'Click.' The lock gave way and the trunk flew up with a shaking rattle. Without another thought, I shifted to where my feet were back underneath my torso and kicked myself out from the trunk and into the dewey night of the countryside.
I lay there flat on my bruised and battered face, rocks and dirt painfully annoying the skin, even tearing some away. Shooting upward I managed to jump away from the vehicle, then checked left then right finding no one there. A glance to the car's mirror found no one in the driver nor passenger's seat. The blaring neon-fluorescent lights scream the availability of fuel from the gas station ahead. No more than thirty paces.
It was as I had predicted. A single man stood yawning at the pump, shooting the gasoline into a large can, its orange color having faded away like specks of sand to the wind's breeze. Beyond the man was a small shop where truckers could stop to enjoy a late-night snack while behind that shop was a port-a-potty. The blue sarcophagus had seen better days with no story of a lock on the door and holes poked from the outside converting the box into a foul room for sexual favors. Yet, I dawdled on these few facts for no more than a second because a few feet behind me I saw the glowing lights of "Jennie's Best Pub Diner".
My scarily unfocused sight transformed the near run-down Diner into a beacon of heaven begging for attention. One moment I lay defeated but the next I clambered up to my legs running as fast as they could toward those flickering lights. Those appendages of mine sped at a faster rate than expected, too fast in fact for my previously bounded state forcing my arms to unnaturally guide their sway to the door. Meanwhile, the rope on my hands cut deeper, drawing something from my wrists which ran all the way down my pants to my ankle.
'Huff… Huff… Huff…' They still haven't seen me.
Luck must be on my side.
An open-mouthed grin formed from my mouth. Spittle fell in a sloppy string as I wore my lungs out to their maximum output. The path in front of me had opened up giving way to a hundred feet or so before I reached my destination. There wouldn't be any of them inside of the Diner either, I heard none of their footsteps go near the trunk, so they had to have gone just to the fuel pump and the shop.
Even thinking and being up in the clouds for this long felt not but a minute before I stood in front of the Diner's glaring lights. Never had such a little shitty eatery looked so satisfying in my life. The inside was wrapped like one from the 1960s. The candy cane seats in which the same pattern extended to the paint on the walls and even the logo of a huge breasted blonde chick serving an array of foods. Pushing myself inside I fell against the counter smack dab in front of Jennie herself. The young sexy girl I had been promised aged over the decades becoming an addicted smoker putting on enough weight for the straps to her overalls having threatened to pop off.
To Hell with this false advertising for she was the prettiest woman in my eyes especially when I saw her reach for her cell phone which was out by the register. I rose my bound hands pleading to her, "For the love of God, Buddha, Yahweh, Allah, or whatever the fuck you imagine, call the goddamn cops!" The woman blatantly startled out of her mind then motioned with her hand to one of the other customers inside the place. I turned and saw that the customer was the very police I was begging for. A sheriff even with a badge and all. Despite this, he was getting on in years with gray hair and some gray whiskers floating in his handlebar mustache.
"What's happened, sir?" The officer asked, placing his hand on my shoulder pushing me into one of the seats, another hand on his holster contemplating whether I was a tweaker, or, due to the blood, a killer or victim.
I pointed outside back at the truck rubbing some of that crimson filth to the glass, "The two people by that truck kidnapped me when I left from my concert. They tied me up, but I got out of their car." The officer seemed wary still, but a new focus shone in his eyes. They concentrated on the truck seeing only one man at the pump and the truck's trunk indeed remaining wide open. Those vermillion eyes of his narrowed focusing further into that trunk seeking out a mess of scratches and blood that decorated its innards. His reasoning shot at the wounds upon my wrists and ankles concluding their effort.
"Got one more question for you, sir. Due to the rather peculiar taste of cinnamon I'm getting from you, I assume you are an Evolved, right?" The officer's expression was grim. He had already rationalized the man to be telling the truth but could not rationalize how two regulars could have taken an Evolved captive without so much as a struggle. If there had been one, he would have already gotten a call over the radio looking for this very boy and then had the time to make an early ride to the station instead of eating at Jennie's place for an early breakfast. Unless…
"How did they get you?"
Staring bullets at the officer I didn't give a shit about his questions but jabbing me with a needle, I'm not that strong of one, I entertain people not fight them." Then, a realization dawned on me. The man who had become that hulking beast must also have been an Evolved, but there wasn't as much as an inkling of an aura emanating from that beast.
"I think one of them is also an Evolved."
"What makes you say that?"
Chattering my teeth, I felt an icy grip clench the room. Goosebumps popped up all along my arms. None of the other occupants who now stared in fascination were experiencing this, not the two couples on a presumed double date or the officer or Jennie. I shook my head, resolved from my nerves and spoke, "One of the guys' bodies was changing in front of me, it grew into some type of fucking monster, man. You need to call for backup!"
The fear emanated from me reaching the cop. His fierce eyes widened. The officer wasn't one trained by the rise of Evolved but merely a product. When they had come and needed guidance, he was the first to seek shelter in the bowels of the station away from the grueling work of the Military Police. Resolute in his approach to handling the regulars and their common petty theft. However, fate was always hiding the next moment from him.
The officer nodded then switched his attention to Jennie, "One of them appears to be listening to something while he fills that large can of his. The other probably went for a shit at the store which is why they haven't seen the open trunk yet. When they see it, they're either gonna come here and stir some trouble lookin' for him or scream their heads off and run away. I don't like those odds being 50/50 and all." The officer looked hard at the man at the pump. Large earmuffs stood out on his head along with the can. They were planning for an even longer ride. "Call the station, and Jennie... Did you bring your SUV today?"
