part 9:
Behind the Adult Conspiracy
by Michael D. Quadrozzi
©1999 by Michael D. Quadrozzi and Matthew Atanian
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Behind the Adult Conspiracy
by Michael D. Quadrozzi
©1999 by Michael D. Quadrozzi and Matthew Atanian
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Mike, Aaron, Matt Atanian, both of the Bills and, in fact, all of Troop 192 were in shock. That's really the best way to describe it. If a qualified medical doctor had come in with a stethoscope and blood pressure thingy-do and given everyone a full evaluation, he would've concluded in no time at all that most of the scouts in the hall, especially Mike, Aaron, Matt Atanian and both of the Bills, just couldn't believe that Justy Yung had just been elected to the post of Senior Patrol Leader.
All they could do was stare, mouths agape.
Proctor was clapping as Justy took to the stage to accept the position of SPL. Mr. Pruyne, his face an ashen shade of gray, moved silently towards the door to let him pass.
"Bravo, Captain!" Proctor shouted, punctuating his clapping with enthusiastic whistles and cheers. "Speech! Speech!"
Justy stood at the centre of the stage and began to talk. At least, one might call what he did talking if one discounted all the bouts of maniacal laughter and voracious, spittle-frothing claims of absolute victory. He ranted about what a glorious future 192 would have during his reign, and appointed Proctor as his Assistant.
None of it mattered, of course, because to most everyone present his speech was a meaningless blur, a limbo, a fuzzy patch in the film where nothing makes sense. The pure, unanticipated shock of what had just transpired would not wear off until the meeting ended, fifteen minutes later.
The night had grown cold. A bitter wind skirted the shrivelled grasses of the field behind the church as the scouts went home with their respective parents. The meeting may have been over, but for some, there was still a lot to discuss.
"What are we going to do?" Bill Gelinas asked of his fellows.
"This is a disaster."
The five of them were standing by a section of chain link fence that surrounded the rear of the main building. They hoped that anyone who might care what they were talking about had gone home by now.
"I can't believe it," Mike said, obviously disappointed. "They picked him over me. Who voted for him?"
"Well, heck, I think that we all voted for you, at least," remarked Hughes.
"I would have," said Matt. "It must have just been some new kids who tipped the scale to Justy's favour."
Aaron snorted. "Oh, come on. How many of the younger guys don't know how much of a jerk he is? I mean, he steps all over the new kids. I bet you he didn't even vote for himself, he's so cocky."
"Well, Kenneth and Proctor didn't vote," said Bill Gelinas. "Neither of them picked up a pencil."
There was the blinding flare of headlights, and they turned to watch Jon Becker ride away in his mother's minivan. Mike waved for the group and then turned back to the conversation.
"Okay. Let's say that Justy was voted in because of the Tenderfoot Majority," Hughes was saying. "That still means that..." He did some quick arithmetic, "nine of the others voted for Justy. That doesn't seem very likely."
"No, it doesn't," Matt concurred.
"So what are we saying, here?" Mike's voice dropped. "Are we saying that I might've actually won the election?"
None of them had a chance to answer, because the Girl Scouts of Troop 42 chose that moment to exit the church, having finished their own meeting moments before. A parade of squealing little girls in white blouses and green skirts charged out the door, followed by someone more recognizable.
Kirstin Porter waved. "Hi guys!"
"Hi," said Bill Gelinas as she approached their section of chain link fence.
"Gutentag!" said Hughes, who got no response to this and decided that being able to speak one word of German wasn't really that impressive.
Mike noticed that Aaron audibly swallowed. He tipped his dirty red hat. "How you doing, Kirstin?"
"Fine," she said. "Hi, Aaron."
Aaron coughed. "Er, hi."
Kirstin smiled, then arched an eyebrow. "Okay, what's going on?" she asked. "You're acting like someone died or something."
"Well, I suppose you could say that Troop 192 is near death," said Matt.
"Why? What's happened?"
There was silence. It was Hughes who gathered up enough courage to say the words. "Justy Yung is the new Senior Patrol Leader of Troop 192," he said.
Kirstin blinked. "Wow. That sucks."
"We suspect a conspiracy," Mike said.
"And why is that?"
"Well, who would vote for him?"
Kirstin smiled again. "Someone must have. That is how it works, isn't it? You vote someone in, and they get the position."
"Yeah, but . . ." Mike floundered.
"It would have to have been the adults," Hughes offered.
"What?"
"The adults in the troop."
"And what do you think they're doing?"
"Well, they must've fixed the election."
Kirstin couldn't believe this. Didn't boys ever think before they spoke? "Why in the world would the adult leaders fix the Senior Patrol Leader election?" she asked them.
"Because they're old," said Hughes.
"And mean," Mike finished the thought.
"It doesn't matter if they're mean," Kirstin said. "They're the leaders! A leader's job is not to ensure his own power or to dominate those who elect him to his position. They prosper by earning respect and by setting an example. Leaders are servants! They act as guides, especially in the Scouting program. Why would the adults conspire to control the troop? To what possible end could such deceit carry them?!"
There was more silence.
"But these guys are really mean," said Mike.
"And old," said Hughes.
Kirstin rolled her eyes. "Whatever." A group of her fellow Girl Scouts from Troop 42 was waving her over to another conversation. She started over in their direction. "I'll see you guys later," she told the five of them, "when you feel like making a little more sense."
They watched her leave, feeling the slightest bit chastised. Then, the conversation resumed.
"She's probably right, you know," said Matt. "This does seem kind of silly. I mean, these guys were in charge of the troop back when I first joined!"
He paused for a moment. "Damn," Matt said to himself, "I'm old."
"Yeah, well, how else do we explain this?" asked Mike.
"Okay, okay," said Hughes, holding up his hands like a spastic football referee. "Let's say that for some reason or another, the whole election was rigged by the adult leaders and that Squid really won instead of Justy. That's what we're saying, here, right?"
The other four nodded.
"One problem," he said.
The other four nodded.
"How do we prove it?"
The other four blinked.
"Ah," said Aaron, scratching his chin. "Proof."
"We can't just make accusations," Hughes continued. "I mean, these are the adults we're talking about."
"What could we possibly use as proof?" Mike asked, semi-rhetorically.
They settled into a troubled silence, and in thinking found themselves looking in the direction of the new kid, Kenneth Pendrell. The young boy was standing off in a corner of the paved lot, intently reading a passage from the lengthy book he held in his hands. Like the rest of them, he was waiting to be picked up. Unfortunately, he also seemed to be being picked on.
