“What will it be?” The bartender spoke hoarsely and loud.
“Uh…” said James looking helplessly.
“We want to lay low for a while,” barked Tina.
“You must be on the lamb huh?” The man laughed acknowledging them as James gave a suddenly shocked reaction as affirmative. “Many folks in here got problems with the police but to be in here you got to buy something.”
“I knew it. Let’s go, Tina.” James started up but Tina held him back down with her eyes firmly locked with the bartender.
“We’ll have whiskey,” she smirked with a determined grin as James looked at her with a complex glance.
”You kids got some balls,” the bartender laughed as he reached out from under the counter and poured the drinks and walked away.
“James we really need to think of a plan.” Tina spoke sipping her whiskey.
“How are we gonna pay for this?” James whispered to Tina.
“We’ll get a tab,” she shook it off sipping her whiskey but curiously remaining fixated on the question, “but this is the least of our worries. What are we gonna do now?”
James threw most of his whiskey back and made a sour face. “Ooh what the hell?”
“It’s an acquired taste.” Laughed Tina, “but seriously now, what are we gonna do?”
“Well…,” “we’ve just escaped from jail. We need to leave.”
“We’re fugitives.” Tina said worried.
“I know.” James looked around worrisome.
“We need to change clothes and identities fast.” Tina observed. “No doubt they will be looking for us and they have our photos to distribute on the evening news. It will be all over town. Chronix Bay ain’t that big. I do agree we got to blow town.”
“You act like you’ve done this before,” said James inquisitively.
“I was raised in a household of criminals.” Tina took another sip. “You pick up a thing or two about hiding from the law.”
“You have been in trouble a few times haven’t you?”
“Once or twice” she shrugged.
“Yeah” he nodded looking back at her.
Tina took another sip of her whiskey and fixated at the end of the bar, her eyes bore a sudden misty sense. “You know, sometimes I wonder what really happens to us in life isn’t always what it seems.”
“You mean like fate or destiny” said James looking at her with a curious glare.
“I never believed in that crap growing up but the nuns at Saint Mary always tried to get me to believe in the notion that God had a plan for me and my future was written in the stars like everyone else. What a load of crock, huh?” asked Tina rhetorically.
“There are worse things to believe in.” said James. “You were involved in churches and stuff so I can’t believe the catholic experience in school and life didn’t leave some sort of a mark on you.”
“It was my ‘forced rehabilitation’ as a kid. I guess my life would have been much worse if I would have stayed with the people I was with before. But I honestly can’t see it getting much better. I’m still getting in trouble for stuff.” Said Tina.
James continued to look at her curiously.
“If the great and powerful ‘God’ had a positive plan for me, he sure is taking his sweet time.” Tina added sarcastically. “Everything I ever knew seemed to be against God’s plan according to them so I tended to let it pass over me. I didn’t know what to do really.” Tina spoke eloquently to James’ dismay.
“You still kept your faith. That’s a good start.” Said James.
“I was really curious about the other worlds and spirituality part. You know I read a lot to kill time back in my confinement in the orphanage. It made me smile but wasn’t real so the bad feelings came back.”
“I read too. I for one loved science fiction.” Said James laughingly. “But it was more about trying to alter choices and bad decisions. I guess I never got the time machine I wanted for Christmas.”
Tina laughed. “Here’s to God’s plan for us” she smiled and lifted her glass to his. They finished their drinks with the toast.
“How do you do that?” James asked suddenly in awe.
“Do what?” She shook her head.
“You sudden change in personality and you just got all philosophical like that.”
“Did I? Must be my crazy upbringing, harsh and all. I sometimes don’t even notice things like that. You learn to block stuff out living on the streets as long as I have.”
“I know. I’m sort of new to the homelessness thing but it’s rough.”
“That’s why I read so much to lose myself out there in … another world” said Tina staring forward in a melancholy gaze.
“Sounds like you have deep feelings about a lot of things,” added James.
“Some by choice and some I wish I could forget” said Tina.
“So we are both on a mission for our true purposes” said James.
“I wish I knew what my purpose was. I suffered through so many heartaches, James. It seems my whole life to this point has been one mess up after another.”
“Maybe it’s a mysterious puzzle to be figured out” said James.
“Maybe I’m just meant to be a bitch and a half” said Tina jokingly.
“Maybe you’re purpose is yet to be revealed.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of!” She added.
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The minutes past and became close to an hour as the sound of the bar escalated to a louder noise of rowdy patrons clanking beer steins and laughing, telling jokes and singing. The duo James and Tina sat on their stools trying to figure out a way out of their current predicament.
“So let’s get going, how are we going to escape out of town?” asked James.
“We can find a more suitable ride into town and get to the train station. We can bum our way into two seats.” Commented Tina.
“You mean steal? I am not comfortable with that.” Replied James.
“We have no choice, James. Like it or not, we are on the opposite side of the law now and we need to survive or we’re going back to prison and we won’t be let out ever. You heard the conversation between the judge and prosecutor; they’re into some type of conspiracy to make sure we take the fall for these crimes, guilty or not. I ain’t doing life so you with me and maybe we can find a way to clear our names?”
