Over The Bridge
Randy Noble
Published by Randy Noble at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Randy Noble
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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As I neared the bridge, I became nauseous, a voice in my head telling me to not go over it. It made no sense, but in my sixty years on this planet, I’ve learned one thing for sure: don’t ignore your instincts, they’ll always serve you well, whether you think so at the time or not.
So, I continued on, quietly moving about in my slippers. The wind lightly ruffled my night attire of silk bottoms and a silk long sleeved shirt, with a collar. Not the best clothes for running at night, but there was no time for anything other than this.
My house backed a forest of poplars and birch trees, and I instinctively ran into them when I left the house, after grabbing my cell phone. All my work was done via cell phone. People are not my forte, so staying away from them works better for me.
You could call me wealthy, most people do, but the funny thing about money is that you always want more, to continue the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to. It occurred to me that someone wanted me out of the house because they wanted to steal from me, but I wasn’t about to wait around and find out. I might get killed in the process. Besides, before I was even out of the house I called the cops and they should have been here by now, but I didn’t hear them. So I stood just inside the trees, the breeze quietly rustling the leaves on the branches, near the bridge still able to see the back of my house.
A cigar would have tasted good, but there was no time to grab one, plus the smoke from it might have given me away. It pays to be paranoid, well, at least reasonably paranoid, but not so much that you can’t function. That’s why my security around and in the house was top of the line. I paid someone from another continent to fly in and install it, because I didn’t want any local -- by local, I mean North American -- to know how to circumvent the system.
My actual property was one acre in size, about the size of a football field, with a twelve-foot high concrete wall surrounding its perimeter, barbed wire on top, and an electrified wire running throughout the barbed wire. Warnings were placed everywhere, as well as closed circuit TV cameras, recording 24/7. If you did what I did for a living, you’d do the same thing. Nobody was getting in but me, yet somehow someone did.
But who? And how?
And the bridge? Well, it was there when I moved into the property so I left it because it always seemed quite beautiful even though it served no purpose. It didn’t cover anything, no water I mean, just dirt, leaves, and clumps of grass.
My cell phone rang just then, causing me to almost scream, but I held my tongue.
“Hello,” I said.
“Is this the man of the house?” said the voice over the phone, sounding male, but whispering. Audible though. Very clear.
“It is. Who is this, calling at this late hour on a number no one should have? I call people. People do not call me.” I leaned against a tree, still watching the back of my house. The moon was bright, causing the tinted windows in my dark house to reflect. Looking at the three-story wall of mirrors, I could not see myself in the reflection, probably because I was covered by the shadows of the trees.
“I would be the bearer of bad news, I’m afraid. The one who got you out of bed. The one who needs you to go a little further. The one who will save your life and the lives of countless others if you do exactly as I say, with haste.”
Afraid of being compromised in my position, not my physical position, mind you, but my chosen career, I proceeded with caution.
“Do we know each other?” As I asked this question it occurred to me that I couldn’t see any cop activity because there was no way for them to get in without my direct intervention. Stupid of me not to realize this, but I never had to call them before. My situation with the caller had changed the threat level, and the cops no longer served my purpose and might even threaten my way of life, as in living a life outside of prison. I had to call them off. This all occurred to me very quickly, before the caller had a chance to answer. “You know what, can I call you back, or can you call me back in five minutes?”
“No!” the caller said, no longer whispering. “You cannot hang up. You hang up, you die. It’s that simple.”
The voice sounded very familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Are you threatening me, sir?”
“No, I most definitely am not. There is something else you need to be concerned about.” He continued to no longer speak in a whisper.
“Something or someone? Who are you?”
“Call me Davis.”
My middle name was Davis. Nathan Davis Rothman. I shrugged it off. “Well, Davis, are you going to share, or shall I start guessing?”
“I’ll tell you, but I have to prove something first, or you won’t listen to anything I have to say. My last three calls proved that.”