"Hey, Dorkweed!" Slim McGraw sneered in a voice like a cat being run over by a snow blower. "You still readin' dat book a' yours?"
Kenneth ignored him, but the bully would not accept the cold shoulder. He snatched the book from the youth's hands.
"How da hell d'ya read dis ting, anyway?" asked one of Troop 192's ruder morons as he flipped through the pages of the book. "Dare ain't no pictures in it!"
"No pictures! Yeah! Heh heh heh!" laughed Homer, Slim's cruel accomplice in this game of infantile harassment.
Between the two of them, they had fewer brains than a jar of mayonnaise.
Slim and Homer proceeded to pass the book back and forth over the head of Kenneth Pendrell, who just stood there looking disheartened and lost.
"I don't know about you guys," Matt said to the others, "but I'd like to put a stop to this."
The five of them made their way to where the one-sided altercation was taking place and approached Slim and Homer in a far corner of the paved lot. The two bullies slowed their game of catch as Mike, Aaron, Matt and the Bills stepped towards them.
"What do you want?" Homer snarled.
"Why don't you cut that out?" Aaron advised.
"Leave the kid alone," said Matt.
Now, it is a well-known fact that the kind of people who enjoy making other people's lives miserable are usually quite confident when they're preparing to pummel someone in a darkened stretch of parking lot, but become less sure of themselves when they are confronted and outnumbered two to one.
Slim contemplated the situation. "Whatever," he said, and promptly tossed the book up in the air. It landed with a heavy thud as he trudged away.
"Dorks," Homer snarled, and turned to follow the other. The two of them walked away into the night, crossing the street at a speed just slow enough to impede traffic and just fast enough not to get hit.
"They're really quite clever," Aaron said, half turning to address Mike.
"Oh, yes," Mike agreed. "I thought the repetition of a particularly childish insult showed their intelligence and ingenuity quite well."
"Indeed."
Kenneth Pendrell was stooping over to pick up his book, and the five went over to lend a hand. They noticed for the first time that he'd been reading War and Peace.
"Don't worry about them," Hughes said to the younger scout, "they're idiots."
"Yeah, we've got a few people like that," Bill Gelinas concurred.
"However," said Mike, "most of us are pretty nice."
Kenneth looked at them all in turn, then pushed his thick spectacles a little farther up his nose. Timidly, so timidly in fact that the others strained to hear him, he spoke just above a whisper: "Um, . . . thanks."
"Hey, no problem," said Aaron.
They all introduced themselves to the new kid, who told them in a voice just as quiet as the one he had used for his first comment that they could call him Kenny.
Headlights flashed across the group, and they turned to see a dark blue minivan pull up alongside them.
"Your ride?" Matt asked.
"Um... yes," Kenny said. He stood in his place a moment more, almost fidgeting. It was as if he'd never come across this situation before. He seemed to be almost searching for the proper way to proceed.
"Bye," he finally said, and made his way to the car.
Mike, Aaron, Matt Atanian and the Bills waved goodbye to the new kid, and turned to walk away. They didn't notice that Kenny Pendrell had stopped a few feet from his car with his hand on the door latch. They couldn't see that he was looking back at them as they departed, a look of curiosity on his face. And something more... perhaps, suspicion?
"Nice kid," Matt said as the five of them walked back over to their spot by the section of chain link fence. The parking lot was almost deserted now, nearly everyone had gone home.
They hadn't forgotten why they were out here. "So, what are we going to do? Mike asked.
The group fell into silence once more, each scout trying to come up with something, anything that they could use to expose the dark adult conspiracy.
Hughes snapped his fingers. "I've got it!" he said.
"Just like that?" Bill Gelinas asked. "Isn't that kind of convenient to the plot?"
The other four shushed him. "What have you got, Hughes?" Aaron asked.
"The ballots!"
"The ballots?"
"Yes, the ballots to the Senior Patrol Leader election!" said Hughes. "There's our proof that Mike really won instead of Justy!"
"But they might've destroyed them already," Aaron pointed out.
"Let's hope they haven't."
"Okay," Mike said. "The ballots are the proof we need. They're probably in the church if they're anywhere. How do we get 'em?"
The five of them didn't get to decide, because at that moment four cars turned down the drive at the Church in the Acres. The vehicles pulled into the back lot and commenced honking irritably.
"Well, I guess that stalls the decision making process for tonight, anyway," Matt said.
"Stay in touch," Mike told the others.
They all bid each other good night, their voices echoing hollowly in the almost suffocating darkness of the night.
Everyone walked to their respective rides and started for home. Mike was the only person left standing in the parking lot. A pair of headlights turning the corner told him he wouldn't have to wait much longer.
He pulled the collar of his coat up against a sudden gust of wind and began walking towards his mother's aqua green car when the door to the church behind him suddenly flew open and the Scoutmaster, Mr. William Pruyne, ran out.
Mike figured he was just running late, and called a brief 'good night' while moving out of the older man's way. To his surprise, Mr. Pruyne stopped right in front of him and clasped his jacket sleeve tightly.
"The proof you need exists," he said, his voice a throaty whisper. "I can help you find it!"
"Um... what?" Mike asked. Could he have heard them talking? Did he know that they knew? Was this some kind of trick?!
No. In the darkness, a beam of moonlight splashed across the Scoutmaster's face, and Mike saw into his eyes. They were wide, deeply lined at the edges. The eyes of a man wracked with terror and guilt.
"Bring the others back to the church tonight," Mr. Pruyne continued. "Ten o'clock. You'll know everything then." He let go of the other's jacket. "Please, be here."
The adult looked around the empty lot once, twice. Then he was gone.
Mike was alone again in the paved lot behind the church. He blinked. Someone honked a car horn, and he remembered that his mother was still waiting. As he walked over to the car in which he would ride home, he thought to himself how utterly strange Boy Scouts had become.
It was just after ten, and four of them were back at the Church in the Acres, standing on the pavement behind the main building.
Mike, Aaron, Hughes and Bill Gelinas looked up at their meeting place, silent now in the dead of night, illuminated only by the light of the moon and the cars racing by on Wilbraham Road.
"So, are we going to do it?" Aaron asked the others.
"We've got to," Mike said, "if we want to know the truth."
The wind howled across the open field and through the naked branches of the trees beyond. It was a dark, cold autumn night.
"I can't believe we're going to do this," said Hughes. He was having second thoughts.
