(aka Bike) Part 1007 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad
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I suppose I had five or ten minutes to work on the girl before reinforcements arrived to see what happened. I managed to stop the bleeding and one of the bullets had worked its way to the surface and I was able to remove it.
I was so engaged in what I was doing, I didn’t realise that I was being observed. Pushing the energy into the woman and talking to her I was completely absorbed in my task. Another bullet rose to the surface and I removed it, I reckoned there was a third and it felt to be deep inside her close to her heart, having penetrated a lung on its way. I drove the energy deep into her body, and felt myself forming like a sling of it to draw the bullet out.
My sling was very fragile and her organs felt stuck together with glue. Sweat was rolling down my back as I pulled and pulled on the bullet and simultaneously plugged the hole with light to heal it. I had to work fast, the girl’s heart had stopped and she wasn’t breathing.
Finally the last bullet came to the surface and I laid her flat and began CPR, breathing the light into her lungs and pushing it into her heart as I practiced my ministrations. She coughed and gurgled and began breathing for herself, and I turned her on her side, so she could cough up whatever muck was in her throat.
I had just done this when there was a cough behind me, and I spun round to see two swat officers standing watching me.
“Did you just do what we think we saw you do?” asked the taller of the two.
“That depends upon what you think you saw me do.”
“You pulled the bullets out of her and started her heart again, somehow stopping the bleeding at the same time.”
“Yeah, there was this blue light all around you,” said the second.
“What if I denied what you assert you saw?”
“How did ya do it?”
“Who said I did it?”
“There are three damaged slugs there, they’ve obviously hit something.”
“Maybe they hit the wall.”
“C’mon, lady, they didn’t I saw them come out of her body–I’m pretty sure I put at least one of them there.”
“You realise if you say what you saw, then you’ll destroy my life and that of my children?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll be pursued by the press and followed by loads of people who think I can help them. I can’t help them all–I don’t have the time or the power, plus I’d like some time to myself and my family.”
“So why did you waste your power on scum like her?”
“I have problems with people dying for nothing,” I opined firmly.
“Yeah, but why don’t you save your energy for the good guys?”
“I’ve used it once for your inspector.”
“Yeah, but he’s still down, I saw the paramedic with him.”
“I think that might be because he’s trying to find the wound, which should have healed by now.”
The woman stirred and two guns were cocked and pointed at her. She sat up and stared at me then at the two police holding guns aimed at her. “Why you save, Anna?”
I shrugged my shoulders, “Perhaps I think enough bloodshed has occurred.”
She gave me a look which suggested she didn’t understand.
“I want the killing to stop.”
She nodded.
“Where is my husband, Simon Cameron?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.” I didn’t, I was convinced that she knew. Every sinew in my body was telling me that she knew.
“Is truth, I don’t know.”
“Do you know who I mean?”
“Sure, man we take from car.”
“Yes that one. Is he still alive?”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t know, mebbe he is, mebbe not, Anna not know.”
“One of your group told me he was being held here, would he lie?”
“Depends how you ask him.”
“I threatened to kill him.”
“And he talked–typical man.”
I picked up the machine pistol and fired it about a foot from her. She didn’t bat an eyelid–one tough cookie. I fired again and a splinter of wood hit her wrist, which caused her squeak and rub the injured arm.
“What’s going on up there?” called a disembodied voice on the radio.
“It’s okay, sir, gun malfunction.”
“See it doesn’t happen again, people could get killed by stray rounds.”
“Very good, sir, we will.” The young copper fibbed to avoid embarrassing me.
“I’d tell her if I were you, Anna, she might not miss next time and she might not revive you next time.”
“I can’t, the energy only works once.”
“So if I was to shoot her now–she’d stay dead?” asked the taller copper.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Good thing too, bloody terrorists.”
“Anna not terrorist, Anna fighting to overthrow capitalist system before it destroy my country.”
“So why don’t you work in your own country and leave us alone?”The tall policeman voiced a not unreasonable question, which might have been rhetorical.
“Simon Cameron, he big investor in corrupt business and government.”
“So why not expose him–show the world what he’s doing and set him free for the legal system to charge him as appropriate.”
“He own legal system, buy best lawyers and judges–forgone conclusion–Anna say, kill him.”
“This woman has just saved your life you ungrateful bitch.”
“I not ask to be saved.”
“Just as well then, innit?”
“I don’t care–you kill me, see if I care.”
“I just took three bullets out of you–you might not care, but I bloody well do. I’m not saving you so you can end your stupid life because you pissed off some copper with a hair trigger.”
“Anna not ask you help.”
“You want me to put the bullets back into you?”
“You do with Anna as you want, I never talk.”
“I admire your stubbornness, but unfortunately, I need to find my husband and that means I don’t play by the rules anymore than I have to. I put the life back into you, I can draw it out just as easily.” It wasn’t true, but she didn’t know that.
I stepped towards her and she rose and struggled to avoid me, falling backwards in the process, nearly down through the hole in the floor. Then she thought about diving from the hole in the rotten flooring, I saw it in her eyes a second before she went, and I grabbed her while she struggled to get through the hole.
The two coppers came and pulled her back, then as they were walking away, one fell through the rotten floor and shot the other one as his gun went off. She saw her chance and pushed me over hitting the wounded copper as she went. He was bleeding quite badly and I had to make a choice–try and save him or apprehend the Russian woman and try and find where Simon was.
It wasn’t a choice, it was a dilemma.
