Current location:	The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	OSTs

Apocalyptica Fanfic: What Could Go Wrong? Part 2

“Are you sure it’s this way?”

Antero peered out of the tour-bus window, treating the outside world to a frankly sceptical examination. A wild, rough sort of beautiful met his eyes. It was a windswept, mountainous vista, and utterly different to the tousled splendour of Finland.  Ahead of schedule, they had sent the kit lorry on ahead, carrying their staging, technical gear and Mikko’s drum kit as well as most of the copious spare cellos it was always wise to carry around with Perttu on tour. The lorry would meet them at their next gig town, but they had a couple of days to kill and less than a day’s travelling to do, so, having discovered whereabouts they were passing, Perttu and Mikko had excitedly championed a detour to check out some famous sights.

Seeing no good reason not to expand their horizons a little, and pleased with the earthy, concentrated effort that the tour had thus far produced, Eicca and Paavo has acquiesced, but Antero could not shake the unease settling onto his shoulders like a damp blanket.

 

“Yes! It is the right way! Down here- the monastery where Vlad the Impaler is buried! Bwahahahahaha!”

Antero gave Perttu a fish-eyed stare.

“Uh, you do realise, Perttu, that Vlad the Impaler never was, or will be, a vampire?”

Perttu blinked, momentarily stumped. Eicca, watching the two from his comfy spot on the sofa, smirked under his hand. The tableau was broken by Paavo’s arrival.

Perttu turned to what he saw as a potential ally in the debate. “Hey, Paavo, Antsa said vampires don’t exist!”

Antero pouted, his instinct for exactitude requiring an answer. "Now wait a moment-!” as Paavo turned an incredulous expression on him.

Paavo then turned to gape foolishly at Perttu.

Perttu, however, was having none of it. “Next thing you’ll be saying the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist!”

Antero’s jaw dropped, and spluttering noises issued forth.

 

Eicca’s face was, by this time, hidden in a cushion, his shoulders shaking with mirth.

 

Paavo, however, was looking thoughtful, and he turned his head back slowly- freakishly slowly- towards the stuttering Antero, who was being interrogated by Perttu’s defiant glare.

Paavo smacked his lips. “You know, Antsa, that is odd, because, I vat to surrck yourrr blurrd!”

Paavo launched himself playfully for Antero’s neck. Antero gave a squeal and ducked away- straight into Perttu, who gave him a very stony glance, and then grinned suddenly, exposing the horrible joke-shop fangs he had hastily stuck into position as Paavo made his ‘attack.’ Perttu’s grin widened and he curled his fingers into a melodramatic ‘villain’ pose and made for Antero as Paavo approached from the other side. Antero spun from one smirking ‘vampire’ to the other, then pulled a ‘oh for goodness sake’ face and simply slapped a hand onto each of their chests, holding them off him at arm’s length as they made mewing, hissing noises and pawed the air, pretending to try to get to his neck.

 

Eicca was nearly hyperventilating from laughing so hard.

 

And so they were all quite relaxed and unexpecting when the bus suddenly lurched to a halt, sending Eicca onto the floor, and the other three into each other in a jumble of limbs and plastic joke teeth.

 

Mikko, sitting up with the Driver and a map, stuck his head through the doorway to the front cab.

“Small problem, guys.”

 

“Why have we stopped?” Eicca, nearest the door and with only himself to pick up, was first to the cab, swiftly followed by the other three.

“This rig is too big to go any further,” the Driver gestured out of the windscreen, where the rough but serviceable roadway petered out a track that set off through a wood.

Paavo gave a shrug. “No problem; I suppose fifteenth century monks didn’t plan for a several-ton tour bus to roll on up to their gates!”

Eicca agreed. “We walk from here.”

“Is that a good idea?”

Eicca turned back to gently tease Antero for his apparent laziness, but instead saw his friend wearing an expression of genuine worry.

“You Ok, Antsa?”

