Journal of Thomas Book (May-June)

One long post this time. I'll try and keep this updated.


Blackthorne's Journal

May 29th, 2005

18:50 Hrs

Grid G9

I was scraping away at the floor on Jude’s Tomb so I didn’t hear them pull up. The first thing that I could hear that got my attention was the sound of Nurse Ratchet screaming. I peaked out of the stairwell and saw a three trucks of men drive up to the site with their AK's held high. They began rounding up the workers and told them to leave. Our people were tied and told that they would be ransomed back to their universities.

No one saw me as G9 was on the opposite side of the field from the main camp. The guys carrying the AK’s didn’t seem too interested in what we were doing – just who we were. Within twenty minutes, they had everyone tied up and loaded on their trucks and drove away. I didn’t want to move. I could hear us screaming and them shouting but I knew that I was safer if I did nothing. I am staying hidden until dark and then sneak back into the base to search for the team's SAT phone.

21:45 Hrs

I found the SAT phone but every time I tried to call out it was too garbled to get through. Apparently we had the Big Lots version. I had to climb up the hill to the west to get a clear signal and as soon as I did – I called the Embassy. I had the number written in my notebook just in case. I just didn’t expect this to be the reason I’d have to use it. I sat huddled against a tree, but even from there I could see the kidnapper’s camp in the next valley.

The guy that I finally got a hold of, some kind of Aid to the Ambassador, told to stay put and help would be on its way just before dawn.

May 30th

8:05 Hrs

Hospital Lobby

Last night got worse. I know I’m going to leave out some stuff but here’s my best shot at remembering what I can:

It took me a while to make the climb out of our valley, and it would take a few hours for the cavalry to show up. I wanted to keep an eye on my friends so I stupidly snuck down the hill and into the valley where they were being held. I really didn’t want to, but if the guys tried to move them I wanted to at least be able to watch and call back to let the Marines (or whomever) know about it. I found a spot behind some bushes a few dozen yards away from their camp. I didn’t mean to get so close but I could hear them screaming and what I heard didn’t make sense. They were screaming at the members of the team - wanting to know where an "eye" was.

The more they screamed in Spanish the less it made sense. "Ojo del Diablo", the eye of the devil. I assumed that it was some artifact that they were looking for - probably to trade for more weapons, but the team was excavating some tombs of a regional Mayan official and his family - no wealth like that should have been there.

The marines, or whoever was supposed to come, never seemed to show up. Dawn took forever when you were waiting for it. The bandit leader got a SAT phone call about an hour after I called the Embassy and he switched from Spanish to English.

He told the caller that "they" didn't have it but he was going to kill a few of them to send a message. One of the Grad students, a guy named Kevin, screamed out that it was in this gym bag back at the camp.

I knew that the minute they had it, the others would see the dawn. I crawled away from the camp and high tailed it up the ridge to get back before the bandits. They had to drive a fairly twisty road to get out of their valley and over to our camp, but all I had to do was just go up and over the hill.

I fell down the bottom half of the ridge, scraping my legs on something sharp; I didn't know if it was sweat or blood running down into my socks.

Yes, I was panicked.

Kevin and I were in the same barracks tent. I knew everything about that guy – when he changed his socks (never) and when he had some private time (usually every night). I never remembered anything about an artifact that could be called an ‘eye’. It took me a while to get through his collection of port-a-john pornography, but I found what appeared to be a gold disk encased in bubble-wrap. I grabbed his satchel and ducked out of the back of the tent just as the headlights brushed the perimeter of their camp.

As a hand full of bandits searched the camp, I saw Kevin being tossed out of the back of their pick-up. He was bleeding from a cut on his lip and had a large purple bruise across his cheek, but he was alive. He told them where to look - right where I had taken it.

They accused Kevin of lying and called back to the leader. I was hiding back in the tomb in G9, but I could hear the sound of one shot ring out in the pre-dawn hours. I froze. I didn't know who had been killed but I guessed that whoever it was, they wouldn't be the first.

I felt for the small pistol in my satchel; I had picked it up back in the tent when I grabbed the SAT phone. I remember Kevin asking me why I carried it with me and I told him that I had packed it in case they ran into wild animals around the site. I wasn’t the best of shots.

The two guards stayed in the camp with Kevin while the other two drove back to their boss. One bandit continued to scream at Kevin for the Eye - who was hoarse from screaming that it should be there in his box.

The other bandit found the site director's secret stash of whiskey and began to drain the bottle. They took turns yelling at him and shoving him around. He was bound with zip-ties and hardly made it back to his feet before they would knock him over again.

