The Mojave Desert – Dusk
A blood red sun is sinking behind the distant mountains.
Charlie speaking:
When I was a little girl, my mother would remind me each night before bed to be sure to open my heart to God, for he was kind, merciful and just. Things changed after my father left a few years later, leaving her to raise me and my brothers alone in a little place out on the edge of the Mojave Desert. She never talked about a kind and merciful God again. Instead she spoke of a prophecy. Of a time when all the world would be covered in darkness and the fate of Mankind would be decided and how God only had one last hope. One night I finally got up the courage to ask my mother why God had changed, why was he mad at his children. "I don't know," she said, tucking the covers around me, "I guess he just got tired of all the bullshit."
Los Angeles, December 23rd - 1:02 a.m.
A blood red moon reflected in a greasy puddle of water. Might just be the smog that's making it that ominous color. Then it's noticed that something moving in the reflection. A dark shape, growing coming down at the Earth fast. Two black boots land hard in the water. A dark figure in a tattered trench coat tumbles onto the pavement, hands out to slow the impact. A beat then slowly he climbs to his feet, recovering from what seems to have been quite a fall. He has chiseled features, shaved head, deep-set eyes. Looks like he's been through one hell of a fight. His name, people will come to know, is Michael. He quickly checks out his surroundings, nothing but brick walls above him. A rumble of thunder...then rain starts to hammer down. Seems to motivate him. Michael pulls his overcoat tight around his body and dashes toward the mouth of the alley. He reaches the street just in time to see a fleet of police cars tearing around the corner, sirens wailing, heading this way. He reels back into the alley way, ducks down behind a trash dumpster, as the blue and red lights of the police cars whip past. Michael waits for the lights to disappear, then he pulls a massive ornate knife from his jacket. Michael begins to peel off his overcoat, revealing his bare chest underneath...and skin literally covered with dark tattoos. It is hard to see what they are in this light. As his coat falls to the ground, it drifts over to the brick wall behind him where it can be seen Michael's shadow is crouched over. Two large shapes unfold from his back, stretching up into what are unmistakably...the shadow of wings. The rain pounds harder, as if punishment from the heavens. The glint of the knife can be seen coming down fast. And then Michael's screams can be heard.
City Street - A short while later
Michael, face tight with pain, trench coat back on, steps out of the alley, stares with determination at a dark storefront across the street. ''Gun and Sport World.'' can be seen on the sign.
Cavernous. A Costco for survivalists. Quiet except for the sound of rain, then... SMASH! Michael drops down through one of the skylights in a shower of glass.
A little while later, Michael goes to the bathroom and tosses a first-aid kit into the sink. His trench coat falls to the floor and here in the fluorescent light, he gets a better look at his wounds. His thin but stunningly well-muscled body is tattooed shoulder to ankle with intricate writing. The man's flesh is a living book. But the writing is in no language recognizable. He turns his back to the mirror, revealing two horrifically open wounds running down between both shoulder blades. Fresh. Bloody. He threads a needle not with thread, but with fishing wire, and begins to stitch the wounds closed. Blood pools on the cement floor around his feet. A few moments later, with trench coat and a shirt back on, Michael races along the
endless racks of guns, searching for just the right weapons, his every movement precise, as if he's trained his whole life for this. Weapon after ferocious weapon gets tossed into rifle bags. Whatever this guy's preparing for, it's big. Rifle bags filled, Michael heads for the exit. Stops cold. The place is locked up tight. Metal gate over the front doors, bars over the windows. How the hell's he going to get out of here?
Hope Grace Constance POV
December 23rd 2020 12:00 a.m
After coming out from the bathroom in the camper because of morning sickness, I go to check on my nephews, John, Chip, and Lucas. All asleep, like little cherubs. I pray to God to protect them and my family. I soon go to bed, unaware of the danger coming, unaware that we are about to be trapped at a diner in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
It couldn't have been somewhere cooler is something I will think later on as heat and I have never got along because I have epilepsy along with ADHD. My seizures can be triggered by me getting too hot ergo my nonexistent tan.