The fog was wet, cold, and heavy and allowed for only a few yards of visibility. It put her on edge even more, and she drew deeply on the cigarette again. No matter how hard she thought on it, she could not reason how she came to be in a place like this, in a situation like this. The only sign of life she had encountered was a gun shot from far off, a sign of not only life but the dealing of death as well.
In only a few shops, she found a sporting goods store with rifles visible on the back wall. She stepped over the broken glass and around the heavy camouflage coats. The counter had been smashed, but it still held a number of handguns. They were large and unyielding and Shannon had no idea what it was she was looking for. She knew it had to be small enough to fit her hand but have a big enough bullet; this was something her brother had taught her after her first break-in.
Her brother, she could almost remember his face, but the image eluded her. She could remember his voice, soft and drawn into a Southern twang. Aggravation began to rise in her again, and she wrestled it back down. She found a gun that fit her hand; according to the black plastic case, it was a Glock model 27, .40 S&W. She had no idea what all this meant, but the gun was small enough to fit her hand and the barrel was large enough to fit her index finger.
She found a clip and shoved it into her pocket and sought out the ammunition. The store seemed over-stocked with .40 S&W boxes, so she picked up one and dumped it into her pants pocket. It was a lot of weight, so she dumped another in the other pocket to even it out. She then used a third box to fill both clips and struggled for some time before being able to draw the slide back and bring a round into the chamber. Now she was ready.
Shannon stepped through the door and paused a moment. She had no idea which direction to go, completely unfamiliar with a town she knew she lived in. It was unsettling to say the least. She raged against the curtain in her mind, struggled to push it out of the way. Finally, she turned right, giving the fight over as lost. She continued down the street in slow fashion, unsure what was about to come screaming out of the fog and fearing it.
The sidewalk had begun to crumble in many places, giving way to the rapid aging affecting the entire town. She slowed even further to keep from falling over the refuse. With all the want of being free of this town but forced to go slow, anxiousness and urgency began to build in her alongside the irritation of not knowing herself.
“Hey! You, miss?” a voice called from the edge of the fog.
A man in a long coat came into view, and Shannon stopped, more out of fear than interest.
“Miss, are you alright?” the man asked as he started to approach her in a nervous, quick manor.
“Stop!” Shannon shouted.
The man slowed to an even pace. “What? Are you hurt or something? Did you hear the news?”
The man seemed in control of himself, not a raving lunatic like those from the night before. His question about the news interested her, but still she was nervous as all get out. “What news? Can’t you tell me from there?”
“No, but its wonderful news. But first, are you hurt?”
“Uh, no, not too bad. What’s the news?” She found the grip of the pistol in her jacket pocket and pointed it in his direction without pulling it free.
“Well, I tell ya, it is great news!” He stopped just in front of her looking like a computer nerd gone crazed weekend flasher. “He is coming! Are you ready for him?”
“Who is ‘him’?”
“Captain Black!” he shouted happily.
“Who is Captain Black? Is he a police officer?”
“No, silly, he is quite like Santa. He brings presents to all the good children!”
Shannon felt a chill run down her spine.
“Have you been a bad girl?”
“Mister, I think it’s time you leave,” Shannon said while taking a step back.
“You haven’t taken a life yet, have you?”
“What?” she shouted. “Are you crazy?”
“No, really! He rewards those that kill for him! Honest!”
“Get the fuck away from me!” she screamed.
The man’s face went from joyous rapture to a hurt, sunken look of rejection. “Okay, that’s fine. One more can only help, I guess,” he replied as he drew a long fillet knife from under his long trench coat. “Shame since you’re so pretty and all.”
“Get the fuck away from me!” she screamed again. Somewhere over her shoulder, she heard someone yelling, which fed the disjointed terror building inside her. The man approached her and she squeezed the first bullet through the first handgun she had ever fired. The explosion was terrible, even inside her pocket, and the man flew backwards a few feet before skidding on his back. The spent casing fell onto her hand and burned her. She jerked her hand from the pocket and shook it up and down.
The man lay prone on his back. He had been nude under the trench coat; his body covered in shallow lacerations, a crisscrossing pattern of self-abuse, but now with a neat smoking black hole in his upper chest. He had left behind his fillet knife and one shoe, still standing where she had shot him.
She pulled the gun from her pocket and then the empty casing. She released the magazine and added another round to it before putting it back into the gun. She wanted to make sure she kept the thing loaded until she was out of here. Then she would bury it somewhere so no one could say she killed this man; accuse her of murder even though she was just protecting herself.
“Hey! Up here!”
Shannon spun around and saw a man in the window of a large building some many yards away. She raised the gun and pointed it at him, and he ducked immediately. “I had to! He was going to kill me!” she screamed desperately.
“I know,” came the reply over the edge of the window. “I saw the whole thing. Can you get me out of here? I’m getting hungry and there are no nurses up here.”
“You’re in a hospital?” she asked after her heart slowed its hammering pace and she gained control of her breath again.
“Yeah, sort of… Can you come and let me out? The door is locked!”
“Why are you locked in?” Shannon asked as she approached the building.
“They thought I was crazy, but then they tore their own town apart.” The man peeked over the sill again.
“Are you crazy?”
“No, I know what I saw, and it’s the same thing that’s going on around here. They just didn’t know about it. I tried to tell them, and they locked me in here.”
“You know what’s going on then?”
“Not exactly, but I think my friends and I started it. Come let me out, please?”
“What are you going to do if I let you out?”
“Get the flaming fuck out of this town, that’s what! Please?” he pleaded.
“What’s your name?”
“Ethan.”
“Alright, Ethan, I’ll come up—but I will have some questions for you before I let you out.”
“That’s fine. Do you have any food with you?”
“We will worry about that after I get you out. Here I come…”
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Shannon.”
“Nice to meet you, Shannon, and thank you!”
She walked along the side of the building searching for the entrance to the hospital. She was not sure who this guy was, but if he had any answers to what was going on, maybe he knew who she was, maybe he could help her remember. At a minimum, she could talk to him from a safe distance.