By the end of the whiskey, they were bored of beating on him. I was scared. I wanted to help Kevin, but I sucked at shooting moving targets and the others would come if he started pulling the trigger randomly.

One of the bandits started to take a piss against the tent but finished on Kevin's back. Still with himself hung out he grabbed Kevin by his belt and pulled him to his knees.

I knew where this was going and snuck closer to improve my aim. I moved from pit to trench across the field until I got within a few dozen feet from where they were. The bandit kept Kevin's arms zipped, but cut open the back of his shorts with a flick of his knife. The other bandit, originally not too interested, couldn't find anything he wanted in the tent and had apparently decided that raping the American before shooting him wasn't such a bad idea.

I made sure the pistol was loaded and tried to calm myself down as the two men pulled their army surplus pants down to their ankles; their guns on the table a few feet away. I took aim at the one by Kevin's head first. The one on his knees would take a second to get up before he could get to his AK.

Slowing my breath, I squeezed the trigger and the first man fell dead as Kevin let out a yelp - either of pain or surprise. It was only a Glock, but at this range almost any hit to the body would drop someone. The second man tried to stand and as he did, I put a round through his throat, but I was aiming for his chest.

Kevin was moaning with panic and fear as I ran up to him. All I could do was hold on to him for a few seconds until he realized that he had not himself been shot. Grabbing the dead bandits knife, I cut Kevin free and grabbed a pair of shorts from near the tent where the bandits had rummaged through our stuff. Kevin was freaked – shutting down his panic and fear, but at least he was able to move.

We ran and hid in the far tomb until just before dawn - just long enough for kevin to change the tattered shorts. He was more shaken than hurt but sometimes that was worse. All he wanted to do was curl up and hide. I had to pull him with me as we climbed back up the ridge and called for help again. Just then, by the dawns light, he could see the leader cocking his pistol and aiming at the back of the head of the team's nurse; a woman we jokingly called “Nurse Ratchet”.

Just then, the bandits dropped like someone had cut their strings. Snipers from the tree line had taken each out within seconds. The Marines had arrived. I told Kevin that we needed to move down to their camp so the Marines could find us. As soon as I got him back on his feet, two bushes near us moved and he about crawled up the nearest tree. I don’t know who those Mairnes were, but I’m glad that I didn’t shoot one of them by mistake. Within a half-hour, we were being air-lifted out of the area and I had completely forgotten about the artifact.

Kevin was taken to a nearby hospital with the others on the team to have them checked out. It turned out that they had broken one of his ribs somewhere in the process. I’m sitting in the lobby of the Hospital writing all this down while I wait for people to get discharged. A SGT is here with me to help get us over to the Airport. The Site Director was dead, but the Team Leader was heading back to the site to collect the gear and the data with some help from a local security company. I don’t know where they’re going to stick me. I’m just a member of the Team, not on staff with the University.

I’m never going to get paid.
-TB

June 5, 2005

Highway 40, 20 miles east of Kansas City, MO

13:05 hrs

Ugh. Rain.

I'm driving across country and the soft-cover for the jeep has a tear that even duct tape won't fix. Someone cut a hole in the roof when I was back somewhere around Denver. I tried to patch it but there's only so much that duct tape can do for me right now.

The rain is so hard that I've parked under an overpass just to get out of it for a while. The wind is flapping on the duct tape so bad that it's ripping the soft-cover even more. I've tried to tape it but I've gone through half a flat already. Oh yeah, and where it has ripped - the rain was leaking in and drenching my duffle. I'll have wet clothes when I get to Metro unless I stop at a laundromat and dry them.

Speaking of Metro: When I got back from the dig and the University took my statement and helped process all of details of what happened I found out that I was out of a job. The grant that we were operating under was supposed to hold me for the entire summer and possibly into the fall. Well, with the business with the kidnappers and the hostages on the team who were shot - the University is freaking out. The grant, university-sponsored, has been terminated since all of the principle researchers are either dead or going to be recouperating all summer long. They'll let them have the grant dollars later - like next summer, but for now I'm jobless.

The only good thing is that I pulled in a favor with the Dean and asked if he could help me out a little - since I was stuck at his University with nothing but half a paycheck from the field. He called around to some of his contacts and found me an adjunct job at Metro University. Here's the thing. I was in Denver. Metro is in Northern KY, Southern OH and Western West Virginia - it's the weird new Metropolitan Complex that the gov created for the Pathfinder project. I find it oddly ironic that a the University that I'll be teaching archaeology for is in a city that was built to develop the technology to get a colony on Mars. Ancient world vs New World. Interesting mix.

