Chapter 5: The Haunt Of...

“I can't believe he rejected me like that!” Belle huffed later, pouting like a spoiled schoolboy. Sebastien grinned again. “I told you it wouldn't work – Lester isn't interested in things like that.” She narrowed her eyes at the faraway figure still slumped at the bar over his dregs. “Well why the hell else would he save this island?” Sebastien glanced round at Belle, who was sitting in the shelter of a giant propeller lodged partially into the ground some distance from the bar.. “How do you mean?” he asked. She gave him the sort of look which implied that she thought she was talking to a three-year-old. “Because, dummy, why live if not for sex? Its not like you'll get anything out of this wasteland except those weird vibrating worms that crawl around the beaches, and I'll never get people who use them.” Sebastiens eyes widened. “People actually do that?” She smiled wryly at him. “You really are a fair innocent kid. I forget how old you are; seventeen, eighteen?” “I'm twenty-two,”, Sebastien snapped, and she grinned because they both knew that they both knew it and that Belle was just fooling. She always got into fooling when she was drinking. He knew that if she was sober then she wouldn't be acting at all like this. In the field she was quiet, alert, assertive. Here...

His thought process was interrupted when he realised Belle was standing; all of a sudden she stood taller than he did, sitting as he was. She looked at him with different eyes. “Have you ever been with a woman, Sebastien?”He blushed scarlet, and looked away. “Not really.” He murmered. He was unsure why he had told Belle this, and immediately tried to clarify himself. “Not really, anyway. But whats the point anyway?”
“Whats the point?” Belle purred. “You want me to show you the point?” She hiccuped and giggled. “Haha, or can I see your point?” Sebastien stepped back. He knew she wasn't normally like this but just saying things didn't have any effect. What was happening now...
She walked forwards, her eyes focused on him. She slipped a little,, but the look on her face said that nothing was going to stop her. Sebastien didn't know what to do – he tried to speak, but Belle rammed him against the propeller and made to kiss him – he held his mouth away from her, but she leaned up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear “C'mon, Seb, you know we both want this-” She wrapped her arms around him and tried to kiss him again, but he bit his mouth shut. Her hands ran from the base of his neck, which she had pinched in a vice-like grip trying to force his mouth onto hers, down to the small of his back and -
“Stop it!” cried Sebastien. “Belle, you're drunk!”
She looked coquettishly at him, head down, eyes up, lips pouting. “C'moon, Seb!”
“No!” he spat, fighting a latent desire, and pushing her off him. She fell backwards onto the ground and smacked her head hard on the ground.

He exclaimed, and immediately went to pick her up. His hand extended to hers, and she gratefully took it, before pulling him down so he landed on top of her, legs splayed across her. She held him down and cooed the air loudly, head thrown back. She was still doing this, legs wrapped around Sebastien, when they were rudely interrupted by Lester, who looked at them oddly.
“So thats what you were doing. I should warn you kids, the patrons can all see you. Maybe you'd be better behind the propeller?”
“I want them to see!” Belle exclaimed.
“Get me off her!” Sebatien hollered at Lester, who chuckled and said “Oh! So its like that, is it?”
“Lester, I just joined the mile-high club!”
“Jeez,” Lester grumbled, “Even I've never seen her this drunk. I figured something was wrong earlier when she tried to fuck me instead of punch me.”
“Help me up, won't you?” Sebastien asked. Lester trod on Belles wrist and she grunted in pain, relaxing and allowing Sebastien to roll off her. He got up, and dusted rust off of himself, before wincing and cricking his back. “Man! Doing stuff like this outdoors is painful” Lester grinned ruefully, and together they picked up Belle, hollered at Dresden that they were leaving and headed for their camp-site.

However, they hadn't been hobbling for more than five minutes when something very odd happened. A pillar next to them, which looked like a tree, wires splayed out at its feet and an odd radar at its head, burst into life and squawked at them. Lester noticed this and immediately dropped a suddenly confused Belle, who dropped to the floor, who subsequently dragged Sebastien down, who couldn't carry all her weight on his own. Lester ran over to the tree, and searched it up and down before swearing loudly. “Damn! Theres no microphone.” He shouted back to the procession, “Find me a microphone, quick! Search the undergrowth!” They spread out, some more confidently than others, into the brush, sifting through the nightmare of wires and photo-receptors which constituted 'brush' around here. After a minutes frantic searching, Dresden found a clutch of microphones growing behind a busted solar panel. He picked the one which looked the ripest (ripe microphones were black instead of grey, and the cables were longer), and brought it back to Lester, who thanked him briefly and searched the pillar for a connector. Finally, plugging it in, he was able to answer the pillar. “Hello?”

“Lester? Oh, thank Christ its you.” A voice crackled through the speaker at the top of the pillar. It sounded distorted, like it had come from a long way away. Lester grinned. “Harry? Is that you?” A sigh of relief sounded from the speaker – it sounded like static. “I'm glad you picked up, Lester. We've picked up something.” The ears of everyone in the vicinity picked up. “Oh yeah?” Lester asked. “Yeah. Its... Well, its... a little girl, Lester.”

