NaNoWriMo Day 12

Word Count: 20,045

Joseph


Jesus, my nerves are completely shot and Candy is driving this jeep like a crazy person. I keep asking her to slow down and she’s being unnecessarily crude with her replies. I understand that we are trying to get away from a nasty firefight, but if we die in a car accident it wouldn’t have made much of a difference if we decided to hang around and get shot instead. I have no idea where she is taking me but I get the sinking feeling that we are heading straight into the unwashed masses in that horrible slum we passed on the way into the city. I ask if this is indeed the case but Candy is too busy being a suicidal maniac behind the wheel to answer. She finally slows it down to a less asshole-puckering speed, but that is due more to the increased traffic than any common sense on her part. She’s beeping the horn and screaming at people like a lunatic and I have had just about all that I’m willing to take for one day.

Look here, I say, just because you saved my ass back there doesn’t mean that you are in charge now. I’ll be damned if I let her take me into that horrible place. She stops the jeep with a screech and glares at me. Fine, she says, get out. Ouch, I wasn’t quite expecting that. I apologize and try to explain that I’m a little rattled but she just snorts and jams the accelerator down again. I guess I don’t have any choice but to stick with her until I get things figured out. I sure wish Molly was around, she would know what to do.

Candy stops the jeep again after a few minutes if icy silence and jumps out into the fast-moving crowd. I frantically follow, asking her why she ditched the jeep. She explains that a military jeep would be like a signal flare around here and we shouldn’t be anywhere near it when the bad guys come a-looking. That makes sense, I guess, but now that I’m pressed up against these people I can’t say that I’m very thrilled about it. Everyone is staring like they’ve never seen a guy in a bathing suit and flip-flops before. Come to think of it, they probably haven’t. I am barely able to keep up with Candy, who is weaving and ducking her way through the thick crowd like a ghost. I keep getting held up by people trying to sell me chickens or something equally ridiculous. I call out to her to slow down a little and she shoots me back a glare that could turn your hair white. I don’t know what has put her in such a mood, aside from the whole almost dying thing, but she is really being difficult.

I panic a little when she suddenly disappears from sight, but a hand shoots of a nearby tent and she pulls me inside the musky dank hovel. She quickly barters with a toothless old man in a language I can’t even identify and just like that he is handling her a bundle of soiled rags and she is handing him cash. She tosses some fabric at me and tells me to put it on. To my horror, I realize that it is one of the long robes that pretty much everyone out there is wearing and she wants me to wear it too. I shake my head violently until she impatiently explains that I will need it to blend in or I will be spotted and either captured or executed immediately. Apparently, corrupt new governments don’t like foreigners hanging around with their own agendas. I sigh and pull the robe over my head and oh god it smells like two goats had sex on it and I have to suppress a gag.

Just as I’m able to choke down the bile in my throat I notice that Candy has also donned a robe and is now rubbing dirt into her face. Before I can ask what she’s doing she comes at me with a handful of it and I nearly fall over backwards trying to get away. She huffs and tells me that this is also necessary to blend in. Grudgingly, I let her spread the grime on my face.

We emerge back into the crowded street and suddenly I’m not attracting so much attention as before. I guess Candy knows what she’s doing after all. She leads me deeper into the slums, to a decrepit little food stand, and begins speaking with the proprietor in Chinese. They talk for some time before he hands her a bowl of soup that she tries to pass on to me but there is no way I’m eating god knows what it is in that soup. I tell her I’m not hungry and she shrugs and tucks into it herself. The sad irony is that I am actually starving, I’m just not that desperate yet. I’ll find some real food when I convince her to take me back to civilization. She thanks the man and we move on.

Over her shoulder, she tells me while we walk that the food guy Yao said there have been patrols from the new guys in charge coming through and taking people away. No one knows who they are looking for or why they are taking those specific people. Either way, it makes me nervous, and I start scanning the crowd with a paranoid eye. Any one of these miserable sons of bitches could start hollering and pointing at me and some crazy dark-skinned Gestapo would come swooping in out of nowhere and drag me off kicking and screaming.

Idly, I wonder if General Xu made it out of the Ministry alive. I’ll bet he’d be pretty ticked off to see that I managed to escape. The interrogation, if one would be so inclined to call it that, is still mostly a blur and I sincerely hope it stays that way. My body hurts all over and my request that we look for some aspirin made Candy snarl at me like a Doberman. I just hope they didn’t do any weird sex stuff like those old Guantanamo Bay pictures from the Iraq war. That would just be icky.

