A Mike Life – The Life of Mike!

Running: Chapter 2

// August 20th, 2007 // fun

This is the second chapter in my short story, “Running”. If you haven’t read the first chapter, click here.

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Chapter 2

Five hours earlier

John raced down the interstate in his hard-top jeep, the wind whistling through the cracks of the removable ceiling. It was a long drive to California and he had just entered the long expanse of desert between Phoenix and Yuma. The setting sun could barely be seen in his rear view mirror. A crimson shade with crisscrossing clouds adorned the western skies. The sunset was one of those amazing ones that made you wish that you had a camera nearby.

The beauty of the moment was lost on John. A million miles from the desert, from the highway, from the cars passing him by, John was in agony. He probably wouldn’t even remember the miles and miles he traversed if quizzed on it later. The saguaro cactus, blooming yucca plants and the occasional coyote were invisible objects blurring by his windows.

John’s lips were moving feverishly but no words were heard, only the sound of his whispering breaths escaping. His bloodshot eyes were desperate, their pain fully visible, and his gaze locked firmly on something ahead of him on the road. Or perhaps not on the road, but on some unseen menace in his mind’s eye.

The sun disappeared completely behind the mountains he had crossed earlier and instinctively John turned on the headlights. Despite the trance he was in, the jeep hugged the bends and curves in the road as if guided by a high performance driver. The reflectors in the highway must have been like little beacons he was following on some subconscious level. They almost mirrored the tiny lights littering the evening sky all around him. The heavens flickered and cast a strange but faint luminous glow over the desert.Behind him, one of the stars grew brighter.

It was hardly noticeable at first, but it steadily intensified. The bends in the road would hide it at times, the mountains and hills blocking the light out, but it would appear again a short while later…bolder and stronger than before. At first, John’s self-loathing and internal battle kept his eyes from seeing the enlarging glow in his rear-view mirror. It was only when the piercing light flashed off the mirror and blinded him did he wake up out of his stupor.

The star was now on the road. And following him.

“What the heck….?” he muttered to himself.

Straining his eyes, he tried to maneuver his line of sight to find out what the thing was. What at first looked like a star going supernova was now following close behind on the highway itself. Shaking off the sudden fear in his mind, he tried to force a laugh.

“Probably just a motorcycle… calm down John.”

He realized he was in the left lane and figured the guy behind him just wanted to pass. He flipped on his turn signal and scooted over to the right side of the highway.

The star matched his lane change.

John stared into his mirror. Who was this whack job? Why on earth was his headlight so bright? He flipped up the mirror into night driving mode, but the glare was still strong. John slapped his hand across it and sent it flying into the passenger seat, broken clean off the windshield. Putting on the sunglasses resting in his cup-holder, John stepped on the gas and the jeep’s engine roared. Watching the speedometer approach 100 miles per hour, he turned back to see if the supposed motorcycle had been lost.

He cursed when he saw it was even closer than before and gaining on him quickly. He swerved back to the left lane and then returned to the right, but the headlight followed him as if connected like a trailer to his tow hitch.

A green road sign flashed by on the right, barely visible at the breakneck speed the jeep was traveling. Still, he was able to see that an exit was just up a mile down the road. There was something about his pursuer that filled John with familiar dread. Fear coursing through his veins, a plan ripped through his head and he got ready to execute it. He had little time to prepare as fast as he was moving.

The exit was coming up on the right and John waited until the last moment and then yanked his steering wheel to the right. The jeep went cutting through the gore lane and narrowly missed the sign indicating this was the Hollow Road turnoff. John turned back hard to the left, trying to keep the vehicle on the off-ramp and in control. The jeep almost tipped over off the right side of the exit, but somehow landed back on four wheels. The road curved downward towards a barely visible stop light that at this moment was blinking red. Outlines of buildings appeared in the darkness, the beginning of some barely populated desert town.

John didn’t care about the red light in front of him, it was the white one behind him he was worried about. He turned back to look out his rear window and saw the light had vanished. Oddly enough, the absence of the light gave John a brief feeling of emptiness before he turned back around and saw that he had made a big mistake.

The stop light had come quicker than he realized and even when he slammed on the breaks, the downward slope of the road did little to slow him down. John braced himself as he saw there was no on-ramp leading back up to the freeway. Where a ramp should have been instead loomed a large, black building. The jeep smashed through the walls of a huge warehouse and then blasted out the other side of it, into a dark alleyway where it came to rest impaled against a brick wall. Windshield smashed, John slumped over in his seat, alive, luckily unhurt, but completely unconscious.

When he awoke moments later, the light was descending from above and he ran.

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Chapter 3 coming soon…