The Chillicothe Horror Affair: Act II
The Chillicothe Horror Affair
-a Man from UNCLE slash fanfic by Taylor Dancinghands
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin, April Dancer/Mark Slate (background)
Chapter Index
Prologue: ...his Unspeakable Name...
Act 1:...something must have brainwashed them.
Act 2: ...There's something not right here...
Act 3: ...a little bird told me.
Act 4: Your Guide has found you!
Epilogue: ...a good beginning.
Act II: "...There's something not right here"
It was an impressively vast space, with the ceiling at least twenty to thirty feet above them. Another stream (or perhaps the same one again) ran along one side, and the room followed it, promising further wonders ahead in the dark. Where Dan was standing, Napoleon now saw, was an even larger flowstone formation, with stalactites, stalagmites and even some 'curtain' formations, but some of these were broken, newly so, for the pieces could be seen at Dan's feet.
"I take it that it wasn't this way when you were here last?" Mark said, aiming his light up at the damaged formations.
"Hell no!" Dan said angrily. "Our club pledge says we're supposed to protect the caves, and leave 'em like we found 'em. Folks at the Grotto, they'll say it was us kids who done it, though!"
"The Grotto?" Napoleon asked.
"Local chapters of the National Speleological Society," Abigail explained, adding her flashlight to the lamps aimed at the broken formations above. "They often sponsor high school caving clubs around the country. What's that black thing up there?"
"It's a cable," Illya said, peering intently. "An electrical cable, I would imagine."
"Electric?" said Luther, coming down to join them at last. "Ain't nobody s'posed to be running electricity down here. This is all county land."
"Dollars to doughnuts that's coming from the prison," Napoleon said.
"You'll get no takers here," April said. "The real question is, where is it going to?"
With the two Sentinels' keen eyes to track it, the whole group made their way slowly down the length of the room, following the black cable as it snaked along the ceiling, leaving the occasional remains of destroyed formations on the ground below. The two boys expressed both outrage at the damage and indignation over how they would surely be unjustly accused, until Napoleon and Abigail both promised that they'd testify to their innocence if called upon to do so.
The room narrowed somewhat as they moved through it, forcing them all single file along the stream bank, then it opened out again, revealing the thing that the four UNCLE agents had been expecting at last. They were not expecting to find it in such a condition however, and the boys were not expecting it at all.
"What the hell?" Dan exclaimed, while Luther stood, dumbfounded as he shone his light around, muttering, "Lord a'mighty… who done all this?"
It was small for a Thrush lab, but they'd had limited space in which to build. Two computer banks remained standing, and another lay face down where it had fallen on the rocky floor, black scorch marks on the wall behind it telling part of the story. There were two desks, one of which was overturned, and a row of file cabinets, drawers all opened revealing blackened ashes of the papers they'd once contained, though more than a few were scattered on the muddy ground.
Other furniture and equipment of a less identifiable nature lay overturned and strewn about, along with masses of the uncoiled data tapes from the computers and a fair amount of broken glass. One of the overturned chairs still had a Thrush liveried lab coat hanging on it, and a small notebook Illya found under the overturned computer proved to be a Thrush manual of some sort. It did not seem that anyone had been here for weeks.
The two young cavers hung back by the entrance to watch, as did Abigail, standing with her arms crossed in stern disapproval. The four UNCLE agents moved over the scene with practiced intent, gathering what information they could from the wreckage, trying to reconstruct the events leading to the installation of the lab and its demise.
"I suppose it was autumn the last time any of you lads was down here?" Mark asked.
"It weren't us, but two of the guys from the club, Geoffrey and Lee," Dan said. "They were here just before Halloween, said it was getting pretty wet already. Pretty sure they got this far back, and they sure woulda said something if they'd-a seen anything like this."
Luther shook his head. "Yeah, I talked to Lee about it the next day at school. He said the crick was high already and he hadda walk in water up to his knees to get to the back room."
"The back room, that's this one?" Napoleon asked. Dan and Luther both nodded. "Well that gives us a pretty clear time frame. Chances are, I'd say, that one of those side passages you were hoping to explore leads to the prison. Thrush would have bribed and coerced the prison guards and administration to let the prison be used as a staging area for all this. That's right up Thrush's ally."
"So, you're saying that a criminal organization has most likely taken over the State Pen?" Abigail said. "Well that's just typical, isn't it."
"It is for Thrush," Napoleon replied. "But that's just a means to an end. They're here looking for some kind of mind control… device or technique. So that means there's yet another passage somewhere around here that leads to…"
"The thing whose name our unfortunate Thrush scientist used to kill himself," said Mark. "Are we sure we want to find that?"
"Quiet, everyone," Illya said suddenly, before anyone could come up with an answer to Mark's question. "I think I hear something."
"Yeah, me too," said April. The others obligingly fell silent as the two Sentinels listened into the dark. Napoleon stepped forward to touch Illya's shoulder, his way of anchoring his Sentinel, allowing him to stretch his senses further.
"It's a baby!" April said after a moment. "A baby crying."
"Yes, that's what it is," Illya said. "A baby crying… it's afraid; it needs our help…"
A strange feeling came over Napoleon just then, as if some influence were, impossibly, coming between him and Illya. Never in his life had Napoleon doubted his Sentinel's senses and yet… "Are you sure, Illya? A baby? So far down in this cave?"