After what seems like an endless trek through the labyrinthine bowels of poverty town, Candy leads me into a dilapidated wooden shack that sits crammed together with a bunch of other dilapidated wooden shacks. There is an old woman inside, huddled in blankets even though it has to be a hundred and twenty degrees in here, and Candy kisses her on the cheek with some soft words of greeting. The woman nods and goes back to sitting there and being old, and Candy takes a seat in the corner with a tired sigh. Seeing no other options, I head over and plop down next to her, waiting patiently for her to explain where we are, what we are doing, and how long until we can get back to the real world. After a long few minutes with no such explanation arriving, I go ahead and ask those very questions. Candy says the old woman is a dear friend of hers, has helped her out on many occasions. She tells me we are going to lay low here for a while until things in the city calm down a bit. Then she is going to start checking her contacts to find out what’s going down. So basically, a whole bunch of crap I didn’t want to hear and don’t agree with one little bit. I tell her I have to get back to the hotel to get my things and call Nanodyne so they can send someone to get me out of this clusterfuck. Oh, and to find Molly too. I didn’t want to lose face by calling when Molly disappeared and I lost my passport, but I think a military coup is a pretty good excuse for requesting rescue from the cavalry. Plus, I’ll have some boss war stories to impress everyone with and the old man will be proud of my ability to make it through such a tight spot in one piece. Then the corner office will be all mine.

Candy says fine, do what I want. Just don’t lead anyone back to her when I eventually get caught. Damn her, she is willing to brush me off so casually, yet risked her neck to pull me out of the Ministry. This chick is dippy, even more than most. Molly would have thought up a much better plan than to sit around this dump and do nothing. I cross my arms and sulk while she curls up on the floor for a power nap. The old lady is staring at me and smiling in a really disturbing fashion and I am not a happy camper.




Candy


I’m too jazzed up to sleep but if that mother fucker whines about one more thing I’m going to punch him in the throat. So I just lay here, eyes closed, listening to the hustle and bustle outside, and thankfully he stays quiet. I can tell that he is well and truly lost without his assistant, one of those chest-puffing poseurs that seem to be the norm in the corporate world. I hope all of my people are safe. God damn, it is going to be such a pain in the ass to start the whole series of bribes, new smuggling routes, and learning how to skirt around new laws. If these guys are what I think they are, looks like I’m back to covering up in public again. Shit, I hate those things. How is a girl supposed to get any attention from the boys if she is dressed like a formless black lump of goo? It is kind of fun going nude underneath though, just naughty and dangerous enough for a bit of fun on a boring afternoon. Lord help me if they ever caught me. I saw what the hardliners from three regimes ago did to that poor girl who let her ankles show. I am rather attached to my various bits and pieces, and I wouldn’t much like to lose any of them.

This changeover is going to put a serious dent in my finances while we restructure. I’m sure the squeaky clean funds in the bank are seized along with everyone else’s in the country. My stashes all depend on what is safe to get to now, and there won’t be any new revenue coming in until we rework the whole damn system. I am definitely going to need some quick cash to buy Joseph’s way out of here, although I don’t know why I’m even bothering to help. He is abhorrent on every level, but I can’t just leave the guy flopping around out here like a goldfish out of the bowl. This place would eat him alive. I really feel sorry for Molly, but unfortunately there isn’t much I can do for her. Especially not with all this additional nonsense going down. As sick as it sounds I kind of hope someone murdered her nice and quick. It would be a lot more merciful than if she was taken and sold into slavery by those awful bastards. I’ll never forget the look on poor Marta’s eyes when they came in the middle of the night and took her. I couldn’t do anything but run for my life or they would have gotten me too. I wish for all the world I didn’t take one last look back to see her being dragged away, pleading for me not to go. I always thought I would come back one day and rescue her, or at least punish the ones who took her. I’m just a small American girl though, I would need an army to take them down. They are too big, too powerful, and too connected for the likes of me. The best thing I can do is continue winning the small victories, and be just enough of a pain in their ass not to warrant any serious heat. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll have my chance.

The peace of the room and a nice belly full of Yao’s soup are starting to make me drowsy, and I decide a nap might be a good idea after all. It is impossible to know when the next chance to sleep will be. I try to push the sound of Joseph fidgeting next to me out of my mind and concentrate on falling asleep. Such a miserable man, I wonder if he has a girlfriend. There is no ring on his finger so that’s out. I would think by the way he was hitting on me that he is single, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was one of those “it isn’t cheating if you are on a different continent” type of clowns. He is so offensive in every single way I can possibly imagine, no wonder he’s an office drone errand boy. I hope that saving his ass wins me just enough positive karma to keep my own sweet caboose out of trouble for just a little while longer. Long enough to be able to get the people I care about far, far away from this goofy place to somewhere they can start over in peace. Which reminds me, first thing first I need to check up on Pratima to make sure that she is ok. Her and her family’s well being comes before any personal concerns. Maybe I can stick Joseph with her brothers while I check things out. If anyone deserves hours of aggravation at the hands of those two it is most definitely him. If he thinks being beaten to a pulp by General Xu was bad, wait until he suffers the awe inspiring roughhousing of the fabulous insano-brothers. He’ll be begging me to send him back to the Ministry of Defense. I wonder if old Xu made it out alive? It would be kind of sad, just a little teeny bit, if he wasn’t around anymore. I always considered him as something of a worth arch-nemesis. Him always waiting for me to screw up just enough for him to finally take me down, and me always staying one step ahead. I’m going to miss the cranky old fuck. Sleep finally takes hold and I drift off with Xu’s stern face lingering in my mind.