Gah, I hate this chapter so as a reward, I'm going to post the next one today as well. My computer decided to something really annoying and type this out in red which was extremanly off putting and almost resulted in me throwing it out the window.
That aside, it's time to meet the final member of the cast.
Chapter 24: Stranger in a strange land
"Hey?"
The muffled female voice cut through the darkness, yanking Jobe sharply back towards the light of consciousness.
"Hey!"
A tone of urgency crept into the nagging voice, this time the cry was far louder as if the cotton that seemed to have bunged up Jobe's ears had been ripped out.
"HEY, mister!" This time, there was a sharp pain that exploded across Jobe's numb face, tearing the man from the dark world of slumber.
"Owww…" He muttered, lifting his head slowly. The sharp light greedily fell upon his eye like hungry birds of pray and he winced, the gum refusing to clear from them. That was when he saw the blurry form of a person bending over him. His mind still swimming with weary delirium, he muttered the first thing that popped into his foggy mind.
"Julia?"
"You're alive?" It retorted somewhat stupidly and Jobe suddenly noted just how different it was to his girlfriend's. While hers was light and almost tuneful in the way it rose and fell, this one was full of coarse gravel that scratched at Jobe's ears. He braved the pain and opened his eyes a little more.
A scene of chaos came into focus around him.
The windshield was all but gone, save for a few jagged teeth of glass that clung stubbornly onto its frame, the rest of it littered all about him. Through the fractured windshield, Jobe could easily see how the van's bonnet had been twisted so effortlessly around the solid lamppost that now stood erect in its centre.
Jobe dully thought what effects this would have on his car insurance if anyone had been around to report it.
"Barely, by the looks of it…"He replied to the voice of unknown origin and turned to it.
A woman looked back at him, not much older than himself with large green eyes that were full of worry.
Jobe suddenly remembered the sharp stab of pain and lifted a hand to his sore face.
"Oh, I'm real sorry about that."
Jobe turned to her with questioning eyes.
"Huh?"
"Uh…well," She began, sounding almost embarrassed and pushing a long bang of brown-blonde hair behind her ear. "You're the first person I've seen since I got here and…well…for a moment, I kinda thought you were dead." She took a deep breath as rushed towards the end of her short explanation. "So I sort of slapped you to wake you up…"
Jobe stumbled drunkenly out of the van onto the slick pavement. The endless cascade of rain seemed to have ceased.
"That was very thoughtful of you." He turned to her and took a better look at her features as she pulled a packet of cigarette from the pocket of her denim jacket.
Despite her young age, any beauty she'd had in her earlier life had already waned over the years, burnt-out and spent like an overused candle. The light hair was pulled back into a pony tail, the grown out fringe falling to either side of her forehead that seemed a little out of proportion with the rest of her face, contrasting with her slender, snub nose.
Having plucked one of the white sticks from its cardboard habitat, the woman replaced it in the pocket of her jeans, exchanging it for the lighter that must have resided there.
"It's a good thing," She began, moving the cigarette to the side of her mouth as she lit it, its tip flaring. "That you stopped when you did. Any further and you would have gone right off the edge." She stopped and to a long drag from her fag.
"Off the edge?" Jobe repeated her last words, making sure he'd heard them correctly. He looked back to the van, his eyes tracing the invisible path the vehicle would have made, had Virgil not interfered.
Only, the road didn't continue with it.
In the length of time in which he'd taken that short trip to 'Nowhere', the road had sunk into another one of those deep, bottomless crevasses, filled with nothing but empty fog and shadows.
"Fuck!" Jobe's foot caught on a hubcap that had rolled free of the wreaked van and booted it viciously in to the gapping hole, whatching bitterly as it sailed off into the mist but doing little to vent his built up frustration.
The road he could have taken out of Silent Hill was gone, along with the only means of transport that ever so slightly raise his already dismal chances of survival. Oh yes, and now he also had this woman's (who seemed wondrously oblivious to what was going on in this town) welfare to worry about…as if he didn't have enough on his mind already.
He wheeled around and saw her looking at him with worried confusion over the glowing tip of the cigarette.
"Are you feeling alright?" She asked, and Jobe could hear the concern in her voice, the kind of concern for one's own health. That little display could have done nothing for her faith in his sanity.
"Yes, it's just…" He stopped him self from launching into what would be a damning speech about the horrors that stalked Silent Hill's misty streets. If she didn't already think he was crazy, she would after he finished explaining about why he was just so distraught over the loss of the van. "Are you sure I'm the only person you've seen here?"
She laughed curtly through her nose.
"I've been wondering around this place for hours and I haven't seen anything except for a bunch of crappy houses and lots and lots of fog. The place is totally deserted." She paused, the shadow of fear faintly pinching her. "This town…it's a ghost town." She stopped, flicking the spent cigarette into the nearby gutter; its illuminated tip continued glowing for a moment before the still damp pavement drowned it.
"What happened to everyone here?"
Jobe shook his head, wishing he had a sane answer for her question.
"I have no idea… It's been like this ever since I got here." He found his voice trailing off when he noticed that the woman was absorbed with eyeing his grisly assortment of accumulated wounds.
"Wow," She murmured somewhat tactlessly. "You really managed to cut yourself up quite badly when you crashed, huh?"
"Uhhh, yeah…" Jobe leapt on her assumption, silently thanking Virgil for providing him with such a believable alibi and letting his newfound apprehension and hatred towards the warped girl fade for just a moment. "Thank god for safety belts."
The feeble attempt of humour managed to raise a faint ghost of a laugh from the woman but all too quickly the oppressive silence of the town invaded their sparse conversation. The woman attempted to break it with a hollow cough.
"We should get inside before we both freeze to death out here." She tried, pumping her words full of a forced optimism. "There's a café up the road that looked open Well, not in the sense that the lights were on and there were people sitting in it…" She trailed off and hung her head with a grin. "And I'm just going to stop waffling on so we can go there and warm up, instead of stand out here and listen to me rambling on..." She stopped again, glancing at Jobe from the corner of her eyes that seemed to smile nervously. "You must think I'm stark raving mad, huh?"
Jobe found himself unable to stop a laugh escape from him at the irony of her comment.
"Oh no, you are by far the sanest person I've met here."
And with that one comment, you could practically hear the ice break. Some of the forced awkwardness faded from the woman, and she slouched comfortably, smirking to herself.
"Oh jeeze, that's very reassuring, considering there's no one else here!. Well you can stand out here for all I care but I'm going inside," She jested and made a start towards the mentioned building, taking barely three steps before glancing back over her shoulder at him. "You coming?"
"Sure…I'll be with you in a moment…" With that, he turned back to the van, making sure she wasn't looking before he began gathering the more dangerous items in his possession that lay amid the mass of broken glass, doing his best to hide them under his clothes (which proved to be an almost impossible feat when it came to the shot-gun and fire axe). Perhaps it would be for the best if he kept them to himself for now, after all, he didn't want the first person he'd met who didn't appear to have an unhealthy interest in religion or intent on stabbing him in the back run a mile screaming blue murder when they saw him come lumbering up, armed to the teeth.
Jobe turned to trace his new acquaintance's steps and found himself smiling briefly. Then he remembered where he was and all that had lead up to this point and the smile dropped lifelessly from his face.
Past experience didn't bode well for either of them.
E.P.O: Jobe's deeds will all be revealed…I can't really say shortly but we are beggingin to draw towards the latter parts of this story. Heh, I had a little too much fun with the conversation sceen, Eddie was so refreshing to write.
