Editing Campaign:End-World/Log (section)

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Raymond slowly approaches the automobile at an angle from behind. Painted up like that, no way it's a local. Maybe someone from the cities further south, or a tourist on their way through the countryside. Either way, they won't know of him. Just maybe they'll be the kind of folks that wouldn't mind giving an obvious fugitive a lift; in times like these, even the best of men can be hard on their luck.

Raymond could always, if need be, take the car by force. Anything to put a few miles more between himself and the chair waiting for him.

Raymond creeps closer, trying to see into the dark windows, get a handle on who's driving...

As he approaches, the deep putt-putt-putt of the engine seems to slack off, quieting, and what comes to mind is a cat quieting down as it sees something interesting. 

The passenger-side window creaks as it opens, and the thick haze of cigarette smoke that chokes the cab begins to drift out, as a hand flicks a glowing butt out in a long end-over-end arc that terminates with it splishing into the lake. "I smell a hume. You smell that?" a voice says from... somewhere. "I smell bacon. Burnt bacon," someone else laughs, in a rough-sounding voice. 

"You looking for a ride, guy?" someone calls.

Raymond fights a sudden, thrilling urge to turn and bolt like a deer. Not that he'd get very far or fast hobbled like he is. Most certainly he'd end up face-down in the pond while the driver of the garish auto laughed at him. Besides, he'd never run scared in his life (save from Gaunt, perhaps, would he run from that crooked-teeth grin?) and didn't intend to start now.

"That would be kind, mighty kind of you," he says, shuffling closer to the auto. It almost seems to purr, he realizes, like a beast. A sleeping dog or a tiger that shouldn't be woken. "I don't need to get far, 'less you were already plannin' on it."

The rear door on his side clicks open softly, and the engine's putt-putt-putt increases in tempo, almost panting. 

Raymond remembers something that Hiram Wilson, the 'lifer' in the cell adjacent to his said. "No one does you any favors. Even if it looks like they're doing something out of the goodness of their own hearts, it's 'cause they're thinking about eating yours."

Raymond recalls it only a bit too late. He's already opening the door, easing into the car as best as he can with legs and arms chained.

As the door swings open, the smoke roils out, sliding over the top of the mist that clings to the grass at his feet. Everything seems magnified, unreal. As he passes under the frame and into the back seat (the long bench seat feels like leather, but not quite) the sound outside him seems to drop away. The frogs, the crickets, the herons, it all disappears, leaving him with nothing but the accelerating rumble of the engine under him.

Across from him a man in a squat top hat and a pair of dingy whit-framed sunglasses grins at him and sucks on his cigarette, exhaling a cloud directly into Raymond's face. And that's when he realizes that the door is already closed behind him.

"Lucky we found you, right, pal?" the driver grins widely, turning around in his seat. His teeth are like Gaunt's.

"Nice day for a drive," he says as the car begins to roll forward. A moment later he turns back around and grips the wheel, finally taking his gaze off you.

Raymond worked in the hot sun with dirt and shit and animals and sweating men that smelled worse than animals. It's safe to say he can put up with a lot of offensive things. But the cigarette smoke makes him cough, hacking hard enough to make his lungs hurt. The flight through the woods must have taken more out of him that he thought. "Right, lucky," he manages to say...

Raymond catches sight of the man's teeth and freezes, like a rat caught in a trap. No...no, it couldn't be. Not already. This isn't what was supposed to happen. "It's just good to be...free," he says, trying to betray his sudden terror. He feels about on the door for the handle.

The engine revs a little harder, and the trees caught in the headlamps begin racing past, faster and faster. The driver turns around again, grinning his wide, square face. His teeth are long, like horse teeth. "Careful, pal!" he chirps cheerfully. "You could lose a leg that way!" The unbroken wall of the door slides under Raymond's fingers. They don't find a handle.

 "Maybe we made a mistake picking him up," the other figure in the front seat says, finally. At first he doesn't turn around, keeping his gaze on the twisting road ahead that the driver somehow navigates turned around with one hand resting casually on the shuddering wheel. All Raymond can see is the collar of his baby-blue suit and the fedora of the same color. A vein on his thin neck runs up to where the roughly-cropped hair at the nape of his neck starts. Curly, wiry hair.