"What choice do we have?" Mike asked him.
"Well, we could not break into the church, for one," he said flatly.
"Don't go wimping out on us, Hughes," Aaron said.
"Hey! Hold on a minute," Bill Gelinas broke in, silencing the brief altercation. "How did we all get here, anyway? Are we seriously asking people to believe that our parents were willing to bring us here at this time of night?"
"Shut up, Bill!" The other three told him.
"And where's Matt?"
"He had to work," Mike said.
Bill was incredulous. "What? He's never worked this late before. Isn't that kind of convenient? I mean, is the store even open at this time of—"
"SHUT UP, BILL!"
"Fine."
Their attention returned to the church, the great white building that lay before them in all its foreboding gloom. The wind gave another huge gust, as if ushering them forward on their task.
"So, what's the plan?" Mike asked the others.
"Well, I think it's safe to say that the front door is probably locked," Aaron said. "So why don't we try the kitchen door up there?" He pointed to an old and seldom used door that sat at the top of an old and seldom used flight of stairs. On the other side of the door would be the kitchen on the second floor, the well-known meeting place of the adults and their destination.
"Okay," said Mike.
They made their way across the lawn towards the staircase and the door. In their minds, the plan was simple. Enter the church by way of the kitchen door, find the ballots if they still existed, and use them as proof of the adults' treachery.
Their plan revealed itself to have a fatal flaw upon closer examination of the wooden staircase. The examination was done by Bill Gelinas, a talented marksman and dutiful scout but by no means an expert on the effects of the elements on manmade timber technology. Indeed, he and the others were quite unprepared for the outcome of his daring experiment.
Case in point, Bill stepped on the first step to have his foot go right through the wooden plank and come out the other side.
"Okay," said Mike.
"Looks like the stairs are a bad idea," said Bill, picking splinters off of the cuff of his jeans.
The four of them thought. Aaron gazed up at the landing where the door stood. The stairs were obviously unsafe, but maybe they could bypass the stairs...
"Hey," he asked the others, "how high do you think this is?"
The other three looked up. "Why?"
Mike couldn't fall asleep.
Not that he was trying. I mean, one of things you really don't want to do when you're dangling approximately twenty feet off the ground with only a bunch of milk crates to break your fall is try to lose consciousness. The statement was made because Mike was able to fall asleep in almost any other situation imaginable. As soon as a comfortable position was found, be it in an automobile, plane, train, flat bed truck, ocean liner, bulldozer, subway car or an ordinary suburban bedroom, he was down for the count. Snoozing was serious business in the Quadrozzi family.
Still, for the sake of pure curiosity, had he been trying or even remotely comfortable, Mike still would not have been able to fall asleep.
Mike reflected on the fact that he hated it when he thought such weird thoughts and yelled down to his companions on the ground. "Right! Get going!"
The four of them had constructed a crude tour of milk crates on the ground under the landing and were, by way of a human bridge and the use of a few amateur climbing skills, attempting to reach the kitchen door.
This newest plan dictated that one person would climb the crates first, grabbing onto the ledge and getting a firm grip. The tower fell quite a few feet short of the landing, so the others would have to latch onto each other in order to climb upwards.
Mike was the first one up the rickety creation. Getting a good grip on the posts of the railing which were, thank God, surprisingly sturdy, he proceeded to dangle and call for the others to proceed.
Bill Gelinas was the second one up. Carefully, he stepped from crate to crate up the makeshift tower and grabbed Mike's ankles. Mike exhaled sharply as the other stepped off the crates and hung freely in the air.
Now it was Aaron's turn. He was supposed to climb up the two of them and get to the landing where he could help them all up in turn.
"Go, dammit!" Mike called.
Aaron rubbed his hands together anxiously, then ascended towards his fellows. At the top of the pile of milk crates, he proceeded to use his fellows as hand and footholds.
"Careful!"
"Watch it!"
"Sorry."
"Gaw!"
"Oh, shut up."
After a few tense seconds, Aaron was at the top of the landing. Bracing himself against the side of the church for support, he leaned down to help Bill Gelinas up and over the side of the wooden ledge. A few bouts of human staircase later and the two of them were there.
Mike was still dangling.
"Hughes!" he yelled.
Hughes stood on the lawn at the base of the pile of crates. He looked less than confident about the events which were playing themselves out tonight. "I really can't believe we're doing this," he said flatly.
"Come on," Aaron said, "It's not that hard."
"Piece of cake," Bill Gelinas remarked.
"Piece of cake?" Hughes balked. "This is my first premeditated crime, thank you very much!"
"Dammit, hick boy!" Mike yelled, "Get going!"
Hughes finally submitted, and after a few more tense seconds all four of them were standing atop the landing just outside the kitchen door. They took a short break to catch their breath.
"And now, the moment of truth," Aaron said. He tried the knob. It turned in his hand and the kitchen door swung open with an unnecessarily long creak.
A puzzled look crossed Bill Gelinas' face. "Wait a minute," he asked of the others. "Wouldn't it have been a lot easier just to become our animal forms and get up the stairs that way?"
The other three looked at him. "Shut up, Bill!"
"I mean, Aaron could've flown, Hughes and Mike can climb and that would've left us with—"
"SHUT UP, BILL!"
He held up his hands. "Fine, fine!"
"Can we please get this over with, now?" Hughes asked.
They walked through the door into the kitchen, each hoping to find something in the church that might bring the adult conspiracy to light and save their troop.
And they didn't want to get caught.
Mr. William Pruyne, Scoutmaster of Troop 192, pushed the double front doors of the church open and threw a glance around the vast parking lot one more time. Still not seeing the scouts, he decided he would go downstairs and wait for them there.
He turned in the doorway, starting to walk away when he caught something in the corner of his eye. The moonlight had glinted off of something in the parking lot. Squinting in the pitch dark of night, he looked out into the lot, trying to discern the shape of the thing—
Twin headlights flared, and the silent car roared suddenly to life.
Mr. Pruyne's eyes went wide with horror. How could they have known?
With a thunderous squeak on the heavily waxed floor, he turned on his heel and ran back into the building. Maybe if he could get down to the lower floor he could find another exit or--
Another distraction. Something crunched underfoot. In the oppressive silence of the great meeting hall, he bent down to see what he'd stepped on.
The smell of ashes. It was a burned out cigar.
The double doors behind him swung open with a thunderous crash.
