Getaway, Chapter 1

Okay…so this is that new story. I said it would be mid-May when I got it posted. But I actually got sorta-ish ahead of some work so I'll type up what I have and gauge the reaction before deciding to follow through and finish the whole thing.

Warning: GTS heavy! But, done tastefully with no creeper-ness in it.  

Getaway

Chapter 1

Very few people were on the campus in the late afternoon, even less at night. And then there were nights like tonight when it was pouring rain and even the shallowest of puddles were ankle deep on humankind. Nobody ever ventured out on a night like tonight.

It was a perfect night for borrowing.

Jackson pressed himself against the retaining wall of the giant plants, trying to avoid the puddle-lakes. Rivers cascaded off stairs and pounded the pavement below. Pocked ground formed dangerous hidden crevices and gorges. The young Borrower darted around the corner and hoped over one such crevice. It wasn't particularly wide, but it was at least half his five inches tall deep.

Jackson Haybin was tall for a Borrower, towering a full inch and a half above his father. Perhaps the Borrower race wasn't diminishing after all. Maybe in a few hundred years they would be human-sized again. Maybe. But perhaps not. Borrowers were still too skittish, still too afraid of their human counterparts. That's why they had dwindled to near-nothing in the first place.

But Jackson was tall. He was tall to the point that the girls in his home settlement had avoided marrying him. He tended to stick out like pumpkin in a carrot patch on borrowing runs. He'd even gotten stuck once or twice where his three and a half inch tall friends had easily slipped through. Like a good Borrower, though, Jackson never panicked. He simply remained calm, cool and collected until he was freed from the tight crawlspace.

Even after that example of just how good a head the young man had on his shoulders, the girls still avoided him. He wondered vaguely if there was some sort of disease he had that the others could see but he couldn't. One glance in a mirror gave him his answer. His height. He was too tall to be the "ideal" Borrower. That was how he found himself out one storming night, borrowing from the humans' college that was a good two weeks travel away from his home settlement to him.

Jackson skipped around a torrent of water and leaves that flowed down another set of stairs. He jumped when the monolithic clock tower resounded in the distance, eight strikes of the bell echoing across the campus. The Borrower dashed into the bushes when rushed footsteps thundered behind him. He squinted his verdant-green eyes into the grey evening, watching as the tall human rushed by, more than likely late for his class. A few unrepeatable words later as he stomped into the nearest building and the Borrower's bemused thoughts were confirmed.

Once the human was far enough away, Jackson slipped from the bushes and headed towards the set of stairs that held the massive waterfall. He stopped just to the side of it, gathering fallen acorn shells. He stuffed them into his borrowing bag and continued to work closer to the stream. He wasn't paying as close attention as he should have been. The night wasn't the type where many—if any at all—animals were about and about.

Except for Grackles.

Grackles were massive compared to a five and a half inch tall Borrower. They were black as pitch with eerie yellow eyes. The females may have been smaller the than males with dirt colored feathers, but they were still big enough to be more than a threat to Jackson. While he was occupied with collecting acorn bits, a female Grackle was busy eyeing a potential meal. She flapped her wings, taking off from the low branch and aiming her sharp claws for the Borrower. It was only at the last second that Jackson heard the leaky-tire squeal of the bird.

He glanced up before throwing himself forward. Instantly, he was forced under the torrent of water. His diminutive body was pummeled by the flagstone that covered the wall. After a horrible eternity of seconds, he was suddenly airborne. He somersaulted across the empty space, catapulted by the raging river. His eyes opened just in time to see a dark blue pavilion moving into his path. When he hit it, he discovered it wasn't a pavilion at all. It was an umbrella.

As he rolled off the forward pitch of the umbrella, he made a curious discovery. The human holding the umbrella was a young woman. She looked just as shocked as he was. There were very few girls on campus this late at night. To see one in the middle of a rain-storm was even rarer. His head throbbed with the residual pain of repeatedly pounding the flagstone. The world's spinning suddenly had nothing do with his freefall. Jackson's eyes dropped closed when he landed.

oOoOo

Hallie had been minding her own business, simply strolling through the flooded campus after meeting with her professor.  She had wanted his comments on her short fiction and had set up the appointment so their time wouldn't be limited because of other obligations. Once it was done, she had waited in the entryway of the building, praying the rain would slacken up enough for her to get to her car without being completely drowned.

She more than expected her legs to get wet—which was why she had worn her paint splattered jeans tucked into knee-high black and white plaid goulashes. She loved getting soaked from the thighs down on a rainy day; to the point where she went out of her way to splash in deep puddles and walk under dripping trees to hear the quick and deep plopplopplop of the rain on her umbrella. Which is why she ended up walking right into the path of a flying Borrower. The runoff from the flagstone wall was a noisy opportunity she couldn't pass up.

So it was that when she was almost under the water that a very odd and peculiar thump sounded off her umbrella. She tilted it back in surprise and nearly dropped it altogether when she saw what appeared to be a miniature human plummeting to the ground. This time she did drop her umbrella as she reached out to catch the creature. She was remembering her high school physics lessons when she let her hands drop a little as the tiny human landed in them.