"I know what I'm hearing!" Illya snapped. "It's a baby… a terrified baby, come on!"
"Yes!" April agreed. "Can't you hear it too? We have to help!"
"Wait, April luv," Mark now cried. "There's something… I can't… I've lost our connection. There's something not right here."
Yes, that was it exactly, Napoleon thought. "Illya," he said urgently. "Mark's right. Something's wrong. We need to get out of here!"
"No! We need to get the baby first," Illya insisted, pulling away from Napoleon's grasp and heading towards a dark corner of the room. April moved to follow him.
Napoleon was wondering what he could do to break the spell their Sentinels seemed to be under when suddenly he, and the others in the room, really could hear something. There were footsteps coming, from the same direction that Illya and April were heading-lots of them.
"Dan, Luther," Napoleon commanded, unzipping his mud smeared coveralls to draw out his UNCLE special, loaded with sleep darts. "Get yourselves and Abigail out of here, now! We'll try to join you as soon as we can, and if we don't, go to the authorities, tell them to contact UNCLE and most important of all, don't let anybody send any more Sentinels down here!"
The two young cavers hesitated for a split second, reluctant to run away from a fight, but they saw the importance of getting the 'lady' to safety, and so complied. Napoleon hoped to be following them soon enough, but also knew they needed an immediate 'plan B'." Shadowy shapes were already emerging into the destroyed Thrush lab, though the erratic lights of his and Mark's headlamps made targeting them almost impossible.
There was a terrible blankness in the part of Napoleon's mind where he usually felt his Sentinel and he realized that not only did he not know what his partner was thinking, he didn't even know where is was anymore. It was impossible to tell in the dark, whether the Sentinels had been captured, killed or simply ignored by the figures moving towards them, but Napoleon heard no signs of struggle.
"Interlopers!" Napoleon heard instead. "Unbelievers! Trespassers! Defend the Master from the Profane! They will come to worship Him! Come…! Come to feel his love!"
Napoleon made a split second decision. "Fall back!!" he called, using his Guide voice at full strength. "Mark, Illya, April! Fall back now!" Even as he spoke, Napoleon felt the Sentinels' names fall dead on his tongue. They had not reached their target, but Mark's had. There was a scuffle and a discharge of an UNCLE special in the dark, then Mark was at his side, pausing at the door.
"I don't think the others are coming," he said, voice as bereft as Napoleon felt.
"I know," Napoleon all but choked out. "We need to get away. We'll come back for them as soon as we can."
"You know it, mate," Mark said, turning to accompany his fellow Guide back up the passage. "And we'll get them back. Make no mistake."
Napoleon would forever remember his and Mark's desperate scramble through the dark passages of Deadman Cave as the very quintessence of nightmarish. Thinking he would easily find the route he'd taken into the cave, Napoleon soon found that the features he could make out in the light of his headlamp seemed utterly unfamiliar when viewed from the opposite direction. Fortunately, he was able to make out the lamps of the two young cavers and Miss Blackfish moving up ahead, and from that deduced the way forward.
More fortunately still, Luther spotted them following behind and waited, calling out the way ahead when they got disoriented. Climbing the steep, mud-slick slope of the passage leading to the big room was only possible with the length of climbers sling fastened along one side, which Luther pointed out to them when they arrived at the bottom. Their pursuers could still be heard, shouting epithets as they followed, so Napoleon cut the climber's aid once they'd reached the top, much to Luther's displeasure.
"We'll see to it that it's put back, when we've finished here," Napoleon promised. "UNCLE will see to the cleanup and restoration, trust me, but those folks sound like they're out for blood, and whatever we can do to slow them down, we'll do."
The cave itself would surely slow them down, Napoleon considered, as there is absolutely no way to 'hurry up' while you're belly-crawling through mud, but none of these ordeals seemed to decrease their ire in any way. The climb and scramble up to the first room, and from there back up to the culvert, passed in a blur for Napoleon.
Once back out in the open air, Napoleon spared only a moment to revel in the freedom. Even as he stepped into the sunlight, he was assessing the scene strategically. The zealous devotees of the Thing with the Unspeakable Name would soon come pouring out of both ends of the culvert, surrounding the high ground of the road, which would be the most defensible spot. Time to circle the wagons.
Clambering up the steep embankment back to the road where the three cars were parked, Napoleon shouted out instructions to that end.
"Get the vehicles arranged into a triangle, so we can take shelter in the center," he said between panting breaths. "You boys have any shells for those shotguns?"
"Well sure," said Dan, getting into the driver's seat to back the truck into position. "Just buckshot, though."
"Anybody got any rock salt?" Abigail asked, having pulled her van into formation.
"Yeah," Luther said. "But we ain't got time to load it into the shells, now." Indeed, Napoleon, getting spare clips, lethal and otherwise, out of the trunk of their car, could already hear the first muffled cries of "Defilers! Vandals! Get 'em!" emerging from the culvert below.
"Not for the guns!" Abigail said forcefully. "For protection. Just hand it over. I'll take care of it."
