Thundering Rain - 0.2

Thundering Rain - 0.2

The storm raged full bore.  Sheets of wind driven rain, and the thick cloud cover, blocked any possible chance of moon light penetrating enough to see more than a meter in front of your face.  The thick blanket of darkness was only penetrated by the frequent spasms of lightning all around.  Out of one lingering flash of lightning, and the guttural roll of thunder that immediately followed, a man was revealed within the storm.  He wore a deeply hooded, shin length, duster.  He climbed the knoll with a deliberate stride, like he had nowhere else to be.  Over his right shoulder was slung a lever action rifle with a mounted scope, the muzzle pointing towards the ground.  As the brief illumination faded, the man disappeared back into the anonymity of the night and storm.

The occasional flash of lightning and roll of thunder marked the figure’s progress up towards a small century old church.  It stood defiantly against the storm, just as it had since the late twentieth century.  As the man neared the portico of the venerable building, he paused.  Reached up with his right hand, he pulled down his hood and tilted his head slightly toward the angry sky.  This revealed what looked to be a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties, with a dark ruddy complexion and prominent, high cheek bones. His thick black hair was pulled back into a single braided ponytail that was tucked into the back of his jacket.  With his hair pulled back in this way, it revealed a set of pointed ears, swept up and back, extending gracefully adjacent to his hair. He remained still like that and just allowed the water to wash over his face, and drip down his neck, soaking the shirt underneath.  He remained silhouetted against the storm and sky for several long moments before he took a deep breath of the moisture filled air, and then slowly exhaled.  He took a brief look around, and then entered the hallowed building.

As he shut the heavy oak doors behind him, he was greeted by the fire he had left smoldering in the center of the cleared out sanctuary’s tiled floor.  Approaching its inviting warmth, he picked up three small logs from a neat pile, and gently laid them within the embers.  The radiant heat from the leftovers, and the tile floor below, quickly ignited the new source of fuel.  With the flames now renewed, the elf stood and opened his jacket to allow the heat to reach a dark blue heavy duty shirt beneath.  Once the heat penetrated through to his skin, he turned, removed the long coat, and draped it over a nearby wooden bench, and remained with his back to the fire to warm that up too.  As he stood there, he reached back and squeezed some of the water out of his shoulder blade length ponytail.  Just as steam began to rise from his back, he turned back and set about preparing his dinner.

He was cautious as he knelt next to the fire, keeping his right thigh away from the flames.  This was because of the heavy pistol strapped to it over the heavy duty military utilities.  He rounded out his look with a pair of well-worn military boots.  They looked like they might once have been a solid black.

Once he stirred in the fresh meat, he remained squatting on the balls of his feet.  Suddenly he felt tired and began staring aimlessly into the flames.  Within the flames, the wispy image of a bear appeared.  It was roaming the grasslands not far north.  It quickly came upon an overturned car on a divided highway.  There was steam coming up from the now exposed engine compartment, as a heavy rain poured down on the scene.   It stopped, over-watching the scene, and then raised its head to the sky before letting out a bellowing growl. Then, just as suddenly, Rain’s attention was back to the here and now and he quickly realized just how warm the fire was.  He stood, and stepped back away from the fire.

As he paced behind a row of old pews, he shook his head.  “What was that all about?” he asked himself.  “I wonder if that was old route I-90?”

A soft rumble of thunder rolled through the building.

He went back to stirring the pot of improvised stew.  “I don’t recognize the car,” another soft rumble of thunder.  “Not so sure I should go rushing out into a storm with a… bear on the prowl though.”  This time, the crack of lightning preceded the roll of thunder.

He got up, and wandered over to where he kept his Winchester 2066, and his field pack.  “Still… maybe I should head up….” ***CRACK*** this time the blaring flash of light and the peal of thunder rumbled the foundation of the old Christian shrine simultaneously.   Silently, Rain acknowledged what he was supposed to do.  He threw on his damp hooded duster, and then secured his pack.  He glanced at the lever action rifle, then reached down to remove the scope, and left the weapon behind.