I was intrigued by this person. Paranoid? You bet your ass. But also intrigued. Most of my days were filled with a handful of phone calls, moving money, and checking on my interests. Very little challenge anymore, but the lucrative side of it all kept me going. “Prove away,” I said, smiling. Damn, I wish I had a cigar.
Davis cleared his throat. I could hear something in the background. It sounded like screaming, but not by just one person. There were several people screaming. My paranoia was getting stronger. “Does my voice sound familiar to you?” Davis said.
“Very.”
“It should. I’m going to spout off some facts about you. Facts that nobody but you could possibly know, except me. Don’t get paranoid either. Nothing I am saying should be misconstrued as a threat. I’m not here to rat you out, to turn you in, or harm you in any way. Yes, your life is in danger, but not by me. Let me help you, and by my helping you, you will help me and countless others. Just listen. Take it all in. And then respond. Ok?”
My instincts told me to listen. What harm could it do? I had a way out. Always a way out, in case someone ever came for me. I would listen to Davis and then decide whether I needed to run for my life. I wondered, at the same time, if the cops would try to get in. Time was short. I needed to respond to them, but hanging up on Davis was also not an option. Another decision born of instinct. I decided to walk to the front of the house, by the gate, and see if the cops were there. If so, I would make something up, tell them it was all a mistake and get rid of them. As I started walking parallel to the house, towards a side walkway, I responded to Davis. “Ok, Davis, I’m listening.”
“Good. That’s all I ask.”
The screaming continued in the background, something I would ask about, but not yet.
Davis continued. “You’re a middle man, Nathan. You find the right person for the job and get paid very well to do it.”
He knew my name and what I did. Not good.
“Whether it’s explosives that are needed or something more subtle, you find the person and make it happen,” Davis added.
Right you are, Davis, my man. And I hadn’t failed yet. I made my way to the sidewalk and started walking up the back cobblestone steps and down the side of the house. It was very dark. Caution was called for, in case Davis was in or around the house. I quietly unlatched the gate at the back of the house, which would lead me to the driveway. My security wall loomed over me on one side and my house on the other. Lucky I’m not claustrophobic.
“I’ll be more specific,” Davis said. “You have twelve hit man contacts, all specializing in hand-to-hand combat, small arms weapons, and interrogation. You have three computer security experts, all experienced with hacks, jacks, and any kind of access necessary for the purposes at hand. You have five explosives contacts who can rig or defuse pretty much anything between them all.”
It was impossible, of course, or seemingly so. He couldn’t know all that. Not one of my contacts knew of the others, and they may have been used by other middle men, but even those others did not know me. I used a different fake name for every one of my contacts. There was no way for any one of them to know who I really was, because nobody knew.
And the where? Well, that’s tougher. I used a cell phone for everything, which was under false identification that did not point to me, anywhere near me. The real issue was tracing. Even with fake ID on a phone, a so-called disposable phone with a fake ID can still be traced to within a couple hundred feet of the tower the cell is using, which was too close for me. Suffice it to say that I have technology in place to confuse even the most adept tracing software.
It was hard not to respond to Davis, but the journey to the front of my house kept me busy. Slow going for someone as paranoid as I am.
Davis continued his facts, and they were most definitely on point, as I neared the gate that would take me to the front of my house. I was well aware I was over my three minute rule but there was no time to worry about that just yet, even though a little voice inside my head suggested the idea of being set up to be taken down. My instincts said otherwise. They said to listen.
“Now I’ll get personal,” Davis said. “You are Nathan Davis Rothman, and that is your actual name, which you wanted because you were tired of being someone else, and you didn’t want your whole life to be a lie.”
Now Davis was downright bang on, on my own thoughts, and I was starting to think I hit my head in the house somewhere and was lying on the floor unconscious, because there was no way anyone anywhere knew exactly what I had thought.