So I'm heading cross-country in my beat-up old jeep with what little I own to walk into an adjunct job for Summer term. It doesn't pay that much and I'm all but certain that I'll have just enough left of my dig money to get there and find a place to live - if they rent card board boxes for cheap.

Yeap, it's still coming down out there. I can barely see a few dozen feet past the edge of the over pass. They have serious storms out here. Everything is so flat that the storms have nothing stopping them when they roll out over the state. I'm hoping that it will let up soon. The cheeze burger I grabbed a few hours ago is not holding me and I need to try and tape up some more of the hole in the roof.

Hang on - the sound of the rain has finally been picked up by my bladder.

15:25 hrs

Still under that bridge.

Well, the rain is still coming down but not as bad now.

I've just spent the past few hours with someone that could be rather interesting. Let me paint the picture for you.

So there I was, on the other side of the jeep watering the highway with a very full bladder when I heard the roaring whine of a bike coming towards me. Now I can think of only a few things worse than being stuck out in the rain on a bike. Trying to drive with any speed in this kind of weather is a formula for an accident. Either the road would get too slick or you'd hydroplane and slide across the road or into another car or truck. It's just generally a bad idea.

I asked myself, as I was trying to finish in privacy, if whoever was on the bike was going to wait it out under the bridge with me. As soon as I finished asking myself, I heard the bike wind down and pull over on the opposite side of the bridge. Yeah, he saw me taking a leak and didn't want to just pull up along side.

So he got off the bike just as I was pulling myself together and peeled off the helmet; he was soaked. I kinda felt sorry for him. My duffle was not as soaked but I, at least, had the jeep's top to keep me out of the rain. He was in jeans and a jacket.

Wet jeans. ew. I'm fairly certain that the Chinese have explored methods of extracting information by making people wear cold wet jeans until they confess.

I grabbed a towel from the backseat and walked it over to him. I knew that I was going to be under the bridge for a while - at least until the rain had stopped and I could try and tape up some of the new rips. He gave me a weird look at first - since he didn't know me from Adam, but when he saw the towel he was too grateful to care.

His name was Kevin, but everyone called him 'K'; he hated "Kev".

We talked for a little bit but he really wanted to get out of his clothes. So, he just pulled out something from the case on the back of his bike and started to strip. I just turned around and walked back to my jeep. I had no need to watch.

After he changed, he pulled his bike over to my side of the bridge and we started talking. We weren't going anywhere. The rain continued to pour.

He's a photographer who's doing some kind of cross-country photo thing. I told him that I was headed off to Metro and he just shook his head - he's not been there but has heard some things about the place. Since I only remembered the CNN show on the founding of it, he gave me a bit of an insider's story. Metro is fairly new - parts of it are still being built, but it's huge. Three small towns / cities were combined and tied together with rail transit into a new metropolitan area. It's sort of like D.C. Huge corporations came in from Japan, China and Europe to start developing the technologies for the whole mission to mars thing. The project will take fifty years but there's a huge push to get there for some reason.

With corporations behind it - there's got to be money in Mars.

He told me that housing sucks unless you want to sell your soul to a corporation. The University is just a factory turning out scientists and engineers for the program, but it's not a bad place. I'll be interested to see what I'm walking into with the campus and the housing thing is making me nervous.

K had a friend who was doing a lot of work for the news channels - photographing this and that for whomever. He hadn't spoken to the friend in a while but it's easy to get busy in a place like Metro.

I don't know why but I gave him my card. I figure that it might be cool if he ever ended up in Metro to check in with him. He seems like some kinda photo-gypsy and part of me envies his freedom. I'd guess he's about as broke as me but you'd never know it from the way he acts. Not a care in the world.

It's rare to find someone who's at home in their own skin and at peace with themselves.

Hang on, I think the rain is stopping.

15:45 hrs

Nope, just slacking off again.

K is passed out. He said he was getting too tired when he was in the rain and it was making him a bit wobbly towards the end. Since I was goign to be there for a while, he asked if I'd keep an eye on him while he grabbed some sleep. Before I could say yes or no he was snoring away. I remember when I used to be able to do that; sleep at the drop of a dime. I really haven't slept well since the Dig. Loud noises make me jump like it's another gun shot.

I think I'm going to get some sleep myself. I can sorta get comfy in the jeep.

17:00 hrs

I didn't realize that I was that tired. I couldn't curl across the seats because...well...it's a Jeep and that's just not possible. When I was coming out of my nap I could sorta hear that the rain had stopped so I woke myself up the rest of the way.