James nodded after thinking of it for a moment and realizing she was right, someone was trying to set them up and he had to figure out why and Tina was the only friend he had right now who he could trust so whether he liked it or not they were stuck together. He smiled reluctantly and grimaced hiding a tone of intrepidity in his demeanor.
Then two men began a drunken hoarse conversation nearby which soon escalated into a violent encounter. “What do you mean by that?” The larger man shoved the shorter man who regained his composure and lunged into his taller adversary pounding into his chest striking him with all the vigor he could find and knocking him onto the floor. The crowd begins to transform into a frantic whirl of chains and leather as the two fighting became several snarling at one another ensnaring their various items like clubs, brass knuckles, or whatever loose item could be used as a weapon, pool cues, broken beer bottles, or the spikes on their jackets, pulling of long goatees and pounding one another’s chests with fists prior to blocking blows on the nearest neighbor. They tossed one another in and out into the pavement outside and onto the wooden tables and chairs being used both as landing pads and weapons picked up to strike whoever was around. James and Tina ducked under the other side of the bar with the bartender.
“What’s going on?” James asked.
The bartender explained coughing, “the Satan’s Warriors could get pretty defensive in their home turf. Their boss owns this here bar. They generally abhor violence except when their turf is threatened.”
“Whose there boss?” Tina a
sked.
“That big guy right there.” He pointed to a large man with a leather jacket, long red hair and beard tied in knots and a tattoo across the side of his face that read “Hell’s a Pleasure.”
James said jokingly, “one of the most common phrases In the English language.” “Can you be more specific?” He asked jokingly.
The bartender looked at them with a straight face, gave a quick reply of “no”, and he crawled off to the phone and started to dial three numbers and spoke.
“He’s calling the cops,” Tina said worried.
“Good” mentioned James.
“Not good, we’re wanted fugitives remember. We gotta get out of here.” Tina stated and then noticed a man in a black three piece suit at the end of the bar who didn’t seem to be there before. He seemed oddly out of place.
“Tina, we really need to think of a plan. What are we gonna do now? Tina… what is it?” James stopped his words dead in his tracks as he saw blanks in Tina’s face as she saw the man in the black suit. “Tina, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe,” she ducked down and held a still gaze at the man at the end of the bar where James also turned his head towards and saw the man in the black suit there as if the fight around them didn’t bother him. He was calm, cool, and collected dressed like a butler or gentleman of the old nineteenth century with a tan complexion and had modern shades and a bowler hat. The man in the black suit muttered something to the bartender. The man had a pale complexion and small round beady brown eyes that appeared to burn a hole in whatever he kept a quick gaze on, fixed at the end of the bar he had a mechanical movement that seemed almost artificial and mundane. His black suit was old fashioned.
James asked Tina beside him under the counter “do you know that man?”
“I think so” replied Tina. “He looks like my father, but it can’t be…” she thought back to her childhood over two decades ago, “but how I don’t know.” They saw the man in the black suit now wearing a pair of sunglasses indoors and taking small sips from his glass of whiskey and then turned his head slightly with an almost robotic jerk and he removed his sunglasses revealing again his small brown beady eyes that bore into them like the fire of hell.
James turned away, “oh my we should go now.” James started to rise when the bartender approached.
“The cops are on their way. You guys still got to pay for that whiskey before you go.”
“Huh?” James and Tina looked at one another as they rose.
“That’ll be $12.50 to settle up the tab.” The bartender spoke loud in the midst of the bar fight.
“Oh uh.” James looked at Tina with a curious gaze.
“Yeah well, we need a more extended tab. We’re a little short of funds right now.” She added.
“No that’s unacceptable. You’ll answer when the cops show.” He backed off. “We’ll see what you say when the cops come.”
Meanwhile the fight in the background has settled some and calmness of the rowdy tranquility that became an apparent permanence. The bikers were used to the occasional fight and settled back into their routine of regular drinking. Four burley sized bikers with the same fiery emblem on their jackets and spikes on their shoulders, representatives of the group known as the Satan’s Warriors who had been fighting recently then broke up their own fight and now had gotten behind the pair of homeless citizens. They turned and looked behind them at the slight intimidation they were facing and then at one another.
“We don’t want any trouble.” James protested.
“Well, you got trouble now. We don’t take kindly to dead beaters around here. One way or another you will pay your way, now!” Said the apparent leader of the group, a biker with a head full of long fiery red hair and a long goatee who smirked and growled as he whistled for two of his disciples who rose up behind them and grabbed James and Tina from behind and lifted them as they struggled and kicked back forcing themselves free of the grip. They found themselves surrounded by Satan’s Warriors and other patrons hopping up to the sounds of the disturbance.
“I don’t suppose you have any magic tricks to get us out of this one,” screamed Tina.
