The Adventures of Campy Girlymann's Final Episodes

The sandwich was good, Campy thought but not tuna. The apple too was delicious but not exactly what apples taste like and what looked like a brownie, didn't taste like chocolate at all. It wasn't bad but different. And the air tasted cleaner, the sky brighter, and he felt much lighter, almost as if he was floating.

"Say, Vic."

"Yeah?"

"How do you feel?"

"Really great, Campy. Man what a great day."

"Yeah it is great." Campy had a smile as well and felt the best he had in years. 

Everything was fine until they passed someone on the dirt road talking on the phone. When he saw Campy and Vic pass by he yelled at them to stop. The boys didn't but the guy on the phone started to chase them on foot and once he saw there was no way to catch them, drew a pistol.

A shot rang out and bullet flew between Vic and Campy which spurred them on. Before the man could fire again they had rounded a curve and were soon on to the next one.


No one needed to say they had to watch their backs. Both men kept a look out for anything that moved and held close to the edge of the mountain as they climbed on. But all too soon they heard the whir of a helicopter coming up from behind and not long after that shots pumped the earth nearby.

"Zig-zag." Campy yelled and swerved his bike left and right, with Vic doing the maneuver in the opposite way.

It made it difficult for the helicopter to get a good aim but it slowed the two cyclists down. Campy looked ahead, there was a short drop before it started to climb again and in the drop was a grove of trees.

"Vic, follow me and when we get to that grove of trees pull up next to me, jump off your bike and climb that overhead cliff. You'll know what to do."

With that they dived into the grove, stopped and Vic got off his bike. Campy grabbed Vic's bike and kept riding further down in the gorge and then over the side with both bikes. He tried to  stay upright as best he could but not far from the road he took a fall with both bikes twisted  around him.

Vic, in the meantime,  ran to the other side of the road and quickly sprinted up the hillside, as he did, the helicopter dived down toward the gorge. Vic was equal to the helicopter from his vantage point and quickly realized what Campy meant.

Faster than he ran before, Vic climbed higher until the helicopter was now beneath him. It looked too that the copter had lowered itself  further looking to see who was in the wreckage of bikes and that was when Vic grabbed a good size rock and hurled the weight.

The large rock made a curve fall right into the blades of the copter. A blade broke and the copter became uncontrollable. It swirled and tipped before it suddenly crashed below where Campy was with the bikes.

As soon as Campy heard the copter crash he got up beneath the bikes and pulled them up back to the road just as Vic had ran down to greet him.

"Man, that was close." Vic said.

"There's  going to me more, I'm sure." Campy said, straightening his saddle.

Both men readied their bikes and began to climb when the noise of several cars could be heard from behind.

To be continued........

The Adventures of Campy Girlymann Final Episodes

Campy, gingerly, felt the lump in his back pocket. He touched it and the thing didn't move. He took that as a good sign. Vic though, tried to bend enough and pull his jersey enough to see what he could. It wasn't much. Girlymann slowly pushed his fingers into the pocket and felt one of the objects. He then grabbed it and pulled out a somewhat square object.

Holding it in his hand, he found, whatever it was, wrapped in a red and white checkered cloth. Carefully he unwrapped the package and beheld something like a sandwich with a tag laying across it. "For Endurance" it said. Campy then smelled the sandwich and was pleasantly surprised. He wrapped up the sandwich and felt for the next object which was round. An apple with a note tied to the stem. "For Strength.' The third was wrapped in blue and white checked cloth and looked like a brownie. "For Agility."

Once Vic saw Girlymann's gifts he too opened his and found the exact same thing. Each item with a note and wrapped the same way.

"You mean what I thought was a dream--wasn't?"

Girlymann looked at Vic in a puzzled way. "What dream?"

"The one with the troll and a witch with a talking rat."

"Dream?"

"Oh, well, huh. Shit, do you think this stuff is for real?"

Campy had placed his food back in the jersey and mounted his bike. Vic watching,  took to his bike and the both rode toward the hills ahead. Campy pulled out the sandwich, unwrapped it and took a bite.

"Kinda like tuna." He said to Vic with a smile.

Vic laughed and then bit into the apple. The two riding side by side on the dirt road covered over by giant limbs of oak on a beautiful French country day. 

The Adventures of Campy Girlymann Continue

"You two must be those bikers everyone is looking for."

Girlymann and Vic looked at each other before turning to the stranger. Campy stood up and brushed some leaves from the back of his pants.

"Campy. Campy Girlymann and you?"

"Better left unsaid in case the Du Claudes skin you alive asking questions."

Campy's blood pressure rose. "We wouldn't want that."  He remembered what the witch and troll had said, about a price on their head.

Vic stood as well and offered his hand to the stranger. But the stranger didn't take the offer. Instead, he looked Vic and Campy over from head to foot with what looked like a bit of disgust.

"Don't worry none. The Du Claudes are not my friends. They steal my truffles each year and leave me with less than half  of what my pigs find. They are as worthless as cyclists."  Then he spit on the ground and raised his stick toward the horizon where the dirt road disappeared among the foothills and oak groves.

"Your best chance is to take this dirt road, stay off the side roads. They all dead end at some point. Once you hit pavement the road becomes a wicked winding descent into the next valley. If you should reach that valley, the Du Claudes can't touch you.  The house of Du Claude are mortal enemies of that region going back centuries."

The stranger then lowered his walking stick, "Best get back to my pigs before they eat what little I'll have after the Du Claudes take their fill."

With that the stranger turned his back on the two men and walked on toward the sound of grunts coming not far away.

Campy and Vic watched him disappear among the oaks and laurel. Then they turned to each other and started to laugh. "Guess there's only one thing to do," Campy said as he picked up his bike from the grass and began to inspect it.

"Ride out of Dodge?" Vic asked.

"Hell yeah, and get our asses to this valley pronto." Campy's eye was caught by a bulge in the back pocket of Vic's jersey. "Say Vic?"

"Yeah?"

"What's in your pocket?"

Vic looked a bit astonished, "I was going to ask you the same thing."

To be continued.....