K was gone. He left me a note on the window of the jeep and stuck the towel through the passenger window. I can't believe I didn't wake up. In his note he thanked me for the towel and the conversation and he gave me his cell phone number. Not like I'd probably ever call him, but I did catch that he fixed my top. He had gaffer tape - sort of like ultra duct tape - and sealed the last of the rips. This stuff won't come off.

I guess it was for letting him grab some sleep so he could head out later.

Oh well, back on the road.

-TB

June 5, 05
23:45 hrs
Moonlight Motel
Frankfort Kentucky

I couldn't drive anymore.

The road was starting to blur together so bad that I decided to grab myself a room. I'll be in Metro tomorrow morning, but I wanted to at least grab a shower before I check in with the University and start looking for a place to live.

This is the cheapest place that I could find; not that I shopped around - but by the appearance, I wouldn't be surprised if they had hourly rates.

It's still a bed and it's still a shower. That's all I care about right now. There's a bar across the road from here. It's pretty rowdy too. I grabbed all of my stuff out of the jeep (which wasn't much) just incase someone tried to help themselves to my stuff in the middle of the night. When I got into the room, I could have sworn that I saw K's bike in the bar's parking lot. I didn't really get a good look at it and I'm too tired to care right now.

I've already got a shower and I'm waiting on the last bit of my laundry to dry before I head back to the room and crash.

June 6, 2005
03:11 hrs

I knew it... I KNEW it. As soon as I put my head to the pillow I was sinking into oblivion to the sounds of a fight across the small road that seperated the hotel from the bar. I was glad that I pulled my stuff out of the jeep but left it alone. It wasn't my problem.

Yeah, right. The gods like to screw with my life. All of them.

So just when I'm about ready to put my hand on the ancient idol of power in the forbidden tomb of death - I hear the sound of my cellphone buzzing. The buzz continued and, within my dream at least, that alerted the carnivorous bugs who began pouring out of the walls to come eat me. Thankfully the buzzing yanked me out of the Tomb of Death before that happened.

I was half confused as to who would call me that late. As soon as I got my eyes open, I guessed that it was K. I was right.

He was in a fight and the guys who had decided that he was in the wrong bar decided to destroy his bike. The cops were called and the idiots were arrested but K was still without a bike that would run. To say that they had trashed it was an understatement. There was no beating anything back into shape to let him ride it. So he was stuck. He saw my jeep in the parking lot and called to see if I could help him out again.

Sometimes it hurts to be a nice guy.

So, I got out of bed and opened the motel door to look for him. He was in the middle of the parking lot looking at my jeep. Since he didn't know where I was staying he just used the number on my card to find me. I just waved him up and he hobbled towards me. The cops had to call EMS for the bar fight since a number of people got seriously hurt. K just had a busted lip and shiner that would probably become a black eye by morning. He got up to the room and it was only then that I realized that I was standing in the door way and talking to him in just my boxers and t-shirt. Oh well. I can afford to be a bit off my game when I'm being nice.

He's in the bathroom now getting himself straightened up since they ripped his shirt almost off him and his shorts have blood on them from someone else. I just crawled back to bed and started writing to let my mind wind down.

Ok... bed. Night.

June 7, 2005
09:43 hrs

Ya know... when I was writing last night I didn't think of -where- K was going to sleep. Didn't even occur to me. I just let him in my room - a guy that I had only met the day before and really only spoke to for a few hours. What the hell was I thinking?

Oh yeah, I was being a nice guy. That's it.

So this morning I woke up and rolled over in bed. Part of me almost forgot that the fight and all that had happened last night until I saw his back. K was in bed with me and only wearing a pair of briefs. Again, didn't need to see that.

The thing that got my attention, though, was a tattoo on the back of his neck, just under the hair line. It was tribal - of a sort; glyph-like. When I raised my head to focus on the mark, he stirred and woke up. I just rolled over and started to get up. I just shrugged it off and headed to the bathroom. I saw his shorts, apparently soaked and now drying on the shower rod, were still streaked with blood stains but at least not as bad as they were last night. That's probably why he was not wearing much - he had nothing left.

I grabbed a shower and came out and he was really embarrased now that the emergency of last night's fight had lapsed. He said that he would pay for the gas if I could take him to Metro. he'd look up his friend there and get help. I didn't want to just leave him without wheels and he wasn't a bad guy, but I really needed the money for gas.

He's in the shower now. I let him borrow my shampoo and all that. I think he's had some blood in his hair or something. He's going to pay for breakfast and gas for the last bit of the trip. It's only going to be a couple of hours so it shouldn't be too bad.

I hope he's got another shirt.

Anyway, time to finish getting ready. Breakfast sounds good right about now.

-TB