In another part of the church, a spark flared. The spark became a small flame and the flame lit the end of a long brown cigar.
Mr. John Hawley ignored the din coming from the hall and examined what he'd come here tonight to find, what he knew others also wanted to find.
In his hands he held the election ballots. A neat stack of white scraps of paper on which were written the names of one young man or the other. Nothing more than that.
How unfortunate, then, that so much trouble had to come from something so insignificant, so paltry. It was almost laughable. Hard to believe such a problem could be caused by nothing more than paper.
But, of course, all problems had their solutions.
The noise from the other room abruptly stopped. Mr. Hawley took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it for a moment. Then, he slowly brought it towards the insignificant pieces of paper.
"All right," Mike said, "I think we should split up."
They were standing in the darkened church kitchen. What little light there was bounced around the room, glinting off of every shiny metal surface.
"Okay," Aaron nodded. "Me and Bill will go downstairs and you two can look around up here."
The Bills nodded. "Sounds good."
"If they're still here, the ballots could be anywhere," Mike reminded the others. "Check all the drawers and the wastebaskets and everything."
They split up. Aaron and Bill Gelinas left the room, making for the stairs. As the sounds of their footsteps faded, Mike and Hughes began searching the kitchen.
Looking through a drawer filled with scissors, scotch tape and those little plastic things fancy restaurants put around dinner napkins, Mike's thoughts were momentarily elsewhere. Mr. Pruyne had told him to be here. He had to be somewhere, and Mike had to find him. He was probably the only person who knew where the ballots were.
"Hey, Hughes?" Mike called across the room.
"Yeah?"
"Keep looking in here, I'll go out into the hall."
"Sure."
Mike pushed open the swinging door that led to the main room of the church. To one side of him lay the stairs down which Aaron and Bill had gone. He could hear the faint rustling of their search on the first floor. In front of him was another door, the one led into the hall. Mike walked through it, emerging into complete and total darkness.
He stood in the doorway a few seconds, letting his eyes adjust. Looking around briefly but seeing next to nothing out of the ordinary in the huge empty room, he started forward.
Mike asked himself what he thought he should do now, and his answer came as he noticed something odd. He'd been making his way towards the front door, away from the door to the kitchen and the stairs. Yet, the sound he had heard before and dismissed as Aaron and Bill's search was getting louder, not softer.
It was coming from outside, through the double doors. In the parking lot.
It wasn't the others. It was a car.
Could this be Mr. Pruyne, waiting for them to arrive? Mike picked up his pace a bit, walking towards the exit at a slow trot. He was almost there when he heard a soft crackle.
He'd stepped on something.
Slowly, he lifted his shoe to see what it had been. Squinting in the darkness, he thought it looked like ashes. Maybe a cigarette butt.
He suddenly had the feeling he should find Mr. Pruyne. Now nearly running, he made for the exit to the parking lot and threw open the double doors.
To Mike's dismay, the lot appeared empty. A cold wind blew a few dead autumn leaves across the pavement, but that was all.
No, it wasn't. Twin points of red light brought his eyes to focus an idling gray town car. There was a man standing next to it. He closed the half open trunk with a hollow thud.
"Well, good evening, Mr. Quadrozzi."
Mike wheeled on the voice. The tall figure of John Hawley stepped out of the shadows towards him.
"What are you doing here?" Mike asked the elder.
"I think you know," Mr. Hawley said. Wisps of cigar smoke encircled him, almost as if he himself were giving off the noxious fumes.
"You're right I know," Mike said, surprising himself with the sudden steadiness in his voice, despite the fact that he was more than a little frightened. "We all know what you've done."
Mr. Hawley frowned. "You know nothing."
He took a few steps forward, and Mike sidestepped in return, keeping a safe distance. The elder now stood in between him and the idling town car.
"I think you may have been expecting someone," Mr. Hawley said.
Mike blinked, a frightening thought coming to him. "Where's Mr. Pruyne?" he asked.
The other's face didn't change, his expression remained set in stone. "He's come and gone," he said.
Mike glanced at the trunk as Mr. Hawley began walking towards the car.
"What, that's it?" Mike called after him. "You're done playing your mind games and now you just leave? Disappear?"
The elder ignored him.
"We deserve to know the truth!"
Mr. Hawley stopped.
Slowly, he turned back to face the youth. If Mike could have seen his eyes he might have retreated into the church. They were cold, yet burned with a smouldering hatred. "You can avoid what you deserve," he said, "If you leave this alone, Mr. Quadrozzi. You've lost."
The man who had closed the trunk held open a door, and Mr. Hawley got inside the long gray town car. Seconds late, with a burst of exhaust and an almost imperceptible rumble, they disappeared into the night.
The doors behind Mike were thrown open, and Aaron, Hughes and Bill Gelinas raced outside.
"We were looking," Aaron said as the three of them walked up to Mike.
"And we heard a car," explained Hughes, "What happened?"
They watched as Mike fell back against the church, slumping to his knees. He was suddenly tired. He looked up at the others and sighed.
"We've lost," he said.
One week later, they were all at the Church in the Acres again. Mike, Aaron, Matt Atanian and the Bills.
Days before, they had told Matt what had happened at the church that night, how they had failed to find evidence of the adult conspiracy. Still, they pledged not to give up hope.
All the scouts of Troop 192 were arriving, some by bike, some getting dropped off by parents eager to have just an hour and a half of peace and quiet.
"Well," Mike was saying, "No point in worrying ourselves sick over it, eh?
"Don't worry, we'll think of something," Aaron said.
Jon Becker arrived, and they waved as he walked past them towards the church. He was waving his copy of Boy's Life at them, which he had received in the mail earlier that day. "Your trip's in here!" he enthusiastically shouted at them, although whether he was shouting to be herd over the distance, or if due to the headphones he was wearing he thought he was talking a normal volume, no one knew.
They were about to join Jon entering the building when they noticed someone was standing behind them, off to the side. The five of them turned.
It was the new kid, Kenny Pendrell.
"Oh, hey, Kenny," Matt said in greeting. "How are you?"
Kenny didn't say anything at first, but then, in that quiet voice of his he asked them, "So have you guys ever heard of a place called Jusenkyo?"
All they could do was stare, mouths agape.
Proctor was clapping as Justy took to the stage to accept the position of SPL. Mr. Pruyne, his face an ashen shade of gray, moved silently towards the door to let him pass.
"Bravo, Captain!" Proctor shouted, punctuating his clapping with enthusiastic whistles and cheers. "Speech! Speech!"