It took Dan a few seconds to extract a partially used bag of rock salt from under the back seat, and Abigail all but snatched it out of his hands. She could hear the approaching voices as well. With hasty but practiced motions, Abigail began pouring a line of salt around the outer perimeter of the three parked cars. Protection, Napoleon thought, the way he'd heard of protecting against vampires by pouring a line of salt across your threshold. Abigail was enclosing them in a circle of salt, and was just finishing, as the first few enraged devotees appeared on the road.
They were armed with only crude weapons, such as truncheons and sections of pipe, but there were really quite a lot of them, and more were coming.
"Are those jail uniforms?" Mark said, standing in the cover of the UNCLE rental beside Napoleon, checking his weapon. Indeed, most of the approaching attackers wore unmistakable, black and white striped prisoners' coveralls, but there were prison guards among the crowd as well. Their former distinctions seemed to mean nothing now, for they stood shoulder to shoulder as they charged.
"Dan, Luther, fire at the ground in front of them!" Napoleon shouted, as he and Mark, on the other side of their 'fortress', darted a few of the leaders of the charge. Looking over his shoulder, Napoleon could see that the shotgun blasts were deterring the bulk of the assailants on that side, as the suddenly slumping bodies among the fray did on theirs. Elsewhere, their would-be attackers did seem to be put off by the salt line, approaching to within inches, but not daring to step over.
"Stop them!" Abigail called suddenly, and looking where she pointed Napoleon saw one attacker coming with a long stick, clearly intending to sweep the salt away. Mark darted him and Luther shot the stick itself, reducing its length to fragments.
"Get back you!" Dan shouted from the other side, firing another round at some of the enthralled prisoners who were throwing rocks at the salt line. One of the rocks fell too close, almost breaking the line of salt, but a second later Abigail darted out, kicked the rock away and poured a bit more salt out to fill the gap. Dan fired another shot in her wake as a warning.
"How long do you think we can keep this up?" Mark asked quietly, glancing over his shoulder at the boxes of shells on the ground next to where Dan and Luther stood. The two UNCLE agents had another couple of clips each, but if the attackers came at them in force, they'd be in trouble. Eventually food and water would begin to be an issue too, but this was a regular county road in middle America, not some remote wasteland.
"Sooner or later, someone's gotta come down this road," Napoleon muttered, darting another rock thrower. "If they don't want their cover blown on the whole prison operation, they don't dare let themselves be seen by the police."
And as if his words had summoned them, Napoleon and Mark both soon heard the very welcome sounds of approaching police sirens. There followed a moment of confusion and directionlessness among the attackers, then they slowly turned, gathered up all their weapons and fallen comrades, and retreated back down the embankment. Less than a minute later, there was no trace of them, and the lights of the police cars could just be seen in the distance.
There was enough time before the police arrived for Napoleon to shuck his coveralls and put his suit jacket back on. He stood in front of their circled vehicles as the black and white car pulled off the road, hands in the open, and a welcoming smile on his face. The two officers who exited the car still looked at him suspiciously, though their expressions changed to confusion as they observed the others who came to stand beside him.
"What in the Sam Hill is going on here?" the older of the two officers, slightly paunchy with a sandy grey mustache, demanded.
"We had reports of shots fired," said the younger, a beanpole of a fellow with a long face to match. "And I can smell the cordite. You boys wanna tell us what's up?"
So you're a Sentinel, eh, officer Cranston, Napoleon thought, reading the fellow's badge. He stepped forward and extended his hand.
"Napoleon Solo, agent of the U.N.C.L.E. Here on an investigation of some untoward activity near Chillicothe," he began smoothly. "You may have met my colleague, Agent Slate, who was here investigating the John Doe you folks picked up last week."
"Heard about you," the older officer, Watts, according to his badge, replied. "Some Brit with a girl Sentinel?"
"That's me, guv," said Mark, offering his hand as well. "The sticky thing is, my 'girl Sentinel' is in a bit of a spot at the moment, his 'boy Sentinel' too, and we could really use your help."
"What kind of help?" Cranston, the Sentinel, asked.
"First of all," Napoleon said, modulating his voice to portray his trustworthiness to its fullest. "If you contact the prison this very minute and tell them to do a bed check, they'll find a number of inmates and more than a few guards missing. I realize that's a lot to take on faith, but time really is of the essence."
Watts looked dubious, but Cranston was with him. "He's a Guide, sir, and he's on the level. I'm sure." Watts held his gaze for a moment, then went to the police car radio.
"Okay, now y'all owe me an explanation, full story: What's happened to your Sentinels and why are Dan and Luther mixed up in all this?"
Before Napoleon could frame and answer, Abigail strode up and inserted herself into the conversation. "They're here as cave guides; UNCLE is paying them as consultants, aren't they?" Napoleon nearly laughed aloud at her audacity, but it was a good idea nonetheless.
"And I'm Abigail Blackfish. They're consulting me on cultural and historical issues involved with the case." They shook hands, almost tentatively, and only then did Napoleon realize.
"She's an unbonded Guide," he said to Mark. "How did we not notice?"
"Well, we have been working on a case, guv," Mark said. "That does tend to distract a fellow."