“Yeah, just fight.” James grabbed a chair and struck it to the chest of one of the Satan’s Warriors that stood before him almost twice his size both length and width combined. Then another romp and melee ensured where James and Tina fought against their sudden captors resiliently resisting the kicks and blows from their opponents as best they could and struggling to strike back. James received two knocks in the face and stumbled up striking back using more wooden broken parts from the bar stools and table legs. “Damn, there’s more wood here than the deck of the Titanic,” yelled James sarcastically as the various wooden items were being flown around the bar. Tina overturned a table as groups of Satan’s Warriors approached to bum rush her and another tried to grab her from behind. James reached out to grab them. The man in the black suit sat calm and observed with an almost sense of pride in watching the biker. But both James and Tina were suddenly grabbed and held again by two Satan’s Warriors who prepared to toss them out onto the street. The remaining Satan’s Warriors approached them vigilantly to defend their turf even against the two cocky street smart young people who were apparently more trouble than their purchase was worth. They still furiously kicked and they broke free after fighting for release but were easily caught again.
“Get rid of them,” said the bartender “their more trouble than their worth.” They were tossed out fighting till the bitter end but helplessly outmatched. “The cops are on their way anyway.”
The duo resisted their captors as they broke free again and made it to the door and were almost free. The duo attempted to run out of the door. Tina took one last glance at the end of the bar where the man in the black suit sat as they raced out the door to find out that the man was gone and no longer there. James and Tina continued to fight on their way out as a pile of buckets and wooden broom sticks from the cleaning closet near the exit revealed themselves when a Satan’s Warrior fell back onto the door.
“Now that’s what I call not coming out of the closet,” yelled James.
“We better go.” Tina screamed watching other Satan’s Warriors form a battalion to march toward them to kick them out of the bar for good so they ran out of the bar and saw a set of motorcycles, one with the keys in the ignition.
“Oh my God, can you drive one of these things?” asked James.
“Well, how hard can it be?” She got on and started it. “Get on” she yelled.
“Right” James added as he mounted the motorcycle behind Tina and saw the bikers come pile out and panicked so he pressed tight against her and she yelled, “hold on tight, but not that tight” as they rode off and let a cloud of exhaust zoom out of the tailpipe and the bike wiggled along the dirt road due to the sudden movement so the other bikes, in a sudden domino effect, fell on top of each other. There was a thunderous noise and the duo was long gone from the bar. The Satan’s Warriors arrived to see their damaged bikes.
“Damn it!” yelled the leader of the Satan’s Warriors leading his pack out of the bar in time to see the duo ride off into the distance leaving the mess of many damaged motorcycles behind.
Tina and James rode off into the wind thanks to Tina’s professional biking skills having seen it done thousands of times.
James smiled. “You have done this before,” he spoke proudly in a frightened but relieved tone.
“Once or twice” replied Tina.
“Wow” remarked James.
“I told you, I grew up with roughens.” She smiled.
James eyes bugged out as he held on tight to her waist during the looming journey on the back road towards the city limits of Chronix Bay as they passed a sign indicating that it was just thirty-five miles away.
CHAPTER 24
In the tall obelisks centered in the heart of Chronix Bay, modern day technological and architectural marvels of urban city planning in the midst of qua
int semi-suburbia, the joint towers, conjoined together in the center and stretching into the sky above the meager underpinnings of residences and commercial districts that lay at the center of town. In the twentieth floor about two thirds of the way up in the northeast tower, the lights remain on in the midst of darkness during the longest night in the summer solstice. In the large conference room, a marble inlaid table rested at the center over Persian rugs, wooden and gold and silver decorated coverings and a large crystal chandelier rested overhead, the table rested with gilded water goblets and pitchers and leather pad folios and silver pens shining in the well lit room, and a large monitor on the far end covered with a Oakwood credenza.
The meeting delegates began to pour in between five individuals and within seconds the monitor flickered on with lights. There was also a dark figure in the center who wore a dark suit and whose face remained obstructed in the darkness appeared. Complete silence manifested itself in the meeting room as the five individuals sat at their seats. Broad Staffnight started the meeting.
“Good evening, my fellow Temporo Inc. board members. We are here for a very important meeting. We have just enough for a quorum and we need to vote on a serious matter tonight that holds no bounds. We are aware of the mysterious happenings in town, people vanishing and deaths of unexplained occurrences. We must now strike to seek our destiny and make a true impact on the events to come. It is with this reasoning that we decide to enter into a new endeavor….”
“And what is that going to cost us?” Spoke Elizabeth Peters, his secretary and mentee who grew accustomed to questioning him at every turn and offering critique.
“Liz, my pupil, how quick you forget that we will always have our expenses and risks but that is why we are here and there is no greater price to pay than that if we do nothing. Mr. Brent Hightower, Chief of Police is here for security”, he beckons to a tall slender man with a slightly muscular built and whimsical mustache depicting his Irish-American heritage mixed with his central African roots and constable attire depicting his high rank as a civil servant. “He has so gratefully chosen to protect us on our extremely dangerous missions not only as a member of our board but as sergeant at arms for our new assignments. Also, we have Mark Cumberberry, our CFO who is well versed in cryptic archeology and mystic studies who will prove invaluable on our missions.”
The Time Stone Page 7