Justy stood at the centre of the stage and began to talk. At least, one might call what he did talking if one discounted all the bouts of maniacal laughter and voracious, spittle-frothing claims of absolute victory. He ranted about what a glorious future 192 would have during his reign, and appointed Proctor as his Assistant.
None of it mattered, of course, because to most everyone present his speech was a meaningless blur, a limbo, a fuzzy patch in the film where nothing makes sense. The pure, unanticipated shock of what had just transpired would not wear off until the meeting ended, fifteen minutes later.
The night had grown cold. A bitter wind skirted the shrivelled grasses of the field behind the church as the scouts went home with their respective parents. The meeting may have been over, but for some, there was still a lot to discuss.
"What are we going to do?" Bill Gelinas asked of his fellows.
"This is a disaster."
The five of them were standing by a section of chain link fence that surrounded the rear of the main building. They hoped that anyone who might care what they were talking about had gone home by now.
"I can't believe it," Mike said, obviously disappointed. "They picked him over me. Who voted for him?"
"Well, heck, I think that we all voted for you, at least," remarked Hughes.
"I would have," said Matt. "It must have just been some new kids who tipped the scale to Justy's favour."
Aaron snorted. "Oh, come on. How many of the younger guys don't know how much of a jerk he is? I mean, he steps all over the new kids. I bet you he didn't even vote for himself, he's so cocky."
"Well, Kenneth and Proctor didn't vote," said Bill Gelinas. "Neither of them picked up a pencil."
There was the blinding flare of headlights, and they turned to watch Jon Becker ride away in his mother's minivan. Mike waved for the group and then turned back to the conversation.
"Okay. Let's say that Justy was voted in because of the Tenderfoot Majority," Hughes was saying. "That still means that..." He did some quick arithmetic, "nine of the others voted for Justy. That doesn't seem very likely."
"No, it doesn't," Matt concurred.
"So what are we saying, here?" Mike's voice dropped. "Are we saying that I might've actually won the election?"
None of them had a chance to answer, because the Girl Scouts of Troop 42 chose that moment to exit the church, having finished their own meeting moments before. A parade of squealing little girls in white blouses and green skirts charged out the door, followed by someone more recognizable.
Kirstin Porter waved. "Hi guys!"
"Hi," said Bill Gelinas as she approached their section of chain link fence.
"Gutentag!" said Hughes, who got no response to this and decided that being able to speak one word of German wasn't really that impressive.
Mike noticed that Aaron audibly swallowed. He tipped his dirty red hat. "How you doing, Kirstin?"
"Fine," she said. "Hi, Aaron."
Aaron coughed. "Er, hi."
Kirstin smiled, then arched an eyebrow. "Okay, what's going on?" she asked. "You're acting like someone died or something."
"Well, I suppose you could say that Troop 192 is near death," said Matt.
"Why? What's happened?"
There was silence. It was Hughes who gathered up enough courage to say the words. "Justy Yung is the new Senior Patrol Leader of Troop 192," he said.
Kirstin blinked. "Wow. That sucks."
"We suspect a conspiracy," Mike said.
"And why is that?"
"Well, who would vote for him?"
Kirstin smiled again. "Someone must have. That is how it works, isn't it? You vote someone in, and they get the position."
"Yeah, but . . ." Mike floundered.
"It would have to have been the adults," Hughes offered.
"What?"
"The adults in the troop."
"And what do you think they're doing?"
"Well, they must've fixed the election."
Kirstin couldn't believe this. Didn't boys ever think before they spoke? "Why in the world would the adult leaders fix the Senior Patrol Leader election?" she asked them.
"Because they're old," said Hughes.
"And mean," Mike finished the thought.
"It doesn't matter if they're mean," Kirstin said. "They're the leaders! A leader's job is not to ensure his own power or to dominate those who elect him to his position. They prosper by earning respect and by setting an example. Leaders are servants! They act as guides, especially in the Scouting program. Why would the adults conspire to control the troop? To what possible end could such deceit carry them?!"
There was more silence.
"But these guys are really mean," said Mike.
"And old," said Hughes.
Kirstin rolled her eyes. "Whatever." A group of her fellow Girl Scouts from Troop 42 was waving her over to another conversation. She started over in their direction. "I'll see you guys later," she told the five of them, "when you feel like making a little more sense."
They watched her leave, feeling the slightest bit chastised. Then, the conversation resumed.
"She's probably right, you know," said Matt. "This does seem kind of silly. I mean, these guys were in charge of the troop back when I first joined!"
He paused for a moment. "Damn," Matt said to himself, "I'm old."
"Yeah, well, how else do we explain this?" asked Mike.
"Okay, okay," said Hughes, holding up his hands like a spastic football referee. "Let's say that for some reason or another, the whole election was rigged by the adult leaders and that Squid really won instead of Justy. That's what we're saying, here, right?"
The other four nodded.
"One problem," he said.
The other four nodded.
"How do we prove it?"
The other four blinked.
"Ah," said Aaron, scratching his chin. "Proof."
"We can't just make accusations," Hughes continued. "I mean, these are the adults we're talking about."
"What could we possibly use as proof?" Mike asked, semi-rhetorically.
They settled into a troubled silence, and in thinking found themselves looking in the direction of the new kid, Kenneth Pendrell. The young boy was standing off in a corner of the paved lot, intently reading a passage from the lengthy book he held in his hands. Like the rest of them, he was waiting to be picked up. Unfortunately, he also seemed to be being picked on.
"Hey, Dorkweed!" Slim McGraw sneered in a voice like a cat being run over by a snow blower. "You still readin' dat book a' yours?"
Kenneth ignored him, but the bully would not accept the cold shoulder. He snatched the book from the youth's hands.
"How da hell d'ya read dis ting, anyway?" asked one of Troop 192's ruder morons as he flipped through the pages of the book. "Dare ain't no pictures in it!"
"No pictures! Yeah! Heh heh heh!" laughed Homer, Slim's cruel accomplice in this game of infantile harassment.
Between the two of them, they had fewer brains than a jar of mayonnaise.
Slim and Homer proceeded to pass the book back and forth over the head of Kenneth Pendrell, who just stood there looking disheartened and lost.
"I don't know about you guys," Matt said to the others, "but I'd like to put a stop to this."
The five of them made their way to where the one-sided altercation was taking place and approached Slim and Homer in a far corner of the paved lot. The two bullies slowed their game of catch as Mike, Aaron, Matt and the Bills stepped towards them.