The handshake ended with fleeting, bittersweet smiles from both the officer and Miss Blackfish. No flash of recognition, then; no sense of missing pieces fitting together. It didn't always happen like that with Sentinels and Guides, but it occurred often enough that one hoped, every time a potential bond-mate came one's way. Napoleon remembered the feeling all too well, and felt a pang of longing as he recalled his and Illya's own tumultuous moment of mutual recognition.
Napoleon felt Mark's hand on his shoulder, a reminder that he was not alone in his distress. "Keep your chin up, mate," he murmured. "We'll find 'em."
Dan stepped up now, filling the awkward silence with his own narrative. "It's true what she said," he addressed Officer Watts. "We did take 'em down into Deadman Cave, and we done it proper like, with all the safety gear. But there's something… something bad going on down there. Something is getting into people's heads, like that old guy we picked up the other day."
"And that's not all," Luther elaborated. "Somebody done built some kinda scientific laboratory down there, with computers and everything, but them other folks, the mind-controlled ones, I guess, they destroyed it, and then they came after us."
"Scientific laboratory? Mind control?" Officer Watts exclaimed, having returned. "What kind of sci-fi, monster-movie hogwash is this? I find out you're pullin' my leg, young man, and you're gonna land in a heap of trouble."
"His narrative is a little jumbled, officer," Napoleon interjected. "But his facts are essentially correct. An organization called Thrush, who we often find ourselves opposing in our work, does seem to have built a laboratory in the back of Deadman Cave, possibly for the purpose of researching… an entity, we think, capable of controlling the minds of its victims. The John Doe that Dan and Luther encountered was probably a highly placed scientist in this Thrush organization, but the lab we found, where he would have worked, appears to have been overrun. Possibly by the same people who were attacking us."
"And who were these people attacking you?" Watts inquired.
"Looked like they were mainly prison inmates with a few prison guards thrown in," replied Mark. "Possibly as many as one hundred of them."
"Prison inmates?" bellowed Watts, incredulously. "Where are they now?"
"Returning to the prison by way of Deadman Cave," Napoleon said. "The same way they got out."
"So, you're saying that there's been a prison break, on top of everything else?" Watts demanded. "Why didn't you say that? They thought I was completely nuts when I called them just now."
"Well, yes and no," Napoleon said, frowning. So much for that hope.
"Sir, if I may?" Officer Cranston offered. The older policeman nodded for him to go on. "I can confirm that a sizable crowd of people was here, not long ago, nearly all wearing the same shoe style, and with a… body odor not inconsistent with prison inmates. The tracks all lead to and from the culvert down below, which I happen to know is the only known entrance to Deadman Cave. That all corroborates the incidents as relayed by Agent Solo here and the others."
"So you're saying that maybe a hundred prisoners escaped as far as here," officer Watts said. "But that they turned around and went back to jail, what, when they heard us coming?"
"Yes, sir, that's it precisely," answered Napoleon.
"But why?" cried Watts, throwing up his hands. "Why return to jail once they'd gotten this far?"
"That's why we can't call it a jailbreak, officers," Abigail explained. "They did get out of the jail, but they weren't really free at all. They were all under the influence of the… thing. Whatever it is that's been down in the bottom of Deadman Cave since ancient times. I've been studying the legends about it, and there are more than a few."
"A mind controlling monster from Indian legends," officer Watts said skeptically. "I'm not writing the report on this one, Ted. It's all yours."
"Yes sir," officer Cranston said with a long suffering eye-roll. "So what's your next move? And what do you need from us?"
"Well hopefully, if there's anyone left at the prison who isn't under the influence of the, ah, whatever it is," Mark said. "They'll at least find out where the passage is that connects the cave and the prison, and block it. We spotted an electrical cable in the cave that we also think came from the prison, so they should be able to trace it that way. You lot probably ought to make sure that's going as it should."
"Yes, and make sure any Sentinels stay away, from the prison and from this area in general," Napoleon added. "Somehow Sentinels seem more vulnerable to the influence. Any prison officials who are Sentinels must be suspect."
"Right," said Cranston, taking notes. "What about me? How do you know I'm not under this influence?"
"Feeling any urge to run into the cave and rescue a crying baby?" Mark asked. Cranston looked up to stare at him, pencil frozen on his notepad.
"God almighty, I was just about to ask if anyone else heard it…" he said, turning pale.
"Close your senses down now, Sentinel," Napoleon ordered. "And get out of here. Keep any other Sentinels far away. That's the best thing you can do to help us."
"That and send us Guides!" called Abigail as the two officers retreated to their car. "As many as you can find. I have a feeling we're going to need them to rescue our Sentinels."
Napoleon had no idea what she was talking about, but something instinctual within him thought it was a very good idea. "Dan and Luther, you might as well go back with them and help spread the word. We're going to be keeping watch here for now, but there's no reason for you to stay."
"Man's got a point," said Watts. "Your folks'll be wanting you home for dinner soon, in any case."
Reluctantly, the two cavers gathered up their things and climbed into Dan's pickup. "Don't you go back in that cave without safety gear!" Luther called out the window as they pulled onto the road behind the police car.
"And a cave guide!" called Dan.
"We won't!" Mark promised as he watched them go. The sun was dipping towards the west now, and in the calm that followed the two vehicles' departure, Napoleon could hear a chorus of cicadas chirring from the treetops above.