Comments
It's The Perils of Pauline
...redux... No one hangs from cliffsides quite so fetchingly as Cathy and her gang.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Bike pt 1007
WOW! Now to see if Anna is right about Simon or if she is being duped and if Simon is as guilty as she believes.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Talk about being
on the horns of a dilemma, What will Cathy choose, Stop the bleeding of the policeman and possibly save his life....Or follow Anna... Because as things stand if our Russian friend reaches Simon first, I don't think she will have his best interests at heart!!!
Kirri
Trolley Problem...
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Anarchist?
Taking down the Capitalist Pigs! Yea!! I though these types went out with the fall of the Soviet empire.
I knew Angharad could not keep a simple straight plot line. It's all these random variables and plot twists that keep me hooked.
Was it that great philosopher Murphy who said "Nothing is a simple as it first seems". Nice cliffhanger and conundrum for Cathy.
The more you write the better you seem to get. Thanks. When it comes to "Bike" I like the quote attributed to the late mayor Daily of Chicago, "Vote early and Vote often."
Hugs,
Trish-Ann
~There is no reality, only perception~
Hugs,
Trish Ann
~There is no reality, only perception~
Cathy will no doubt save the
Cathy will no doubt save the officer as she is being led by the power she has. I believe as she is saving him, one of the other officers will find Simon bound and gagged somewhere on the grounds of the house. Cathy's instincts to treat everyone the same until they prove her different, is being tested at this moment and Angharad along with Bonzi is testing us all as well. Cliff hangers, tests, and traps, what a super cool story we have been given. Jan
Simple Solution
Cathy is holding a machine pistol, and she hasn't got time to chase after the escaping prisoner, yet she daren't let her escape. Hmmm... what to do, what to do...
The solution seems simple enough. Shoot the woman to incapacitate, but not kill her (a shot or two to the hip), and then tend to the injured policeman.
I think I'm going to have to
I think I'm going to have to draft one of my more powerful characters to keep me from falling off all these cliffs! Whoever it is will probably tell me to stop hanging from them, but The Daily Doormouse is far too much fun for that! Thanks for another wonderful chapter Angharad, and Bonzi of course! :)
I like Pippa's idea, disable the woman and heal the man. Although I'm not sure how Cathy will get any information out of her, she's one tough cookie! Then again, maybe she'll lead them to Simon in her attempt to kill him?
Saless
"But it is also tradition that times *must* and always do change, my friend." - Eddie Murphy, Coming To America
Maybe it's time for Cathy
to discover that she can pull the life from someone. Yank enough out of Anna to disable her and save the cops. Shame that all that healing was for nothing.
Maybe its time for the blue light
to have another influence on those it has healed. The ability for Cathy to coerce them mentally to behave with her.
"Those are not the 'droids you are looking for"
*giggle*
Kim
Or...
Sadly, perhaps Simon is already dead. THAT would really put a spin on the next 1000 episodes or so...
Okay, I don't REALLY wish it on him... too much.
And Cathy would get the Jag...
Suicide.
Touch on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism. The trouble is that the hyprocrites know that inequality is the main cause of terrorism.
It only takes so much despair to turn people suicidal. It's not brainwashing or religious fanaticism or any other device of oppression or persuasion that turns people into suicidists it is DESPAIR, the LOSS of HOPE. The same despair that arises from watching one's loved ones suffering and dying, the same hopelessness that derives from the helplessness to prevent it.
Once one loses all hope of achieving any sort of happiness, death becomes the most attractive alternative; ipso facto, suicide, suicide bombers, suicide terrorists.
Cathy, the girl wont talk if you try threatening her. The only way you can get her to talk is to give her back her hope!
It's great pity that western security forces cannot understand this and genuinly think that the bullet is the only solution.
God forbid! (or whoever suffices for God,) the message has been around long enough. Three of the tenets of godliness are bandied about with glib and pious hypocrasy all the time. faith, HOPE and charity. These are three tenets amongst others but the greatest of these in this modern world of starvation, disease and inequality is not charity any more but HOPE!!! Charity just reinforces the perception of haves and have-nots followed by the subsequent resentment of inequality and consequent violence that leads to despair and loss of hope!
Give me the seven tenets of Islam, give me even the three tenets of christendom but above all give me hope.
Beverly.
Where is Simon?
In Part 1,000—The Millenial Edition—we learned that Simon had disappeared.
Seven installments later, he still hasn't been found, and it's debatable as to whether his rescue is any closer.
I think Angharad and Bonzi are trying to set a record for the longest cliffhanger in this venerable series.
Prolonged Suspense
Bike Archive
Bike Resources
I left the kidnap
for Bonzi to organise, he can't remember where he left Simon. He's been digging holes all over the place, which I assume are related to his search for Simon. Why else would he be digging holes?
Angharad
Angharad
...longest cliffhanger
That would be the plight of Clarabelle the Clown on the Howdy Doody Show, who was marooned at the bottom of the sea in a diving suit after Bob Keeshan (who later played Captain Kangaroo in a similar children's show) was fired for trying to negotiate for higher wages. It turns out Buffalo Bob was a putz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCnPmu_421g
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I Remember this!
It was right about that time that Kookla, Fran and Ollie were on too! Recollection of Boat,Plane,Choo Choo is dim. Oh who sang the Nestly's song. N-E-S-T-L-E-Y, Nestley's makes the very best Chokie, I say! I was born early on in '47. It was an accident I promise!
Much Peace
Khaduuj
Anna
is a fanatic. Still, has to be disconcerting to be healed that way. Give her time to think about it perhaps.
S&W mod 29
I prefer Inspector Callahan and the .44magnum.
Hopefully some one will wound the red bitch, and give Cathy another shot(literally) at her.
Cefin