted from his Joimus-glaring by the wobbling of the mummy case.

It tipped way to the right, way to the left, then began to topple forward, its still-opening front

smashing down on the neon-pink linoleum, completely crushing this year's mushroom crop.

"LAYNE!" Himself bellowed. "You and Ben get out of the shadows right now!"  Himself

wasn't terribly fond of Ben, had even been heard to say he could never be friends with the

man, but he had, after all, created him and wasn't ready for him to be carried off by invisible

squirrels to some disgusting fate, probably worse than anything a band of Apaches might be

able to come up with.

The squirrel gone, or maybe still there only unseen, Thalamus turned back into a shepherd

and continued sniffing suspicious yams. Doree unnocked that which she had previously

nocked and turned to study the swirling blue vortex that was descending from the fifth

corner of the perfectly square room.

Nash, somehow, was mathematically disturbed by the existence of the fifth corner in a four-

sided room. It was the fifth corner more than the vortex itself that bothered him and he wished

he could ask Charles about it. Charles always seemed to have a level head about such things

but, alas, Charles was currently being Stephen and was even now kneeling next to the yams,

stitching the Captainly-severed one back together.

"What about the swirling blue vortex?" Terry wondered aloud. "Should we be at all...

concerned?"

The vortex widened, settling down onto the neon-pink linoleum and he bent to look down

inside the thing.

He probably shouldn't have because looking back up at him from the depths was the face of

Attila the Hun. He turned away, not ready for Huns to be in the epi. Yaks were enough. Maybe when it was time to leave Pittsburgh, maybe then the vortex could prove useful, but this was

only chapter 5 and he knew, except for Crossing Australia, that epis definitely tended to go on longer than that. Besides, he was hungry and in need of a large Pittsburgh sandwich. For

hunger to be satisfied, alas, meant leaving the building.

"We can't stay here," he announced. "There's nothing to eat."

"There's them damn yams," Ben replied, rebuttoning his vest.

"NO!" Jim cried. "Not the yams! Haven't they suffered ENOUGH?"

"I thought we came in here to escape the squirrels," Jeffrey spoke up.

"We did, yes," Joimus nodded, "but if we stay in here, we'd simply be too safe and safety just

cannot be a part of epis, plot or no plot."

It was true. Everyone knew it was true. They would be going back outside. After all that

climbing up the tortuous, rusty fire escape, they would be leaving. Arthur stifled a sob.

"Surely there must be some way to go all the way down to the first floor of this building

without having to re-deal with the fire escape," Dee said hopefully.

"We could take the escalator," Joimus said softly.

"Escalator?" Himself growled. "What escalator?"

"The one over there in the fourth corner marked DOWN?" Joimus suggested.

"If there was an escalator, why didn't we come UP it!" Himself growled again.

"It...it only goes down," Joimus explained righteously. "See for yourself, Himself."

He did. It was working and it definitely only went down. "How come we didn't see this before?"

"It wasn't in the plot before," she smiled.

He didn't deign to reply to that but merely asked, "If we get down, can we get...out?"

"If the portcullis is up, we most likely can."

"If the...?" Nobly, he pressed his lips together and turned to look at his people. "You about

done there, Stephen?" he asked. "We're leaving now."

Stephen stood, picking up a large bucket of sand in each hand. "If you want to go outside,"

he said, his eyes serious, "we may well have need of these."

The male characters all girded their loins, something which completely fascinated the female

members of the cast, though not really the canine, and headed toward the escalator. At the

bottom, sure enough, the portcullis was up.

Himself paused, eyeing it. "I'm not even going to...ask."

"Probably wise," Joimus said, adding, "Once outside, we'll need some sort of vehicle, something

large enough to hold all of us since, um, if we stay together, we may possibly survive, but not

something that will attract the attention of the squirrel population as we go in search of large

Pittsburgh sandwiches."

Wouldn't you KNOW, parked just outside the building was the perfect mode of transportation,

meeting their needs in every way! How serendipitous!

"I'll drive!" Alex offered, but Bud sat on him, squishing the air out of his body to put an end

to that. Bud, you see, still remembered back in A More General Storyline when Alex had

driven the LA city bus through the lava plug and into the Outback. As the LA cop of the

story, Bud, of course, had been the one hanging under the bus trying to defuse the Mickey

Mouse watch bomb that made the bus have to keep going over 55 MPH. Bud remembered

all too well how maniacally Alex had driven and this, after all, was Pittsburgh, a much

more difficult and tortuous place to drive than through a lava plug.

"We need a driver who knows his way around the city," Bud said firmly.

"I'll do it."

