Crossed Over by Sandra McDonald Part 4 Read Part 1,Part 2 or Part 3
Roy DeSoto and Johnny Gage (picture courtesy Tigger - Thanks!)		Willie Gillis, Jill Danko, Mike Danko and Terry Webster

 

Johnny stood on Wilshire Boulevard, squinting in the bright light. He resisted the urge to turn around and drag his partner out of the bar. Let Roy stew in a pot of self-pity. Johnny missed home, too, but he refused to believe he would never see it again. Lost as they might be in a crazy universe of television shows, surely there was some way to get back to the real world. He just didn't know where to start looking for it.

Begin at the beginning, his mother had liked to say. Johnny returned to the narrow alley he and Roy had found themselves in after leaving the Planet of the Apes. He checked out the only Dumpster. Old cardboard boxes, a pile of stained clothes, no clues there. He tried a few back doors, all locked, no clues there, either. He tugged experimentally on the bottom rung of a fire escape and read graffiti spray-painted on the sides of buildings. No clues. Sweat-soaked and tired, he was about to give up when he heard a great hiss, like the static of a thousand empty television channels.

The nearest wall transformed from brick and mortar into a shimmering field of silver. A body came hurtling through it. Johnny crashed backward under the sudden weight and barely managed to keep the back of his skull from slamming into concrete. Arms and legs tangled with his own and an overcoat flapped over his face. Johnny struggled free of the unwelcome burden and rolled away.

"Man! What the hell are you doing?" Words tumbled out as he struggled to regain his breath. On hands and knees, Johnny eyed the stranger warily. He recognized the newcomer with the brown hair as the same man who had urged him and Roy through a similar silver wall just a short time ago.

"We have to get out of here," the stranger said thickly. He pulled himself upright, staggered slightly, then reached to pat something under his coat. "They're right behind me."

Johnny saw a flash of something silver and remembered the blood-stained sword, the decapitated victim. He needed to find the police and report the stranger for murder. Maybe some hard-nosed detective could get the facts of this bizarre adventure out of him. Then again, maybe the last thing any of them needed was official attention. Roy's threat of a padded cell in a psychiatric hospital wasn't too farfetched.

"Who's behind you?" Johnny asked. "Who are you?"

"Survival first. Explanations later." The stranger offered him a hand up. Johnny hesitated, in no hurry to be the man's next victim.

"The name is Connor MacLeod," the stranger said. "I won't hurt you."

Johnny knew to trust his first impressions, and his first impression of Connor MacLeod was that the man trailed trouble. He had also learned, in his years as a paramedic, that things weren't always what they seemed to be. Connor had killed someone, yes, but perhaps it had been self-defense.

Warily he let himself be helped up. "Who's chasing you?"

Connor swung around, obviously gauging their surroundings. He yanked down the nearest emergency ladder and began climbing. "Meyer's men," he called over his shoulder.

"Wait a minute - " Johnny thought of Roy back at the bar. He couldn't just leave his partner there. At the same time his brain made the connection to what Connor had said. "Dewey Meyer? The president of Mammoth Studios?"

"Hurry!" Connor said. "You don't want them to catch you."

Johnny grabbed hold of the rungs and swung himself up. "Why are they after you?"

"They think I have the lens," Connor said, just as the wall across the alley turned silver again and a half-dozen men with swords spilled through.

***

Roy looked at the bottom of his glass. The overwhelming desire to lose himself in drink had been tempered by damned common sense, and through the long afternoon he'd finished only three beers. Homesickness, soap operas, cigarette smoke and lingering guilt over his treatment of Johnny had blended into a dismal haze. Now dusk had come, bringing a dozen scruffy customers to the little bar on Wilshire. The owner, Lottie, had been forced to get off her stool and start serving drinks.

"You want another of those?" she asked Roy.

"No." The door swung open and he spared a glance that way, hoping to see his partner. No such luck. Roy picked a peanut out of a bowl and pushed it across the bar top with his right thumb. "Just a Coke."

