Eric Flint - Time spike

Take me with you. There are enough of you. You can carry me out. Take me with you and I'll show you the way to the captain." James hesitated. All of his instincts told him to agree, but he wasn't sure it was even possible. "Please," she said. "If you found me, how long until someone else does? And I don't think I can make it much longer even if they don't. I'll starve. Worse yet, I'll get so weak I can't keep scaring off the rats when they sniff around me. The last time I went upstairs at night to steal a little food was two days ago. I can't make that climb up the stairs again. I could handle the pain but I'm not strong enough any more." James reached out again; and, again, Brown stiffened and pulled back a little. "I'm just checking," he whispered. Gently, he removed the newspapers covering her abdomen, then lifted her blouse. The I.V. he remembered was now gone, but the bandages were still in place. Her breathing was rapid and a little irregular. The basement was too dark for him to see if that reaction was due to fear or infection. He touched the bandage itself. It was dry. That made her proposal… Well, possible anyway, without just killing her. She wasn't a big woman. Never had been, even before a bad injury and a week without much food shrank her weight down even further. If James and his men could escape at all, they could carry her easily enough. And, being completely cold-blooded about it, having Elaine Brown with them when and if they finally found Blacklock would work in their favor. James could make bold statements about "being allies," but the fact remained that Blacklock had well over a hundred well-armed guards and James had a little over twenty convicts armed with nothing more than shanks. He could easily see where Blacklock might decide that locking up his new "allies"-or just shooting them-was the appropriate measure. Harder to do that, though, if those same cons were the ones who brought out alive a female guard whom the other guards had left behind to die. Alive, and unhurt. In any way.

James pondered that for a moment. The problem was that he didn't really know all of the men in the gang that well. Once again, Boyne showed how good a lieutenant he was. It was a little uncanny, the way such a dull-looking man could seem to read his mind. He squatted next to them and said: "Won't nobody hurt her, boss. Don't think any of them would anyway, but I'll see to it." His grin split the gloom.

"Just to make sure, I'll have Kidd watch over her. Be her personal bodyguard. Goofy bastard'll get a kick out of that." James chuckled.

Elaine's brow wrinkled. "What's so funny?" "Geoffrey Kidd's as queer as they come, lady. He's also six feet tall, weighs well over two hundred pounds, and hospitalized the last man who tried to make him his bitch. That was… what, John? Before my time." "Four years ago." Boyne stood up and looked down at Brown. "Just relax, girl.

Won't nothing bad happen to you. Not from us, anyway." The moist gleam in her eyes turned into a sudden flood. Her body was wracked with sobs. Quiet ones, though, very quiet. Even now, she was trying to maintain her control and self-discipline. Hoping it wouldn't be misconstrued, James slid right next to her. Half-sitting and half-lying down, he put his arm around her shoulders. This time, instead of drawing back, she leaned into him. Started to clutch him, in fact, before the pain brought by the motion made her pull the arm back. "I've been so scared," she whispered. "Never thought a person could get so scared. Or stay so scared for so long." He felt a lump in his throat. Ancient instincts were getting stirred up, no doubt about it. For the first time, her good looks registered on him. Big time. He needed to bring that under control, for damn good and sure. The effort to do so made his mind veer off to something that made him laugh. Not chuckle, laugh outright. "What's so funny?" she asked again. His initial reaction was that an honest answer wouldcertainly be misconstrued. But something in the way she looked up at him, her head resting on his shoulder, made him think otherwise. There was something very steady about this woman, as young as she was. He didn't think she rattled easy. "It's just that, when I was a kid, I used to have this daydream. Like in the comic books or the movies. Someday I'd rescue a beautiful princess from dire peril." He laughed again, more softly.

"You're good-looking enough, that's for sure. But I'd been figuring I'd find the princess in a fancy castle somewhere. Not…" He waved his hand at their surroundings. Brown laughed softly herself. And then, to his complete surprise, nestled into him. "I was born in a bungalow, not a castle. And the closest I ever came to being a princess was being runner-up-second runner-up, mind you-in a stupid beauty contest my mother made me enter when I was sixteen. Junior Miss Alexander County, I would've been, if I'd won. Oh, whoop-de-do." She looked up at him again. Her dark eyes seemed bigger than any eyes he'd ever seen. That was a trick of the dim lighting, of course. "What's your name? I remember seeing you now, once or twice, in the infirmary.

But I never knew your name." "Cook. James Cook." He smiled. "Not the sort of fancy name any knight in shining armor would have, is it?"

"No," she said calmly. "But it's the same name as that famous captain.

The great explorer. The one who sailed all around the world and discovered almost everything, way back when. More'n two hundred years ago, I think." James knew who she was talking about, of course. His crazy damn father had named him after that captain. He chuckled, harshly. "Yeah, I know. And wound up, in the end, being killed by cannibals." "I like the name." Oh, Lord. The lump was back in his throat and James had a feeling it wasn't going to get dislodged any too easily. A little noise made him look up. He was a little embarrassed to discover that the whole gang had quietly gathered around, peering into the cubbyhole. He cleared his throat. "Uh, boys, this is Elaine Brown. Ms. Brown, these are… ah…" What to call them? They'd always just been "Boomer's boys." Boyne cleared his throat. "Boss, I been thinking we should probably have a name. I mean, now that Boomer's gone." He was right, and the name came to James immediately. "We do have a name. We're the Boomers." The men murmured among themselves for a little while. It didn't take more than a few seconds before Morelli said: "Hey, I like it," and everybody else nodded their agreement. Geoffrey Kidd pushed forward and knelt on one knee in front of Brown. As big as he was, he seemed to dwarf the little woman. That wasn't just his height and his weight. Kidd had figured out right from the start that the best way for a gay man serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison to survive on his own terms was to outdo the cons at their own dominance games. Being almost as black as the proverbial ace of spades helped, but he'd gone the whole nine yards. He lifted weights until he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, shaved his head bald, and had tattoos all over. The four knuckles on his left hand spelled out F-U-C-K. The ones on his right spelled out Y-O-U-2. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Brown," he said.

"I've been assigned the task of watching over you, it seems." Kidd had a good sense of humor, and was obviously amused by the situation.

"Pleased to meet you as well, Mr. Kidd." Her little hand came out from under the newspaper and magazines to shake his great big tattooed one.

"Well, isn't this touching?" said a hard voice from somewhere in the rear. "Move aside, girls. Move, I said." Startled, the gang members at the rear skittered away, letting a man come through. No, not one man.

There were four others standing behind him. Each and every one of whom was holding a rifle or a shotgun and had a pistol holstered to his hip. A couple of pistols, in the case of the one in front. One holstered on his hip and one shoved into his waistband. Too late for it to do any good, James realized that the interest sparked by finding Elaine Brown had drawn everyone away from watching the door. His fault, his fault. He'd been too damn sure that no con searching the building would have a key to the door leading down to the basement.