"Coffee, anyone?" said Abigail, opening the side doors of her VW bus.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Act III
-a Man from UNCLE slash fanfic by Taylor Dancinghands
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin, April Dancer/Mark Slate (background)
Chapter Index
Prologue: ...his Unspeakable Name...
Act 1:...something must have brainwashed them.
Act 2: ...There's something not right here...
Act 3: ...a little bird told me.
Act 4: Your Guide has found you!
Epilogue: ...a good beginning.
Act II: "...There's something not right here"
It was an impressively vast space, with the ceiling at least twenty to thirty feet above them. Another stream (or perhaps the same one again) ran along one side, and the room followed it, promising further wonders ahead in the dark. Where Dan was standing, Napoleon now saw, was an even larger flowstone formation, with stalactites, stalagmites and even some 'curtain' formations, but some of these were broken, newly so, for the pieces could be seen at Dan's feet.
"I take it that it wasn't this way when you were here last?" Mark said, aiming his light up at the damaged formations.
"Hell no!" Dan said angrily. "Our club pledge says we're supposed to protect the caves, and leave 'em like we found 'em. Folks at the Grotto, they'll say it was us kids who done it, though!"
"The Grotto?" Napoleon asked.
"Local chapters of the National Speleological Society," Abigail explained, adding her flashlight to the lamps aimed at the broken formations above. "They often sponsor high school caving clubs around the country. What's that black thing up there?"
"It's a cable," Illya said, peering intently. "An electrical cable, I would imagine."
"Electric?" said Luther, coming down to join them at last. "Ain't nobody s'posed to be running electricity down here. This is all county land."
"Dollars to doughnuts that's coming from the prison," Napoleon said.
"You'll get no takers here," April said. "The real question is, where is it going to?"
With the two Sentinels' keen eyes to track it, the whole group made their way slowly down the length of the room, following the black cable as it snaked along the ceiling, leaving the occasional remains of destroyed formations on the ground below. The two boys expressed both outrage at the damage and indignation over how they would surely be unjustly accused, until Napoleon and Abigail both promised that they'd testify to their innocence if called upon to do so.
The room narrowed somewhat as they moved through it, forcing them all single file along the stream bank, then it opened out again, revealing the thing that the four UNCLE agents had been expecting at last. They were not expecting to find it in such a condition however, and the boys were not expecting it at all.
"What the hell?" Dan exclaimed, while Luther stood, dumbfounded as he shone his light around, muttering, "Lord a'mighty… who done all this?"
It was small for a Thrush lab, but they'd had limited space in which to build. Two computer banks remained standing, and another lay face down where it had fallen on the rocky floor, black scorch marks on the wall behind it telling part of the story. There were two desks, one of which was overturned, and a row of file cabinets, drawers all opened revealing blackened ashes of the papers they'd once contained, though more than a few were scattered on the muddy ground.
Other furniture and equipment of a less identifiable nature lay overturned and strewn about, along with masses of the uncoiled data tapes from the computers and a fair amount of broken glass. One of the overturned chairs still had a Thrush liveried lab coat hanging on it, and a small notebook Illya found under the overturned computer proved to be a Thrush manual of some sort. It did not seem that anyone had been here for weeks.
The two young cavers hung back by the entrance to watch, as did Abigail, standing with her arms crossed in stern disapproval. The four UNCLE agents moved over the scene with practiced intent, gathering what information they could from the wreckage, trying to reconstruct the events leading to the installation of the lab and its demise.
"I suppose it was autumn the last time any of you lads was down here?" Mark asked.
"It weren't us, but two of the guys from the club, Geoffrey and Lee," Dan said. "They were here just before Halloween, said it was getting pretty wet already. Pretty sure they got this far back, and they sure woulda said something if they'd-a seen anything like this."
Luther shook his head. "Yeah, I talked to Lee about it the next day at school. He said the crick was high already and he hadda walk in water up to his knees to get to the back room."
"The back room, that's this one?" Napoleon asked. Dan and Luther both nodded. "Well that gives us a pretty clear time frame. Chances are, I'd say, that one of those side passages you were hoping to explore leads to the prison. Thrush would have bribed and coerced the prison guards and administration to let the prison be used as a staging area for all this. That's right up Thrush's ally."
"So, you're saying that a criminal organization has most likely taken over the State Pen?" Abigail said. "Well that's just typical, isn't it."
"It is for Thrush," Napoleon replied. "But that's just a means to an end. They're here looking for some kind of mind control… device or technique. So that means there's yet another passage somewhere around here that leads to…"
"The thing whose name our unfortunate Thrush scientist used to kill himself," said Mark. "Are we sure we want to find that?"
"Quiet, everyone," Illya said suddenly, before anyone could come up with an answer to Mark's question. "I think I hear something."
"Yeah, me too," said April. The others obligingly fell silent as the two Sentinels listened into the dark. Napoleon stepped forward to touch Illya's shoulder, his way of anchoring his Sentinel, allowing him to stretch his senses further.
"It's a baby!" April said after a moment. "A baby crying."
"Yes, that's what it is," Illya said. "A baby crying… it's afraid; it needs our help…"
A strange feeling came over Napoleon just then, as if some influence were, impossibly, coming between him and Illya. Never in his life had Napoleon doubted his Sentinel's senses and yet… "Are you sure, Illya? A baby? So far down in this cave?"
