Monks

The cold brisk air started mixing in with the warm breeze, as Jon sat on the bus bench watching the Sun slowly set in the distance. He was the only one at the stop. He was sitting, back hunched over, scrolling through his music while listening to some smooth jazz on his phone. The headphones he had on were those big ones, they covered the whole of both ears, as to keep the worlds noises from those soothing beats and tunes.

Jon looked up every minute or so, to see if the bus was coming, but he wasn't in a rush and the weather was pretty mild.

All of a sudden Jon saw a strange figure coming from a bush across the road. He looked left, right and behind him and saw more shadowy figure emerging from a building. It was the Tibetan monks he was avoiding. For years he had been trying to lose them. Traveling the world in search of a place they would not find him, but each time they seemed to track him down...

Jon got up slowly started to walk towards downtown. He knew it wasn't going to be possible to get away from them easily. In the past we fought off one or two to get away, leaving with minor wounds and bruises that took weeks to recover. from This time however, he counted four. Four wasn't a number he could fight and win with hand to hand.

Now running full steam now, Jon took off down the street. Behind him one was running after him, the other three split off to try and catch him off guard and corner him. It was a good plan, but Jon had come up with scenarios for this area in case he was in trouble from something like this.

Pulling out a RF badge he ran into the back ally behind a large fifty story office building and swiped it on the reader next to the door. As it opened he could hear the one monk from behind him closing in, and one more from in-front of him was running at him full steam. As the door closed he could hear the pulling of the closed door.

“Rattle, shake, bang bang...”

It takes 400-500lbs to open a closed magnetic lock door like that, he new they would break in soon so he continued to run to the elevator. He was hoping it would take them a minute or they would go around.

After pressing the elevator button, Jon thought about how he should have taken the stairs in-case they opened the door quicker then he thought, but he knew the elevators in this building were quick and not used to often at this time.

“Boom”

He heard the outside, magnetic lock, door open just as the elevator door opened. He jumped in, hit floor twenty, and hit the closed door button. Jon heard them coming up to the elevator as the doors closed. A brief moment of panic hit him just as he stated to relax and catch is breath. His heart was pounding and body was racing with Adrenalin.

As he slowly started to go up he was praying no one used the elevator before he got further up. He figured they were probably now all in the building. Most likely one or two was taking the stairs, one or two was waiting at the bottom, and one or two was taking the other elevator. It wasn't a great plan but he split them up, that was enough to have some kind of chance.

Once he got to the 20th floor, Jon calmly walked out and started the second faze of his plan. He pulled the fire pull station and watched as people started to all poor into the stairwells.

The elevators here didn't show the monks at the bottom which floor he was traveling too, and the fire alarm would probably make the monks in the stairwells head down. They would take 20 minutes to get up a stairwell full of people if they kept going up. Most likely they would cover the exits and wait for him to leave the building.

The last faze of the plan was the easiest. Jon knew the Janitor in this building. He took a key from his pocket and opened up the unusually large janitors closet. In there was a cooler with enough food for a week, some changes of cloths, toiletries and a cot.

Jon sat back, put his headphones back on, turned on the tunes and plugged in his phone to charge it.

After a week past he came out of the building, dressed as a janitor driving the utility van Jons friend drove to and from work.

He got away this time. He knew though that it was lucky. If he had gotten on that bus, there's no way he could have escaped. Thinking back, what saved him was looking for the bus every few seconds. He probably gave the monks the idea that he knew they were there. So, instead of waiting, they came out to catch him before he could get a head start. If it wasn't for that, they would have caught him.

He also figured they would search the building after the fact, but put his luck in them not being able to go through easily at night or during the day with the alarm systems and security on certain floors. They might have thought he'd escaped during the fire alarm as-well. Whatever the case, tt was a gamble really, one which payed off.

Jon knew now, they would keep coming, and not just in manageable numbers it seemed. It was time for Jon to re-think his lone wolf approach.