Since I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with a place to start, I just started writing. This is what came out. Questions for you: Is this a good place to open the story? Does it hook you in/keep you interested? And the biggest question of all: would you keep reading?
--
It was raining. Not a downpour, not even a hearty thunderstorm. It was more like walking through a dense cloud. Duncan Orald stood at a street corner, watching his general store burglarized in front of him, and all he could think about was how everything seemed wet. He was wearing full rain gear, for the man was old, wizened as he would say, and was always prepared for rain. He had called the police, of course, and they were taking longer than usual to show up. His shop wasn't that far into the Badland Belt to be outside of the United State's capacity to police, but if was far enough that the police didn't much like exercising their authority. They didn't take as much pleasure in beating the criminals as they used to.
While watching the three enter his store, Duncan estimated his chances of fighting them off. He sized up the leader, the two followers. One of the lackeys looked like he could hold his own, the other was just big and stupid. The leader was tall, walked like he knew how to reach the pistol he wore on his back. He also always kept his left foot closer to his center of gravity, betraying the fact that he carried a back-up weapon in his boot. He was too confident for his own good. Duncan figured he could take the two oafs, or the leader, but not all three. He was an old man after all.
Duncan cursed the rain again. It didn't need to rain this much. No one was farming this time of year, and those who were subsistence farming had their crops in green houses. It was November, after all. Maybe the damn machine had broken down again, Duncan thought. It was all to real a possibility, and since no one was going to fix it, it meant a cold winter was brewing. In his estimation, Mother Nature shouldn't be caged, and when she is, she'll find a way out and be more pissed at her self-righteous captors. Duncan noticed that he was becoming more pessimistic as the years wore on.
He finally heard a siren off in the distance. The three would-be-robbers were almost done cleaning out his register. One had discovered a safe and was busy trying to find a data port through which he could crack the code. None of them heard the police coming, despite their over-loud engine and wailing siren. Duncan laughed and thought about warning the thieves himself. His thoughts wandered as the car, an Enforcer car-tank hybrid, drove up and pulled to a stop outside his store. He knew there was no backdoor to his store, but the robbers did not, and once they saw the Enforcer pull up, they scrambled to find the back door. That was a stupid mistake, Duncan thought, a poorly planned heist. The leader looked frantic almost immediately, and the other two lost their cool completely. The police shouted into the store for the three to come out slowly, with their hands clasping their own forearms. The crooks realized their were doomed, and they did as they were told.
Duncan shook his head, let out a long breath. He was disappointed, but continued to watch as they were arrested. The leader even tried to run, though he again showed his lack of planning and just took off in a random direction. He failed to notice the two sharp-shooters hidden in the shadows across the street, and was shot with a restraining bolt immediately. Duncan shuddered with remembered pain. It would be a while before that man walked again.
He wondered how long it would take to meet someone interesting. He set his jaw. If the rumors he had heard were true, then there was such a person out there, and this person was moving west. Duncan shivered, he moved back into the street behind him and went back to his little shack. It wasn't large, but at least it was dry. He cursed the weather as he walked.
Duncan groaned as he entered his sham of a home. The shack was hardly large enough for his to stand uptight. He had a small camping stove in one corner, his bedroll along the far wall, and a knee-high desk next to the door. On the desk were several computer monitors, a keyboard, and a small touch pad input device. On the whole, his home was a mess. There were mostly empty soup cans littered around the stove, the newest can still sitting on the small griddle with a fork in it. Clothes were strewn around his bed, which was merely a camping mat with some dirty blankets balled on top. The walls were thin, but kept the cold out well enough. The roof did its job and prevented water from pouring on Duncan while he slept, which seemed to be the only time he was here. The desk, however, was immaculately clean. It was as if all the dirt that was supposed to be on the desk was exorcised and thrown two-fold on the rest of the house. There was no dust on the monitors, nor around the keyboard. Even the cable that ran from the keyboard and out of the house was clean.
Duncan hunches over his desk and types on the keyboard briefly. The three screens flashed to life almost immediately, casting a blueish light on the rest of the room. He grunted as he stared at the left-most display, then his gaze travelled across the others. He kept his gaze on the screens as he took of his coat and boots. Then he sat at his desk, still watching the monitors. He remained that way, occasionally tapping on his keyboard, for several hours.
There was a knock on the door. Duncan was shocked to sudden alertness, and his hand found a knife before the grunt escaped his mouth. He silently cursed his age, then glanced at the screen on the right. There was a second knock. On the screen was a video of the front of his house. There were seven armed police waiting with stun guns at the ready down the alley that led to his door. He noted that they sent a whole Enforcer after him. A third knock. His brain started working at an incredible pace. He had, almost before he realized it, thought through almost every possible reason for why police would be knocking on his door. Suddenly, his conscious mind fought against the upsurge of subconscious decisions. He was caught in indecision as the fourth and fifth knocks came. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Then there was a voice.
"Mr. Orald. Duncan Orald. This is the police. Please open the door or we will knock it down according to section 3, paragraph 18 of the Provision for Martial Law in the Western United States." The officer sounded more bored than anything else.