Once outside, the man threw a heavy tarp off of an early model Yamaha Growler, configured for military use, and hopped on.  Once the engine roared to life, he dropped it into gear, and set off for the old interstate just ten kilometers to the north.

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Part - 3

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The Long Unwinding Road - 0.1

The Long Unwinding Road - 0.1

Like an asphalt and concrete ribbon slicing through lightly rolling grasslands, I-90 went on as far as the eye could see. Paralleling this man made scar were parallel lines of obsolete telephone and electrical wires. Behind the wheel of a lone vehicle crossing the Badlands of the Sioux Nation, was a man with a single minded purpose, to get to New York as fast as he could.  He did not rate high enough in Evo Corp to warrant a suborbital flight.  Well, officially, he did not even work for them, so.  He was the one the 'suits' came to when they needed something taken care of... "off the books".  He was only ever referred to as, "Mr Johnson".  Definitely no glory or fame, but the pay was good.  Especially when there were no records of expenses to be kept.  Normally, something like this, the retrieval of a corporate "asset", he would just put a word on the street, and the rabble crawled out of the shadows for the work.  But when an exec comes to you directly, you make sure you see to it personally. If the 'asset' proves too difficult to regain on  his own, he would just hire some local talent.

Yawning, the man shook his head and lowered the windows to try and wake himself up as he accelerated to two hundred kilometers per hour. He looked to be maybe in his mid-thirties, with a slightly thinning rumpled crop of hair.  His beard was growing thick having gone unshaven for four days now. Although he had gone nose-deaf to his situation, he sat in a crumpled casual business suit that had not been taken off of his body for longer than the beard was old. He pulled out his last pack of cigarettes, took the last one from the packet with his teeth, then crumpled up the pack and tossed it on the passenger side floorboard. It fell alongside the growing pile of empty soykaf cups, and containers from Stuffer Shack that were mostly empty.

It didn’t help that the only thing that the headlights on his SK Bentley could reflect off of were the lines along the highway, and the rumble strips along the shoulders to let you know that you’d fallen asleep. But, even in the early morning hours, the driver could tell he was coming up on a storm, and fast. To his left, right, and rear view mirror, there was the dim illumination of moonlight, but the view out his windshield was only a wall of black, punctuated with frequent brilliant flashes of cloud to ground lighting.

With a blink and twitch of his right eye to the left, he checked his tracking readout within his field of vision of his cybernetic eye.  The target marker was still solidly locked in New York, “The City that never sleeps”’, he chuckled to himself. With another twitch of the eye, he switched to the MapSoft display, and then another blink and and a flip of his right hand, he switched the display to the windshield HUD. “If I keep to just fuel and essential pit stops… I should roll into New York in just under... twenty hours”, he says aloud to the empty cabin.

Another ten kilometers down the road, and the wall of black now filled the entire view to his front, and most of the side windows. The wind wasn’t doing it for him as he fought with having gone over four days without sleep. He reached into an interior pocket of his out of date suit jacket, and pulled out a hard case, the size of a long cigarette pack. Cracking it open, it revealed five thin metallic cylinders. He pulled one out and placed it between his lips.  Once he closed the case, and returned it to his pocket he reached up to grasp the cylinder, which he was now clenched between his teeth and with a swift tug, he pulled the cylinder free from its lid. With practiced ease, he simultaneously turned his head to the left and spit the lid out through the open window, while, with his right hand he fliped the cylinder over with his fingers and then jammed the open end into his upper thigh. He was used to the sting of the spring injected needle, and didn’t flinch. He just relaxed and enjoyed the slow spread of coolness through the muscles in his leg, as the dose of ‘Long Haul’ spread throughout his blood stream. When it finally began to wind its way into his brain, the fatigue induced mental fog just melted away. With a smile crossing his lips, he tossed the empty injector vial to follow its lid and then put the windows back up.   Leaning forward he retrieved the smoldering cigarette from the small ashtray in the console, sat back to let his head lean against the head-rest, took a long drag of the cigarette, held the smoke briefly, and then let it slowly exhale from his mouth and nose. He was only twenty four hours from the biggest payday in his life, and nothing was going to stop him now.

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Part - 2
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