"I know what I'm hearing!" Illya snapped. "It's a baby… a terrified baby, come on!"
"Yes!" April agreed. "Can't you hear it too? We have to help!"
"Wait, April luv," Mark now cried. "There's something… I can't… I've lost our connection. There's something not right here."
Yes, that was it exactly, Napoleon thought. "Illya," he said urgently. "Mark's right. Something's wrong. We need to get out of here!"
"No! We need to get the baby first," Illya insisted, pulling away from Napoleon's grasp and heading towards a dark corner of the room. April moved to follow him.
Napoleon was wondering what he could do to break the spell their Sentinels seemed to be under when suddenly he, and the others in the room, really could hear something. There were footsteps coming, from the same direction that Illya and April were heading-lots of them.
"Dan, Luther," Napoleon commanded, unzipping his mud smeared coveralls to draw out his UNCLE special, loaded with sleep darts. "Get yourselves and Abigail out of here, now! We'll try to join you as soon as we can, and if we don't, go to the authorities, tell them to contact UNCLE and most important of all, don't let anybody send any more Sentinels down here!"
The two young cavers hesitated for a split second, reluctant to run away from a fight, but they saw the importance of getting the 'lady' to safety, and so complied. Napoleon hoped to be following them soon enough, but also knew they needed an immediate 'plan B'." Shadowy shapes were already emerging into the destroyed Thrush lab, though the erratic lights of his and Mark's headlamps made targeting them almost impossible.
There was a terrible blankness in the part of Napoleon's mind where he usually felt his Sentinel and he realized that not only did he not know what his partner was thinking, he didn't even know where is was anymore. It was impossible to tell in the dark, whether the Sentinels had been captured, killed or simply ignored by the figures moving towards them, but Napoleon heard no signs of struggle.
"Interlopers!" Napoleon heard instead. "Unbelievers! Trespassers! Defend the Master from the Profane! They will come to worship Him! Come…! Come to feel his love!"
Napoleon made a split second decision. "Fall back!!" he called, using his Guide voice at full strength. "Mark, Illya, April! Fall back now!" Even as he spoke, Napoleon felt the Sentinels' names fall dead on his tongue. They had not reached their target, but Mark's had. There was a scuffle and a discharge of an UNCLE special in the dark, then Mark was at his side, pausing at the door.
"I don't think the others are coming," he said, voice as bereft as Napoleon felt.
"I know," Napoleon all but choked out. "We need to get away. We'll come back for them as soon as we can."
"You know it, mate," Mark said, turning to accompany his fellow Guide back up the passage. "And we'll get them back. Make no mistake."
Napoleon would forever remember his and Mark's desperate scramble through the dark passages of Deadman Cave as the very quintessence of nightmarish. Thinking he would easily find the route he'd taken into the cave, Napoleon soon found that the features he could make out in the light of his headlamp seemed utterly unfamiliar when viewed from the opposite direction. Fortunately, he was able to make out the lamps of the two young cavers and Miss Blackfish moving up ahead, and from that deduced the way forward.
More fortunately still, Luther spotted them following behind and waited, calling out the way ahead when they got disoriented. Climbing the steep, mud-slick slope of the passage leading to the big room was only possible with the length of climbers sling fastened along one side, which Luther pointed out to them when they arrived at the bottom. Their pursuers could still be heard, shouting epithets as they followed, so Napoleon cut the climber's aid once they'd reached the top, much to Luther's displeasure.
"We'll see to it that it's put back, when we've finished here," Napoleon promised. "UNCLE will see to the cleanup and restoration, trust me, but those folks sound like they're out for blood, and whatever we can do to slow them down, we'll do."
The cave itself would surely slow them down, Napoleon considered, as there is absolutely no way to 'hurry up' while you're belly-crawling through mud, but none of these ordeals seemed to decrease their ire in any way. The climb and scramble up to the first room, and from there back up to the culvert, passed in a blur for Napoleon.
Once back out in the open air, Napoleon spared only a moment to revel in the freedom. Even as he stepped into the sunlight, he was assessing the scene strategically. The zealous devotees of the Thing with the Unspeakable Name would soon come pouring out of both ends of the culvert, surrounding the high ground of the road, which would be the most defensible spot. Time to circle the wagons.
Clambering up the steep embankment back to the road where the three cars were parked, Napoleon shouted out instructions to that end.
"Get the vehicles arranged into a triangle, so we can take shelter in the center," he said between panting breaths. "You boys have any shells for those shotguns?"
"Well sure," said Dan, getting into the driver's seat to back the truck into position. "Just buckshot, though."
"Anybody got any rock salt?" Abigail asked, having pulled her van into formation.
"Yeah," Luther said. "But we ain't got time to load it into the shells, now." Indeed, Napoleon, getting spare clips, lethal and otherwise, out of the trunk of their car, could already hear the first muffled cries of "Defilers! Vandals! Get 'em!" emerging from the culvert below.
"Not for the guns!" Abigail said forcefully. "For protection. Just hand it over. I'll take care of it."
