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Old 03-04-2017, 12:55 PM   #69
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Crash Into Me

Perhaps the best illustration of how nervous the three guards, Randall, Lamb and Summers, as well as the two orderlies, James and Gilbert, truly are is the fact that during several minutes of standoff with the unarmed Taylor in the dining hall, not one of them has dared step away to turn off the blaring fire alarm or the sprinklers that are dousing everyone thoroughly as they stand around talking. Inside the dining hall, the repetative siren is loud, but not so loud as to cause hearing loss or make conversation impossible.

The only one still pointing a gun at Taylor as he walks slowly to the kitchen is a terrified orderly, Dave Gilbert, who obviously has no idea of proper firing stance or trigger discipline. Gilbert is breathing fast enough to be hyperventilating and his arms are swaying in a figure eight as he is shouting at Taylor to stop, not make him shoot. The distance is between him and Taylor is around 15' and judging from the unsteady way Gilbert is holding the gun, not only Taylor, but Randall, Lamb and Summers are potentially in danger if he pulls the trigger. When Lamb suddenly cries out in surprise, Gilbert twitches and reflexively pulls the trigger of his M9 pistol.

As he is doing so, Taylor is trying his hardest not to show his astonishment. As he walks toward the kitchen, he can hear someone crawling on the floor to his right, in the direction of the hallway that leads to the small office and the guard armoury. A sideways glance reveals Dr. Anderson crawling on the soaked linoleum floor, headed for the armoury. It was Anderson that Lamb spotted, causing him to cry out and reflexively move his muzzle in the direction of this new threat. And causing Gilbert to negliently discharge his firearm.

Taylor is too surprised to dodge or react in any way. It's just chance that the bullet hits the doorframe next to him rather than the small of his back. Shaking off his astonishment, Taylor rushes into the kitchen, where there is clearly a small fire inside the microwave, but it hasn't yet spread effectively to the oil-soaked pile around it, perhaps due to the sprinklers. There is smoke coming from some of the sheets nearest the microwave, where the top layers of the rag and cloth pile protects them from the water, so a blaze large enough to burn the string around the safety lever of the grenade is probably only a matter of seconds.

As Taylor reaches under the wet rags and smoking sheets, trying to find the grenade before it goes off, he can hear someone in the dining hall take three quick steps south and then he hears a solid meaty thunk of knuckles hitting bone and cartilege, followed by a man and what is probably a rifle hitting the ground separately. Taylor's estimate of the relative positions involved is that Randall has charged Lamb while he was surprised at seeing Dr. Anderson crawling in the hallway and upon reaching Lamb, Randall punched Lamb hard enough to knock him down.

Randall: "Gilbert, you idiot! Finger off trigger until you ----ing mean to shoot!"
Gilbert: "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!"
James [shouting into the hallway]: "Sir, who the hell are you?"
Randall [facing south, away from the corridor]: "Sir, what are you doing here?"
James: "Wait, where did he go?"
Summers: "Sorry, sir, I dropped it!"
Randall [sounding surprised]: "But Taylor, the Green Beret, he's in here!"
Lamb [voice slurry]: "Yes, sir, we're coming, right away, sir."
James [terrified]: "Please don't do that, sir!"
Summers: "If you say so, sir."
Randall: "Sir, I really think we ought to consider negotiating."
Gilbert: "I am loyal, King Tyrrell. I didn't drop my gun."
Randall: "In that case, you're right, sir. No reason to stay in here."

Taylor finds the M67 grenade and grabs the safety lever as carefully as he can. He pulls the pin he stored in his pocket out and makes the grenade safe again. Then he turns off the sparking microwave, kicking the sheets away from it and carefully removing Dr. Anderson's incendiary chemicals from the microwave before the small fire inside it reaches it. Finally, Taylor opens the microwave so that what's left of the fire will be smothered by the sprinklers in short order.

Putting the grenade in his pocket, Taylor moves to the kitchen doorway and listens to the men inside the dining hall pick up their weapons and walk toward the barracks lobby. They seemed to have been talking with Warden Tyrrell, but Taylor is absolutely sure that Warden Tyrrell has not said anything audible inside that dining hall. Even through a radio headset, Taylor figures he'd have heard Tyrrell if he was really speaking to the men, but that's a non-issue, as Taylor knows that the radios carried by the three guards in there didn't have tactical headsets and not one of the men in there was wearing anything in his ears.

