Candy Mountain Charlie, Candy Mountain (Baby Face)

Alister's future seeing abilities had provoked the need for this intervention, and had given Sledge his marching orders. This beaten up teen was needed to prevent the apocalypse. An apocalypse brought about by a unicorn. The con man had to wonder if Alister had known about the collision in advance. Simply getting Sledge to accept the strange, and highly unlikely, source of the end of the world had been a sisyphean task. Unicorns were too noble in mythology. Perhaps the road was indeed paved with good intentions. With the teen floating in a cocktail sea of pain medications and the dregs of adrenaline leaving his veins it may very well be easy to accept that one My Little Pony was the four horsemen.

Of course Sledge had no clue if any surgery was necessary for Hokee. He had fed that rubbish to satiate the bird. Nothing on the medical chart made sense to him, if there was any sense to be made in the first place. Had he been able to decipher the scribblings that decorated the charts he would still need some sort key for the abbreviations. What was needed was time, time to be able to have a chat with Hokee in private without risk of interruptions. Speaking of unicorns and destruction might be easier under influence of prescription drugs, but such conversation could easily be waved off as a hallucination.

"No chips for you mate," Sledge responded to the incoherent mumblings. The words were not important, other than to make the injured party aware that he was not alone. Get him to talk, and keep talking. Preferably with sentences that make sense. "Iffin Chase was one of those anklebiters back there, 'e's fine. There's more important things we need to talk about." It was an interesting balance between keeping Hokee out of the room long enough for his lie to be convincing to the lady he had left behind, and getting him back before someone who actually belonged on the hospital staff swung by and found the empty bed. He was it in a real bad way, but surely if there was a pressing need for surgery the teen would have been put under promptly. This sort of tension was the thrill of the scam, the risk of being caught and having it all crash in on his head.

Then again, mayhaps Alister hadn't known about the accident after all, at least not the condition that the teen would be in. Once again the language barrier had been raised. Talking to the septics could be a trial on its own when his conversation counterpart was cognitive. Right now he was attempting to hold a conversation with what boiled down to a well tenderized meat sack with noodles for brains. What did barbeque flavored, rigged crisps have to do with anything? Hokee was remembering only the things that Sledge said they shouldn't talk about. "Forget about the bloody crisps and chips!"

It may have sounded harsh, and it did not make a lick of difference to Sledge if that was the case. What made him wake up whenever he had dozed off in school was the short sharp command of the teacher or headmaster. He would have to use his voice as a sort of alarm clock in hopes of breaking through that thick skull and head that resembled a mop. "This ain't no talk about women, or food, but what will happen in your future." Sledge assumed that about half those words were heard, and perhaps even less than that had made any sense to him.

"The world is going to end," Sledge started, continuing to wheel the gurney down the hallways. Nurses and orderlies were always moving patients from one area of the hospital to another. Those on the gurney most likely did not know where they were going. Direction and location are hard to tell when you're on your back and the only scenery is overhead lights. Add to it prolonged rides in elevators and it wasn't surprising that hospitals had to paint stripes on the floor to prevent getting lost. "Unless some actions are taken, doomsday is upon us, and you are part of the stopping part."

He tried to recall the precise details of this end of the world scenario. Alister had to blackmail Sledge into going along with all this. How humiliating to be blackmailed by a child half his age, not just once, but twice. That was a detail that he wasn't going to fill Hokee in on. "Know 'ow all those girl things seemed evil when you were five? Turns out you were spot on."

AIDS? Forget about hearing half the words, Hokee was making up Sledge's part of the conversation, or having a nice chat with the drug bunnies hopping around in his circulatory system. Just how long until the meds took the edge off the pain and granted him a window of opportunity before Hokee's body let him know the extent of the damage. "You do not 'ave AIDS." What you do have is a brain of bricks, thought Sledge, though he kept that to himself. If the only thing that Hokee had gotten out of the conversation thus far was contracting a horrible disease, being told that his skull was filled with a construction material would result in something even more obtuse. Bricks for brains? He had gone through an unnecessary surgery that would gradually replace his innards with various bits and bobs so that he could be cloned.

"Can you focus for just one minute?" Kaitlyn should have warned him that you should never make plans the days you stop by Alister. His hot date was going to have to wait for another day, if he could convince her to give it one more go. If Hokee couldn't clear his mind up long enough for David to deliver the message the whole evening might as well go to pot. If he could just stay awake and semi intelligent for three, four minutes the Brit would be fine with that. "World, going to end. You, healthy."

Dear lord now he was talking like an unevolved neanderthal. Given the state of his companion David should probably stick to words with two syllables or less, forget all the conjunctions, proper nouns, pronouns, adverbs... Slaughter the Queen's English and start grunting. Either that or start to babble utter nonsense and hope that it translated into actual words to the teen. Yes Hokee was under the influence of some unknown (to Sledge) drug that made his mind about as useful as a lint roller in a flood, but you would think the mention of an apocalypse would garner some attention. "Unicorn destroy world. You help."

In attempting to make it clear to Hokee that he did not, indeed, have AIDS, Sledge had implanted the notion that Hokee was fit enough to get up and about the hospital. Whatever pain pills they had used it must have been pretty powerful. "Git down you twit," Sledge scolded Hokee, putting some pressure on the teen's chest to push him down, "Said you were healthy, not well." It would seem that not only did he have to avoid any large words, Sledge would have to analyze every single word to make sure that it wouldn't be mistaken for something else.

