NaNoWriMo '06 - Day 30

I did it! I made 50,000 words with about an hour and a half to spare. Whoot!

I freely admit that this installment is a bit overdrawn, and I’m thinking that I may drop it altogether once I get around to editing. Oh well, I got it out, and that’s the point. I was pushed to just keep writing rather than worrying and wondering if what I was writing was any good.

NaNoWriMo is a wonderful thing for someone like me. I recommend it, or something like it, to anyone who has always wanted to write a novel but never has. It might not be great, but at least you’ll be writing something. After all, you can always scrap it and start something else once you’ve gotten yourself in gear.
In case anyone is wondering, I’m going to keep writing and posting the results here, it just won’t be every day like it has been throughout November.

For Idle Hands (working title) - Part 25

As I stared down at Andre - or Stephen, whichever - I saw three cops racing towards us through the thinning crowd. of course, those barricades blocking off Church Street from Main Street would be manned by the local cops to make sure no one got hurt and sued the town. They’d seen what went down, and were rushing over to serve and protect. I didn’t know if these guys were on my side or not, and I couldn’t take that chance. Even if they were, in front of all these people they’d have to cart me away, and I couldn’t have that either.

The big man under me was out cold, I wasn’t going to get him moving, or even talking in the next thirty seconds. It was time to bail. Leave him here to occupy the boys in blue - though in Idle the uniforms were a grey so dark they appeared black in most light - and see if I could get back to my bike before they did.

I took just a second to look around for my cell phone, but it had skittered off into the crowd and I had no hope of finding it now. I did see the saddle bags tall dark and ugly had been carrying though, so I grabbed that and slung it over my shoulder. It was even heavier than it looked. Just great.

As I got up to run, only stumbling and nearly falling once in the process, the sun was just falling below the tree line. There was no way I was going to get to my bike before the cops caught me. My only hope to outrun these guys while I was encumbered like this was to find an unlit area and lose them. Church Street was well lit, as was the UMI campus to my left and ahead, and to my right was the beginnings of Idle Village’s downtown area. Up ahead though, the right side of Church Street was lined with, of all things, churches.

At this time of night on a Friday they were closed and locked up tight. Except that I happened to know that cleaning service worked on the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church on Friday nights, and they always left the back door propped open while they worked. With any luck, they’d be there right now. My mother had dragged me to that church every Sunday until I was eighteen, and occasionally after that, and I knew it like the back of my hand. Plenty of possibilities for escape there.

I huffed down the street, shouting for people to get out of my way. I’d piled the saddle bags on top of the same shoulder I had Derrick’s bag slung over, to spare my injured shoulder, but now that one was starting to cramp and burn from the exertion.

I could hear the cops behind me yelling at me and each other, though through the noise of the crowd and my own ragged breaths and pounding heart I couldn’t make out the words. I glanced back to see what they were up to.

One was working on the thug, rolling him over and handcuffing him, and the other two were following me. The two that followed looked to be young guys and in good shape. This just kept getting better and better.

I reached the Unitarian church and cut sharply to run down the side street it sat at the corner of, leaving the crowds behind completely. It was a large building, and had been expanded and built onto many times. The result was a monstrous structure that looked as if half a dozen smaller building had been stacked next to and on top of each other like building blocks. As I pounded down the street the back door - really a recessed door in the side of the building - came into view. It was closed.

I nearly despaired until I noticed the cleaning service’s van parked on the other side of the street. Unless they were just sitting in the van, they were in there. With luck the door was unlocked, they just hadn’t propped it open, possibly to avoid tempting revelers to come in. The door featured one of those large levers you simply had to push on to open it, since this door doubled as the handicap entrance when the church was open. That left one very important question, did he door open in or out?

I didn’t have time to consider it, I reached the ramp leading up to the door with the cops only a short distance behind me and closing. I hit the door at a full run, catching the lever with my free hand an instant before my body blasted the door open. It opened in, and was lighter than I’d expected. I lost my footing and sprawled flat out on the linoleum floor. The saddle bag went flying down the hallway.

As I scrambled to my feet I could hear the faster of the two cops pounding up the access ramp. As soon as I regained my feet I took off down the hall, cursing myself for losing track of the saddle bags. About half of the lights in this portion of the building, the administrative offices, were on. Somewhere in the distance I could hear a vacuum cleaner.
I rounded a corner and headed towards the chapel. Both of the cops skittered around the corner after me, colliding with the wall and landing in a heap. Their uniform shoes weren’t designed to work on linoleum, apparently. Neither were my Bean boots, but they did the trick well enough.

I raced out into the chapel and stopped dead. There were no lights on in here. The sky was clear and the moon had risen shortly before sundown, but it was only a quarter moon. The light filtering in through the stained glass windows did little more than highlight the polished backs of the pews and the clean white lines of the pulpit. A lone, lit exit sign showed the direction I wanted to head in. I ran down the isle towards the back of the room, my legs and lungs burning in protest. I cut left before I reached the main entrance doors - they would be locked anyway - and felt my way along the wall until I found another door and opened it.

This small room was not only a broom closet, but contained a ladder that ran up through a hatch in the ceiling. I’d been up this ladder many times as a child. More recently, before Carolyn and I had been married in this church, I’d shown her this place. It was the path the ministers took once a month to wind the great old clock in the steeple.