I quietly unlatched the front gate and made my way past a semi-circle driveway made of cobblestones, past my four-door garage, and towards the front iron gate.
Davis continued, and I let him. “You were born on July 5, 1947, in Toronto, and were an only child, and a fatherless one. Your mother committed suicide when you were three, and you ended up bouncing back and forth between four foster families. You lost your virginity at thirteen to a fifteen-year-old girl, Rosa Plimpton, who always smelled like onions, and who forced herself upon you by her sheer weight. When you ejaculated too early for her liking, she beat you in the face until both your eyes swelled up. You didn’t have sex again for eight years.”
Wow, was all I could think. Impossible. What the hell was going on? I stopped before I got too close to the gate, because I could see two police cars and didn’t want to deal with them yet. It seemed like Davis was waiting for me, because he stopped talking. “It seems you probably know everything there is to know about me, even my own thoughts. Unless you want me to hang up this phone, you best be getting to the point of all this, because I don’t plan on being Nathan much longer.”
“I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to hang up, and you have to promise to hear me out, or you will surely die as I am so very close to doing.”
Through clenched teeth, I said, “I promise nothing. Tell me now.”
“Tell me what time you have, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Why? So you can tell what time zone I’m in?”
“Just tell me! I already know your name, your phone number, and everything else about you including where you live.”
True enough. “It’s zero three hundred and twelve minutes.”
“I’m looking at the same silver watch with a black face that you are, and I have zero six hundred and one minute.”
That was it for me. I grabbed my watch off my wrist and slammed it onto the concrete, with the phone in the crook of my neck and shoulder, and then held the phone again. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Temper, Nathan. It’s why you couldn’t hit anymore, and why you decided to move up in the business by taking out your middle man. I’m not doing this for my amusement, and were our positions reversed you would do the exact same thing, believe me.”
I took a deep breath and relaxed. From the sound of Davis’s voice, he seemed calm to me, and I could not detect any inflections that would indicate he was lying to me. Plus, again, instinct was kicking me in the ass that he was on the level, even though sense and reason screamed otherwise. I waited for the reveal, as I moved by the side of the garage, out of view of the gate, wondering what the cops were doing.
Davis sighed. “My name is Nathan Davis Rothman, born on July 5, 1947, an only child, fatherless because of a whore for a mother. I used to kill for a living, and now I run the killers for considerably more money.”
I said nothing. What could I say? It was ridiculous, but at the same time the only thing that made sense.
Davis continued. “I am you, just under three hours from now, calling from the very same phone you hold in your hand now, because it’s the only number I could get, and you’re the fourth version of myself that I’ve called, the other three hanging up before I could tell them everything. You’ve come this far. Just go a little further. This is just as crazy for me as it is for you, and, to lighten the load, you should probably continue to call me Davis.”
I was completely calm, and if I thought about all of it I probably would have hung up. What I did think about was what was different about this version of myself than the other three that hung up. “Continue, Davis.”
“It’s going to get harder to believe, if you can believe that, but I swear on . . . on everything that it’s true. Something dark is coming, about two hours from now, your now, and if you don’t act quickly you will end up where I am and soon after that you will surely be dead, among many, many others. It’s the bridge, Nathan, the bridge in the backyard. I believe it’s very very old. If you take a close look, it looks like it was just built. The stone is immaculate, no scuffs, chips, or wear from weather, no mold, absolutely nothing defacing it.”
BOOM!
Amongst the continuing screams over the phone, a loud banging sound erupted.
“Jesus!” Davis said. “I -- I think they’re coming back with more. I don’t have much longer. They’ve already eaten a few of us.”
I didn’t know what to say to Davis, mostly because I wasn’t sure if I believed any of it. It was all so surreal.
“Go, Nathan!” Davis sounded panicked . . . afraid. And to hear your supposed future self in fear when it’s not something I have felt since my first couple of hits years and years ago was very unsettling. “Go and destroy the bridge, and for Christ’s sake don’t walk over it at any point. It --”
BOOM! Another loud, pounding sound, like a wrecking ball slamming into a rock wall, came over the phone again.