"Maybe we made a mistake. Ain't that right, mister?" he asks, turning around, and Raymond can see the sunken, jaundiced eyes. "Maybe you ain't hardcase enough. That right?"

Raymond gets that feeling that he might have stumbled onto more than he bargained for. Only three of them, though, and the automobile has to come to a stop some time. There's half a dozen little towns in the surrounding area; just got to wait for a stop sign or an intersection and force the door open. Until then, stall. "Would I be in stripes if I weren't...hardcase?" he asks, trying to play to what...

Raymond ...they seem to want.

"Any man pushes me, I'll push back."

"That's what I said, pal!" the driver whines, keeping his eyes off the road and squarely on Raymond as he flashes another insincere smile. "I told them what the stripes meant, but they didn't see any truck in it!" As he pleads sympathy, the headlamps of another car swell into brightness out of the night road, and he faintly hears the driver honk as the car swerves out of its path at the last instant - and Raymond is sure that both the driver's hands were off the wheel when it happened.

"Maybe we oughta give him a push and see how he goes," the one in the top hat says, flicking out a jackknife that he cleans one long nail with.

Raymond watches the knife glint like it was polished...or already wet with blood. He's seen men like these before on the road, in the work-gangs...in prison. Brutal men. Stupid men. Low men. He promised himself he'd never be like them, but they only understand one thing.

Raymond leans back, as if he's recoiling from the knife, then shifts and settles his back against the smooth wall of the door behind him. Both legs lift, chains rattling as his knees draw to his chest, and then he hammers them outward, planting the cheap rubber soles of his prison-issue boots straight in to Top Hat's sunglasses. Raymond once saw a mule kick a man in the back. Left the poor son of a bitch unable to walk. The sound is much the same.

The sunglasses crunch and shatter, as the men in the front cry out in surprise and - laughter. "Didja see that?" the driver hollers at the one in the blue fedora. "Oh, bird and bear, pal, that's what I was talking about!" he laughs, that horse-faced laugh, as the lips peel up and slide over those long, long teeth. Not horse teeth, no. 

"Ehech-" the one in the top hat says, sounding German. "My goddamn glasses." He reaches up and pulls a sliver of glass out of his cheek, and another. Where he tugs the shards loose, wiry sprouts of hair push themselves out of his skin, like watching a movie of a man shaving in reverse. Except the only person Raymond ever saw with hair around his eye socket was a wolf-man from Mexico who toured with them one summer.

"God in Heaven," he whispers, and Raymond is not usually a religious man. Somehow he's able to tear his gaze away from the ruined glasses and sprouting hair around Top Hat's eyes, and instead turns to the men in the front seat. "So am I hardcase enough for...whatever you need?" 

A stop sign flashes by as the car races through the dark streets of a small country town, houses, stores rush past in a blur, and the trees resume. "You've got fire, pal," the driver agrees, glancing ahead at the dark country road for a moment before looking back at you. "Fire enough for me. Whole buckets of it," he nods, smiling that awful wide grin. Not horse teeth, no.

Rat teeth.

"We need a guy with a strong back. A guy who knows how to do things that need to be done."

"You ever kill someone before, pal?"

"Yes." That's all he says, but there's no bravado in it. No excitement. Just a quiet admission. When the question, much the same, was posed to him at the trial, he answered the same way and condemned himself. "I'd rather be the strong back, if I need to pay my way for this little ride. I'm not afraid of work and I won't ask no questions."

"Good to hear, pal," he nods, as the one in the fedora lights another cigarette.

"Take a peek, friend," Mr. Ex-Sunglasses says, pulling something small and white and square out of his bomber jacket. He hands it across the seat to Raymond, glowering at him from behind those tufts of hair, and as Raymond takes it in one hand he sees that it's a strange color photograph of some kind. The photograph itself is set in the center, with a thin border of white card around the edges, wider on the bottom.

In the picture is a girl of maybe nineteen, sitting on a bench outside of a drug store. Next to her is a man covering his face as she laughs. There's something about the place that looks unreal, though, aside from the strange, muted colors.

"See that bird, friend?" Ex-Sunglasses asks. "She flew the coop. The King wants her back."

Raymond holds the strange, glossy photograph up so he can see it a bit better. Even the picture itself seems alien, out of place, never mind the young girl in it. "The King? Some sort of royalty?" he asks, handing the photograph back. Maybe they are from Germany.