It took Dan a few seconds to extract a partially used bag of rock salt from under the back seat, and Abigail all but snatched it out of his hands. She could hear the approaching voices as well. With hasty but practiced motions, Abigail began pouring a line of salt around the outer perimeter of the three parked cars. Protection, Napoleon thought, the way he'd heard of protecting against vampires by pouring a line of salt across your threshold. Abigail was enclosing them in a circle of salt, and was just finishing, as the first few enraged devotees appeared on the road.
They were armed with only crude weapons, such as truncheons and sections of pipe, but there were really quite a lot of them, and more were coming.
"Are those jail uniforms?" Mark said, standing in the cover of the UNCLE rental beside Napoleon, checking his weapon. Indeed, most of the approaching attackers wore unmistakable, black and white striped prisoners' coveralls, but there were prison guards among the crowd as well. Their former distinctions seemed to mean nothing now, for they stood shoulder to shoulder as they charged.
"Dan, Luther, fire at the ground in front of them!" Napoleon shouted, as he and Mark, on the other side of their 'fortress', darted a few of the leaders of the charge. Looking over his shoulder, Napoleon could see that the shotgun blasts were deterring the bulk of the assailants on that side, as the suddenly slumping bodies among the fray did on theirs. Elsewhere, their would-be attackers did seem to be put off by the salt line, approaching to within inches, but not daring to step over.
"Stop them!" Abigail called suddenly, and looking where she pointed Napoleon saw one attacker coming with a long stick, clearly intending to sweep the salt away. Mark darted him and Luther shot the stick itself, reducing its length to fragments.
"Get back you!" Dan shouted from the other side, firing another round at some of the enthralled prisoners who were throwing rocks at the salt line. One of the rocks fell too close, almost breaking the line of salt, but a second later Abigail darted out, kicked the rock away and poured a bit more salt out to fill the gap. Dan fired another shot in her wake as a warning.
"How long do you think we can keep this up?" Mark asked quietly, glancing over his shoulder at the boxes of shells on the ground next to where Dan and Luther stood. The two UNCLE agents had another couple of clips each, but if the attackers came at them in force, they'd be in trouble. Eventually food and water would begin to be an issue too, but this was a regular county road in middle America, not some remote wasteland.
"Sooner or later, someone's gotta come down this road," Napoleon muttered, darting another rock thrower. "If they don't want their cover blown on the whole prison operation, they don't dare let themselves be seen by the police."
And as if his words had summoned them, Napoleon and Mark both soon heard the very welcome sounds of approaching police sirens. There followed a moment of confusion and directionlessness among the attackers, then they slowly turned, gathered up all their weapons and fallen comrades, and retreated back down the embankment. Less than a minute later, there was no trace of them, and the lights of the police cars could just be seen in the distance.
There was enough time before the police arrived for Napoleon to shuck his coveralls and put his suit jacket back on. He stood in front of their circled vehicles as the black and white car pulled off the road, hands in the open, and a welcoming smile on his face. The two officers who exited the car still looked at him suspiciously, though their expressions changed to confusion as they observed the others who came to stand beside him.
"What in the Sam Hill is going on here?" the older of the two officers, slightly paunchy with a sandy grey mustache, demanded.
"We had reports of shots fired," said the younger, a beanpole of a fellow with a long face to match. "And I can smell the cordite. You boys wanna tell us what's up?"
So you're a Sentinel, eh, officer Cranston, Napoleon thought, reading the fellow's badge. He stepped forward and extended his hand.
"Napoleon Solo, agent of the U.N.C.L.E. Here on an investigation of some untoward activity near Chillicothe," he began smoothly. "You may have met my colleague, Agent Slate, who was here investigating the John Doe you folks picked up last week."
"Heard about you," the older officer, Watts, according to his badge, replied. "Some Brit with a girl Sentinel?"
"That's me, guv," said Mark, offering his hand as well. "The sticky thing is, my 'girl Sentinel' is in a bit of a spot at the moment, his 'boy Sentinel' too, and we could really use your help."
"What kind of help?" Cranston, the Sentinel, asked.
"First of all," Napoleon said, modulating his voice to portray his trustworthiness to its fullest. "If you contact the prison this very minute and tell them to do a bed check, they'll find a number of inmates and more than a few guards missing. I realize that's a lot to take on faith, but time really is of the essence."
Watts looked dubious, but Cranston was with him. "He's a Guide, sir, and he's on the level. I'm sure." Watts held his gaze for a moment, then went to the police car radio.
"Okay, now y'all owe me an explanation, full story: What's happened to your Sentinels and why are Dan and Luther mixed up in all this?"
Before Napoleon could frame and answer, Abigail strode up and inserted herself into the conversation. "They're here as cave guides; UNCLE is paying them as consultants, aren't they?" Napoleon nearly laughed aloud at her audacity, but it was a good idea nonetheless.
"And I'm Abigail Blackfish. They're consulting me on cultural and historical issues involved with the case." They shook hands, almost tentatively, and only then did Napoleon realize.
"She's an unbonded Guide," he said to Mark. "How did we not notice?"
"Well, we have been working on a case, guv," Mark said. "That does tend to distract a fellow."
The handshake ended with fleeting, bittersweet smiles from both the officer and Miss Blackfish. No flash of recognition, then; no sense of missing pieces fitting together. It didn't always happen like that with Sentinels and Guides, but it occurred often enough that one hoped, every time a potential bond-mate came one's way. Napoleon remembered the feeling all too well, and felt a pang of longing as he recalled his and Illya's own tumultuous moment of mutual recognition.