The blonde-haired woman answered with a stutter, "I-I-I'm sorry D-Deacon. B-B-Bonnie n-n-needed it for her k-kids. She dropped me off e-e-early and will p-pick me up later." Tears welled up in her eyes just as I felt my burst of adrenaline begin to wear off.
"That's ok, Jennie." The officer's hand was now on her shoulder. "You take this man and hide him in the back somewhere safe. Even if they do come here, they'll do nothing if they don't see him. There's also George, Ted, and Welson at the shop. Too many witnesses for them to get out clean."
He headed for the door and opened it, sounding a bell at the top. Scared, Jennie looked on with a face full of questioning horror. "W-where are you going D-Deacon?"
"If I can close that trunk of theirs without rousing too much suspicion then they won't even realize he's gone. Like I said… I don't like my odds being 50/50."
"Neither Do I." The officer swerved around to be greeted by the slick metal barrel of a handgun which was subsequently pushed into his mouth by hands that resembled the blackness of a void. No tears came from the officer as he realized the intentions of the man. Just the last whimper of a soul being returned to its rightful place.
'BANG!' The cartridge blew out the back of his head yet didn't kill him instantly; it would be an unbearable pain before he eventually bled out on the tiled floor. The bullet leapt out of his skull smashing Jennie in her abdomen while the matter from the officer's cranium splashed about the counter and her apron.
An eerie quietness settled on the Diner. This man dressed in black with a face of darkness and skin to match was undoubtedly the one who drugged me in the alley. The assumptions I and the officer had made were untrue. They didn't care to kill and were not intimidated by the number of people here. I turned my sight back to the pump, finding that the man who had stood there for so long was gone while the light to the shop had just gone out.
The kidnapper stood there; gun still stuck in the man's mouth. He grabbed onto the fat of the officer's belly pulling him away from the gun falling into a slump on the floor. He prodded him with the tip of his snakeskin boot then aimed the gun once more at Jennie's face. She was clutching her side where the last bullet had hit but now was a deer in the headlights as another was lodged into the bridge of her nose.
Her body dropped backward, clattering against the dishes which sent condiments flying to be echoed along with the shattering of plates as she fell, respectively, to the floor. Her back propped against the oven and expression downtrodden as a resulting smear caked the wall.
He had killed his second person inside the Diner and all I could do was shake in utter terror.
Never had I seen a lifeless corpse before.
The eyes… they don't close like the movies. Jennie's eyes simply gave out, becoming rolling balls of a pasty nature. The thing that had lived in her skin was gone and would never return.
'Squeak!' The shoes of one of the men in the couple rang out loudly. He shoved his girl to the cover of the counter that faced away from the man with the gun. In the second the faithful protector had moved to save a life so had the gunman in which he squeezed the trigger three more times. None of them missed leaving two holes around the left side of the man's chest and the last in his forehead like the others.
A harrowing wail accompanied the whizz of the bullets and the 'thud' of the collapsing man's corpse. He came face down, leaving a resounding crack as the result from his nose snapping on the floor. The woman's nerves must have been equally as strong as her lover's because she subsequently dove for the back door not long after her initial fright.
In that briefest of moments, I thought that someone had actually managed to evade the gunman but was answered by a guttural groan that spat out with the ripping of muscle and the snapping of bone.
Whatever monster lay beyond that door I did not care to know. If I saw it my end would be all the more pronounced.
The final couple shielded themselves with the flip of a table only to be outdone by the cartridges within the death dealing pipe. It blasted through the fragile material with two precise cuts, relaxing the weapon's victims to a cooling puddle.
Their lives were decided when I had left that trunk. Why hadn't I just stayed and suffered the consequences?
Why not run for the woods?
Hide?
Fight?
Anything but involve others who had no part to play in this story of mine?
There in that gruesome mess of a diner I had also committed a graver sin. An act that truly demonstrated the essence of my character to myself. Not only was my judgment poor once, but I had not lifted nor said a word to the carnage of the gunman. An unconscious acceptance of these conscious actions was allowed. I resigned myself to this fate producing the resulting mess of those that had no part in this situation. I didn't care for those that truly had more to contribute in life. An elderly cop trying to woo the owner of this dingy eatery, the owner desperately searching for a way to survive in this dwindling economy, and a couple that may have just gotten back from their honeymoon, if the ring on the man's finger was any indication. Forgotten and not even cared about, how was that any different than what those slimeballs had done to me?
'Clack… Clack…' Looking up I saw the man who had drugged me. He had no face to tell me whether he sustained anger or relief and no sweat to show exertion. Merely a clean slate that could not be interpreted. He jostled the butt of his handgun around in his right hand, admired the texture and bluntness, swung the gun back, and let loose a hail of attacks on the side of my skull.
In the first hit I was sent to the floor, blood plastered wide and far that I slipped when trying to stand. His steel-toed boot kicked my side, snapping something in two possibly three parts but gave the intended result of flipping my body onto its back.
I do all I can, which is groan and plead to the ears that do not hear. Then, the second hit from the gun smacked into my jaw, splintering teeth as well as denting the bone of my cheek to an awkward angle. The beginnings of a lake were flooding into the pit under my tongue with its dark sludge.
I coughed, shooting the sludge out expecting to see it splash on the man's slate… yet it didn't. The blood hovered just above my face giving me a clear line of sight of all of its droplets. Suddenly, the droplets opened, exploding out into the petals of sunflowers with an orange core. A slim stem no thicker than a fingernail and no longer than a pinkie finger sprouted from the back of them with a tint of aquamarine as if they were birthed by a clear day's sky.
Each time a kick or rapping from the butt of the gun came to rest on my face, the advancing blood would turn into these flowers which floated from the sky on down covering me entirely. The other man paid no attention to these wonders so they must be something only I can see. A mystery of the universe granted to me…
So beautiful… 'Snap…' The final kick came slicing my mind down the center and ending my train of thought.