Chapter 3

We were awakened from our cozy snuggle by the sound of the S.W.A.T-mobiles loudspeakers demanding our surrender. It seems Creepyduper had convinced his cop buddies to crash this party. Only Frank and I and his roommate Roger remained from last night, who muttered darkly that he had prepared for this day but never expected to need resort to this.

He led us to his bedroom as the count-down to some unspecified ultimatum grew smaller. Frank winked at me and told me “Roger is cool.” That, and the safety I felt from Frank eased my near panic, which was then ratcheted up by Roger saying “They will assume we have died, at least until the arson team finishes up.” We dropped down into the concealment created by the enclosed block foundation at this end of the trailer. No way were Rogers bedroom activities going to rock the house.

Revealed was a utility vault, the cover on a hydraulic hinge. We were down the hatch and buttoned up tight when we heard the muffled shots, sounding like it was expired ammo inventory time. Roger sang out cheerfully “So long rotten crappy trailer-home!” and he pulled a large red mousetrap breaker into the closed position. After a delay of twenty seconds with no abatement of the fully automatic rifle fire (machine-gun) during which Roger explained “Aerosol dispersal” there was a loud ‘KRUMP’ even down in a sealed utility vault.

“Ok, that covers our tracks, no one will be looking for us for awhile. What’s next?” Roger asked, sounding very optimistic.

“Why are you so happy at burning down and or blowing up your home?” I asked in confusion, not understanding his attitude nor the extremes he was willing to take on my behalf, although by how the cops had opened up on his trailer making it resemble Swiss cheese or a cheese grater no one would have been permitted to surrender anyway.

“I went to the trouble of parking right here, building the block foundation under the trailer, making a trap door through the floor under my bed and down to the utility vault, rigging my freeking house, crappy as it is with a fuel air delivery network.

We have supplies, lights, equipment and a passageway to another exit if we don’t want to wait for the site to cool off. Can you imagine if I went to all that preparation, and didn’t get to use it? I bet I would have lifelong regrets.

Anyhoo, it doesn’t sound like this is a problem that requires the arsenal, so let’s have something to eat to at least justify the emergency rations, and then we can vamoose down the escape tunnel, and leave this city, county, State, and Country behind! Finally get to use my prep contingency planing.”

Roger’s seeming competence combined with Frank’s protective aura slowed my pulse rate and my breathing evened out. We had ‘Gourmet emergency rations’, affectionately called ‘gummi rats’ as such things seem to happen. It wasn’t bad for freeze-dried reconstituted meals, it tried to follow some sort of meal plan with various parts of it. The freeze dried fruit cup was better not reconstituted, for instance, while the green beans were best forced down dry as well, chased with the gravy packet. The alternative was even worse. Roger’s cheerful comment was “Thank god we aren’t going to be trapped down here for days eating this crap. Lets head out!”

I can’t imagine that Roger was Not a boy scout in his youth, and once a boy scout, always a boy scout or is that the Marines? because he had a caving helmet with headlamp for each of us, and a few spares in case there had been an orgy going on at the time of the raid.

As we followed Roger down the downward sloping concrete tube, he explained “This trailer park was originally intended to extend all the way back here, but the money dried up and besides they couldn’t fully fill the first third they did develop. But by then they had ran the road back here, and the sewer line. I could be flushing my toilet down here if I hadn’t had a better use for it. Instead, I had a septic system put in, and no one said a single word about it.” We started up a ladder set in the wall, just in time as we were close enough to the rest of the trailers to start to smell the sewage odors drifting up the tunnel. The top of the vault revealed when the manhole cover was muscled aside was completely surrounded by trees, so there were no witnesses to our egress.

Roger had a vehicle stashed in an anonymous looking building which could stand in for a park service shed or utility station or some other such unnoticeable structure. He unlocked the serious yet not flashy padlock and revealed our ride. I voiced another question to Roger. “How can you afford all this?”

He scoffed, “What, a crappy used twenty year old mobile home, a small gun collection, some dried supplies and miscellaneous camping gear? The rest was just taking advantage of the terrain.” We got into the station wagon which was verging from ‘classic’ toward ‘antique’, but it started eagerly and seemed to want to gallop. “Did you do something with the gearing ratios?” Frank asked his roommate.

“I couldn’t find the right transmission, so yeah, it doesn’t have the low end the original did, but it sure has the top end once you get it moving! Plus, any one who knows this make of vehicle understands it can’t speed down the freeway, it doesn’t have enough bottom. So their mind would tell them ‘no way that brick was actually speeding’. It would be like spotting a flashing blur from the edge of your vision, and your mind discounting it as what you thought you saw, because sloths don’t zip by like that. Only in this case, their brain would tell them they were mistaken about the speed they can’t believe to be true. People who say ‘I can’t believe what I am seeing’ are actually trying to convince their minds to believe their eyes.”

Frank commented “Congratulations, I had no idea, and you have saved all our lives.” I felt obligated to apologize for bring such trouble down on them, but Roger reassured me, telling me that I was certainly worthy of triggering his escape and evasion contingency plans and since I was cute enough to cause such trouble, I was cute enough to merit such rescue. Frank agreed wholeheartedly. I just wondered how good of a buddy Creeparooni was to the cops, or just what kind of NBC terrorists we were supposed to be. Whatever, we had been most effectively Wacoed.