"I can't be caught again. Can't go back to prison. If...if I help you find this girl, can you help me get out of here?"

"Oh, we can take you places, pal," the driver agrees. "We go just about everywhere, my friends and me. And he isn't just any king," he says, leaning in toward you, completely discarding the pretense of operating this thing that looks like a car, that pulses under the floorboards and ducks around corners like a fox. "Ram Abbalah, pal" he hisses. "Remember that name. Ram Abbalah. Think of it often."

Raymond bows his head, eyes shut for a moment. "I won't kill her, though. Don't ask that of me," he murmurs. And then he lifts his head and nods, repeating the man's strange words. "Ram Abbalah."

The car slows as a streetlight wavers into view like the windshield is surfacing out of the ocean, and as the car-thing glides to a stop, the door clicks open. "Killing her's the last thing we want, pal," the driver says as Raymond steps out onto solid ground. "She dies, we'll be after you, dig?"

With that the car door slams shut and it peels away, vanishing into the fog and leaving Raymond alone under the streetlight.

  =========================

Alan stares at LaRoux following her statement on what to do with the ordinance, incredulous.  Finally, he speaks, "There's a few problems with that plan of yours.  First," he holds up one finger, "As I told ye, these bombs are a danger at any point to us.  They can't even be relied on to explode, let alone at the same time.  Second," another finger ticks up, "We just killed Farson's escort for these weapons, they'll be missed."
  "Third," he continues, "Whatever gods-blinded monster just possessed that THING could probably warn off the Good Man's intended recipients.  Fourth, we could be caught with them and be mistaken for harriers.  Fifth, we should just blow them up!"
  Alan punctuates this last statement by thumping his pistol-butt on the wagon.
  "And what of us, then, boy?" Tall Francis asks.
  Alan looks to Francis
  "We were paid in part to deliver this, and not a one of us knew what it had inside."
  "My contract, sai, was for transporting dry goods.  What of those you have, you may keep, and I will honor my agreement on that."
  "However, if you think you're going to march a cartload of bombs, into a town of innocents, sai, you're more mercenary than I am."
  "Very kind words, sai, he says, bowing as he spits out the honorific. "I'm sure they'll be of great comfort when said men put a bullet in my belly for losing them."
  LaRoux nods. "I say we keep one." She excetuates the point by holding up her finger. "The rest we destroy. Should there be no trouble, we'll dispose of it later..."
  Alan considers LaRoux's words, then nods, "If'n you're planning to carry said bomb, that's fine by me. I wouldn't want to touch one for any longer than I'd have to, but if you insist..."
  Alan turns back to Francis
  LaRoux stands and motions to the two crates. "Take out two, one to destroy these and the other for myself. I'll use it for practice."
  "What makes you think they won't do that anyway?  Let me tell you, Francis, there's nothing 'good' about the Good Man, and I'd frankly be surprised if they intended to pay you at all."
  "Even if they did, they'll certainly cry foul when they see their men missing."
  "And," Alan gestures with his gun, "I could just put a bullet in you, too."
  "I wouldn't relish it, sai, but fair's fair and a warning's a warning."
  "Then what would ye have me do?" Francis cries angrily, unconcerne with Alan's threat.
  "Crawl off inta the waste?"
  "Shut up and follow our lead for one..."
  "In your position, I'd die," he says dryly, then seeing the man's face, explains
  "We could easily pretend to kill you - mutilate and burn these bodies, et cetera - you head to a new town and start a new, quiet life.  No, 'tain't fair or easy, but it's a sight better than dying."
  "And, frankly, I'd rather crawl into the wastes than be in the clutches of the Good Man when he's angry, do ya ken."
  Tall Francis glowers and swats at a huge mosquito in front of his face. "Cry pardon, sai," he says, turning away to where the others are raising Zeke to his feet. The rag wrapped around the man's leg spreads a red stain from the center, just above his knee.
  LaRoux watches the men help Zeke to his feet. She leans to the grenade crate and takes out a pair, examining them, turning to Alan. "You said you knew of these, do you know how to work them?"
  As Alan and Josef watch, the waggoners talk heatedly in low, hissing voices, casting glances back at the pair.
  LaRoux holds the two out far, poising her hands on the levers "I reckon these are like triggers, right?"
  "You pull that loop of metal and throw it, and they explode after a short while.  You don't want to hold onto one, don't try to be clever - the old ones' craft is old and usually cruel."
  "You don't want one to explode while still in your hand, brief as your misery would no doubt be."
  LaRoux stops her confident post, arms falling lax, mildly embarassed. "Ah..."
  "Ye don't want to be playing around with those, girl.  Handle them as little as possible.  Do not jostle them, do not try to ken their workings - they don't give a warning before they go off."
  Alan keeps his good eye deliberately on the waggoneers
  Meanwhile...

