12: Captured
The first day following the disappearance of Tristan and Penelope; the five children had been frantic, or merely utterly depressed, and sometimes a combination of both. The floating elevator disk had dropped to the bottom when the event occurred, leaving them stranded in the cathedral.
“We have got to figure out a way to get to those stairs!” William said for perhaps the fifteenth time.
“We can’t leave.” Leena half sobbed.
“Look Leena, we have to get more food. As soon as we can figure out how to get down, I think Josh and myself should make a run for more berries. You three should stay here and try to get this thing working again.” William was resolute.
Leena didn’t respond. She just sat there on a pedestal with a blank look on her face.
“We’ll get them back Leena. I know it.” Will tried to sooth her obvious fear.
Sarah was looking out at the countryside, and then she came over to William and pulled on his sleeve. “Come here.” She told him bluntly.
“Just a second Sarah.” He replied and then continued talking to Leena. “We’ve got to pull it together Leena. I’m sure that Tristan and Penny are alright. I don’t think whoever built this thing did it to hurt people.”
“It’s not this thing!” Leena snapped back. “It was that thing the man from Dreamland gave us.”
William looked down, trying to think of some way to get her out of the dumps.
“Come HERE!” Sarah became adamant.
“What Sarah?” William sounded exasperated.
“There’s something out there.” She answered calmly, pointing to where she had been gazing.
Everyone got up to look.
“See.” Sarah directed them to the east with her index finger.
Sure enough, there on the horizon was a roughly circular shape floating in the air.
“What is it?” Josh was the first to ask. No one could respond.
All watched for some minutes before William questioned, “Is it getting bigger, or is it just me?”
They all tried to scrutinize as best they could, and finally Becky spoke, “I think you’re right Will. It looks like it’s coming toward us.”
Leena became hopeful, “Maybe they know where Tristan is.”
“Only question is,” Joshua stated, “Who are they?”
That questioned bothered them for over an hour, as the circular blob on the horizon grew larger and larger. When it was several kilometers distant, it seemed to grow fatter as well. It grew much fatter and then they all saw that it was a blimp, or a dirigible. This had obviously been travelling directly at them up to that point, but now it was veering to their left. Even at that distance they could see the brightly colored paint scheme reflect golden light. As it loomed even closer the children could clearly make out that it had a fish scale like pattern to it. In fact all could see that the whole airship’s shape and ornamentation was designed to look like a fish, and a familiar one at that.
“It looks just like the golden fish I caught.” Joshua piped up excitedly.
Sure enough the blimp even had the almost human like eyes painted on it. The ship passed by the spire to the west, and all gave a sigh of relief; except for Leena that is.
“Hey!” She started jumping up and down, waving her arms.
“What are you doing?” Josh was curt to her.
“I’m trying to get their attention silly.” She was curt right back.
“We don’t know if they’re friendly” He then spat.
She stopped at the thought of that. “I just thought they might know something about all this.” Leena explained her motive.
Within several more minutes the ship turned around and headed back east, but it also seemed to be losing altitude. As it got closer they could see it was lined up in the canyon, and seemed to be heading for the ‘Holy Bridge’. The airship lowered altitude some more until it was just above the height of the massive bridge, and it was clearly steering towards the span with its giant fish tail. A large structure hung below the balloon section, and there were several propellers on each side attached to this housing. The children couldn’t make out any of the crew inside however as the sunlight brightly reflected from the windows. They watched as the craft was maneuvered close above the bridge, and then appeared to stop moving very much. It was only about a tenth the size of the massive span, which still made it quite large. Finally the crew was observed as several of them flapped down the short distance to the bridge surface, and ran with ropes in claw to moor the airship down.
“The bird! The birds!” Joshua corrected himself. “Those are just like the one we saw, aren’t they girls?”
They could only nod, as their jaws had dropped open, along with Leena’s and Will’s.
Sarah remembered that Joshua had wondered if the bird they saw was smart or something after their encounter; due to the belt it had worn. “It looks like you were right Joshua.” She confirmed.
“About what?” He questioned.
“They are smart.”