"What do you want?" Homer snarled.
"Why don't you cut that out?" Aaron advised.
"Leave the kid alone," said Matt.
Now, it is a well-known fact that the kind of people who enjoy making other people's lives miserable are usually quite confident when they're preparing to pummel someone in a darkened stretch of parking lot, but become less sure of themselves when they are confronted and outnumbered two to one.
Slim contemplated the situation. "Whatever," he said, and promptly tossed the book up in the air. It landed with a heavy thud as he trudged away.
"Dorks," Homer snarled, and turned to follow the other. The two of them walked away into the night, crossing the street at a speed just slow enough to impede traffic and just fast enough not to get hit.
"They're really quite clever," Aaron said, half turning to address Mike.
"Oh, yes," Mike agreed. "I thought the repetition of a particularly childish insult showed their intelligence and ingenuity quite well."
"Indeed."
Kenneth Pendrell was stooping over to pick up his book, and the five went over to lend a hand. They noticed for the first time that he'd been reading War and Peace.
"Don't worry about them," Hughes said to the younger scout, "they're idiots."
"Yeah, we've got a few people like that," Bill Gelinas concurred.
"However," said Mike, "most of us are pretty nice."
Kenneth looked at them all in turn, then pushed his thick spectacles a little farther up his nose. Timidly, so timidly in fact that the others strained to hear him, he spoke just above a whisper: "Um, . . . thanks."
"Hey, no problem," said Aaron.
They all introduced themselves to the new kid, who told them in a voice just as quiet as the one he had used for his first comment that they could call him Kenny.
Headlights flashed across the group, and they turned to see a dark blue minivan pull up alongside them.
"Your ride?" Matt asked.
"Um... yes," Kenny said. He stood in his place a moment more, almost fidgeting. It was as if he'd never come across this situation before. He seemed to be almost searching for the proper way to proceed.
"Bye," he finally said, and made his way to the car.
Mike, Aaron, Matt Atanian and the Bills waved goodbye to the new kid, and turned to walk away. They didn't notice that Kenny Pendrell had stopped a few feet from his car with his hand on the door latch. They couldn't see that he was looking back at them as they departed, a look of curiosity on his face. And something more... perhaps, suspicion?
"Nice kid," Matt said as the five of them walked back over to their spot by the section of chain link fence. The parking lot was almost deserted now, nearly everyone had gone home.
They hadn't forgotten why they were out here. "So, what are we going to do? Mike asked.
The group fell into silence once more, each scout trying to come up with something, anything that they could use to expose the dark adult conspiracy.
Hughes snapped his fingers. "I've got it!" he said.
"Just like that?" Bill Gelinas asked. "Isn't that kind of convenient to the plot?"
The other four shushed him. "What have you got, Hughes?" Aaron asked.
"The ballots!"
"The ballots?"
"Yes, the ballots to the Senior Patrol Leader election!" said Hughes. "There's our proof that Mike really won instead of Justy!"
"But they might've destroyed them already," Aaron pointed out.
"Let's hope they haven't."
"Okay," Mike said. "The ballots are the proof we need. They're probably in the church if they're anywhere. How do we get 'em?"
The five of them didn't get to decide, because at that moment four cars turned down the drive at the Church in the Acres. The vehicles pulled into the back lot and commenced honking irritably.
"Well, I guess that stalls the decision making process for tonight, anyway," Matt said.
"Stay in touch," Mike told the others.
They all bid each other good night, their voices echoing hollowly in the almost suffocating darkness of the night.
Everyone walked to their respective rides and started for home. Mike was the only person left standing in the parking lot. A pair of headlights turning the corner told him he wouldn't have to wait much longer.
He pulled the collar of his coat up against a sudden gust of wind and began walking towards his mother's aqua green car when the door to the church behind him suddenly flew open and the Scoutmaster, Mr. William Pruyne, ran out.
Mike figured he was just running late, and called a brief 'good night' while moving out of the older man's way. To his surprise, Mr. Pruyne stopped right in front of him and clasped his jacket sleeve tightly.
"The proof you need exists," he said, his voice a throaty whisper. "I can help you find it!"
"Um... what?" Mike asked. Could he have heard them talking? Did he know that they knew? Was this some kind of trick?!
No. In the darkness, a beam of moonlight splashed across the Scoutmaster's face, and Mike saw into his eyes. They were wide, deeply lined at the edges. The eyes of a man wracked with terror and guilt.
"Bring the others back to the church tonight," Mr. Pruyne continued. "Ten o'clock. You'll know everything then." He let go of the other's jacket. "Please, be here."
The adult looked around the empty lot once, twice. Then he was gone.
Mike was alone again in the paved lot behind the church. He blinked. Someone honked a car horn, and he remembered that his mother was still waiting. As he walked over to the car in which he would ride home, he thought to himself how utterly strange Boy Scouts had become.
It was just after ten, and four of them were back at the Church in the Acres, standing on the pavement behind the main building.
Mike, Aaron, Hughes and Bill Gelinas looked up at their meeting place, silent now in the dead of night, illuminated only by the light of the moon and the cars racing by on Wilbraham Road.
"So, are we going to do it?" Aaron asked the others.
"We've got to," Mike said, "if we want to know the truth."
The wind howled across the open field and through the naked branches of the trees beyond. It was a dark, cold autumn night.
"I can't believe we're going to do this," said Hughes. He was having second thoughts.
"What choice do we have?" Mike asked him.
"Well, we could not break into the church, for one," he said flatly.
"Don't go wimping out on us, Hughes," Aaron said.
"Hey! Hold on a minute," Bill Gelinas broke in, silencing the brief altercation. "How did we all get here, anyway? Are we seriously asking people to believe that our parents were willing to bring us here at this time of night?"
"Shut up, Bill!" The other three told him.
"And where's Matt?"
"He had to work," Mike said.
Bill was incredulous. "What? He's never worked this late before. Isn't that kind of convenient? I mean, is the store even open at this time of—"
"SHUT UP, BILL!"
"Fine."
Their attention returned to the church, the great white building that lay before them in all its foreboding gloom. The wind gave another huge gust, as if ushering them forward on their task.
"So, what's the plan?" Mike asked the others.
"Well, I think it's safe to say that the front door is probably locked," Aaron said. "So why don't we try the kitchen door up there?" He pointed to an old and seldom used door that sat at the top of an old and seldom used flight of stairs. On the other side of the door would be the kitchen on the second floor, the well-known meeting place of the adults and their destination.
