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Adventures In Living With The Mythical |
| This would look like a well thought out competent plan if you glanced at it on the surface. Every step taken seemed as if it was a methodic point on a well-drawn map that perhaps Kevin McCallister had painstakingly done in crayon just before the Wet Bandits arrive to rob his house. But that wouldn’t be the fear induced, knee jerk reality of the situation that Donte had been dealt. In truth, some people don’t think in these situations; they just leap to the next rock in the brook and hope they land without getting wet. Donte is one of those people. All the thinking is done in the air after the leap, and not necessarily pre-calculated. Not to say that this is bad, it works for him after all. Usually. His first idea was to go to the address that was given in the box the human heart had been delivered in. The simple grain store house out near the edge of the county. By now there was police lights all over it, crime scene tape and several detectives who were standing a corner “having a coffee break” according to Donte. He didn’t even slow down when he saw it, just drove on by trying his best to look like he was late for work. As he drove down the road, glancing in his rear view every few seconds or so to ensure that he hadn’t alerted anyone to his presence, he made a call to Eleanor. “What’d ya get?” “A bunch of cops and an old building surrounded by trees. No way I’m getting in there to snoop around without a badge. Could you send me a pin of where the signals died at?” Keys clattered in the background. “Should get it now,” she replied. “Since I have you on the line, is there any way you can give me the names and locations of everyone who was within a one block radius of this place at that time?” Donte put as big of a smile in his voice as he could, hoping that Eleanor would come back with ‘too easy, give me a bigger challenge.’ Instead, he got ‘Sure! Let me just wave my magic wand. How about a pot of gold while I’m at it? That would be impossible. Well, not technically impossible, but improbable and let’s just say it would take a team several days to retrieve those kinds of results. Plus, we’d need to get inside the phone company itself, not to mention have someone inside the government to,” “Okay, okay! I’m sorry I asked, jeez. Is there a way then to hack into the phone of someone who maybe was there? Perhaps see where they’ve been?” “Perhaps,” she said. “They’ll need to have their blue tooth on, and I need you to get your phone close for a bit. Say, thirty seconds should do the trick.” “Challenge accepted,” he said. “But make sure they’re not looking at their phone,” Eleanor replied. “Already said challenge accepted,” Donte smiled. “Trust me.” Then hung up. The distance between the two locations took Donte some time. He said it was another ‘tiny Midwest town’, the ‘kind you’d see Andy walking along with a fishing pole in’. So, for the purpose of this blog, we’ll say the kind of place that has a fast-food avenue, a few stop lights, maybe a movie theatre or an old drive-in rotting away on the outskirts somewhere. When you have enough experience, you can begin to see werewolves and vampires mixed among the general population. Donte, having spent most of his life living with the Rodriguez family, could spot a werewolf blind drunk on a cold dark night, so to speak. So, it wasn’t hard for him to see one at a hardware store, another at a local fast-food place (no not Mitch), nor another pair sitting nearby in a Wal-Mart at the end of the parking lot, like they were waiting for someone. The ones at the Wal-Mart were who Donte went for cause, according to him, ‘They were the only ones driving those expensive SUVs. Everything else was normal boring cars.’ They appeared to be wearing suits, and after all, who but ‘The Nobility’ or the Feds ever wear a suit around in Small Town USA. He took a deep breath, then exhaled it to calm his nerves and called Eleanor. When he was within earshot of the vehicle, he started talking. “I told you those GPS things don’t work for me,” he grumbled, then walked over to the vehicle. He stepped up on the curb, leaned into the vehicle hanging his phone down, and smiled at the guy driving. “Could you get me to the interstate? My girl is pissed at me, and,” A pistol flashed in his face. Donte threw up his hands, shouting “Woah! It don’t need to be like that now,” making sure to drop his phone in the guy’s lap. The guy began to roll up the window. He stuck his hand inside, “Hey, let me get my phone back at least, come on now!” The door opened, and the guy stepped out, still holding the pistol. Donte smiled wide, “Wow, you’re big,” he said almost subconsciously. “Look, all I want is the interstate, or at least my phone.” The big guy pointed down the road, “Keep going. Take a left at the light, Donte” he growled and threw Donte’s phone back at him. “If I catch you snooping around again, I’m going to forget you’re human.” He then stepped back into the car and slammed the door hard enough to rock the vehicle. Donte walked back to his car, took two deep breaths, then put his phone to his ear. “Tell me you got it.” Eleanor smiled through the phone, “Too easy. And the interstate? Really Donte? He made you in thirty seconds.” “Well, you said you only needed thirty seconds, you got thirty seconds,” he smiled back. Keys clattered in the background for a second. “Okay he’s got two locations saved on the phone. You’re getting both,” she hummed, “And one of these is a restaurant….” Another hum… “And the other is, well, it’s the place.” Donte’s smile grew wider as he pulled away from the Wal-Mart, “You sound so certain.” “Trust me, when you see it, you’ll see why I’m certain.” The address Eleanor sent him, as well as the satellite pics she got from the internet were of a property just on the other side of that county. An elaborate sprawling gated community type place that was under construction. A wall had been built around it. A large sprawling new home, and according to Donte ‘this old one that Crash would love’. The kind that seemed like it wouldn’t be out of place in a black and white monster movie. He drove around it, only seeing the skeletal frames of a few homes peaking above the wall and the show house from the gate. There was a forest nearby, but a good bit of it had been cleared away to make way for the wall, leaving an open space of twenty feet or so around the entire complex. And it was a complex. “Looked like Batman lived there,” Donte would tell me later. “I could have tried to climb the wall I guess, but I’m not Batman.” So, instead he pulled off the shoulder of the road, in his car, and began examining the pictures Eleanor sent over when his phone rang. “Get off the highway now,” Eleanor shouted. “Why,” Donte asked, climbing back into his car. “The blunder twins are heading your way.” He drove on by down a side road, and parked it away from the gate. Then slowly began making his way towards it, walking along the side of the wall. It was dark by then, the sun setting in the distance, cast enough of a shadow to hide his form. By the time he got to the gate, it was already closing. He raced inside, pulling his pistol from his harness and crouched low, holding it in the low ready position as he came upon the vehicle in the driver’s blind spot. Crouched low, he moved as quickly as he could around the vehicle and popped up at the driver’s door. The pistol barked in Donte’s hand. He caught the driver by surprise snapping his head snapped back and to the side. The passenger snarled the word “mongrel” as he started raising his own pistol. Donte brought his pistol down on him, firing once more. The passenger’s head snapped back, then fell back into the seat. The driver’s body slumped forward, causing the horn to shout for a moment before Donte shoved him to the side. “Shit, Donte. Out in the open, too.” He snarled. Staring at the carnage, for a moment, he looked around. No one at the house was coming out. No one at the old house was coming out either. He breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back colliding into a wall of muscle and fur. The silver fur glistened almost in the dying light. So did the creature’s fangs. “Shit,” Donte growled, staring up at him. |
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