After the ship was secured, the children watched as a party of a dozen of the birds disembarked from the craft, and marched towards the entrance to the spire. Several of them seemed to be carrying weapons of some sort, but none of the kids spoke of this. They didn’t have to, as one look at any of the other’s faces said it for them. Each wore the panic of sheer fright. As the birds entered the spire the children went from the clear wall to look down through the entrance hole. There was just enough light to see by, as the dark electric shroud that had covered the entrance before was off. This was how the children had seen that the elevator disk was indeed on the bottom after the incident, which seemed to rob the spire of its power. The birds marched the long walk over to the disk, but when they realized it wasn’t functioning, they turned and headed back to the stairs. This was when the kids heard the birds talk for the first time. Even though they were separated by over a kilometer, they could still hear the chirps, gawks, and cackles that the birds made, seemingly agitated. Several beams of light shone from the bird group up towards the children, and they all instinctively ducked back from the edge of the hole.
A while later William was the first to poke his head back over the edge, as he figured they’d already been seen.
“They’re coming up the stairs.” He said.
Leena formed a question, “You said you all saw the one fly, didn’t you?”
“Yup.” Joshua stated.
“Well, I wonder why they don’t just fly up here then.” She said perplexed.
“Yeah, huh.” Becky agreed.
“And why do birds need to fly around in a blimp?” Sarah added.
That got Joshua thinking about their encounter with the bird back at their ‘Shanty Camp’. “I bet they can’t fly very well. Yeah, remember that one had a hard time getting off the ground!”
Becky nodded excitedly, “That’s right! It had to run real fast before it could take off.”
“Well, they are real big.” Leena figured.
It didn’t take the birds nearly as long to climb the stairs as it had Leena, Tristan and William; they did the arduous trek in just over an hour. As they could hear the squawks coming from just below the entrance hole, the children all backed away up to the clear wall.
“Maybe they can’t get up here.” Becky sounded hopeful.
Joshua asked, “What do you think they want?”
Before any further speculation was bandied about, there was a loud fluttering and flapping noise, followed by the sudden entrance of one of the large birds up through the hole. It landed quickly and brought a spear like weapon from around its neck to bear. Then it squawked some and pointed the spear menacingly towards the kids. It was an amazing sight to behold, here was an extremely large bird, by Earth standards, facing them down with its rather lethal looking weapon. It was at least six feet tall. The feather
s were bright green, speckled with a deep indigo blue, and its eyes were close set, not opposed as were the birds on Earth. Quickly it scanned all the children with the large solid brown eyes. Joshua and then William put their hands up as if to surrender, but when the girls started to do likewise, it issued a sharp series of whistles. That was when Sarah started to cry, and this prompted Becky to do so as well. Then they all started crying.
This seemed to confuse the bird, and it emitted a variety of almost cooing like calls. Suddenly another loud fluttering of wings was heard, and another bird flew up into the cathedral. This scared the kids even more, and they cried even more loudly.
The other birds came up one at a time, each cautious at first, but seeing the unarmed children, they all soon slung their weapons back over their necks. Leena saw that they were obviously trying to communicate with the children, but they kept their distance for the most part; as each time one would get too close to one of the kids, the child would cringe in fright. Leena found some courage, and actually tried to talk to the birds.
It was quickly apparent that a crude form of rudimentary sign language was the only way, as their respective languages were totally foreign to each other. The first thing she did that sparked an appropriate response was to mimic eating and drinking. One of the birds handed her a small canteen from its utility belt.
Soon Leena realized that there was definitely one bird in charge; the one that stayed the furthest back. The other birds were constantly conferring with it, and when it pointed or squawked the others went into action. She dried her eyes fully and after several moments thinking about it, Leena got the lead bird’s attention. She pointed to the pedestals, and then mimicked the bright light flowing over her.
“Do you know how to get these working again?” She instantly felt stupid asking the question.
There was no response, just what appeared to be a blank look on the bird’s features, but then again with most of its face being a large gray beak; there wasn’t much in the way of facial contortions available to it. Leena carefully and slowly walked over to a pedestal and stepped up on it. It instantly lit up with the golden light as before; to her and everyone else’s amazement, including the birds. They brought their slung weapons right back up to bear and each of the forward birds crouched as if ready for combat. The lead bird and the others started making all kinds of noises then.
