Chase The Rabbit: Gretch Bayonne Action Adventure Series Book #1 (15 page)

              “Put that gun down!” the other one told me.

              “This man is holding me hostage!” Alvon said. “He is insane and I insist you take him into custody!”

              The two men looked at us both and backed away.

              “We are landing in twenty minutes,” one of them said.

              “Go get Klaus!” I said. “I am Bay! Tell him I need him up here now!”

              They backed away as if I’d been holding the gun on them and disappeared back up the ladder. If the monkeys rolled the balls just right, it would be all over for the Graf and everyone onboard. The whole thing would go up in flames just as it reached the Olympics in front of a crowd of one hundred thousand people. And the whole world would be watching in horror.

Chapter Twelve

A
lvon took off running down the corridor, smashing flashbulbs beneath his feet, causing sparks to fly around him. 

             
That son of a bitch knows I won’t shoot him
, I thought.

              My main concern was shutting down the rest of the furnaces before the monkeys rolled a strike. I would deal with Alvon later.

              As I turned the control knob to cut off the last furnace, I heard that awful rolling sound on top of me. I was frantically kicking bulbs, trying to get them out of the way, when the bowling ball burst down. The second it did, I grabbed the mesh ropes that were designed to keep the gas cells in place and pulled them down hard. I caught the damned bowling ball in the net and stopped it from crashing onto the flashbulbs. I caught my breath and chased Alvon down the catwalk and into the cargo area. We clashed near the monkey cage and fell to the ground, wrestling and punching each other. 

              “You ruined everything, you fool!” he screamed.

              I managed to overcome him, sitting on his chest, and he fell limp, crying. 

              “We were almost there!” he sighed.

              “Get up, Alvon!” I said. 

              I sat him up on the floor and told him to call his monkeys down.

              “Do it!” I demanded. “Get your whistle out!”

              He looked totally blank and defeated but didn’t move a muscle. I’d never seen anyone this crazy before. I grabbed the whistle from his pocket and began blowing it, and the monkeys started hurrying down. They darted into the cage as I tried to count them. But they were coming so fast, it was hard to keep track of them. 

              “I think that’s it,” I said, as I slammed the cage shut.  “Keep still!” I said, counting them. Yep, I thought, that’s seven. 

              I locked the cage and told Alvon to follow me.

              “Where are we going?” he asked quietly.

              “Up!” I said, pointing to the ladder. “Back up to the guts, into the nightmare, where you belong.”

              Alvon climbed the ladder and I followed closely behind. We went up to Level B, the backbone of the beast that was nearly broken.

              “Where are you taking me?” he asked. 

              “To my sling,” I said. 

              “Why?” he asked. 

              “If you ask me one more question, Alvon,” I replied, “I swear to God I am going to shoot you in the head right now.”

              When we reached the hammock, I instructed him to lay down in it. He almost seemed relieved. I used the same rope that I’d used to tie myself off with on the back of the beast to secure Alvon in the hammock. I wrapped it around him and the hammock from neck to feet, then tied it in a dozen knots. 

              “They are not going to believe your story, you know,” he said.

              Just then the ship shook. We must have landed.

              “I don’t care,” I replied. “We’ve made it to the Olympics and we are all safe. But you are not getting off here.”

              I turned and headed back down the catwalk.

              “They are not going to believe you!” he said.

              I could hear the roar of the crowd as soon as I opened the door from the cargo area into the cabin. I dashed down the hallway to discover most of the stars had already departed, taking their bows. Thankfully, Lugosi hadn’t left yet.

              “Where have you been?” Bela asked.

              “I’ve been chasing monkeys and kicking flashbulbs!  And I shut down the furnaces and caught a bowling bowl with a net just in time to save the ship!”

              “Well, why didn’t you say so,” Groucho shot back.

              “No really,” I said, “I am not joking.”

              “Well, you’re here now,” Bela said. “That’s all that matters.”

              As we got closer to the exit, the roar of the crowd grew louder. There was an announcer in the stadium, naming off who was coming off the ship as they departed.  It echoed like crazy as we got nearer. 

              “Speaking of late,” Groucho said, “here comes Jean Harlow.”

              “Oh Bay!” she said, hugging me. “I am so glad you are here!” She looked down at my singed trousers.

              “What happened to you?”

              “Something about flashbulbs and monkeys,” Groucho said.

              “Oh, the monkeys!” Jean laughed. “They are so cute!”

              “Not when they’re rolling bowling balls towards flashbulbs,” I said.

              We moved closer to the exit and the noise level made it almost impossible to hear.

