Doogan here and I’m lucky to be alive.
Immediately after Lt. Merian Archer and I were beset upon by
masked aerial assassins, who abducted the brave Rocket Trooper and laid a swath
of destruction down upon the village market wherein we had taken refuge, a new
peril befell this reporter.
As the smoke cleared, the villagers emerged from their
respective hiding places to assess the damage to their shops and stalls. An
angry murmur grew and it became apparent that the general feeling was that I,
the foreigner, was in some respect to blame for their misfortune. My season on
the Chicago Tribune’s sports desk honed a fine sense for a burgeoning lynch mob
so I beat a hasty retreat up the road. They followed me for a pace and then, as
if a starter pistol was fired, we simultaneously broke into a run, me clutching
my Remington Portable and they, hay forks and lengths of broken wood.
Up the rutted path I raced and it was only the falling
shroud of night that enabled me to take an abrupt turn up a side trail.
Sheltering behind a gate post, they raged past me. I then discovered that I
stood in the portal of a ruined mission. Suppressing my memories of Sister
Eudorra’s oak yard-stick, I passed beneath a sagging lintel and entered.
The scent of decay greeted me and I knew that the
missionaries had long since retreated from this crumbling outpost. I then
noticed an object in the next room; a modern wheelchair! I examined this
strangely placed artifact. Whereas all of the other furnishings were broken and
decayed, the wheelchair looked clean and new. Fatigued from my ordeal, I took a
seat to catch my breath. Toying with the arm of the chair, a surprising thing
then happened. There were several switches secreted beneath the arm of the
chair. I toggled one and there was a metallic ‘swish’. Ten inch, stainless
steel blades protruded from the hubs of the chair wheels. In amazement, I
toggled another switch. There was a roar of ignition and my seat shot forward
in a gout of flame and smoke. The thin walls of the building blew away as the
chair launched me outside. In futile panic, I tried to steer my ride but in the
darkness I hit the jungle and flew through the underbrush until, what I think
was a large palm, arrested my flight.
I came to in flashlight’s glare. At first I thought I was
looking into the mustached face of my editor, C.J. Boggs, but realized that my
examiner was instead a robust, Teutonic woman in a nurse’s uniform. I attempted
to introduce myself but she raised a massive, knotted fist and I remembered no
more. Turn the lights off Ma and let the cat out. This is Doogan signing off.