“Get down Leena, you’re freaking them out.” William said in his calmest voice.
She was too preoccupied right then to hear him.
“Leena!” William became terse.
Then she saw all the commotion and quickly stepped off it.
The leader issued some quick orders, and in a moment each child had a guard bird right behind them, clutching each of their arms. This prompted more crying from the youngest of the kids. One of the birds pulled Leena away from the pedestals, and was careful not to let her near them again. Yet another, the one holding Joshua cooed something to the others, and one of the birds looked at his bandaged foot that his shoe stretched to cover. With a few more quick commands all the children were led to the entrance hole.
“It’s back on!” Leena implored to the others. “We didn’t break it.” She was clearly excited.
“Doesn’t matter now Leena.” Becky said softly. “They have us.”
Looking down they could see the disk on its way back up to the top. As soon as it was resting below the cathedral, another sharp whistle sent the birds jumping down onto the disk, with the children firmly in their clutches.
After the disk made its journey down, the birds took the children out to the waiting airship, and marched them up the ramp into the underhanging structure. There they put the kids into a rear facing cabin and locked the door behind them. A minute later two birds entered and pointed to Joshua’s injured foot. They held some fresh cloth like bandages and a small ampoule of some bronze liquid. Becky could see they meant to treat him, and she admonished him to cooperate. He complied, and they took the old bandages off. Next the wound was washed with some of the bronze liquid which Josh complained ‘stung’, and then a peculiar green leaf off some plant was put directly on the puncture, before the whole foot was wrapped with fresh bandage material. After all this the birds left, locking the cabin door behind them.
“What do you think they are going to do with us?” Leena was frightful.
“I don’t think they mean to hurt us.” William said plainly. “They’ve already had plenty of opportunity to do that.”
“And they wouldn’t have helped Josh.” Becky added.
Sarah spoke up, “It looked like they got pretty scared when you stepped on the pedestal Leena.”
“Yeah.” Joshua agreed. “I don’t think they ever saw that before.”
“Maybe they want some answers from us.” Leena wondered. In her mind she screamed, ‘It’s back on! We’ll find you Tristan!’
The deck beneath them vibrated some, and they could all feel that they were moving, rising to be sure.
“Well, here we go.” Josh said forlornly.
Becky asked, “Here we go where?”
----------
The television in the private waiting area showed continuing coverage of the bizarre events unfolding around the globe, but Jackie wasn’t paying too much attention to it. Her attention was on the doors to the treatment area, waiting for someone to update her on Michael’s condition. Several other mothers of the Dreamland teams were also waiting in the small lounge for news, and they weren’t interested in small talk either. Jackie’s other main concern was to find out what had happened to her children.
Then two men in suits entered the lounge and immediately went to one of the other ladies waiting there. After a hushed brief conversation, they escorted the woman out of the room and down the hall through another door. A few minutes later a woman doctor came into the lounge.
“Ms. Welsh?” The woman doctor called out.
Jackie jumped up from her seat, “Yes?”
“We’ve got the initial blood tests back, and found your husband has been injected with a rather exotic neuron-toxin. We have administered a neutralizing agent, and he is responding to this treatment very well.” The doctor told her.
“Is he going to be alright?”
“Yes, he’s going to be just fine, and we don’t think there will be any long term effects either.” The lady smiled.
Jackie let out a sigh, and grabbed for a nearby chair back, as she suddenly felt a lot lighter.
The doctor put her hand on Jackie’s shoulder, “You’ll be able to go in and see him very soon.”
“Thank you doctor.”
After the doctor left Jackie sat back down, much relieved. Another woman asked her if it was good news, and Jackie smiled and said that it was. Amazingly enough this seemed to relieve the others somewhat as well. From the few shared words earlier she had gathered that the ladies were also still missing their children, and that their husbands had been through something similar to Michael.