              “I just saw one!” Jean said.

              “Saw one what?” I screamed over the roar of the crowd.

              “And here comes Joan Crawford!” the announcer said. “Oh, what an opening day this is!”

              “One of the monkeys!” Jean yelled. “He was trying to push a box up the ladder!”

              “He was outside the cage?” I hollered.

“Yes!” she said, laughing. “I went back to the cargo room to look for my earring, and a monkey was trying to push a box up the ladder!”

              It was almost impossible to hear anything other than the cheering at that point. 

              “Bela Lugosi and Groucho Marx!” the echoing voice announced.

              The Graf had landed onto a platform some twenty-five feet off the stadium grounds. Stairs led down, and all the stars were slowly walking down, smiling and waving as thousands of people looked on. 

              “And finally,” the voice said. “Jean Harlow and…a friend!”

              Jean locked arms with me as we stepped off the Graf.  She began waving broadly, so I followed suit. It was an overwhelming sight from any perspective. I happened to have a front row seat. 

There must have been a hundred ropes coming off of the Graf with at least that many men holding onto them, presumably to keep her down and steady as our circus did the flying hands wave act. A dozen new Packards lined the front of the platform in front of the Graf, presumably to take us the hell out of there after the waving was done.

              I’d never seen anyone wave so much and for so long, or any crowd cheer that loud and hard. For the first time, I got a taste of what being famous is like. I had absolutely no business being there, but there I was anyway. Like a pig who snuck into the thoroughbred horse barn. It must have taken 15 minutes to get down those stairs and into the cars. It was my 15 minutes of fame and I enjoyed every second of it. 

              After we got into the cars, it was another 20 minutes of riding very slowly around the circumference of the stadium. Jean didn’t say a word. We just sat there smiling and waving and taking it all in. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. It seemed to be pandemonium all around us. 

A man jumped onto the back of our car, and I almost slugged him. A mass of people were being held back by hundreds of policemen. Then suddenly, the ropes were dropped, and the Graf started rising. The attention quickly shifted from the stars to the Graf as she ascended above the stadium. The Graf was a star unto herself. The crowd got even louder as she rose high above and began to turn. It dawned on me then that it must have taken them a good fifteen minutes to light all those furnaces I’d shut off. I chuckled to myself that I not only saved the Graf and all of

these stars, but extended the show by a quarter of an hour at least.

              Our cars began moving again, although very slowly, as the crowd was fixed on the Graf. I figured this was all planned to get us out of the stadium with less of a chance of mobs of people trying to swarm us. It was the perfect distraction. Just as our caravan was leaving the stadium, the roar of the crowd turned from cheers to screams of terror. It was just that distinct and happened just that quickly. The Graf was barely outside the stadium. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point. The whooshing sound was almost lost among the cheers. But the fire in the sky made it clear.  Then black smoke followed, and all hell broke loose.

              Our cars suddenly sped out of the stadium and we found ourselves on the boulevard just in time to witness the Graf in full flames, slowly crashing to the ground in pieces.

She was splitting in half, right in the middle, totally engulfed in fire that rose hundreds of feet into the sky.

              Jean was screaming in hysterics and lunged towards me. “Oh my god! Oh my god!” she sobbed over and over. 

              We were all in shock. But I have to hand it to the drivers. They kept it together and continued driving us very quickly the hell out of there. Bela was in the same car as we were, in the seat ahead of us. He turned and looked at me in utter disbelief.

              “There must have been an eighth monkey!” I shouted.

              He turned back around without uttering a word. Jean buried her head in my chest, sobbing.

              “It’s going to be all right, Star Child,” I said.

But I knew it wasn’t. I had failed to save the Graf. 

Chapter Thirteen

O
ur cars sped down the boulevard away from one of the worst disasters in American history. Fire and black smoke filled half the sky behind us. It was the most shocking thing I had ever witnessed. It didn’t seem real. And I felt like I was drunk. Hell, I wished I were.

              Jean was still clinging to me in utter hysterics. “What just happened?” she cried.

              I didn’t know what to tell her. Suddenly our cars slowed down, then stopped completely. The driver in the front car got out and walked to the second car. Then the driver of the second car went to the third car, and on down the line. When they finally reached ours, the message was short and simple. 

              “Change of plans. We are all going to the Hearst mansion.”

              We sped off again, winding through Beverly Hills, and up a steep hill. We stopped in a huge circular driveway in front of what looked like a castle.

              “This is Hearst’s place?” I asked Bela as we stumbled out of the car.