“HOLD IT! HOLD IT!” Davis screamed, but not at me. “Nathan, there’s no time. We have them barricaded out, but they’re coming through.”
“What? What the hell is coming through? Where the hell are you?”
The screaming got louder over the phone and several shouted garbled words could be heard. People, and there sounded like a lot, screamed and yelled, but it was all unintelligible.
“Destroy that fucking bridge!”
BOOM! BOOM!
Davis was getting harder to hear. The din was incredible.
“Obliterate it, Nathan. It’s just --”
BOOM!
“-- a feeling, but --”
BOOM!
“-- I think it can repair itself.”
BOOM! CRACK!
“J-Jesus! They’re coming through.” I heard a clacking sound, and was pretty sure Davis dropped the phone, or it was knocked out of his hand. The connection remained, nevertheless, and the din continued, with noises I hadn’t heard before, and can only now describe as high-pitched screeches like a hundred knives grinding down a piece of metal. I had to pull the phone away from my ear, it was so horrible, as the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I felt goose bumps, and I even held my breath for a second not realizing I was doing so until I had the phone away from my ear. After shaking my head for a moment, I brought the phone back up to my ear, a little farther away than usual, but I couldn’t hear anything. I brought the phone right up to my ear, but there was nothing. The connection was lost.
I needed help. Explosives-type help. But to bring a contact to my own house, well, that complicated things. I had to pick someone expendable, someone I could do without.
First, the cops.
I walked around the garage and towards the gate to see what the cops were up to, and when I got in view, I could see two of them were sitting in their car, and the other two were outside their vehicle. One was trying to reach me through my intercom, and the other by phone -- my home phone. Even my gate was electrified so they had no way to get in and were trying to reach me.
After explaining that it was a false alarm, and that I panicked when I heard a lamp crash to the ground inside my house, they then satisfied their better judgment by searching my house from top to bottom, with my approval of course. While they did that, I made a phone call.
Instead of the most expendable asset, I went for the closest to me, who, according to my contact, would take an hour and forty-five minutes to get to my location. I expressed the urgency of the job to be done, and advanced him more than the usual for the haste needed. I told him the house was unoccupied for the night and to expect no resistance. Of course, I gave him the gate access code. The great thing about my contacts was that they trusted my information and did not question it.
It was going to be close, but he said he could set up quickly and remote detonate, which he would do from a back exit, as I explained not to leave from the front and gave him my exit. My exit, which of course was there for the sole purpose of escape if anyone ever came for me. I would meet him there.
As the cops finished up, I smoked a cigar, thinking about the noises on the phone when I talked to my future self and that raised my hackles again. And then there was the lamp that broke, the lamp that caused me to flee to the backyard without a gun in tow, just my cell phone.
I had become too comfortable, and lazy, in the last few years. I used to always keep a gun by my side, but over time, I eventually put my weapons away and forgot about them. Sloppy of me.
But the lamp. What the hell knocked it over? It did not fall of its own accord. Did a previous version of myself, from an earlier phone call by Davis, knock it over while he talked with Davis? But then wouldn’t this previous version be me? Why no memory of any of the previous phone calls if Davis did call? Or maybe they weren’t all previous. Davis didn’t specify. Maybe they happened after my now. It made no sense, but then again I didn’t understand how all that time crap worked. Different timelines maybe. Who knows? If I could call myself from a few hours in the future to past versions of myself, what wasn’t possible?
An hour later, after the cops were gone and I had smoked my cigar to full enjoyment, I pulled a nine-millimeter pistol out of hibernation, with a silencer, and ten clips of ammunition. And my forty-five, silver plated handgun, no silencer, and twenty clips of ammunition.