"Okay," said Mike.
They made their way across the lawn towards the staircase and the door. In their minds, the plan was simple. Enter the church by way of the kitchen door, find the ballots if they still existed, and use them as proof of the adults' treachery.
Their plan revealed itself to have a fatal flaw upon closer examination of the wooden staircase. The examination was done by Bill Gelinas, a talented marksman and dutiful scout but by no means an expert on the effects of the elements on manmade timber technology. Indeed, he and the others were quite unprepared for the outcome of his daring experiment.
Case in point, Bill stepped on the first step to have his foot go right through the wooden plank and come out the other side.
"Okay," said Mike.
"Looks like the stairs are a bad idea," said Bill, picking splinters off of the cuff of his jeans.
The four of them thought. Aaron gazed up at the landing where the door stood. The stairs were obviously unsafe, but maybe they could bypass the stairs...
"Hey," he asked the others, "how high do you think this is?"
The other three looked up. "Why?"
Mike couldn't fall asleep.
Not that he was trying. I mean, one of things you really don't want to do when you're dangling approximately twenty feet off the ground with only a bunch of milk crates to break your fall is try to lose consciousness. The statement was made because Mike was able to fall asleep in almost any other situation imaginable. As soon as a comfortable position was found, be it in an automobile, plane, train, flat bed truck, ocean liner, bulldozer, subway car or an ordinary suburban bedroom, he was down for the count. Snoozing was serious business in the Quadrozzi family.
Still, for the sake of pure curiosity, had he been trying or even remotely comfortable, Mike still would not have been able to fall asleep.
Mike reflected on the fact that he hated it when he thought such weird thoughts and yelled down to his companions on the ground. "Right! Get going!"
The four of them had constructed a crude tour of milk crates on the ground under the landing and were, by way of a human bridge and the use of a few amateur climbing skills, attempting to reach the kitchen door.
This newest plan dictated that one person would climb the crates first, grabbing onto the ledge and getting a firm grip. The tower fell quite a few feet short of the landing, so the others would have to latch onto each other in order to climb upwards.
Mike was the first one up the rickety creation. Getting a good grip on the posts of the railing which were, thank God, surprisingly sturdy, he proceeded to dangle and call for the others to proceed.
Bill Gelinas was the second one up. Carefully, he stepped from crate to crate up the makeshift tower and grabbed Mike's ankles. Mike exhaled sharply as the other stepped off the crates and hung freely in the air.
Now it was Aaron's turn. He was supposed to climb up the two of them and get to the landing where he could help them all up in turn.
"Go, dammit!" Mike called.
Aaron rubbed his hands together anxiously, then ascended towards his fellows. At the top of the pile of milk crates, he proceeded to use his fellows as hand and footholds.
"Careful!"
"Watch it!"
"Sorry."
"Gaw!"
"Oh, shut up."
After a few tense seconds, Aaron was at the top of the landing. Bracing himself against the side of the church for support, he leaned down to help Bill Gelinas up and over the side of the wooden ledge. A few bouts of human staircase later and the two of them were there.
Mike was still dangling.
"Hughes!" he yelled.
Hughes stood on the lawn at the base of the pile of crates. He looked less than confident about the events which were playing themselves out tonight. "I really can't believe we're doing this," he said flatly.
"Come on," Aaron said, "It's not that hard."
"Piece of cake," Bill Gelinas remarked.
"Piece of cake?" Hughes balked. "This is my first premeditated crime, thank you very much!"
"Dammit, hick boy!" Mike yelled, "Get going!"
Hughes finally submitted, and after a few more tense seconds all four of them were standing atop the landing just outside the kitchen door. They took a short break to catch their breath.
"And now, the moment of truth," Aaron said. He tried the knob. It turned in his hand and the kitchen door swung open with an unnecessarily long creak.
A puzzled look crossed Bill Gelinas' face. "Wait a minute," he asked of the others. "Wouldn't it have been a lot easier just to become our animal forms and get up the stairs that way?"
The other three looked at him. "Shut up, Bill!"
"I mean, Aaron could've flown, Hughes and Mike can climb and that would've left us with—"
"SHUT UP, BILL!"
He held up his hands. "Fine, fine!"
"Can we please get this over with, now?" Hughes asked.
They walked through the door into the kitchen, each hoping to find something in the church that might bring the adult conspiracy to light and save their troop.
And they didn't want to get caught.
Mr. William Pruyne, Scoutmaster of Troop 192, pushed the double front doors of the church open and threw a glance around the vast parking lot one more time. Still not seeing the scouts, he decided he would go downstairs and wait for them there.
He turned in the doorway, starting to walk away when he caught something in the corner of his eye. The moonlight had glinted off of something in the parking lot. Squinting in the pitch dark of night, he looked out into the lot, trying to discern the shape of the thing—
Twin headlights flared, and the silent car roared suddenly to life.
Mr. Pruyne's eyes went wide with horror. How could they have known?
With a thunderous squeak on the heavily waxed floor, he turned on his heel and ran back into the building. Maybe if he could get down to the lower floor he could find another exit or--
Another distraction. Something crunched underfoot. In the oppressive silence of the great meeting hall, he bent down to see what he'd stepped on.
The smell of ashes. It was a burned out cigar.
The double doors behind him swung open with a thunderous crash.
In another part of the church, a spark flared. The spark became a small flame and the flame lit the end of a long brown cigar.
Mr. John Hawley ignored the din coming from the hall and examined what he'd come here tonight to find, what he knew others also wanted to find.
In his hands he held the election ballots. A neat stack of white scraps of paper on which were written the names of one young man or the other. Nothing more than that.
How unfortunate, then, that so much trouble had to come from something so insignificant, so paltry. It was almost laughable. Hard to believe such a problem could be caused by nothing more than paper.
But, of course, all problems had their solutions.
The noise from the other room abruptly stopped. Mr. Hawley took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it for a moment. Then, he slowly brought it towards the insignificant pieces of paper.
"All right," Mike said, "I think we should split up."
They were standing in the darkened church kitchen. What little light there was bounced around the room, glinting off of every shiny metal surface.
"Okay," Aaron nodded. "Me and Bill will go downstairs and you two can look around up here."
The Bills nodded. "Sounds good."
"If they're still here, the ballots could be anywhere," Mike reminded the others. "Check all the drawers and the wastebaskets and everything."