  ======================

  "This is called a cherry bomb. Because it looks like a cherry," Mark says, explaining the nature of the small, spherical object he fished out of his pocket. As the two of them walk down the sidewalk under the hot afternon sun, Uta can still taste the faint burn of vomit, and the world reels again, a translucent skin that she can almost pass through...
  Explosions, bodies, bleeding
  "Hey, are you OK?" Mark says, grabbing her arm.
  Her vision clears. Her head pounds with exertion and the bright sun.
  The boy looks at her.
  Uta at the vision with a blank stare, her mind trying to comprehend the random flashes of violence and pain. She holds her head in her hands, reeling from the image as it clears from her mind, her already taxed mind showing signs of stress. She talks, slowly, "Uta will be fine."
  "OK," Mark agrees, after a moment, slowly nodding his head. "Um, this is it."
  Uta looks up at the residence in question.
  In front of her is a plain-looking wooden house, faded yellow paint with peeling white trim, but a solidly built house nevertheless. The sight of it stirs up a deep-sunk longing in Uta - the houses in River Crossing were of a similar make. Across the dry, brown-grass yard, a dog tied to a stake begins barking in perfect 2/4 time at them.
  "Good house, yes?"
  As she speaks, the door clicks open and a woman in a plain dress that might have once been red but now has faded to a dusty pink steps out onto the porch. "Mark?"
  Uta feels him squeeze her hand, once.

