Adventure

Last night we went downtown to a café in a part of town we had not been to before. We could not find parking as it was Saturday night so we ended up pretty far from our destination. The café, Double Double, was recommended to us by our friends that we met at J’s sitar lessons, and, by its name, it seemed destiny that we go visit. It took us a while to find the place, as it was situated at the bottom of a seemingly abandoned building, far from the main roads.

Talie and I had some great coffees and the kids had hot chocolate to drink. We shared a couple of Afghans, big chocolate cookies, to eat. The place had lived up to expectations and if it had not been for the rest of the evening we would probably have returned there. The sun had set while we were in the café so the neighbourhood looked different when we walked out to the street. A little unsure of which way to go, we set off in what we guessed must be the correct direction. Unfortunately, our orienteering in these unfamiliar surroundings became further hampered by a cold rain that limited our visibility, and we quickly became turned around.

When we passed the same corner for the third time we knew we were pretty lost and decided we needed to change our tact. We considered splitting up to figure out the way back to the car and to communicate by cell phone when we found the car, but, using wisdom gained from watching horror movies, we knew that splitting up would only lead to bad things. As we paused on the corner, the rain chilling us to the bone, we noticed an alley running perpendicular to the road we were on. Overflowing rubbish bins lined the graffiti-covered brick walls and broken beer bottles littered the ground. The shadowed recesses could easily hide unsavory types with sinister intentions. The rain did little to wash away the smell of urine, vomit, and long dead rodents which wafted from the alley, bringing tears to our eyes. The acrid taste of bile burnt my throat and caused me to swallow hard as I tried to return my earlier snack to my stomach. A sense of foreboding filled my mind as we entered the alleyway that we thought would lead us to our vehicle. Keeping the kids close at hand we walked slowly down the middle of the lane, eyes straining to perceive any unexpected movement in the gloom.

When we were halfway up the alley our worst fears materialized. Out from a door way, only three meters in front of us, skulked two fearsome looking men. A quick look over my shoulder confirmed that our escape was blocked by a third man. A strange calm descended upon Talie and I as it became clear that flight was no longer an option and we would soon be fighting for our lives. Talie and I swiftly positioned ourselves so that the kids were between us, with Talie at the rear and me facing the front. The two men I was facing were complete opposites of one another. One of the men had long, greasy black hair tied back from his dirty, gaunt, pale face. He was tall and had the build of a heroine addict. Sticking out from his black t-shirt were arms covered with fearsome looking green tattoos. In his drug induced state, his eyes darted around, never focusing on anything for more than a second.

His conspirator was six inches shorter than me but must have been double my weight. He wore a huge dark trench coat that could not quite cover his bulk. His shaved scalp did little to hide the blue veins which pulsed in fury just below the surface of his skin. His beady eyes stared at us from the folds of his fat face with open hatred, showing neither signs of sanity nor humanity. One of his meaty hands held a bat which he was repeatedly slapping into his other palm, while giving us an evil grin.

The man blocking our exit was a Maori man, his face covered with a moko, the traditional facial tattooing of the Maori. He was easily six and a half feet tall and must have nearly weighed the same as the bald man in front of me, though the weight was formed into solid muscle which was clearly visible through his now see through white shirt soaked from the rain. Again, his eyes showed signs that we would not be able to talk our way out of this.

The skinny man spoke first in a high nasal voice, “Give us your money, mate, and you may get out of here alive”.

To this the fat man laughed a cold, low, demonic laugh.

“Sure man”, I said, realizing that now that we’ve seen their faces our hopes of leaving unhurt were slim, “just don’t hurt us”.

I slowly reached for my wallet in my back pocket. Talie noticed first that the muscled behemoth in front of her was reaching for a pistol he had tucked in the front of his jeans and realized that she needed to do something now or we were going to be leaving this alley in body bags. While his eyes were focused on me, and before he could remove the gun, Talie picked up a trash can lid and in a smooth arc brought it crashing into the side of his tattooed head. With no time to prepare for the blow, he crashed to the ground, smashing his head on the concrete and rendering him unconscious.

The fat man was surprisingly quick with the bat and I had to jump back to avoid a crushing crack to the chest. I could hear the whoosh as it missed me by centimeters. The fat man was silent as he prepared to swing the bat for another bone crushing blow. E, who showed tremendous bravery, stepped in front of me and using his almost superhuman agility ducked below another swing of the fat man’s bat and struck out with a kick to the oncoming blob of a man. His beady eyes filled with tears and he fell with a groan as E’s foot connected with his now crushed family jewels. I finished him off with a swift knee to the face, breaking his nose.

I heard a click and saw a flash of steel in the dim light as the skinny man flicked open a switch blade. Coming at me he shouted, “You shouldn’t ‘ave done dat!”. J reacted quickly and kicked a broken beer bottle at the wall beside him. As she had anticipated, it ricocheted off the wall and embedded itself in the skinny man’s arm in which he held the knife, effectively disarming him. Without his weapon, his courage fled from him and his darting eyes searched for an escape. As he turned to flee, N, knowing this man would not be satiated by this attack and would surely search for another victim this evening, cleverly stopped his retreat. While the fighting had been going on, N had tied his soother to one end of his blanky and his bottle was attached to the other. He swung his makeshift bola above his head and it flew through the air wrapping up the legs of the fleeing felon that moments earlier had felt so powerful with the knife in his hand. Using the back of the gun that Talie had wisely removed from the possession of the slumbering giant, I quickly dispatched this threat with a thump to the back of his head.

With three criminals effectively rendered incapacitated for the next few hours, we allowed ourselves to feel the other emotions that we had pushed to the recesses of our minds as we fought for our lives and all five of us were brushing back tears of joy, fear, and relief, as we stepped from the alley onto the well lit street beyond. We found our car only a few meters down the street, got in, and drove home. On the way we called 111 and explained that there were three ruffians in the alley that they should probably talk to.

Turns out that our adversaries had in their possession the baseball that had been taken from our car months earlier and that these men were wanted criminals in three countries for car burglary, drug smuggling, murder, and song downloading. We got our baseball back and the three of them were exiled from New Zealand for the rest of their lives.