I climbed up the first few rungs, feeling my way along, then pushed the hatch open above me. As I did a distant light started sweeping the chapel. One of the cops was standing in the door on the other side of the room searching it with his flashlight. Sure enough, it settled on me as I stuck my head through the opening, and I heard him yelling to his partner that he’d found me.

I climbed up through the hatch and closed it behind me, though I knew it wouldn’t do any good, I had no way to secure it. I fished my pen light out of my pocket and swept its small red cone of illumination over the new space I found myself in. It was much as I remembered it. If anything it was bigger.

When the original roof and steeple of this church had needed to be replaced, the church committee had elected to have the new roof built over the old one. About eight feet over it, in fact, leaving the original in place. Large timbers criss crossed the space in between, but it was otherwise open all the way to the far wall. The effect was bizarre and beautiful during the day. At night, I discovered, it was like a scene from a gothic nightmare.

Getting up into the steeple to wind the clock involved scrambling over the peak of the old roof - using short lengths of two by fours that had been nailed there as hand and foot holds - and down the other side, then up a steep and winding staircase. I had a few options here, none of which I liked. The simplest, and dumbest of them would be to sit on the hatch and wait for them to go away. Of course, they wouldn’t go away, they’d break in or find another way up here, and in any case I would still be caught. I could easily fight them off either here or on the winding stairs. Surprise alone would probably allow me to win easily, but I didn’t need to add roughing a cop to my list of offenses.

There was another option. It was crazy, but then the whole day had gone from bad to crazy and back again several times. There was no reason to buck the trend now.

I tossed Derrick’s bag down the roof, towards the back wall, hoping I wouldn’t need anything it held after all. The I scrambled over the peak of the old roof and slid down the other side, bypassing the hand holds altogether. I could hear the hatch bang open behind me as I reached the bottom. I killed my light tried in vain to quiet my breathing.
Two cones of light swept over the space from the other side, searching. I heard one of them exclaim something then move off to the side. He’d seen the bag. Both beams of light vanished behind the old roof as they searched around and beyond the bag for me.

I crept to the stairs and started climbing, slowly and carefully. It wasn’t easy with virtually no light to work with. The steps were unevenly spaced and narrow, but they were solidly built and made almost no noise as I crept up them. If I made it to the top I would be out of sight until they realized I wasn’t down there and came up looking for me. That would give me a minute or two to work up to the next step.

Then, half way up, I found the one squeaky stair.

They’d heard me, and were rushing back to the makeshift ladder over the old roof. Damn it. I flipped my red pen light back on and scrambled the rest of the way up the stairs. The first of the cops was just reaching the peak of the roof as I reached the top of the winding stairs.

I could see in here without the flashlight so I switched it off and quickly pocketed it. The steeple was roughly ten by ten feet, with the clock mechanism taking up half of that space. Above me a large bell hung, silent and ominous and the light leaking in through the slatted vents on the sides and rear of the structure.

I glanced through the slats at the rear of the steeple to make sure I had the correct side. I could see the ridge of the new roof receding from me. Offering up a quick apology I threw my good shoulder against the slats, crashing through them. I was expecting more resistance and put too much force behind the motion. I fell through the new opening.

I hit the peak of the roof and careened off. Flailing my arms and legs wildly, my ankle caught on the inside of the hole I’d just fallen through and I stopped sliding. I desperately grabbed hold of the moulding around the outside of the steeple and pulled myself up.

I could hear the cops starting to climb the spiral stairs. They weren’t making any effort to be quiet about it and I knew they’d make it up here quickly. I had to move fast.

About seven feet off the level I was standing at, on the outside of the steeple, was a small decorative ledge. I reached up and tested it, it seemed like it would hold if I was careful. I moved to the front corner of the steeple and looked over the edge. I was at least forty feet off the ground. In front of the steeple the roof stuck out about a foot. I reached around and grabbed the ledge on the front of the steeple, then threw my leg around the corner.

A foot at a time - I had no time to be careful - I worked my way out onto that narrow protrudent, holding onto the ledge above for dear life. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, clinging to the front of the steeple in front of the clock’s face. A narrow decorative ledge, a foot of steeply peaked roof, and what strength I had left in my battered and exhausted body was all that stood between myself and at the very least a long hospital stay. By no the cops were probably in the steeple, and this was the only place they wouldn’t be able to see me through the slats.

Sure enough, I could hear them talking on the other side. They were trying to talk each other into going out of the roof, I guessed, and neither one was having it. I hoped they’d hurry up and leave, my arms were tiring and my fingers were going numb in the rapidly encroaching night cold.

They must have been poking their heads out the hole now, because I could hear their words for the first time. Unbelievably, I was pretty sure this pair were the Chips who’d hauled me in after my ill advised car chase earlier.

“So, what, did he just jump off the damn roof?”

“I don’t know, but he’s not up here, where else could he be?”

“Fine, let’s head down. If he jumped, he’ll be waiting for us at the bottom. If not, then he’s hiding somewhere and we’ll just call in a few people to wait him out.”

“Fine, fine, but if we lose him he ain’t gonna be happy. I’m blaming you.”

I couldn’t hear the other’s response clearly enough to make out the words as they ducked back inside. “He”? The way he’d said that had made it sound like a code name, or a pseudonym. Kind of a “he who shall not be named” kind of thing.
No time to worry about that now though, I had to get back off the edge of this roof and figure out how I was going to get out of here without being seen.