“Can’t shake this weird feeling.”

Perttu clapped Antero on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Antsa!”

Eicca had to agree. What could possibly go wrong? “You’re just getting a bit stir-crazy. Once you’re out in the fresh air, you’ll feel better. Man was blessed with legs for a reason!”

“To wear fabulously tight leather pants?”

Without batting an eyelash, Eicca continued to offer Antero reassurance. “Shuddup, Perttu! We’ll have a walk and see a lovely monastery, get some exercise and have more of an adventure than being cooped up on the bus all day!”

Antero wasn’t entirely convinced, but he appreciated his friends making the effort.

“Mmm… Ok.”

 

Paavo turned to their long-suffering Driver.

“Coming too?”

“Sure, I can lock the old girl down here.”

So it was that a few moments later, equipped with coats and jumpers (for it was quite nippy outside), as well as sturdy boots, the band and their Driver stepped down from the bus, the Driver the last to leave. Pointing his key fob back towards the gleaming side, he pressed a button.

“bwak-bwak,” the bus replied, flashing its lights once and locking down snugly.

 

The track was a well-beaten one winding in lazy coils through a wood both wild and charming; the trees stretched gnarled limbs towards the sky above, and on the ground long grasses swayed with small, brightly-hued flowers. The band walked through the bounty of nature’s design with no little wonder and more than a few jokes and bounding leaps. It was so good to stretch one’s legs! Even Antero relaxed, enjoying an impromptu game of ‘who can climb the best’ between Perttu and Mikko as they came to a particularly fine heavy-armed tree.

He, Eicca, Paavo and the Driver stood back, passing loud aspersions on the climbers’ efforts, quipping about who would get past the first few boughs first and up to the pre-agreed finish line of a central ‘saddle’ where two of the largest branches met in a secure cradle.

Even more amused were the spectators, when, after watching the climbers huff, puff and grapple for a while, Eicca handed his long duster to Paavo, then nimbly swung onto the tree and scampered, agile as a mountain goat, up to the ‘saddle’ of tree branches a good thirty or so seconds before the other two made it.

“Heh- city boys!” Eicca teased them. For once, Perttu didn’t have any comeback- he was too puffed out to speak for some time after.

 

They jumped down and continued on their way, becoming so involved in their chit-chat about families, work, plans and news from the ‘ole Academy, that they didn’t notice at first when the path thinned, and then dwindled to nothing at all.

Perttu, a little ahead and lost in his thoughts as his hands idly played with a plait of grass stems, suddenly realised he was standing not on beaten, bare earth but on more grass. He spun back, thinking he had become accidentally separated from the others, but they were right there behind him, in animated discussion.

 

“Guys? Guys!”

He demanded their attention. The talk stopped, and eyes still a little muddled with other thoughts glanced up towards him.

“Guys- the path! We’ve lost it!”

“How can we-?” Antero looked around them, but had to admit, Perttu was quite correct. No obvious track before- or, more concerning, behind them.

A sudden sharp, knifing breeze whipped up and slid icy fingers down every spine. They shivered and coats were pulled closed around bodies.

The sky, clear all day, if not actually sunny and blue, darkened a shade. Clouds, heavy and black, rumbled softly in the distance.

Perttu skedaddled back to the others quickly, unnerved by the sudden shift of the weather’s mood. Antero was staring up at the clouds with parted lips, his face pale. The Driver eyed the approaching dark- seeming to roll up from among the very trees themselves, warily. Paavo bit his lip, uncertain. Mikko softly growled back at the clouds.

“It’s alright, we can figure this out.” Eicca took charge instinctively. From the worried glances sent his way, the others were more than happy to let him do so.

“Join hands,” he instructed.

“Huh?”

“Just do it, Paavo!”

They made a ragged daisy-chain of clasped hands, and with Eicca in the lead, about-faced and started to wind a careful route back through the trees they had passed, Eicca’s eye peeled for any sign of the disappeared track.