Thoroughly soaked from head to toe, she stared in rapt awe at the nearly six inch tall male in her hands. She figured it was a male, because there weren't any breasts. None that she noticed, anyway. The young woman simply watched the thing in her hands, wondering if he was alright. She was curious as to where he had come from. Where had he been living? Did he hide somewhere on campus? Why had she never seen him before? It was at that moment her cupped hands were quickly filling with water. Water that was almost covering his face.

Panicking, she dropped her hands to get rid of the deadly puddle. And nearly dropped the miniature human in her hands. She swore under her breath, quickly clapping her hands back together and just barely catching him by his arm. She sighed in relief, spacing out her fingers to let the rain seep through rather than collect. She bent down and picked up the umbrella after shifting the little man to one hand and cradling him to her chest. With a furtive glance around, the young woman nearly ran to her vehicle. Stopping beside the gold minivan, she fumbled with the keypad on the door.

"Three, eight, six, zero, five," she chanted to herself. On the third try, she successfully opened the door and reached across the driver's seat to carefully deposit her handheld passenger on the other side. She collapsed the umbrellas and scrambled in before the inside of the van could be soaked.

Hallie buckled and backed out of the parking spot. As she headed back to her townhome apartment, she couldn't help but steal glances at the little man in her passenger seat.

oOoOo

Jackson groaned, trying to open his eyes. His hands curled in the smooth fabric beneath him. Fabric? he wondered silently. But I don't have tight stitching… His eyes flew open and he sat straight up, gazing around the interior of a super-massive human vehicle. The sudden shift in perception made his head spin. He gabbed both sides of his skull, but groaned at that movement, as well. His left hand dropped to clutch his right upper arm. He could understand a sore head from his fall, but a sore arm?

"Oh, good, you're waking up!" a voice thundered overhead.

Jackson cried out and immediately clamped his hands over his ears. Too loud! He gasped as the pain in his right arm and shoulder flared up again with the sudden movement.

"Oh my gosh!" the voice came again, softer this time but still on the verge of straining his ears. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your arm! You were falling and I panicked so I grabbed our arm because you would have died if you had hit the ground and I would have felt horrible guilty and—"

"Stop!" Jackson shouted, immediately regretting it when his head throbbed again. "Just, stop. I—" He cut himself off, realizing that not only had he been Seen, but captured as well. He was screwed. So very, very screwed. He looked up to the bean's curious brown eyes and decided at this point it didn't really matter what he said. He was only going to be sold, experimented on and used and abused. He wasn't going to see his family again. He was never going to get married; never going to have children.

"Where am I?" he finally asked. Jackson didn't like the way the young woman's smiles disarmed him. He didn't trust her. "Who are you? Why did you take me from the campus?"

The young woman was a bit taken aback by the distrust and almost anger in his tone. All she had done was save him from a rather painful and quite possibly prolonged death.

"Well, I'm Halberd Borders. All my friends call me Hallie, though." She smiled. "I was walking back to my van and saw you go careening off the stairs. You hit my umbrella and dropped like a rock. So I caught you before you could hit the ground. You were soaked and unconscious and I didn't see anyone else around like you so I figured you were alone. And I couldn't very well leave you like that! I mean, squirrels eat little bugs and things and the crows and grackles aren't exactly picky."

She smiled again and Jackson stared at her. He wasn't sure if he should believe her story or not. Some part of him wanted to believe her sweet and sincere smile. The rest of him reminded him of just how dangerous humans were. He remembered all the mouse traps that were set in the great farmhouse and barn his community lived it. He remembered the funerals quietly held on moonless nights. Borrowers surrounding a small headstone—nothing more than a simple colored pebble. Anything more than that would tip off the humans. He remembered sobbing wives and mothers when they realized their husbands and sons would never come home. Emigrated families, broken homes, fatherless children. All because of humans.

Still, manners were manners, even if it was a bean. "Thanks." The word was muttered under his breath but Hallie didn't seem to mind—even if she couldn't exactly hear.

"Come on, I had just pulled into my apartment when you woke up. We'll go inside and get us all dried off.  Then we'll see about getting you something to wear or cover up with while your clothes are drying." She smiled and set her hand down beside the Borrower, palm up with the invitation to get on under his own power.

Jackson eyed the hand as he would a scorpion getting ready to strike. He had never seen or heard of a bean offering a ride to a Borrower. No, beans only snatched, grabbed and trapped. They didn't offer. But how else was he going to get down? All of his stuff had been washed away and his spares would be on campus. Grudgingly, he stepped onto the open palm.

He stumbled when she raised her hand, clutching tightly to the fingers that curled around him. He watched in sheer amazement as the chair fell away. His hold tightened when she shifted to get out of the vehicle. Jackson was grateful when she didn't say anything about it. The van honked twice when Hallie pressed a key on the remote as she walked away.