By this time, Duncan had risen to his feat and was standing a few feet back from the door, so as to not get hit if the office decided to obey the PML more zealously than he ought. "What is this about?" Duncan asked.
"Police Chief Boleen has requested your... cooperation," he could barely contain his disgust at asking a Badlander for help, "regarding a new detainee." Duncan could hear the man let out a breath in an attempt to cover his negative emotions. He yanked to door open fast enough to surprise the knocking officer.
"Well, let's be off, then," Duncan said, amiably, with more energy than he actually felt. "I hope there's room for me in your car because I haven't got one."
--
Soon Duncan was standing in a small room, looking through one-way glass into an interrogation room. There was a young woman sitting in the room, quietly watching the door. She was in a restraining harness that bound her arms to her chest and her legs to the chair. Duncan could see a cold confidence on her face, mixed with a kind of determination that gripped his heart. This woman would do anything to get what she wanted and she, at least, believed that she could do anything.
Chief Boleen was standing next to him, trying his very best to not look as confused as he felt. Duncan stared, trying to rationalize what his subconscious had already decided. He felt as though he was looking through a window into another era, another age of his life that he had not thought about for a long time. He had almost forgotten her face, and now all of the feelings and memories were rushing over him as waves crash on a swimmer caught in the undertow. He was struggling to not break down weeping, and the emotion was not being contained to his liking. Boleen spoke, much to Duncan's relief.
"We found her rummaging through some people's pockets out near the edge of town," he informed Duncan.
Duncan was startled out of his revery for a moment and he looked at the short, stocky chief of police. "You pulled me out of my house at this hour of night for a pick-pocket?" Were it not for the flood of memories, he would have been angry. He found his mind rationalizing his feelings. Perhaps, he was telling himself, it is only that I haven't seen a young woman in a while.
Boleen laughed nervously, sensing Duncan's rising anger. "No, you see, she was rummaging through the pockets of five unconscious men."
"Boleen, you need to speak very quickly now or else I will leave a very frustrated man," Duncan had turned to face the chief will his whole body.
Now it was Boleen who was startled. He said quickly, "A citizen who lives near the fence heard some sort of scuffle going on down aways in the dark. She said she heard what sounded like a girl's voice and some men yelling. She had been mugged a while back and didn't like the thought of not reporting it, so she called us. We got there just as fast as we could (at this, Duncan shook his head, remembering the Police's standard, long, response time). A whole Enforcer went. They came upon this little girl riflin' through the guys' pockets. The squad get's out of the car, its all on the dash-mounted camera, you see, and the L.T. asks the girl what happened. Now, not all my guys took your work seriously, but this L.T. did. He said he saw that she was afraid and looked like running so he ordered his squad to restrain her. Now, no one will fault him for his decision after what happened next. It was a no-stun call, so the boys went in arms only. She straight tore through the whole squad before someone got a stun on her. Most of the squad was down, but..."
Duncan interrupted him. "I need to see that tape. Now." Duncan was struggling to absorb the information he had just heard. His conscious mind was reeling while his subconscious was decided. Someone had perfected it. Someone had accomplished what he had tried to do so many years ago. There just wasn't enough data to support the leaping conclusion his gut was making: who did it?
Duncan was watching the camera feed now. It was happening just as the chief had said. The girl was standing amidst five unconscious and rather large men as three armored police officers walked cautiously over to her. The Lieutenant was saying something, trying to be calming. His voice betrayed his nervousness as he started speaking, and Duncan heard the fear rising in his voice just as the girl on the screen turned her head slightly, a look of stifled exhilaration on her face. Duncan was shocked at what he thought he saw, but things were moving too fast now for him to analyze it closely. His mind registered the bodies of the policemen as one reached an arm out to grab the girl by the shoulder.
In an instant the girl was wrenching the man's arm behind him as she grasped his stun gun and ripped it out of the holster. She aimed and fired at the police officer who was approaching her from behind, but the first shot hit his chest plate and only knocked him off balance a little, but it was somehow enough time for the girl to kick him in the head. Duncan missed how she had managed to get over to him in time. His subconscious knew that she had pushed the man she controlled into the third officer, but his conscious mind was struggling to keep up. Before the man she kicked was on the ground she had fired a shot at another officer who was waiting near the Lieutenant, and this time she hit him between the shoulder and chest sections of his armor. She realized too late, however, that the Lieutenant had his gun out and was pointing and yelling at her to stand down. She whipped her stun gun around to point it at the Lieutenant and two shots went off at the same time. The girl crumpled to the floor as the Lieutenant realized that he was not writhing in pain. There were three officers left standing, and one of them had his weapon out and was moving toward the girl. The other went to the Lieutenant and asked if he was okay. He shook his head in acknowledgement and started to call for a medical team. The whole confrontation had lasted less than a minute.
Duncan was no longer confused. This tape had settled all doubts that lingered. Somehow this girl had accomplished what he had not been able to. Needed to know more.
"So there you having it," said Chief Boleen. "We haven't a clue who this girl is or where she comes from."
"Yes, I can see that. Having trouble interrogating her, are you Boleen?" Boleen looked sheepish as he acknowledged. "Well, then," said Duncan, "I'll need to speak with her."
No comments:
Post a Comment