Rebel Dream

You've met Rogue and Riley - Here's Rebel. He has weird dreams sometimes, which we turn into stories. This is one of them.

Rebel is about to have a heart attack. He’s in a situation he wants no part of but has no idea how to get himself out of it.

The night is dark; with no moon showing, and only faint starlight filtering weakly through the thickly leaved branches of the forest, he’s having a heck of a time seeing what he’s supposed to be doing, not that he wants to be doing it in the first place. Still, if you HAVE to do something unpleasant it would be nice to be able to at least see.

The forest floor is fortunately pretty sandy; it makes it marginally easier to dig.

The impatience of the bad guy doesn’t help the situation any. He’s got a shovel of his own but is he using it efficiently and effectively?

No.

He’s picking up a bit at a time from where he’s supposed to be digging and tossing it into the hole Rebel’s already got two feet deep.

Which would be deep enough one would think; it’s not like anybody ever comes to this neck of the woods. It’s in the middle of nowhere in Russia for cryin’ out loud. Two days from the nearest reasonable facsimile of civilization. Why on earth would the bad guy choose HERE to bury bodies that he could easily have buried someplace more convenient?

Well he’s a bad guy – like they’re expected to think straight.

One more shovel full and in goes the body. Scooping the sandy soil back over it, Rebel eyes the bad guy whose hole is barely six inches deep and starts on the next hole.

This is going to take all night if he has to do it all by himself; it’s already two in the morning.

He thinks longingly of his hearth and home.

Sighs.

Digs deeper.

This is the 1940s and the whole world is gone crazy but this? THIS is CRAZY.

He hears a funny-sounding hoot coming from behind the bad guy and glances over to see if he can see what kind of owl hoots that way.

Can’t see a darned thing but hears another hoot from behind HIM and twists to look over his shoulder, not that it would do him any good even if it was broad daylight. He isn’t wearing his glasses again.

When a third hoot sounds from off to the side he realizes why those owls sound so strange.

They aren’t owls.

Renegade, Rogue, and Riley have found him.

WHEW!

Now maybe he can get out of this crazy situation and go home.

Thought and action being almost simultaneous, Rebel scoops up a shovel full of sand and instead of tossing it to the side of the hole he’s digging, he heaves the sand smack dab into the face of the bad guy and follows through with the shovel itself.

In the instant he lets it fly from his hands he realizes that he has just thrown away his only physical weapon.

Thinking fast he puts his feet into high gear to match the speed at which his mind is running and wheels around to duck out of the sandy clearing and into the deep woods before the bad guy has time to clear his vision.

While said bad guy is clawing at his eyes, Renegade shoots him with a dart through a little plastic pipe.

As the bad guy starts to topple into the hole that Rebel has prepared for the next body, Riley seems to float through the air and catches him just in time.

Rogue, right behind her, wrestles the heavy body, now limp with sedatives, away from the hole and Rebel saunters out of the trees like he only just got there.

They have a meeting about what to do.

Rebel votes to roll the unconscious bad guy on into the hole he almost fell into, cover him up, and leave him there with the dead bodies. He’s not feeling particularly compassionate at the moment, unlike his usual self.

His argument is that this guy snuck up on him right around the corner after he left his own hearth and home two days ago, flew him halfway around the world against his better judgment (and against his will), and dragged him into that old truck over there to make him come and dig holes in this forest in the middle of Russia for the dead bodies piled in the back of the truck – with no warning, no manners, and no good reason. If he wakes up before he suffocates it would serve him right to have to dig his way out and have to walk back to whatever hole he crawled out of. Or just go right on back into the hole he just crawled out of, better yet.

Being outvoted three to one Rebel wants to know who has a better idea.

Riley gives him a shot of that brilliant smile of hers, Rogue grins, and Renegade tries her best to look stern, failing miserably when she can’t stop the corners of her mouth from twitching.

Sighing and giving the three of them dirty looks, Rebel grabs his shovel back from where it landed and starts digging the two already buried bodies back out of the sandy dirt, thanking his lucky stars and his native intelligence that he buried them in such shallow graves. Now THAT was what’s called ‘thinking ahead’!

Riley takes pity, takes up the other shovel, and takes to digging up the other buried body.

They pile the bad guy in with the dead bodies in the back of the pickup truck after Renegade pokes him good with another sedative dart to keep him from waking up on the way back to civilization, and off they go.

Rebel and Renegade take the truck while Riley and Rogue head back to where they landed their silent helicopter in the next clearing over. They’ll meet back up in town and get the heck out of there, leaving the truck with a note under one of the wiper blades so somebody will (hopefully) give the dead 

bodies a decent burial.

They pin a note to the bad guy so whoever finds the truck when the sun comes up will know to tie him up instead of burying him. If he doesn’t wake up in time and the note falls off and somebody buries the whole kit and caboodle … oh WELL. Rebel isn’t really all that careful about how he pins the note on because, really, he’s had a bad time of it just recently and isn’t in all that good of a mood.

As they fly their helicopter on out of there, heading for home, Rogue at the controls with Riley navigating, Rebel hums a bit of a tune and then adds a few words to go with it:

All around the world, there is hope … and that bad guy’s gone … we hope … lalalalalalala … lalalalala … all around the world, there is hope … we hope … lalalalalalalalalalala …