  =============================

  Uta emerges from the bathroom, one thankfully equipped with the plumbing she came to depend on in the Devar Toi, and while her commandeered dress may never truly be clean, at least the patch of dampness on it is drying quickly. As she steps out, Mark's mother looks at her from the hallway and asks "Ready?"
  "So," she asks, as the four of you sit down around the table. "What do you do, Uta?"
  Uta sits down at the table, looking a fair bit ackward at the whole situation. She swallows her fear, looking over at Mark, "I cook for the camp!"
  Uta watches Mark as he picks up his fork and knife, cutting at the small, bloody slab of meat on his plate. Uta follows suit, picking up the silverware and cutting at the meat.
  Uta holds up a cut of the roast with her fork, "I cooked the meat for the camp." She bites down into the piece of meat, then reverses the question, "What do Moms do?"
  "One of the WPA camps, you mean?" the boy's father asks, cutting a slice off his own tough portion and chewing it. "Moms?" the woman asks, momentarily confused. "What kind of a question is that? What do you suppose mothers do?" she chuffs, looking at Uta as if she just realized her son was sitting next to a dog that may bite.
  Uta feels the barrage of questions and the ackwardness of the Dinner interrogation well up a ball of fear inside her, "Yes, WPA camp." She however, has no idea how to respond to the "Mom", her anger as a mother cow to its child.
  Uta notices that the meat is well prepared, and well spiced. Her body responds in kind to the norishment, herself having little food even while on the road and tries to compliment the Mom, "Your cooking is good!"
  Suddenly, someone knocks at the door, making Uta start.
  Mark's father looks up, and as his mother begins to rise he says "No, no, I'll get it," and stands up. A moment later Uta can hear the front door open, and a man's voice say "Good afternoon, sir, I'm with the Church of Plano. May I step inside for a moment?"
  As Uta turns back from listening, the curtains catch a slight breeze and flutter back, and she sees the automobile parked on the street outside.
  Yellow, with red trim.
  ==================================
  "All right, sais," Tall Francis says, crossing the grass back to the waggons and LaRoux and Alan.
  "We'll take five horses, one for each of us. That leaves you with one from the waggon, and that of yon hardcase," he says, gesturing to where the speckled brown-and-white mare stands tethered to a warped mutie tree.  "The waggons are yours to do with as you like. Say fair?"
  "Thankee-sai, I do say fair."
  Ten minutes later, by Alan's count, the five ride off, the hooves of their horses thrumping on the drying ground, kicking up a small cloud of dirt in their wake. As it settles in the still air, Alan and LaRoux are left alone with the waggons. The harrier's horse snorts and shivers, casting the blanket of mosquitoes into the air for a brief moment.
  "As for this mess, LaRoux, we'll take a handful of grenados, and use yon horses to drag the wagon over to a ditch.  Unhook 'em, then tip it.  The leftover grenades are for setting off the whole lot and messing up the corpses."
"And I suggest we let your dead friend's horse run free - his comrades may recognize it."
  Alan approaches the dead harrier's horse to lead it to the wagon.
  LaRoux nods, assisting him with the work.
  The caravan horse is a big draft animal, covered in speckled clumps of hair and reeking of animal-sweat. As the lean harrier's mare approaches, the waggon-horse snorts and flicks his tail, and the speckled horse Alan holds by the reins digs her hooves in for a moment before allowing herself to be yoked. 
  LaRoux takes a seat in the wagon, riding shotgun to Alan, not having used a wagon before.
  As the two of them slowly guide the animals to the edge of the sunken washout, the grenados rock loosely in their crate, and the two are reminded once again of Alan's caution - eggs they might seem, but eggs with coiled snakes inside, ready to strike. From this close, he has no doubt they would both be maimed or killed if one exploded. In his mind's eye he sees the flash of white, the deadly pop. The waggon's wheel goes over a stone and one knocks against another, making a hollow clang.
  Alan slows the wagon's progress, holding up a cautious hand to LaRoux. He's worked as a wagon drover before in his myriad of odd jobs up until now, and the cobwebbed instincts from that experience tell him that caution is advised.
She looks over her shoulder just in time to see a grenade bounce up and begin to roll out of the cart. She quickly steps over the divider and into the bed of the wagon, chasing after it. She's forced to dive out, landing beneath the tumbling grenade and catching it, but landing on a pair of jutting rocks, leting out a cry of agony as she rolls to the side.
  Alan stops the cart entirely, letting out a string of curses half in high speech, the rest in whatever else comes to his tongue, before helping LaRoux to her feet and carefully replacing the deadly explosive.
"Nice catch," he says, openly appreciative.
  Alan takes the moment to poke at the wagon, resecuring the woefully loose crates as best he can.
  The grenados seem resigned to their fate, muttering to themselves with more muted clanks but remaining in their seats as the waggon approaches the edge of the washout. The big draft horse snorts again in protest at being made to walk backward.
  LaRoux groans and gets to her feet, stumbling for a moment before dusting herself off. "Barton always did say I was, though I don't 'spect he'd ever think I was doin' this... well, not exactly this." She says, getting back in with a little limp and placing the grenade carefully.
  As she sets the green egg back in its nest, the pile settles, and she has time to register a hihg-pitched 'klink' sound from under the pile before the back of the waggon explodes.
  LaRoux turns but suddenly dives forward as the explosion echos out, cowering in a ball for a moment before scrambling up over the divide. "Shit! Cut the horses! Cut'em off, let it tumble we need to get off it!"
  Alan 's bad eye gets him off to a late start, but his trained reflexes save his hide - he tucks and rolls off to the side, away from the road, feeling the hot sting of shrapnel - probably wood, thankee Man-Jesus for any feeling at all - and hears LaRoux calling out. Ignoring the pain, he puzzles out what she's saying and shouts back. "No use!  Get to cover 'fore the whole wagon goes!"
  LaRoux draws her hatchet anway and swings, cleaving off some of the wagon as she cuts the horses free hastily before hoping down. "Come on!"
  Alan wastes no time, getting to his feet and sprinting for safe distance - he trusts LaRoux to do similar.   As he bolts upright and hurls himself free of the ground, he hears a high-pitched hissing noise behind him, that rapidly raises to a FWEEEE-
  LaRoux hears it as well, before she is blown off her feet by the swell of heat that blooms up as the world disappears into white.
  Alan 's practiced eye spots out the safest terrain like a sixth sense - swells in the land that will carry away rolling grenados, rocks likely to shield against white-hot shrapnel, trees that might yet catch a mortar shell - but merely running won't be enough.
  Alan spins, drawing his revolver and snapping off two shots, detonating a pair of tumbling mortar shells mid-air
  LaRoux lies unconcious for a moment before a mortar shell detonates against a tree a few hundred feet away from her. She shrieks in pair, rolling to her side as a red hot piece of sharpnel buries itself in her upper right back, the leather of her vest and jacket smoldering for a moment before it stops burning. She stays on the ground but draws out her left iron, her right arm clutching hard to her chest to try and relieve some of the pain.
  For a moment neither one of them can hear. Josef's scream shakes her throat, and Alan looks up at the silent world. A moment later he hears something, her voice at last. A moment after that he can hear the crackling of the tree as it slowly smolders from the mortar's impact.
  Alan considers keeping his distance, for a moment - the better part of his common sense tells him to stay away until the grenades have cooked off, but there's still LaRoux, and...well...she went to bat for him.
  Alan starts moving for the downed pistolero, limping at first but evening out his stride as he moves.