I had a secret room in the basement, which could only be accessed by a release button hidden by a small gargoyle bookend on my fireplace mantel. The fireplace was fake, electric, and when the button was clicked, a panel slid open under the other bookend. I entered in a six-digit code before the fireplace rotated ninety degrees, and then crawled into a little ten-by-eight room, which contained several handguns, rifles, and knives on metal shelves lined along gray, brick walls. It was like a prison cell.
After I grabbed my weapons of choice, I set a digital timer, built into the wall, for five-fifteen in the morning. When I first moved into the house, I wired it. It would be a sight to see, even over the huge walls. There would be nothing left, I made sure of that. Overkill on my part, but necessary to wipe out any trace of me. Before the explosion, the timer would initiate a superheating of the weapons room first, the walls solid steel -- an oven. The room would heat up to about 1500 degrees centigrade, and everything in it would melt, including the walls, setting off a chain reaction of explosions.
I was dressed at this point, wearing cargo pants, a t-shirt, and a jacket that concealed two gun holsters, one with the nine and the other with the forty-five. All my clips were stowed in little pockets sewn into the insides of the jacket. I packed light, keeping everything in a small backpack, and didn’t bring any money as it was all safely stored in several banks around the world.
Leaving my house for the last time was not difficult, and a surge of energy ran through me for what lay ahead. Maybe death by some unknown, and even that brought a smile to my face. I didn’t realize how bored I had become, how complacent. And that would not do.
My doppelganger was still very fresh in my mind, and I had no doubt he spoke the truth. When I walked by the bridge, I steered clear by ten feet, feeling uneasy even at that distance. I took a really good look at it as I passed by, using a flashlight I brought with me from the house. But, I didn’t need it. The bridge seemed to almost glow, like it was illuminated from within. It was all made of stone, formed to make an arch. If I had to guess, because I’m no expert, it was made of granite or limestone. For an old bridge, it looked like all the rocks were cut to shape. Its length was quite short at maybe fifteen feet, and wide as it was long. There were raised stones on the surface, on either side, a foot high, to act as the edge markers. I never really studied it before. I saw it, noticed it, but never focused on it.
Just like Davis said, it was immaculate. There were no flaws, marks, or growth of any kind on it. It was quite beautiful. I made my way past it to a shed fifty feet behind the bridge, perfectly in line with it, built there for aesthetic appeal, as much as a shed can be aesthetic. The shed was built with rock as well, similar to the bridge, except there was wear on it from weather. The door was solid oak.
Trees surrounded the backyard, but none grew between the bridge and the shed. I would have a perfect view of my explosives expert when he showed up.
Inside the shed I grabbed a pair of night vision goggles sitting on a shelf. After I strapped them on my head, I looked around the room, which had nothing stored in it other than the shelf and the goggles. There were no windows, but there was a steel trap door that was three inches thick and secured by a keypad lock.
I went to the shed door, slid a panel over, revealing a small, rectangular opening, and waited, watching the bridge, the goggles revealing everything.
Fifteen minutes later, a short, chubby man, bald, bearded, carrying a duffel bag, walked up to and beside the bridge. Not at all how I pictured the voice to a face, but it rarely works out that way. I had instructed him not to walk on the bridge and he listened. It took but a few minutes and he had planted several explosives underneath and along the sides, more than enough. It had to be. He walked towards the shed and I closed the peephole, backed against the wall, my hand on the nine-millimeter still in its holster.
It had been years since I pulled the trigger on anyone, and my heart started to beat hard in my chest. Was it guilt? Nervousness? Couldn’t be. It never happened before, not since I first started out. Who was this man walking towards me? Did he deserve to die just to assuage my paranoia? Fuck! I was thinking too much. Instinct. Always instinct. But, I was getting mixed signals. What to do?
The door swung open, and a man I had made millions off of paused in the doorway.
