The Ill-mannered Door (humorous sci-fi)

23.1: Struggles in the Dark

I awoke to someone shaking me, then heard an anxious whisper, "Thomas, wake up. Someone's coming."

"Wha?" I began, a bit too loudly before being quickly shushed back into silence.

I didn't try to sit up, deciding it might make too much noise. Slowing my breathing, I could just hear the sound of footsteps approaching in the night. Someone was on the road and slowly getting closer.

Time passed. The footsteps drew closer. Closer. Then they stopped a little way down the road before resuming their plodding toward us.

Could it be the king coming back for us, or was it perhaps Dale, the guardsman, coming back for a more thorough search? Surely it would be the whole group of guardsmen, wouldn't it? But what if the others thought he was just being paranoid, and he came back alone to vindicate himself?

The footsteps were much closer when I heard a new sound, but it was a few more moments before I finally realized what it was.

It was at that moment that Derek stood up and said in a bit of a hushed shout, "Barry! Barry, over here!"

Yes, it had been the sound of the king huffing and puffing that I had heard, which he continued to make as he crossed the remaining distance toward our hiding place.

I stood up, and sure enough, there he was slowly making his way toward us. He was clearly exhausted and collapsed upon the ground behind the hedge to rest.

Derek said, "Look, Barry, I'm not a doctor, but at your age, this could be serious if you don't start getting some exercise."

Between breaths, the king said, "What do you... think I'm... doing? All this exercise... is the... problem!"

After catching his breath, he told us that the guardsmen had insisted on escorting him all the way to the palace before they finally left him alone. He then tried to hurry back, but we already knew how that went.

Derek asked him, "Couldn't you have taken the royal carriage back or something? Why did you walk back if you were at the castle?"

"The queen gave the carriage men orders that under no circumstances were they allowed to leave the palace! I had to walk! Can you imagine?"

"Yes," I said, "you had to walk. Absolutely horrifying. No idea how you manage."

He gave me a withering look, or he probably did, but it was too dark to be sure.

"What did you see in there?" Derek asked him, pointing at the Ministry of Wisdom, "Did you get to the bomb?"

"Couldn't. There were guards," the king said. "Only saw two though, at the end of the hallway just outside the room where the bomb is kept."

I was growing terribly concerned about how little time we might have left, so I asked him, "Do you think the bomb is still in there?"

"No point in guarding an empty room, is there?" His Majesty remarked.

He then went on to explain the layout of the building and that he hadn't seen anyone except the two guards. This was welcome news because the extent of our plans when it came to getting past any guards was simply one of divide and conquer.

During our planning, Derek had spoken quite confidently of his knowledge of karate and that he believed that he could overcome a guard, or even two, entirely on his own.

Never having engaged in any sort of martial arts training, I knew very little, other than what I'd seen in films. I knew that a new student started off with a white belt, then after many years of training, one might finally reach a black belt. So, clearly, that meant that the darker the color, the more skilled the warrior. The films hadn't covered any other belt colors, though I knew others existed.

I also had the general knowledge from films that someone with a black belt was to be feared. Yes, black belts fought multiple people at once, swung around all manner of interesting weapons, and confidently thumbed their noses at any opponent, no matter how large they were or what sort of animal-like pose they struck.

Derek bent over and I heard him unzip one of his duffles. He rummaged about for a bit before pulling something out and zipping the bag back up. Then he said, "Alright, let's do this."

He looked at me, then the king, then was back to me again. With a shrug, he said to me, "Here, take this."

Yes, at long last, I would get to see the object that he promised would be a great help to our mission. Surely it must be a powerful weapon of some sort, but I couldn't make out what it was in the darkness. So, stretching out my hand to retrieve the longish object with what I hoped was the appropriate degree of reverence, I asked, "What is it?"

"Baseball bat. Nothing like a nice piece of maple in your hands when things go sideways," he said.

Were things going to go sideways? Was sideways a bad thing, or a good thing? I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, so I asked, "And what will I be doing with it?"

"That's plan B. You stand beside the door and if a guard comes out, ring his bell with the bat, eh?"

"Ring his bell. Right." I performed a few test swings, just to get a feel for it. I had played some cricket in my day, and while a cricket bat was different, the basic principle was the same. Swing and hold on tight. Terrible things happened if one neglected the latter, as Mr. Smithers, my former cricket coach, could attest.

I then said, "But, why are you giving it to me? Shouldn't you use it against the guards?"

"Hey, it's not a present. I expect that back. Anyway, I've got something better," he said, then bent down, unzipped his other duffle, and went back to rummaging. After a moment, I heard the tinkling of what sounded like a chain as he pulled something out of his bag with a triumphant, "Hah, there we go. Numchucks."

Yes, thanks to a misspent youth of watching poorly dubbed martial arts films, I knew exactly what those were. Truly a prime accessory when one planned to do some good nose-thumbing at one's opponents.

Derek went about searching his duffle bags for what I imagined was some last-minute accessories.

As I worked through our plan again in my mind, it now occurred to me to ask, "Derek, what color belt do you have?"

To which Derek replied, "I'm not wearing a belt. Don't really like them. Too constricting."

"No, I mean what color karate belt do you have?"

"I'm a purple belt," he said, then strode confidently into the building, numchucks in hand.

Hearing that, I was satisfied. After all, purple was quite a dark color, so I figured that Derek was surely the next best thing to being a black belt. And, with only two guards between us and successfully saving the kingdom, Derek would likely stride in there, quickly overwhelm the guards and then the king would disarm the bomb. We were home free.