With a surge of hope, Taylor walks into the dining hall. As he guessed, the five men walking away are not even glancing in his direction. Their attention is riveted in front of them, where they are following a spot of empty air to the exit. And on one of the dining hall benches, Sherilyn Bell is reclining triumphantly, making a 'Ta da!' gesture as Taylor walks in. She's been deluged with water from the sprinklers, ballistic vest, white shirt and hospital blues all soaked through and her hair a wet mess slicked down under the 'Bama cap, making her look like a drowned rat. But she's alive, apparently unharmed and the most beautiful thing Taylor has seen for years.

With an involuntary exclamation of "Thank God!", Taylor runs to her and picks her up bodily, spinning her in a circle while whispering "Lynnie, oh, Lynnie, you're safe, thank the Lord!" As Taylor puts Ms. Bell down, he scans her face and body nervously for injuries, but finds none. With arms still around her, Taylor appears to realise their position and he tries his best to hide how much he wants to kiss her right now. As Bell is neither clinically blind nor autistic, she isn't fooled. Leaning forward, she kisses Taylor on the lips, softly, almost hesitantly. Taylor freezes up, but ultimately, doesn't have the willpower to push her away.

Instead, caressing Sherilyn's neck and cheek, Taylor kisses her back, reverently, while looking deep into her eyes. Neither of them seems to notice when the five men leave the barracks by the front door or that the sprinklers are still on full force. Perhaps because their multi-threat vests and fully loaded duty belts makes full bodily contact difficult or maybe because Taylor, like Alabama's most polite prom date and choirboy poster boy for Christian sex education, seems content for his hands to touch only Sherilyn's back and the cheek he is caressing, the kiss remains intimate, emotional and surprisingly free of overtly erotic contact for a long time.

Long enough, it seems, for Bell to become impatient. Loosening the buckle on Taylor's duty belt, she nimbly jumps into his arms as the belt falls down, wrapping her legs around his waist for support and letting her hands roam considerably more freely than Taylor's. If the baton on Bell's duty belt hurts Taylor as she does so, he gives no indication of noticing, lost as he is in the kiss, which Bell somehow manages to avoid breaking during her acrobatic maneuevering for position. To hold Bell up, Taylor is 'forced' to move his hands slightly downwards, to considerably more interesting parts of Bell's anatomy than her back, which at this point Taylor does not seem to mind at all.

Even when Taylor finally manages to loosen Bell's duty belt to stop the less-than-lethal armament stowed there from hurting him any more, however, their enthusiastic embrace and extended kiss is strangely more remniscient of awkward teenage makeout sessions than adult foreplay. It takes more than two minutes for things to come close to anything that would push a motion picture to a PG-13 rating, as they finally try to remove Bell's multi-threat vest. Despite the straps having been loosened, the vest was not designed to be pulled off like a sweater and Bell's head is momentarily trapped, breaking the kiss. Taylor is the one who breaks contact by putting Bell down, but she makes no attempt to let things continue and it is hard to say which of them is looking more chargrined.

Taylor: "Oh, God, Lynnie, I'm so sorry. I didn't... I wasn't gonna... oh, Lord, I ain't never mean for any o' this to happen. I shouldn't oughta have kissed you."
Sherilyn Bell [small voice]: "It's fine, Chase. Really, it is."
[changing over to her normal, flirtatious behaviour with an obvious effort of will]
Bell: "If you really must, I suppose you could make it up to me. There is something I need from the Warden's office. Could you fetch it for me, Chasie-dear?"
[Taylor is composing himself, trying to regain some semblance of sense]
Taylor: "Sure can. Uh, I mean, we been planning to look there for the jammer, anyhow. Wait, Sherilyn, what happened in the tunnels? Where are them others?"
Bell: "Burr got shot, I think, but not fatally. Mr. M is in the armoury."
Taylor: "What about the guards who shot at you? Are they still there? Did you get separated from the others?"
Bell: "We left the others, because they're boring and we don't need them. They were all fine when we left and Burr was still cursing, so I don't think he'll die."
Taylor: "But the flashbang and the shooting?"
Bell: "Oh, that. We were gone when it started. I think it had something to do with O'Toole trying to surrender and screwing it up, moronic ----head that he is."

Taylor gives Bell a worried and incredulous look. Then he walks down the short hallway to the armoury, saying Dr. Anderson's name softly. Entirely too close for comfort to where Taylor and Bell have been for the last minutes, Dr. Anderson's voice answers from the still ajar door: "I can hear you both perfectly, I assure you."
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Last edited by Icelander; 03-05-2017 at 11:20 AM.
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