The hands on the clock dragged by. Roy had figured Johnny was nursing a justified grudge and would return when he cooled off. But as more hours passed he began to think some mishap had found his partner. They shouldn't have split up. Wasn't teamwork the first rule of firefighting? Weariness made his head hurt, and fear for Johnny overtook the faint gnawing in his stomach. He went outside, walked up and down Wilshire and inspected the alley. He saw no sign of John Gage.

Back at Lottie's, Roy's heart lurched as he recognized a man who'd taken a seat at the bar.

"Officer Gillis," he said.

The cop looked impossibly young in the dim light, too young to have his hand around a tall glass of beer. He'd changed from his blues into jeans and a white shirt. "Call me Willie."

"Roy DeSoto," he said, although his nametag had pretty much given him away anyway. Roy slid onto a stool and tried not to look nervous. "Did you just happen to be in the neighborhood?"

Willie shrugged. "You and your friend got my curiosity up. Two men claiming to be lost firemen? So lost they don't even know what city they're in?"

"We're okay." Roy considered ordering something, but had begun to realize exactly how little cash he had on him. Best to save it if he needed to find someplace to stay for the night.

Willie considered his beer, then gave Roy an earnest look. "You are firemen, aren't you? That part's the truth?"

"Yes, we're firemen," Roy said. "Paramedics."

"Some people put on a uniform and don't look comfortable in it. Others, you can just tell."

"And that's why you're here?"

"I thought you might need some help, and that's my job."

Roy couldn't help himself. "You're not from around here, are you?"

Willie laughed a little. "Indiana. You?"

"Definitely not from around here," Roy said.

"You want to tell me what's going on with you and your friend?"

A sudden wave of homesickness swept through him. He imagined Joanne curled up on the sofa with the kids, watching cartoons with Michelle while Chris did his schoolwork. What if he never saw them again? "We're just trying to get home," he said, and hoped Willie didn't hear his voice crack.

"Anything I can do to help?"

The policeman's genuine sympathy reminded Roy of Johnny. Too many late night runs, ungrateful patients and bad situations had begun to make Roy feel hard and worn, but Johnny's openness to people seemed to have increased over the years. He wished he could confide in Willie Gillis without sounding like a lunatic. He wished Johnny would return, whole and unharmed.

"I don't think so," Roy said.

Willie's disappointment was clear as he nudged a card across the scratched wooden bar. "Here's how you can contact me if you change your mind."

After the police officer left, Roy went and looked for Johnny again. He once more found nothing. He returned to the bar until closing time. He asked Lottie about cheap places to spend the night, and she suggested a flophouse two blocks away.

"I wouldn't use their sheets, if I were you," she said.

The night was hot and cloudy, the sky a smudge of gray and orange that reflected the city's glow. The bleary-eyed clerk at the flophouse had to be roused from a nap behind the counter. He took eight dollars and gave Roy a key. On the way down the third-floor hallway Roy heard snores, bed squeaks, rats scurrying in the wall. Flowered wallpaper hung in peeling strips, and the rug's original color had been buried under years of grime. His room came with a single bed, a clean sink and an open window that overlooked the street.

A far cry from the cozy home he and Joanne had made for themselves, but one that would have to do. Roy hung his uniform on the door hook, lined his shoes up neatly by the side of the bed and scrubbed his face with cold water. He examined the sheets and decided to disregard Lottie's advice. He stretched out and tried to ignore how his feet overhung the end of the bed.

"Where are you, Johnny?" he asked the ceiling.

Exhaustion dragged him toward sleep but worry tried to keep him awake. The resulting compromise was a restless doze of fears, half-thoughts and anxious visions. He saw Johnny kneeling by the man with the sword, Joanne telling the kids their dad wasn't coming home and Captain Stanley giving away his locker to some newcomer. The too-familiar smell of smoke drifted through his dreams, which didn't surprise him. He often dreamed of fire and ash. But the imaginary irritant made him cough for real, and the coughing woke him up in a room filled with thick, rolling smoke.

To be continued . . .

 

Author's Notes: Grateful thanks to Terry for her assistance! Any remaining typos, goofs, etc are entirely my own fault. Coming next . . . Connor and Johnny in danger. Roy saves some lives. More hoo-ha about the lens.

 

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