Post by scooter on Sept 14, 2021 1:10:56 GMT -6
This is a story I started last year but...well, unfortunately, never went anywhere with. The setting is a near-future North America; it's a cynical action/adventure tale involving a protagonist - self-insertion, to be obvious - heading across what's left of the United States in a souped-up vehicle with a mysterious package...with plenty of odd mysticism, gritty action, intrigue, power politics, and sex.
It's always helpful when having a run-in with the law to have your lawyer there in the car with you. It's more helpful when she is carrying herself in a distracting way: hip-hugging shorts and a blouse that does an excellent job hinting at the contained assets within; an infinitesimally slight, satisfied smile playing on her deceptively elfin face beneath short, silvery hair - and no, it actually is natural. All of it. John Law there, barely pubescent as he was, almost certainly wrote her off as a bit of fluff on sight, to his current dismay. Not that she needed her considerable legal skills to handle the situation. She left that to the Luipaard .38 which she had safely holstered in the leg well on the passenger side, which seemed to teleport to her hand, barrel directed at the forehead of the slack-jawed bronze before he could pull his. After she got the drop on him, she just crawled over me and out my window (with a quick, impulsive kiss to me on the way) to face our once-pursuer, who had dropped the gun as demanded. She kicked it safely away with a graceful sweep of her leg once out.
I hopped out and together we quickly took control of the situation. "I do hope you know what you're doing," I finally offered.
She was wrapping a bungie around his wrists. "So how many is this?"
"Since Vegas? This one. Since after Mono Lake, this would be the fourth, although the first we've gift-wrapped. Over time...well, I admit I've kind of lost count."
"Uh-huh. Which means they're going to keep -- c'mon, quit that, I don't want to cut off your circulation -- they're going to keep coming unless we leave them something else to go after."
"Leaving him here, Daph? You sure he'll survive?" There was a muffled whine from around a sock that occupied the cop's mouth.
"He'll be okay," said Daphne, finishing with the truss-up and preparing to drag him back to his cruiser. "His dashcam got a good look before I unplugged it. The point is, they'll be stopping for him rather than coming after us. We'll probably have no more than --" she looked up briefly while calculating "-- fifteen minutes before backup shows up, and by then we'll be gone. You'll need to drive to --"
"I can drive," I said, cutting her off. No sense giving away too much information about where we were headed, not that they likely hadn't figured it out by this time. "Let's get moving." I walked over to grab the kicked-away pistol, holstered it, then took it out for a good look and thought better of it. "Y'know, Sparky, they could have given you something better..." I sympathized, putting on the safety and tossing it in the back seat of the Kamakiri with the rest. As I did, the package we'd received in San Francisco, featureless and boxy, caught my eye. It only occupied a whole seat only because the gun roll was stacked next to it. All this over such a small thing. It was enough to make you wonder if it was worth --
"You could help!" came Daphne's annoyed voice through her straining muscles and some muffled protests. She wasn't big enough to handle that task, even if our young badge-bearer, who probably only shaved once a week, had laid off the donuts from his morning patrol. I broke my reverie and took over dragging him back to his cruiser while Daph walked ahead to take what we needed.
A later glance at the chrono showed eleven minutes and ten seconds had elapsed since Daphne made her estimate of how long we had before we had to motor; the ten seconds happened when Daphne skipped back to the cop's cruiser with a straw for the water we left him, since she'd deliberately left the gag looser than the bungie around his wrists or the zip-tie binding his ankle to the door handle. The net haul, if it could be called such, was a rather sweaty cop uniform (he was about my size, surprisingly), a too-cheap-for-police-work .38 revolver with appropriate ammunition, a few other assorted accoutrements of outback law enforcement appropriate to a collapsed empire (including some contraband herb which our intrepid young ranger had confiscated but forgot to remit at the station; I was shocked, shocked, of course), and of course the ID chips which allowed us to program the 'Kiri's scanner and discover where the pursuing cops were. As it turned out, Daphne wasn't too far off. They were closing fast.
