Ogreness, Black Lake-book5

Chapter 54
~

The orc bull flyin’ the helicopter gave Hroli a wink. Figgered they knew each other. Maybe Hroli even blushed, but hard to tell. She had a bit of sun on her face too.

Nuel asked what took him so long.

“We listened to the humans blabbin’ until they found ya, then just homed in on their position,” he said.

“You couldn’t look for us before then?” Ponwr asked.

“Whoa,” our pilot muttered.

A plane had just dive bombed us.

“Are these guys ticked off, or ya playin’ a game with them,” the orc asked.

I asked if he had any water. He shook his itty bitty head. Twit. He had us aloft two seconds later. I scrambled to find a seatbelt. The bench seat didn’t have any? Oh, stink. Shouldn’t helicopters have seatbelts. Maybe I was whinin’. The two orcs wore shoulder harnesses. But who cares about the passengers.

Planes flitted around us, but we rose into the heights and they skipped out on us as the steeper hills undulated below. Yeah.

“Any news?” I asked over the headset.

“Council aired their first thirty-second thingie this morning on pretty much every Northern radio station. Folk are sayin’ the voice-actors sounded pretty good.”

Wow. Already. “Human?” I thought it would take longer to get that going. How long before the human kahunas decided to legislate away free enterprise and banned our messages?

“No. Ogres.”

We would need results from the market research folks to find out if it resonated up North. An old adage. Ya don’t hear a message until it’s smacked ya in the face seven times. We’d thrown a lot at the budget, Papa said. They’d hear our message dozens of times.

I sucked in a long, slow breath. I was pretty tired. My muscles vibrated. My head throbbed. I could close my eyes. It’s allowed, I think. Been shot five times, recently. Walked over eighteen hours straight, tryin’ to keep up with stinkin’ trolls.

The pilot’s voice scratched at my awareness but I didn’t allow the reality of whatever he was sayin’ to dent my exhaustion. Nuel’s voice hummed. She has a pleasant voice, as long as I’m not listenin’ to her. Was a warm hand nestling against my face? Maybe I was fallin’ to my right a little. Maybe, was being nudged that way. I didn’t fight it. I was really tired.

I woke as we landed. I was folded over into Nuel’s chest. She maybe held me close, to keep me from fallin’ to the floor, I guess. I rose, a little embarrassed to have found my face snuggled between her bountiful breasts. Frip wore a hint of a grin.

The sun was a thirty-degree angle above the peaks. We were at the Black Lake airport. Oh, stink. I missed the beauty, flyin’ into the Range. Nothing beats lookin’ down at the awesomeness of the Range, especially with a view of Mother’s glacier, coming in from the northeast. But we would have come in from the northwest. Still would have been beautiful.

“Ya okay?” Nuel asked me.

Heat prickled my cheeks. “Sorry for, uh, fallin’ asleep on ya.”

“I’ll let it pass this time.”

Ponwr and Frip exited the side slider. Nuel rose and helped me get into a vertical hump to make it out. Stars swarmed my vision. There was a lot of discussion, just under the slowin’ rotors, but I couldn’t focus on anything.

Nuel held me against her again. If she hadn’t, I prolly woulda planted my face into the concrete. That would have given Frip material for a week.

My name was being repeated. I blinked.

“He’s a little tuckered,” Nuel’s voice vibrated against me.

My left arm was raised, and fitted over a taller shoulder. I realized Mama was talkin’ to me. I tried to mutter a hello, but my lips didn’t seem to work right.

Oh. Papa owned the new set of shoulders draggin’ me toward the terminal.

“We should get him checked out,” Nuel was sayin’.

I’d be fine. The words were in my head but I couldn’t get them out of my mouth. Maybe it was the exhaustion pressin’ into my lungs.

“He’s got a lot of blood soakin’ his shirt and pants,” Mama was sayin’.

“Blood?” I mumbled.

“He never said anything,” Nuel said.

If I’d been bleedin’, I think I would have said something. I blinked at the glare that appeared, the bright overhead lighting inside, and I realized my pants were blood soaked to my knees. I had more bullets in my back than the front. Prolly bleedin’ back there too. Stink.

I wouldn’t be up to playin’ basketball for days. I realized I was horizontal all of a sudden, and strangers in white shirts with snake icons on their chest were tyin’ me up. Oh. I was on a gurney. Maybe I dozed off on my feet.

~ Nuel ~

As bad as I felt, I hadn’t been shot five times recently. I’ve never seen a sheet of paper any whiter than Ike’s face. I had to pretty much carry him out of the helicopter. That’s when we realized he had been bleeding for a while and everyone started shouting for an ambulance.

We must have all been too tired to notice how bad off Ike was.

~