It was John Brennan. Cal had been just about to speak, but John beat him to it. Marshall

had refrained from offering and the streets had changed too much for Captain to feel all

that comfortable about it. Himself stared at them. How had so many Pittsburghers gotten

into his cast? He looked then at Joimus. She was probably responsible for half of them, he

figured.

"You made two," she whispered, knowing well what he was thinking.

There was no way around it. He'd made two Pittsburghers, yes, he had. And that was despite

the fact that he'd known for some years before them that she was a Pittsburgher. Why had

he done it? Why, why, why? Right now he couldn't remember.

He sighed. "Good idea, John."

"A...chicken? We are going to cruise the streets inside a CHICKEN?" Hando was livid. It

was nearly more than he could endure.

"Maybe we're going to KFC for lunch?" Zack suggested helpfully. "Maybe it's meant to

be a Trojan chicken."

"What?" Hando snarled. "We going to park outside the store and wait for the employees

to come and carry us inside and then after dark we steal all the extra crispy?"

"Doesn't sound all that bad," Zack nodded. "It could work."

"No," Terry said, trying to keep his voice level. "I don't want Kentucky Fried Chicken. I want

a real Pittsburgh sandwich. I mean to have one."

"It's a death wish," Cort gasped. "He must be trying to find the only way there is out of

epilife."

"A death wish?" Bejay was horrified, looking back and forth between Terry and Cort. "What

do you mean 'a death wish'?"

"You've never even seen a real Pittsburgh sandwich, have you?" Cort said kindly, trying to

prepare her for the worst.

"Is...is there something...wrong...with sandwiches in Pittsburgh?" Her voice quavered.

He just conveniently happened to have a menu in his pocket and pulled it out, holding it

before Bejay's horrified eyes. It was illustrated with color photos. It was positively...deadly.

"Oh, Terry...no!" she cried piteously. "No...no...NO!"

"Himself says I have to give up smoking. I want a sandwich." He stepped aboard the chicken.

John Brennan, in the driver's seat, was staring at the road. He'd actually never been in this

section of the city before, not even when looking for meth houses. This was worse than that.

The road sign, he thought to himself, did not bode well. And the chicken had no GPS system,

not that those worked in Pittsburgh anyway. The magnetic forces of Mount Washington

combined with the rust particles floating in the air caused them always to direct one to turn

left. Actually, if one turned left often enough, one sometimes got where one wished to go. But

not always. Not even frequently.

He wanted to get to the Strip District along the east bank of the Allegheny. They had the most

monstrous sandwiches there, probably large enough even to satisfy Thorne. Slowly he let out

the clutch, trying to shift the stick into some semblance of a forward drive. His eyes flicked up

from the gearshift and he slammed on the brakes, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, moaning.

"What's the matter?" Doree asked, picking herself up out of the aisle.

"That," he sighed. "I read it before...before I realized."

"I wouldn't worry," Joimus said comfortingly. "You've already broken way more laws than

that."

Doree eyed him, suddenly wary. "Have you, John?"

"I didn't break my non-existent wife out of jail, if that's what you mean." He glared quite

Himself-like at Joimus.

"We need you to drive, John," Joimus smiled. "We'll ask Doree to ignore all the other things."

"Other things? John, what does she mean?" Doree had begun to develop feelings for the man.

"It's nothing you need be concerned about, Doree," Joimus explained, "just some, um, traffic

violations, some fisticuffs with meth dealers, stuff like that."

"I'm not sure which way to go," John said, trying to get the topic away from his more criminal

activities and back to the matter at hand.

"I'd follow the potholes were I you," Joimus suggested. "The bigger they get, the closer to the

Strip District. Yeah, follow the potholes."

John got the chicken going again, soon spying a small pothole.  "What's that in the hole?"

Ed asked.

"No, Ed," Joimus quickly said. "In Pittsburgh one never ever asks what's seeped up from

below into a pothole. Never."

John found it nerve-wracking driving for the first time in epilife. It was worse, much worse,

than being chased by squad cars and helicopters. Partly, it was the signs that kept disturbing him. Pittsburgh in epis was simply, well, signed...differently.

"You're doing good, John. Look, we must be getting closer!"

Yes, the potholes were definitely getting larger and the squirrels, so far, seemed merely to be

communicating by cell phone and not attacking.

"We're here!" John gasped in relief, passing the pothole that marked the entrance to the Strip

District.

"Obviously," Himself remarked wryly, stepping out of the chicken to read the sign just outside

the restaurant.

"You sure this is where you want to eat?" Himself asked Terry.

ON TO PART 6

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