The dark was approaching fast, though; blown in on snorting steeds of thunderous air, galloping fast over sky and around the tree trunks. Eicca swallowed his own rising panic. He could feel Mikko’s hand in his trembling, and he didn’t blame him. There had been nothing about this on the weather report, and they had hours of daylight left yet. Storms could lower visibility and render a person wet, miserable and dangerously cold in a very short space of time, and while he was no expert on this country’s weather patterns, even Eicca could tell this was a big one coming.

He swore under his breath as, of all things, there was a crack of thunder, followed about five seconds later by a flash of light. Five seconds… five miles till the storm broke. Not far, not far at all.

Behind him, he heard a soft exclamation, but it could just as well have come from his own throat. Should they wait it out? If he was at home and caught out, he might well choose to find shelter, but with lightening in the equation, it made ‘shelter’ a risky business. Even a well-spreading tree could be a potentially fatal conductor, and falling limbs were more likely closer to trees than out in the open. That said, in the open they could get wet very fast, and lost even faster if the rain decided to really bucket it down and obscure all vision.  While they were all grown men and no cowards, a sudden storm in a wood in a strange country with a reputation for spooky was not going to improve matters.

 

Suddenly, Eicca realised he could no longer feel the wind so keenly on his face. He lifted his eyes from glaring at the ground, the path still proving elusive, and realised that they had broken into a sheltering thicket of holly and brambles. The central part seemed dry- the ground bare of undergrowth, but covered in dead leaves and dry pine needles; pine trees rearing up out of the heavy roof of briar and thorn. Not exactly the stable at Bethlehem, but just as welcome. True, there were trees about, but if this shelter was bone dry, plant-free and intact, there was a good chance it had been for some time, which boded well as a place to wait out the storm.

“In, get in!” he tugged on Mikko’s hand, and the meandering snake of musicians and Driver followed the transmitted pull and soon they were all inside the shelter, standing close together for comfort, watching as the skies opened and the rain belted it down outside. The shelter was completely dark, except for the occasional flash of lightening, which were occurring more rapidly now as the storm caught them up and broke overhead. The rain was a slightly luminous wall of movement beyond the hole in the briars through which they had entered.

 

They all took a moment to take a few shaky breaths, and then Antero, of all people, gave a little laugh. “I was right! There was something unpleasant out here!”

There was a pause. Unusual, given the openness of that last line.

“What, no come-back, Perttu?” he teased gently.

The shape that was Perttu, having been at the end of the line and caught the edge of the rain and got a little wetter than the others, shook his damp head and stamped his feet to get warmth into them. “For once I am in total agreement!”

Paavo was staring at the wall of water with unfeigned admiration. “That is some impressive shower!”

“Just a little light precipitation!” the Driver agreed, wryly.

They all gave a snigger at that.

 

As did the space in the back of the shelter. Five mouths stopped smiling, five sets of eyes went very, very wide, and five hearts set up a tremendous pounding.

“H-hello?” Eicca tried, and then tried again in English.

A faint rumble replied- not thunder, more like a giant cat purring- or growling softly in its throat. Shadows- deeper black on black- shifted slightly.

There was a yelp.

“Paavo?” Eicca called out, hearing three voices reply with wordless cries of distress.

“Eic-!” that was Antero, then there was a thump, and his shout was cut off.

“Antero!” Eicca spun around, but there was no light to be had to see by- the lightening having decided to cease and desist.

“Perttu! Mikko! Driver!”

A soft groan attested to the Driver’s disappearance.

“Eicca! What’s-?!” and Perttu finished his shout with a moan and a thump of his own.

“Mikko!”

“I’m h-!”

But he wasn’t, not any more.

 

Eicca’s breath rushed into his throat and his heart lurched.

“Guys?!” he breathed, and then there was a hand on his throat, squeezing certain points, and he knew no more, falling into darkness.