At least the word unicorn managed to penetrate the teen's skull, which was as thick as several encyclopedias, though retaining significantly less knowledge. Now he just needed repetition until the entire picture was playing on the screen behind Hokee's eyes. "Yes, a unicorn. Unicorn is bad." That couldn't be complicated by delusions. Few syllables, fewer words. The gurney was pushed towards an elevator where they paused and waited for the lift. Sledge eyed Hokee carefully. Without the movement of the gurney the teen might try to climb his way to wobbly freedom. A patient on a gurney wasn't an uncommon sight, but a patient who clearly needed medical attention stumbling and bumbling their way about was.

"Don't ask me how, but the unicorn is very bad. Very, very, very bad." It sounded like a load of rubbish, an early childhood nightmare. Nothing that he believed in, but none the less had to accept. Although he could not understand how one of the most pure and good creatures in all of mythology could bring about the end of everything, Sledge could not argue against Alister's skills. At first he was able to brush off his meeting with Kaitlyn as pure coincidence, but upon his first meeting with the boy, Sledge had to accept that there was some truth to the concept of a future seeing psychic, and that Alister knew his business.

"You stop unicorn," he said, speaking very slowly, staring right at the dreadlocked head. Wasn't there some sort of witty telly line that he could use to relate? "Stop unicorn, save world." Well, if nothing else at least he was making the cause of disaster clear. Whether Hokee understood that the world was potentially in danger was still undetermined.

Progress at last. Hokee did indeed get that the unicorn was to be stopped. Word by slow word the message was getting across. Why he even managed to get that the unicorn was the end of the world. Slightly though. Pony was close to unicorn, just lacking the horn and the powers. Also there was only one unicorn, not multiple ones. He was so close to getting Hokee to understand. Repeat repeat repeat and eventually the teen wasn't going to be so clueless.

Repetition didn't clear up a mind though. Sledge had no exposure to the internet unicorn cartoons, and thus thought that Hokee was speaking nonsense again. Even if he had gotten the reference it wouldn't have made sense. It wasn't Charlie the unicorn that was evil, it was those two unicorns that tormented Charlie that were malevolent. "Candy mountain?" he asked. All he could think of was that little kids game. It was one of those places that you passed by wasn't it? Or maybe it was that song that kids sang in primary school, the one about the streams of lemonade. Suggestive of something else, and if he remembered right, it actually was talking about alcohol.

"No, no candy mountain." Honestly this was worse than trying to talk to a three year old. This was yet another reason to avoid the drug ring. You get people who have the combined intelligence of a house plant. Remembering what happened earlier when Hokee mentioned french fries Sledge amended himself. "This has nothing to do with food or treats of any sort. Don't doze off, or you'll miss everything."

"Right," Sledge said, feeling a slight flush of glee. He had never been in a position to teach really before. Yes he corrected his littlest blackmailer, but that was because the girl did bodge jobs with everything. If he didn't teach her how to lie properly it reflected poorly on his skills, and if she didn't learn how to eat with her mouth close he was going to have to tape her trap shut for some peace of mind. This wasn't a learning experience for the teen in the educational way, but Sledge still felt as though he had just taught Hokee some brilliant, centuries old knowledge. It might just be more drug induced rambling, actually that was very likely, but Hokee had just said the core of the message. "Don't sleep or the unicorn destroys the world"

By "Where is it?" Sledge assumed that Hokee meant the enemy. Nothing else had been a subject recently. Had it been something that was on Hokee's mind how was the con man to know or adjust the recruitment speech. "The unicorn?" he asked, then immediately continued on as though the question had no value, "It's not me place to keep track on 'im. I'm of a different type of intelligence." There were things that Alister had wanted of Bradford's criminal that were best kept on the down low, information to gather that didn't directly relate to the horned horse-man of the apocalypse.

The lift halted on a floor and Sledge rolled the gurney out. Hospitals might be a complex structure but he had a good head for direction, not often finding himself lost. In any case if you do not care where you are going, can you be lost? This journey through the hospital halls was just wasting time. Hokee was needed, but in the condition that he was in the only good he would serve was as a sort of meat shield. There would be work for him, but only once he did not need the medication. "Once you're on your feet again you'll 'ave to get your marching orders from Ali." It was not his place to question what Hokee could do.

Apple pies? Was that some sort of American slang that he had never heard of? David had heard that things were as American as apple pie. With Hokee having been able to understand the words at last Sledge thought that this might have been some bit of insight to the teen, a window into the unmedicated mind. Perhaps apple pie meant the two of them. But wait, that was more of a slang term for women, at least it was across the pond. He knew that over here pissed meant angry, not drunk.

Then the French fries returned. Had Hokee not actually heard anything before that would make the little bit of sense that he had made nothing more than a parrot like mimic. If that were the case than Sledge was the fool who believed the bird could talk. “Already said no to the fries,” Sledge offered as a reminder. His pride was stinging. Was the daftie only capable of thinking with his stomach? Surely in such a condition food would be the farthest from his mind. “Keep eating them and you’ll swell up into a lard arse.”

Not that he really was one to talk. Until Kaitlyn had recruited him David had been on a diet comprised entirely of fried fast food and what you could microwave at the 7-11. His innards had rebelled against him, wanting actual food and not something with barely more nutritional value than the packaging that it came in. Now that he had access to an actual kitchen it would make sense to cook frequently. It wasn’t as though David was lazy. More along the lines of being able to cook only a few edible things. Some habits are just bad for you, but you do them even with that knowledge. Sleeping with a unicorn probably was bad, and the con man chuckled. “Don’t play leapfrog with them either,” he offered as advice to the morphine fueled lump.