The Man From Mars - Episode Twelve

   I was just into my third day of lying low in the underground shelter and was already feeling comfortable with my surroundings. And that is something I didn't want to happen. Getting a sense of security with one location when I know someone or some Government agency is looking for me.
   I wasn't planning on staying in the bunker very long, maybe four days tops anyways. I had to plan my next move.
   I had been watching the Cable News Network from the satellite feed I received down there in my hideaway. Trying to see if anyone else had come across the Man from Mars and was telling the media all about him.
   So far, nothing.
   It was just before lunch when Hong Xia came busting into the place without knocking. Luckily I was already dressed.
   Five others followed her inside while she barked out orders in Chinese. Like I have already said, I know enough Mandarin to order a good bowl of wonton soup and an expensive sake. So, to the best of my knowledge, Hong Xia told her cleaners to, "burn everything, bleach everything, and paint everything else. It has to be done by midnight tonight."
   That is when her attention came to me.
   "Here," she said. "This is a map of the sewer system past the hatch. I have already marked your quickest and safest route out of here. You have five minutes to gather your stuff and go."
   "Why, what happened?" I asked startled.
   "Get this," Hong Xia said with a smile. "It was right out of an Edward G. Robinson movie. Not even four hours ago, an unmarked black SUV, with no license plates, parks in front of my restaurant and six guys in blacks suites wearing black fedora hats station themselves throughout the place so no-one can come in or out and start asking questions. They show a picture of you to everyone, asking if they have seen you. They obviously kept there heads down hoping the fedoras would help hide their identities from the ceiling cameras. They said nothing about the bordello, did not ask for anyone's identification, just wanted to know if you where there."
   "What happened?" I couldn't help but ask.
   "This isn't my first rodeo, and it isn't for my clients too. Some of them started laughing because the whole scene was absurd."
   "So you think they will find out about this place somehow and you want me out of here beforehand?"
   "George, sometimes your not as dumb as you like to make yourself look." Hong Xia said, as she pushed me to gather up my things.

   Just when I thought I was about to get some lunch, I was surprised by my host, pushed out the back door, and I found my self trudging in filthy murky water with the rest of the rats of Queens, New York.

   How do I get myself into these things?

   With the amulet safely tucked away in my new backpack, compliments of Hong Xia, my dwindling supply of clothing, and a burner phone she gave me with the strictest of instructions of using it only once, I was off to find the Wizard. A phrase made famous by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz."

   Believe it or not, the pressure must have been getting to me by then. I think I was becoming a little looney during my walk through the river styx. Because a half mile into it, I started skipping and singing, "I'm off to see the Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Mars. Because, because, because, because. Because of the wonderful things he does. I'm off to see the Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Mars."

   Repeating those same lines over and over for the next five miles. It did make the time go by faster, but now, I was looking up at a sewer cover. One checked monthly to make sure it hasn't been cemented down by accident, that gravel hasn't filled the cracks making it impossible to lift, or becoming tacky from the daily grim of being a big city sewer cover.

   My second biggest mistake I made so far?

   Before I left, I forgot to ask where I would come out when I pushed up the sewer cover.

   Would I have to be on the lookout for city traffic? Pedestrians? Would I come out next to a river? I didn't know. I had no sense of direction being in the underground or underworld as they say. I think I was more nervous at that point then when I got married, had a kid, and got divorced, all rolled into one.

   I couldn't stay down there forever, skipping and singing show tunes.

   So I took my first step up the ladder to the unknown.

To Be Continued...

Next Thursday

This is,

The Vacationing,

Jim Hauenstein,

I'll Be Writing Daily Again Starting Monday,

And,

"If you have read many adventure novels, you will know that spies spend about half of their time in sewers. They run along sewer tunnels, shooting. They find secret hideaways in sewers. They take weird funeral barges through sewers, poled along by old men in hoods. In fact, if a spy's kid wants to get a message to their mom or dad, the easiest way is to flush it down the toilet."

- M.T. Anderson -

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

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