The Ride.
One:
The date: February 12th. A cold, foggy morning. A silent morning.
Arthur Faust stood in his kitchen, staring out his window. A man of roughly thirty-five, Arthur wouldn't necessarily be called unattractive. With short cropped brown hair and hazel eyes, he had sometimes been told he resembled one celebrity or another. He didn't agree with most of those claims.
He wasn't a tall man, around five and a half feet, but he was muscular. This came from his daily exercise routine: A four mile ride around town on his sport bike, from his house on Rendell, up Carrol and around Nathan Avenue on the lake, and down King. His co-workers at at Neely's Bar thought he was crazy, but he didn't care. After all, he worked the night shift, so he had his days to himself.
On this day, he had decided to dress for the weather conditions. He usually rode in a pair of cargo shorts and a black T-shirt, but today he had selected a grey sweatsuit. He sipped from the mug of black coffee he'd fixed and grimaced.
"What a day to run out of cream."
Arthur poured the rest of the coffee down his kitchen drain and dropped the mug in the sink. His house seemed a bit shabby, but it was good enough for him. He made a living at the bar, and that's all that mattered.
His keys were sitting on the counter by the door, waiting. With a practiced grab, he snatched up the keys and swept out the door, closing it and locking it behind.
The air was frigid and damp outside. His skin crawled in response to the air. It just seemed to feel...Wrong. Perhaps it was the abnormal stillness that day, or simply the cold and low visibility.
Arthur turned his wrist over, examining his watch. To his dismay, it had stopped at the 7:24 mark. As near as he could figure, it had been an hour since he'd last checked it, when it was working. 8:24, and it still seemed to be just past dawn. The fog was really doing a number on his senses.
He stepped down from his screened in brick porch, letting the door bang shut. The sound echoed and carried through the layers of miasma shrouding his street. They seemed oddly amplified, which only made the unsettling silence more grating.
Around his house, Arthur's bike waited for him, chained to his garage door. The year before, his bike had been stolen from right under his nose. Now he didn't dare leave it unlocked. When he'd moved to this town, he'd been told it was one of the safest towns in the country, nearly crime free.
Sure. Crime free. Fuckin' Mayberry, right here.
Arthur crouched beside his bike and sorted through his keys, selecting each one he needed. He kept it double locked, with the best chain he could get. No fool with metal shears was going to get his bike. At least, not if he had anything to do with it.
After a few minutes of work, he managed to release his bike from it's chain prison, and began rolling it down the driveway. The street he lived on was nice enough. It was one of the residential areas, with houses rather than businesses and apartment buildings, like that grotesque old flop house, Woodside. He hated passing that place on his ride. It gave him the creeps.
He stared down Rendell, squinting against the blinding white. He could make out cars parked along the street and in driveways. He saw no motion, aside from what appeared to be a large dog. It loped by, crossing the street into the yard of one of his former neighbors, a nurse from Brookhaven. Lisa Garrison, Garland, something like that. A nice girl, but a bit strange. She'd disappeared years earlier, under mysterious circumstances. A shame, really. He didn't know the couple that had moved in since then, as they kept to themselves.
He didn't pay any more attention to the dog, mounting his bike and checking his brakes. He'd learned from years of riding that if you didn't find out what's broken and what's working before you ride, you might not live to regret it. A broken shoulder after his brakes failed four years earlier had taught him that lesson. Cars aren't the best method of stopping when you're out of control.
After a final check, he began to pedal. It wasn't very long before he came to the intersection of Carrol and Rendell.With a sweep to the right, he pulled out onto the quiet street. To his surprise, he hadn't seen a single car out and about, or any of the usual joggers or dog walkers.
"It's like a goddamned grave yard..." Arthur mumbled, slowing to a coast as he neared the Heaven's Night "Gentleman's Club" and the Texxon Gas Station. He rather disliked Heaven's Night, as it drew business away from Neely's. Now, however, it seemed something had drawn business away from everything in town.
The Texxon stood silent, lights off. Oddly enough, there was a green hatchback sitting at one of the pumps, hood up, nozzle sticking out of the gas tank. It looked as if it had been abandoned mid-fill. The air reeked of gasoline.
The hell..? Why's the station closed with the pumps on?
Arthur blinked in confusion and then shook his head. A power outage! That had to be why. The pumps ran on a generator independent from the rest of the station, to make sure gas was available no matter what. That would also explain why there were so few cars out, and no street lights. Nobody wants to deal with a work place during a major power shortage, and a stop light without power could turn into a major gridlock situation.
I know I wouldn't like to get stuck in that situation. Then again, there's never any traffic here. Who's ever heard of a traffic jam in nice, quiet, boring Silent Hill?