Sebastien stood up immediately. “Lester – do you think its-” but Lester waved his hand irritably at Sebastien – the universal sign for 'shut up, i'm on the phone'. “Go on?” Lester poked.
“Well...” garbled the speaker. “There was a blast of light up on the cliff behind the village. Like lightning. We thought something had happened with our tower so me and and my wife went to check on it and... there she was. About yey tall, brown hair, looks to be about four or five. Calls her self Melanie, and she says that she's lost her father. You have to come take a look at it!”
Lester said nothing for a long while. His mouth hung open, slack, and the microphone dangled from his wrist. He licked his lips, thought long and hard, and then spoke. “I think I know where the father is.”
“You do?” The speaker exclaimed joyfully. “Thats fantastic! I'll go tell her right now. How fast can you bring him?”
“I tell you what, I'll go find him right now.” Lester murmered.
“Wonderful!” The speaker chipped. “Thats wonderful news, really! I shall expect you arriving soon!”
“Thats fine. I'll be seeing you, Harry.” And with that, Lester ripped the microphone from the pillar, tried to rip the cable in half, failed, so whipped the microphone round him like a tornado and flung it into the distance, where it could be heard clanging faintly down a hill. Lester kicked the pillar. “Shit.” he grumbled.
Sebastien wrinkled his nose in confusion. “Isn't it a good thing that we found the girl? She's alive!”
“Yeah...” Lester murmured, head in his hands, “But I've basically killed her dad. A guy like that can't survive more than ten minutes alone in the brush at the best of times. And these ain't the best of times.” He moaned low. “We'd best get back to the Hole, if we're gonna track him down.” He closed his eyes, stood, then kicked the pillar again and cursed loudly.

They were about to start back up the hill to the tower, to search for clues to his whereabouts, when Dresden noticed something to the side. The wire forest looked built in layers, and stretched three or four storeys tall and god knows how wide. Normally nothing left it, and god forbid anything go in there, but there was an opening in the wires. Lester groaned and Belle, who had sobered somewhat on the journey, murmured “Oh no...”. It was Sebastien who stepped forward, and said “Right!” Well we know where he is; what are we waiting for?” Belle glared at him, and spat “What do you think? He's gone into the wire forest! You know what lives in there!”
Sebastien bit his lip, but stood firm. “Yeah. And I know that he won't get out of the forest without help!” He turned to Lester, pleadingly. “You know the forest, don't you?”
“Better than any of you, I guess,” he said, slowly, “But thats not saying very much.”
He seemed ill-at-ease, and with good reason. They all knew about the wire forest. They had heard stories of it for a long time, of the rumours of a hidden treasure buried within its core, guarded by.. well. They didn't like to think about it at the best of times, when they were safely tucked in their sleeping bags, and faced with the thought of going mano-a-mano with it the thought of it struck a chord of dissonant terror rumbling through the group.
“Hey,” Sebastien tried to quell them. “You never know, we'll probably not even meet it.”
Lester grabbed him by his lapel, and shook him. His eyes bulged as he pulled their faces close together. “Don't jinx it though, will you?” He spat.

Sebastien laughed shakingly. “Oh c'mon, Lester, you can't be scared, can you? Of all the people on this-”
“Of course I'm scared, you idiot!” Lester shouted, slamming Sebastien backwards, and flinging his hands into the air - “Of course I'm scared! Theres a whole fucking bunch to be scared about!” Sebastiens smile had left him faster than his mood. He looked into the dense tangles of wires, then sat down and started shivering. Despite his talk, he was in no mood to walk to almost-certain death.
Lester paced before them, thinking aloud. “Now what do we know about this place? Its dense as hell, dark as all hell and kind of depressing to boot. You gotta watch out for the rivers of fuel – oh, and those things, whaddya call 'em, that gather at the river to drink it.” His pace had begun to wear a beat into the bronzed earth beneath him by this point. “There were passages hollowed partially through it before... before it got to them, so we can use those passages part-way, at least. As well as this, the thing has a root system, a... foundation, a buncha girders which keep all them wires hangin' in a kinda place. If we get lost we should find one of them and follow it to the end, because they'll get us out eventually.” He stopped, and looked into the dense forest, with a sense of mounting apprehension twisting his stomach.

“If we remember all that, we should be alright.” he said quietly, before turning and looking back at them. “Oh, and one more thing – if you make too much noise, you'll wake it up, and you'll all be devoured. Any questions?”
The silence that greeted his words was enough.

“Alright. Well have fun in there!”
Sebastien baulked, “Wait – you're not coming with us?” He spluttered. Lester shook his head. “I have important work to do here still. Sebastien stood, with Dresden and Belle at his shoulders. “Its your damned fault he's in here in the first place!” “How do you mean?” Lester replied hotly. “Because,” said Dresden, reaching for Lester and lifting him up bodily from the ground. “Because its your fault the guys in here in the first place.” “How the hell is it my fault?” Lester gesticulated up at the tower and the forest, “If he hadn't – with the tower – and then gone in here..!” Belle joiend the assault, adding “If you hadn't got him here in the first place he wouldn't be about to die!” He attempted to fight their angry looks, but eventually quailed. “Fine.” He said, resignedly, slumping in Dresdens fist. “If you'll just let me down, we can sodding well go in.” He was placed softly on the ground, and dusted himself off. He shifted left and right, then took off at a run – or rather tried to – he was caught round the throat by Dresden, who had slammed his palm out at such speed it seemed supernatural. Without looking at his prisoner, Dresden said “We don't work for you no more, till we get paid. This means that we can force you to come with us.”
Lester glared at each of them in turn, before humping his livid shoulders and saying “Well I'm glad you all care for me so much.”
“Har har,” said Belle, sarcastically, and she pushed him into the wires.