Napoleon felt Mark's hand on his shoulder, a reminder that he was not alone in his distress. "Keep your chin up, mate," he murmured. "We'll find 'em."
Dan stepped up now, filling the awkward silence with his own narrative. "It's true what she said," he addressed Officer Watts. "We did take 'em down into Deadman Cave, and we done it proper like, with all the safety gear. But there's something… something bad going on down there. Something is getting into people's heads, like that old guy we picked up the other day."
"And that's not all," Luther elaborated. "Somebody done built some kinda scientific laboratory down there, with computers and everything, but them other folks, the mind-controlled ones, I guess, they destroyed it, and then they came after us."
"Scientific laboratory? Mind control?" Officer Watts exclaimed, having returned. "What kind of sci-fi, monster-movie hogwash is this? I find out you're pullin' my leg, young man, and you're gonna land in a heap of trouble."
"His narrative is a little jumbled, officer," Napoleon interjected. "But his facts are essentially correct. An organization called Thrush, who we often find ourselves opposing in our work, does seem to have built a laboratory in the back of Deadman Cave, possibly for the purpose of researching… an entity, we think, capable of controlling the minds of its victims. The John Doe that Dan and Luther encountered was probably a highly placed scientist in this Thrush organization, but the lab we found, where he would have worked, appears to have been overrun. Possibly by the same people who were attacking us."
"And who were these people attacking you?" Watts inquired.
"Looked like they were mainly prison inmates with a few prison guards thrown in," replied Mark. "Possibly as many as one hundred of them."
"Prison inmates?" bellowed Watts, incredulously. "Where are they now?"
"Returning to the prison by way of Deadman Cave," Napoleon said. "The same way they got out."
"So, you're saying that there's been a prison break, on top of everything else?" Watts demanded. "Why didn't you say that? They thought I was completely nuts when I called them just now."
"Well, yes and no," Napoleon said, frowning. So much for that hope.
"Sir, if I may?" Officer Cranston offered. The older policeman nodded for him to go on. "I can confirm that a sizable crowd of people was here, not long ago, nearly all wearing the same shoe style, and with a… body odor not inconsistent with prison inmates. The tracks all lead to and from the culvert down below, which I happen to know is the only known entrance to Deadman Cave. That all corroborates the incidents as relayed by Agent Solo here and the others."
"So you're saying that maybe a hundred prisoners escaped as far as here," officer Watts said. "But that they turned around and went back to jail, what, when they heard us coming?"
"Yes, sir, that's it precisely," answered Napoleon.
"But why?" cried Watts, throwing up his hands. "Why return to jail once they'd gotten this far?"
"That's why we can't call it a jailbreak, officers," Abigail explained. "They did get out of the jail, but they weren't really free at all. They were all under the influence of the… thing. Whatever it is that's been down in the bottom of Deadman Cave since ancient times. I've been studying the legends about it, and there are more than a few."
"A mind controlling monster from Indian legends," officer Watts said skeptically. "I'm not writing the report on this one, Ted. It's all yours."
"Yes sir," officer Cranston said with a long suffering eye-roll. "So what's your next move? And what do you need from us?"
"Well hopefully, if there's anyone left at the prison who isn't under the influence of the, ah, whatever it is," Mark said. "They'll at least find out where the passage is that connects the cave and the prison, and block it. We spotted an electrical cable in the cave that we also think came from the prison, so they should be able to trace it that way. You lot probably ought to make sure that's going as it should."
"Yes, and make sure any Sentinels stay away, from the prison and from this area in general," Napoleon added. "Somehow Sentinels seem more vulnerable to the influence. Any prison officials who are Sentinels must be suspect."
"Right," said Cranston, taking notes. "What about me? How do you know I'm not under this influence?"
"Feeling any urge to run into the cave and rescue a crying baby?" Mark asked. Cranston looked up to stare at him, pencil frozen on his notepad.
"God almighty, I was just about to ask if anyone else heard it…" he said, turning pale.
"Close your senses down now, Sentinel," Napoleon ordered. "And get out of here. Keep any other Sentinels far away. That's the best thing you can do to help us."
"That and send us Guides!" called Abigail as the two officers retreated to their car. "As many as you can find. I have a feeling we're going to need them to rescue our Sentinels."
Napoleon had no idea what she was talking about, but something instinctual within him thought it was a very good idea. "Dan and Luther, you might as well go back with them and help spread the word. We're going to be keeping watch here for now, but there's no reason for you to stay."
"Man's got a point," said Watts. "Your folks'll be wanting you home for dinner soon, in any case."
Reluctantly, the two cavers gathered up their things and climbed into Dan's pickup. "Don't you go back in that cave without safety gear!" Luther called out the window as they pulled onto the road behind the police car.
"And a cave guide!" called Dan.
"We won't!" Mark promised as he watched them go. The sun was dipping towards the west now, and in the calm that followed the two vehicles' departure, Napoleon could hear a chorus of cicadas chirring from the treetops above.
"Coffee, anyone?" said Abigail, opening the side doors of her VW bus.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Act III