  ================================


Uta stands up from the table, knocking over her chair and runs through the house, attempting to find a way out of the entire situation. She can't afford to have a conflict with the low men, not while she isn't at full strength.
  As the chair bangs against the floorboards Mark's father looks back, and so does the man in the door, as she sprints past them down the hall. "Hey!" she hears the can-toi bark.
  Uta doesn't even hear the Can-toi as she blazes through the living room, making a shamble of the placement of the rug as she finds a rear door, she struggles to disengage the lock for a few moments before hearing it click. She runs.
  The screen door bangs closed as she races out across the lawn behind the house, toward the cornfield across the open lot and the waiting trees beyond it. The door squeaks open and slams against the wall of the house as the can-toi barges out. "Uta!" he shouts at her fleeing back. "Get back here, you Gan-beshitted bitch!" As the food sways uncomfortably in her stomach she can hear his curses keeping pace with her.
  Uta continues to flee, entering into large clearing as she suddenly drops, her foot trapped in a gopher hole. She looks behind in panic, yanking her now shoeless foot from the hole, she continues running, even with the pain of a sprained ankle.
  "I can smell you, by God!" he raves, coming over the ridge behind her. "All things serve the King, Uta! You know that!"
  Uta struggles to regain her distance advantage against her leg that doesn't want to behave. But she finally reaches the edge of the cornfield, pushing the stalks to the side as she makes her way through, hoping the cover of the field will hide her.
  Uta pushes through the corn till she comes to an area where the corn has been already trampled, running through the cleared path, she realises that its been made into a shape. That of an eye. She makes it to the other side of the eye, slowing down due to exhaustion and injury.
  "Uta!" the Low Man shouts, and it's all she can do not to scream, for how close his voice is to her. "Come out, come out, kitty kitty kitty!" he calls in a singsong voice. "Can you feel it, Uta? We're on the Beam right now!"
  Uta feels her emotions wall up, her feet have grown to tired to flee. She turns around, striking out against the low man among the backdrop of the eye.
  "I got you, you b-" he shouts in triumph, a second before Uta suddenly lands hard, digs her feet in and throws all her weight into a perfect punch aimed straight at his nose. She hits, and as her knuckles dig in and slide off she feels the awful touch of his hume face, not skin, it was never skin, and it's alive. He flails sideways and tumbles into the corn.
  "You bith!" he shouts. "You broke my nothe you bith!"
  A hand shoots out like lightning and grabs her ankle, and he pulls her across the dirt, closer to him. "You bith! You'll pay! You'll pay, by God!"
  Uta wasn't ready for him to grab her leg, falling down to his level and turning this into a grapple, she hisses, striking down on his arm and head with her other leg.
  The can-toi howls in pain as Uta's foot stomps down on his arm, and she hears the sharp wet crack of a bone breaking.
  Uta tries to pull her other leg away from the low mans grip, her blood rushing to her head and causing her to see red as she feels the blood flow. A desperate and pained look in her face as she strikes.
  "I'll kill you!" he shouts, swiping a hand at her.
  Uta finally pulls her leg free of the Can-tois grip, barely avoiding his swiping grip as she scurries up. She hobbles off in a direction, any direction, trying to escape from this place.
  She looks back once, seeing a blur of a baby-blue suit rise in the dirt through watery eyes, before she disappears back into the corn.