Nattie and Derek

Nattie and Derek

Derek had no idea how he ended up in this dark, dingy place. Trying hard not to slip and fall into the sewer’s murky waters. He trudged along behind his friend, Nattie. He wouldn’t be walking through a storm drain with a .45 in his hand if it wasn’t for her. He wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for her.
Natalie is 15, and has already seen too much in her short life. And she has told too many lies. Kept too many secrets. Especially from her best friend Derek. She glanced back and saw him look about nervously.
I’m sorry it had to be this way. She thought. It was only 4 hours ago, but it felt as if they had been fighting for their lives for days on end.

Nattie walked to the school office, hall pass in hand. She offered to be a secretary’s aide at the beginning of the year, and entered the bustling office like any other day. Until she went to the assistant principal’s office and overheard a life changing conversation. At the final words from the principals mouth, Nattie gasped and rushed from the room.
“I-I gotta go.” She stammered as she ran to Derek’s 6th period English class.
Derek was half asleep in his desk when he heard someone rap furiously at the door. He glanced up just in time to see Nattie give him a terrified look that told him something was terribly wrong.
“WHAT THE CRAP IS GOING ON??!!” He remembered screaming at her as she dragged him down the empty hallway.
“No time to explain!” She cried.
What happened next was a blur. Derek remembered racing through the halls. Nattie stealing keys from a handbag in the teachers’ lounge. The struggle to find the car they belonged to, then flying through the city streets that sunny afternoon.
“I have to tell you something.” Nattie began.
They finally stopped in an empty field, nothing nearby except for dry soybean plants, a few scattered trees, and a run-down old barn with wooden planks missing.
“I’m not who you think I am, Derek. I’m……different. I’m a rebel agent for an anti-government called the Direct rEconnaissance Network. Or D.E .N. as the guys like to call her.”
She exits from the white sedan and hastily ventures up the gravel driveway. Nattie returns from this decrepit old barn with two automatics and a 7” hunting knife.
“Here,” she hands him the pistol and guns the car in reverse. “According to the Wolf, the FBI has kidnapped your family for reasons unknown. We’re now going to find their recon-point, find your parents, uncover a government conspiracy, and cover our tracks all in about 3 hours and I don’t have a single idea how to do it.”

“Are we there yet?” Back in the sewer pipe, Derek chuckled to himself behind her wading footsteps. Nattie’s flashlight paced back and forth in the cement tube. Something shiny caught her eye. She looked up at a large manhole and several slimy stairs.
“We’re here!”