Without hesitation, I drew out the nine-millimeter in one smooth, swift motion, clicking off the safety as I did, and shot him twice. One in the heart and one in the head. He didn’t have a chance. I had the safety re-engaged, and the gun back in its holster before his corpse hit the ground with a dull thud, grabbing the detonator from his right hand before he did.
I pulled the night goggles off and tossed them to the floor.
It was a fancier detonator than I had seen back in the day, more complicated, a little like a PDA device. It had a touch screen menu system, and I quickly found an option to detonate, using a key sequence once the option to detonate was activated, which I didn’t have. My own stupid fault. Not thinking about newer technologies, I assumed he’d have a simple detonation device, but got an advanced, secure one instead.
I was well aware of a wonderful, helpful fact that solved my problem. Electric detonators, when set on fire, will explode, and will set off the larger explosive train of devices. Either that or static electricity or just the right radio frequency. I didn’t feel like sliding around in my socks on carpet building up static only to set off the detonators at close range, and I had no idea about what radio frequencies would set it off. No. Fire was the way to go.
I wondered how much time I had, knowing it was very short.
Hope wanted the explosive devices to be chained together so I only had to set one detonator on fire, but reality, especially after seeing the detonation device, said otherwise. Probably a different frequency setting for each detonator, triggered by the device, meaning I would have to light every detonator.
I grabbed the legs of the corpse and dragged him as quickly as I could, which wasn’t very quick at all, towards the bridge. By the time I got him there, I was panting and wheezing, but I had no time to waste. If I did, I would have taken the body into the room behind my fireplace. My forehead beaded with sweat.
Leaving the body a few feet from the bridge, I ran around it and made my way to the garage. When I got back to the bridge, I had two jerry cans of gas. All in all there were ten explosives and a detonator for each.
Very carefully, and without spilling gas on the explosives themselves, I poured gas on all ten detonators, never walking on the bridge to do it. There was a tremendous pressure around the bridge, like I could be crushed at any moment. The air was thick, almost palpable.
None of the detonators were touching the ground, so I had no way to run a stream of gas away from any of them. I had to light them all one at a time, and I had no idea how long it would take for one that was on fire to explode. No choice. I got out my lighter and started lighting them, singeing some skin and hair on my knuckles while I did, wanting to scream out, but I held back through gritted teeth.
My hands were shaking by the time I got to the last few detonators, and it wasn’t because I was in pain. Something was coming. I could feel it. I just didn’t know how or exactly when, but soon.
On the last detonator, I wondered how long it had been since I lit the first one. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. I lit the last detonator, and as I stood up to run to the shed, and away from this nightmare, all the air sucked towards the middle of the bridge, and I couldn’t draw any oxygen for a breath.
The detonator fires puffed out of existence, like a candle in the wind, and my heart skipped a beat. Before I had a chance to move, the air all came rushing back as a thunderous CRACK! exploded into the night, and I was bowled over by a torrent of high pressure.
My ears were ringing as I sat sprawled on the ground, just a few feet from the bridge, a tear opening just above the middle part over the surface of the bridge. The tear must have been twenty feet high, and red light, maybe from fire, emanated from it.
Any doubt that was in my mind completely vanished, and for the first time in a long time I felt my life was in danger. I got up and, as much as I didn’t want to, went towards the bridge to relight the detonators. Instead of going right for the detonators, I opted to take a hoped-for quicker approach. I took off the cap on a jerry can, and poured its contents underneath the detonators, pooling the liquid as much as I could. I ran around the other side, staring into the red of the opening, seeing nothing, but feeling a tremendous heat, not searing, but very warm. I did the same thing with the other jerry can, on the other side.
I light my cigars with wooden matches so I always carried a box of matches in my pocket. As I scored the side of the match box with the tip of a match, a dark shape came through the red opening, towards my house. And then, one after the other, more came out, like shadows, but they were three-dimensional, featureless. I could make out clawed hands and feet, some had tails. There were shadows with round heads, and others with heads like a wolf, with long snouts, and I could see pointy teeth when they opened their mouths. They were completely black, like it consumed them, and there were no eyes that I could see, no texture, just smooth black, featureless creatures, most of them just over ten feet tall, and some a little smaller, but not by much. They made no sound, and smelled putrid, like rotting flesh.