They split up. Aaron and Bill Gelinas left the room, making for the stairs. As the sounds of their footsteps faded, Mike and Hughes began searching the kitchen.
Looking through a drawer filled with scissors, scotch tape and those little plastic things fancy restaurants put around dinner napkins, Mike's thoughts were momentarily elsewhere. Mr. Pruyne had told him to be here. He had to be somewhere, and Mike had to find him. He was probably the only person who knew where the ballots were.
"Hey, Hughes?" Mike called across the room.
"Yeah?"
"Keep looking in here, I'll go out into the hall."
"Sure."
Mike pushed open the swinging door that led to the main room of the church. To one side of him lay the stairs down which Aaron and Bill had gone. He could hear the faint rustling of their search on the first floor. In front of him was another door, the one led into the hall. Mike walked through it, emerging into complete and total darkness.
He stood in the doorway a few seconds, letting his eyes adjust. Looking around briefly but seeing next to nothing out of the ordinary in the huge empty room, he started forward.
Mike asked himself what he thought he should do now, and his answer came as he noticed something odd. He'd been making his way towards the front door, away from the door to the kitchen and the stairs. Yet, the sound he had heard before and dismissed as Aaron and Bill's search was getting louder, not softer.
It was coming from outside, through the double doors. In the parking lot.
It wasn't the others. It was a car.
Could this be Mr. Pruyne, waiting for them to arrive? Mike picked up his pace a bit, walking towards the exit at a slow trot. He was almost there when he heard a soft crackle.
He'd stepped on something.
Slowly, he lifted his shoe to see what it had been. Squinting in the darkness, he thought it looked like ashes. Maybe a cigarette butt.
He suddenly had the feeling he should find Mr. Pruyne. Now nearly running, he made for the exit to the parking lot and threw open the double doors.
To Mike's dismay, the lot appeared empty. A cold wind blew a few dead autumn leaves across the pavement, but that was all.
No, it wasn't. Twin points of red light brought his eyes to focus an idling gray town car. There was a man standing next to it. He closed the half open trunk with a hollow thud.
"Well, good evening, Mr. Quadrozzi."
Mike wheeled on the voice. The tall figure of John Hawley stepped out of the shadows towards him.
"What are you doing here?" Mike asked the elder.
"I think you know," Mr. Hawley said. Wisps of cigar smoke encircled him, almost as if he himself were giving off the noxious fumes.
"You're right I know," Mike said, surprising himself with the sudden steadiness in his voice, despite the fact that he was more than a little frightened. "We all know what you've done."
Mr. Hawley frowned. "You know nothing."
He took a few steps forward, and Mike sidestepped in return, keeping a safe distance. The elder now stood in between him and the idling town car.
"I think you may have been expecting someone," Mr. Hawley said.
Mike blinked, a frightening thought coming to him. "Where's Mr. Pruyne?" he asked.
The other's face didn't change, his expression remained set in stone. "He's come and gone," he said.
Mike glanced at the trunk as Mr. Hawley began walking towards the car.
"What, that's it?" Mike called after him. "You're done playing your mind games and now you just leave? Disappear?"
The elder ignored him.
"We deserve to know the truth!"
Mr. Hawley stopped.
Slowly, he turned back to face the youth. If Mike could have seen his eyes he might have retreated into the church. They were cold, yet burned with a smouldering hatred. "You can avoid what you deserve," he said, "If you leave this alone, Mr. Quadrozzi. You've lost."
The man who had closed the trunk held open a door, and Mr. Hawley got inside the long gray town car. Seconds late, with a burst of exhaust and an almost imperceptible rumble, they disappeared into the night.
The doors behind Mike were thrown open, and Aaron, Hughes and Bill Gelinas raced outside.
"We were looking," Aaron said as the three of them walked up to Mike.
"And we heard a car," explained Hughes, "What happened?"
They watched as Mike fell back against the church, slumping to his knees. He was suddenly tired. He looked up at the others and sighed.
"We've lost," he said.
One week later, they were all at the Church in the Acres again. Mike, Aaron, Matt Atanian and the Bills.
Days before, they had told Matt what had happened at the church that night, how they had failed to find evidence of the adult conspiracy. Still, they pledged not to give up hope.
All the scouts of Troop 192 were arriving, some by bike, some getting dropped off by parents eager to have just an hour and a half of peace and quiet.
"Well," Mike was saying, "No point in worrying ourselves sick over it, eh?
"Don't worry, we'll think of something," Aaron said.
Jon Becker arrived, and they waved as he walked past them towards the church. He was waving his copy of Boy's Life at them, which he had received in the mail earlier that day. "Your trip's in here!" he enthusiastically shouted at them, although whether he was shouting to be herd over the distance, or if due to the headphones he was wearing he thought he was talking a normal volume, no one knew.
They were about to join Jon entering the building when they noticed someone was standing behind them, off to the side. The five of them turned.
It was the new kid, Kenny Pendrell.
"Oh, hey, Kenny," Matt said in greeting. "How are you?"
Kenny didn't say anything at first, but then, in that quiet voice of his he asked them, "So have you guys ever heard of a place called Jusenkyo?"
THE END?
DISCLAIMER:
Well, that's it. Now I leave the plot hanging for Matt to pick up in the next installment. I know that this part of the Boy Scouts ½ saga was long in the making. I only hope that that made it all the more interesting to read. Actually, I'm just being polite. Matt threatened to feed my testicles to a rampaging horde of Zulu tribesmen if I procrastinated any longer. Believe me, that can be painful.
As you might've guessed (and I hope you did), many aspects of this story were inspired by that show of shows, The X-Files. Please, don't tell Ten Thirteen Productions. They'd pump me full of black goo like that UN babe. You know the one.
So, no publisher babble again. And as always, I look forward to my next contribution.
Thanks. Goodnight, everybody.
-Michael D. Quadrozzi
As you might've guessed (and I hope you did), many aspects of this story were inspired by that show of shows, The X-Files. Please, don't tell Ten Thirteen Productions. They'd pump me full of black goo like that UN babe. You know the one.
So, no publisher babble again. And as always, I look forward to my next contribution.
Thanks. Goodnight, everybody.
-Michael D. Quadrozzi
Notes from Matt:
Damn you, Mike. Had to go for that X-Files, unresolved ending, didn't you! For god sakes, you've left Bill Pruyne's very life in my hands! How could you do this! Well, guess I'll just have to put some thought into part 10...