When the two men in suits returned with the woman from down the hall, she had a stark look on her face, and appeared even more nervous than before. Then the men came up to Jackie and one of them asked, “Ms. Welsh, could we talk to you now please.” The man showed her an FBI badge as he spoke.
“Yes! Please.” She rose from the chair. “Have you found my children?”
“If we could talk in private, Ms. Welsh. One of the doctors has been gracious enough to loan us use of her office.” He motioned for her to follow them, and they led her down the hall to the same room she’d seen them take the other lady.
As one of the agents pulled her chair out to seat her, Jackie remarked to herself how very polite these gentlemen were. Then the other man sat on the corner of the large wooden desk, and ruined the impression.
“I’m special agent Stickley, and this is special agent Hansen.” The man introduced.
r /> “Have you found my children, agent Stickley?” Jackie cut right to it.
“Not yet Ms. Welsh, but we will.” He assured.
“Do you think they were in that explosion that I’ve seen all over the TV?” She tried to remain calm.
“No Ma’am, we don’t think so.”
“What about that damned Millie Schotner? She must know where they are. If you can’t get her to talk, I will.” Jackie felt her anger rise.
“Actually Ms. Welsh, we would like to ask you some questions if you don’t mind.” He was patient, but just on the verge of such.
Jackie nodded somewhat subdued. “Of course, I apologize gentlemen. Anything to help you find my kids.”
“Is there anything you can remember during your captivity that was unusual, or out of the ordinary?”
Jackie blinked hard at the silliness of the question. “You mean besides the fact that we were lured to Dreamland only to be held against our will, and to be tortured for no apparent reason?”
Agent Stickley let out a sigh, “Yes, besides that fact. Anything at all. Did you hear any conversations of the staff, or see anything bizarre, or out of place that just didn’t seem right?”
“Yes!” Jackie remembered, “The woman who brought my food to me in the cell, she wrote me a note saying that my husband was alive, and that she was trying to contact the authorities.”
Agent Stickley perked up, “Do you have this note Ms. Welsh?”
Jackie shook her head sadly, “No. The note said to eat it right away, or she might be caught and killed.”
“What did this woman look like Ms. Welsh?”
Jackie described the woman with short dark hair, and dead eyes to them. Agent Stickley looked to his partner, whom said; “Sounds like CE eleven forty six alright.”
Stickley rose from the desk and pulled his smart pad from his pocket, and thumbed through some data before showing her a stock employee photo on the screen. “Was this the woman?” he asked.
“Yes!” Jackie said excitedly. “She tried to help us.” The look that quickly washed over agent Stickley’s face told of bad news to Jackie. “Is she alright? Did she get caught?”
“I’m afraid so.” He said trying to be deadpan.
“Oh my God!” Jackie realized, “They killed her? They freaking killed her?”
Neither agent responded.
“Leena! Tristan!” Jackie began to cry as the deadly reality of it all began to sink in.
The agent named Hansen handed her some tissue. Then agent Stickley cleared his throat, “Ms. Welsh are any of these ‘statues’ we found in the likeness of your children?” He handed her a stack of large glossy photos. They were close up shots of silvery faced kids from several different angles. There were seven children’s faces portrayed in all, and Jackie carefully studied each one. She recognized almost all of the kids from the ‘Quest’, though they were on a different team than her children were.
“These aren’t mine.” She looked up at agent Stickley with utter seriousness. “But these aren’t statues agent. These are those children.” Jackie didn’t exactly know how she knew this, but she knew it was truth.
“Excuse me Ma’am?” Agent Stickley swallowed hard.
Agent Hansen then asked her a question for the first time, “What makes you say that Ms. Welsh?”
She shook her head somewhat, “I don’t know exactly, but I can just feel that those are real living people.”
Hansen nodded to Stickley with eyes widened, and agent Stickley thumbed through some more digital pictures before showing Jackie a photo of a circular room with a crystal clear wall. In the center of the room was a large round hole in the floor, surrounded by five slightly raised daises of multi colors.
Jackie felt a strong urge to be in that room on the photo, and the mental image of her beloved children became crystal clear. “This has something to do with my kids!” she blurted out vehemently.
Agent Hansen discretely nodded to agent Stickley.