My mouth gaping, I dropped the match without realizing I had done so, until it was too late.
The ground lit up in a blaze of fire, and by some miracle the creatures did not notice me before, but now they did. Several of them turned in my direction, and immediately gave chase. I ran towards the shed, not looking back. They made no sound, not even when they moved, but they felt close. My back kept getting warmer and warmer, and their smell stronger. My knees screamed at me to stop. So close. I reached for the door, and as I grabbed the handle, something got the back of my jacket.
I wriggled out of my jacket and through the door, slamming it shut and locking it.
BOOM!
Something crashed into the door.
I wondered if the fire could reach the detonators at all, and if so, how long it would take for the detonators to explode and set off the explosives. If they didn’t all go off at the same time, and others exploded, I wondered if some would not go off at all, and if the few that did would be enough to destroy the bridge.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Crashes were coming all around the shed now, as a bunch of the creatures must have been trying to get in, which they would before long. Dust shook from the walls as the pounding continued.
There was nothing left for me to do. Going outside would be suicide. I had to hope the explosives would go off and do the job. I needed to move, and hope the creatures couldn’t pursue. Assuming bullets would not harm them at all, I didn’t even draw a weapon. Instead, I ran to the floor door, punched in the key code, and the door hissed open slightly. I pulled the door all the way up, and started to climb down the metal steps there, fluorescent lights flickering to life as I did.
As I started to close the door behind me, half of the shed was smashed to pieces as something big swooped through. Before I let the door slam down, I caught a glimpse of a large, black hand the size of a car. Stone crashed down on top of the door, and I didn’t wait around to see what happened next.
A large, concrete hallway lay before me, straight all the way through to -- believe it or not -- a get-away car hidden in an underground concrete bunker. All part of the work done for my house by the people I hired outside the continent. The hallway stretched half a mile, lit all the way with fluorescents. I moved at as fast a pace as I could. Out of shape, because of laziness, but there was no stopping so I paced myself, probably slow by a young person’s perspective, but it felt like I was running a hundred meter dash.
As I ran down the hallway, sweating buckets, I heard the floor door, from the shed, rip off its hinges, and that’s when I ran all out, as hard as I could, which, as I feared, did not last long.
I stopped, bending over, almost collapsing to my knees as I wheezed and panted, my lungs burning. I walked backward now, slowly at first, but then as fast as I could, still gasping for a decent gulp of air. I drew both guns out, and kept them to my sides, ready for what I knew was coming.
Whatever was coming down the hallway was so large it was taking out the fluorescent lights as it moved. There was a good distance between myself and the darkness, but the darkness was coming at me faster than I was walking backward.
The timing between the lights getting smashed was becoming quicker and quicker.
As much as it hurt, I turned and ran. My lungs were on fire and my legs felt like rubber, but I pictured the end result of getting through the door and into the bunker and thought of nothing else.
Exploding fluorescents behind me got louder and louder as the door in front of me got closer. Just a hundred more feet.
A very loud explosion rang out, shaking the tunnel. The lights flickered.
Flames purged through the opening on the shed end, but I only caught glimpses of it because the dark creature blocked out most of the fire. The thing coming at me was big and I think hunched over.
The flames lasted only seconds. I prayed that the bridge was destroyed, but how many got through even if it was? If the bridge was destroyed, there was no way for them to go back, probably. What the hell did I know, and what could I do about it? I’m not sure I wanted to do anything about it. Yes, I was a hit man, and yes I did run assassinators, but I was not a sociopath, nor a psychopath. I didn’t want to see the world burn. I wanted people to live freely -- good people anyway. The bad ones could go to hell, and, I hope, that’s what I facilitated during my long career.
