By Audra Beberman
Chapter Nineteen
Outside, in the dirt, Jax was drawing and redrawing a map of the underground prison from the information that Del Mansfield had given them under extreme duress from Luke and Jason. Jason stood guarding Del as if his life depended upon it. Suddenly, all the quiet conversation that had been happening stopped as everyone heard the ringing of an alarm. Jerry looked worriedly at Jax and John.
"I have an extremely bad feeling about this," Luke said humorlessly from behind Jerry.
Quickly, they gathered everyone around so the plan could be explained for the last time. The worrisome alarm continued in the background as they tried to ignore it. Abruptly, Jax' cell phone began to ring. Considering anyone who would try to reach him was either standing right there or right below the earth, except for Samir, Jax answered the phone with a wary expression on his face.
"Jax? It's Bobbie!"
Jax smiled and said to the assembled group, "It's Bobbie!" Jerry jumped to his feet as quickly as his disabled body would allow. He grabbed the phone from his brother and heard his wife's voice for the first time in a week. If there had been time, Jerry would have felt relief. Instead, he listened. Without preamble, Bobbie told him that the Keeper was dead. And that there seemed to be some sort of bomb with a timer in the room in which she was standing. She casually glanced at the monitors and realized she could see the whole group of them outside watching Jerry talk to her on the phone. She told him this too.
"Ok, darling. We're right here, now that we know your fath- he's dead... we'll hurry to get you out of there. Stay put for now and keep talking to Lady Jane." Jerry handed the phone to his mother and he related Bobbie's tale to the rest of them.
"So, now we know there's no one waiting for us on the inside, all we have to do is unlock the door. But we don't have much time. Bobbie says the alarm evidently tripped a timer attached to a bomb. We have less than eighteen minutes."
On the inside, Tony and Lucky were racing to open the elevator doors. Chloe reported that information to her and Bobbie relayed the information to Jane who told Jerry and the rest. Jerry was fussing with a joystick by the outer door of the dungeon. This was level eight of the "game" - the part he hadn't invented. Finally, after several aborted attempts, Jerry reached the goal of level eight. A computer keyboard slid towards him from an opening in the rock by the door. Jerry opened the outer door to the dungeon with the words "Angel" and "Fire" in combination with a numeric code Del Mansfield supplied. He hadn't lied, Jerry was happy to note.
Jerry and Jax peered inside. The open doorway led to two large stainless doors behind which, according to Del, they'd find the elevator.
Chloe returned to the monitor room to tell Bobbie that Tony and Lucky had gotten the elevator open, and they were waiting for her. Into the phone, Bobbie said to Jane, "Lady Jane, the elevator seem to be open, I'm getting into it now so I have to hang up." Before Jerry could protest the idea through Jane, the connection had been broken. Jax, John and Jerry heard the whir as the elevator began its ascent. Softly, it hissed as it came to rest on the opposite side of the double doors.
"Jax." Jerry said softly. "The key."
The elevator doors whirred as they opened. Lucky and Tony stepped out as quickly as they could. There was one more set of doors in front of them. No hinges no visible locks. The elevator doors began to close on the women and Bobbie tried to keep them open, but she didn't have the strength. Lucky ran to help her. Tony looked around and to his delight, found a long crowbar resting against the wall. Tony inserted the flat end between the doors and began to pull.
"Tony, I can't move or else the door will close," Lucky yelled.
"It's ok, Lucky. I can do it!" Tony grunted with exertion as the door began to give.
Jerry inserted the curious looking key into a small notch in a rock beside the doors. He looked up at Luke and Jax who were behind him.
"Why don't you guys step back and give a guy some breathing room. I am oxygen deprived you know!" He wanted Jax and Luke out of the way in case something went wrong. The two men moved towards the far end of the crevasse, towards the moonlit night.
The thick stainless doors began to give and Tony started to say, "I think I..." He didn't finish because his words were lost in the heat and noise of a tremendous explosion. Bobbie and Lucky hit the floor of the elevator and the door closed as the noise and heat began to encroach upon them. With Chloe's arms around her, Brenda whimpered as the elevator began to descend.
"Christ!" Luke exclaimed, as he rushed to Jerry's aid. John and Mac also rushed to his side. Jax looked over at his brother, who seemed to be coughing and at least semi-conscious. The elevator shaft was now visible. The doors that stood between them and their loved ones a moment ago were gone. Jax cringed when he realized that Tony was pinned behind one of the doors against the rocks of the cavern.
Jerry managed to rise with an audible groan and limped over to Jax. "The button. Push the button," he said in a voice as deep as the cavern they were now standing in. He was pointing to the elevator call button on the wall. He leaned against the wall at the side of the elevator. The noise of the alarm throbbed in his head. Jerry saw he had added a compound fracture of the wrist to his list of injuries, because a bone was sticking out of his damaged skin. He reached up with his left hand and felt the blood from a wound that would later be diagnosed as a concussion.
The alarm stopped suddenly. To Jerry it was like the quiet of a thunderstorm before the thunder struck. In that instant of perfect stillness, John and Luke ran out of the cavern to move everyone else to a safe distance. But Jerry and Jax stood their ground as the elevator stopped and the doors slipped open. Their eyes locked and they turned to flatten themselves against the wall as a huge explosion occurred that rocked the ground beneath them.
Everyone outside felt the blast too. They were all holding their breath waiting to see what would happen next. Jane and John looked at each other with apprehension. Not yet willing to imagine the worst. Jax came stumbling out with Chloe at his side and Brenda in his arms. Lucky followed Jax as he half-carried, half-supported his Aunt Bobbie.
Bobbie stopped to catch her breath and her eyes locked with Jane's. For a moment she looked around, confused. As she looked from face to face, she realized that Jerry was nowhere in the group of people who were running toward her. "Where is he?" She choked out. "Where is Jerry?"
Jane stopped moving, as through the smoke she saw Jerry limping from the crevasse. "There. There!" Jane cried excitedly.
Through the smoke and the darkness, Bobbie's eyes met Jerry's and the world virtually stopped. She marveled that he was standing up on his own, although even from a distance she could see he was seriously injured. But he was breathing on his own. And standing on his own. She tried to fight back the tears, but lost the battle. Jerry smiled the endearing lopsided grin that she never wanted to live without. When he held out his left hand to her, she gathered the little strength she had left and ran to him.
Luke looked at the chasm as a tall young man stumbled through the smoke and the dust. He was coughing. He had been supporting Bobbie as they made their way out of the dungeon. There was something familiar about him. At that moment, Lucky looked up into Luke's eyes. Only then did Luke realize that his hopes and dreams had come true. This was Lucky. Not a dream, not a spirit from the grave. The flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, and bone of his bone. He was a grown man, but he was still essentially Lucky. Luke would never remember exactly how the gap between them got crossed, but suddenly there was no space and they were in each other's embrace. Silent except for the one word softly spoken by each in unison.
"Dad."
"Son."