I was going to run again, but I noticed that the lights were no longer exploding. Either the creature had stopped or went back the other way. I pressed on, backward, waiting for the darkness to keep coming at me, but nothing happened. Was it playing with me, like a cat with a mouse?
I made it to the door without further incident, and quickly punched in a key code. Two metal rods unlocked from their home inside the thick, metal door, almost as thick as a safe door. I opened it, lights flickered on, and I climbed a black, spiral staircase, eventually making my way to a metal trap door with a keypad. Once through, lights flickered on to reveal a small concrete bunker with just enough space to hold a small jeep and a couple of metal shelves holding grenades, rifles, handguns, knives, a pair of binoculars, and an RPG launcher.
Above the jeep, the ceiling was made of metal.
As I considered what else to bring with me, the door below in the tunnel slammed open. It sounded like something very large, larger than the opening, came through.
No time.
I grabbed a grenade, opened the trap door, seeing only blackness, pulled the pin and dropped it down, immediately closing and sealing the door.
Something was making its way up the concrete walls, the stairs sounding like they were being wrenched every which way. It was likely too big to climb the stairs, which was good, but the bad thing was it was forcing its way through anyway, which didn’t bode well for me if it could force its way through a solid metal staircase. It sounded like a train wreck in progress.
I threw a grenade launcher onto the passenger side seat, along with a pair of binoculars. As I jumped into the driver’s side seat of the jeep, I had the key in the ignition before I fully landed.
The grenade went off, shaking the walls of the bunker. A cloud of dust rose up from the explosion, washing over me.
With any luck, the stairs would collapse, and the thing coming for me would have no way up other than digging its way up the side walls of concrete, which, no doubt, would not be a problem.
The jeep was running. I flicked a custom switch I built into the dashboard, which caused the hydraulic lift the jeep was sitting on to lift up, the ceiling above opening in two halves.
A creature burst through the trap door, creating a bigger hole just to come through, chunks of concrete spraying in different directions. I caught just a glimpse of it as I made it to the surface. It hammered underneath the lift and shook the jeep, but I was off the next second, driving on a dirt road. As I cleared the lift, three more loud successive bangs came from below. Enough was enough. I flicked another custom switch on the dash, and the ground shook as an explosive ball of fire destroyed the bunker and the tunnel that led to it. I lined explosives all the way from the shed to the bunker.
My watch told me it had already started. My fireplace storage arsenal would be well on its way to melting, and soon, many more explosions would rip through the night air. Would they be enough to take more of the bridge out, if necessary? I couldn’t chance it. Doubting my bunker explosion killed the creature, but hoping it would delay the creature’s pursuit, I pulled up to the highest vantage point on the road, and could see down below to the back of my house. I looked through the night-scoping binoculars I had thrown on the seat beside me, and could see that the bridge had indeed been destroyed, but the creatures remained, and there were several. I wondered how many I couldn’t see. The bridge did not appear to be rebuilding itself, but I wasn’t about to give it the chance.
I pulled the launcher over, also with night vision, and lined it up. It was a fair distance, but the RPG found its target, and, at the very least, spread the bridge out even more than it already was. It would have to do. I’m not a stick-around-and-make-sure-everything-is-okay kind of guy. I did my part. Followed my last orders, from myself no less.
As I drove away, I saw fireballs appear in my rearview mirror. The overkill was complete. The house would have been destroyed, along with any trace of me. The creatures, whatever they were, were someone else’s problem now. If they couldn’t get back to their home, then maybe there was another bridge somewhere else in the world that they could use. Would people die? Probably. Not my problem and not my fault. All I wanted was to get far, far away, and that’s exactly what I did.
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Thanks for reading my story. I really hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. I would really appreciate a review or a quick rating if you would be so kind.
Thanks again for reading and I hope you were entertained.
Randy Noble