Well, with that unpleasantness behind us, let us move on. The end is drawing ever near, me thinks this will be done and dusted in five chapters, give or take (most likely give though). A huge thank you to everyone whose reviewed.
Chapter 30: Some Society…
Roy Mark's surveyed the interior of his roadside dinner and sighed. His wife had been right, this had been a stupid venture and any fool could see that the risk desperately overbalanced the slim chance of it paying off. But did he listen? Of course not, he was too busy being a stubborn, headstrong, old bastard to listen to any of her words of warning.
Well, he'd had all the time in the world to morn this decision; barely a single soul had come in here since he'd opened up three months ago and already, his bank balance was swan diving towards the red…
Roy, looking desperately for a distraction from the galling job of accepting failure, briefly checked his watch and raised an eyebrow. Ten o' four? Jeeze, time was really spreading itself thin this night.
'Screw the open twenty-four hour guarantee…'
The somewhat podgy man went to turn of the neon sign (that alone was costing him an arm and a leg to keep on) that proudly proclaimed this fact to the empty highway but stopped, his callous finger hovering indecisively over the switch.
The long absent sound of gravel crunching beneath slowing tires reached his ears.
Roy peered out of the large window that occupied the front of the shop, uncertain that his brain hadn't finally given under the mind numbing boredom of running a failing briskness. Sure enough, a beaten up rust-bucket of a car was pulling up outside the dinner. Roy blinked and almost had the long expected cardiac arrest that his doctor had warned him about there and then when he saw the car was still there AND was actually stopping in the parking lot.
Grinning, the man returned to his post behind the counter; it looked like karma had finally decided to smile down on him, cut him some slack and bring him some long absent customers.
But the grin that he'd worn so gleefully on his face instantly collapsed upon itself when he saw the state of the three figures that trudged out of the car and begun slowly meandering towards the restaurant as if they were blindly following the light emitting from it like a pack of moths.
Roy Mark's sighed loudly as the bell above the door jangled into life, shaking the gathering dust free from within the tiny copper dome. The point of no return had been breached and there was no way he could avoid these youths, even if he could afford it.
'Karma's a bitch'
8 8 8
Jobe tried his hardest to pull a painful smile as he approached the counter, pretending he couldn't see the look of disgust and shock stapled on the owner's slack-jawed face. The three of them must look as though they'd just clambered out of a sewer (which for two of them was actually true).
"Why don't you two go sit down?" Jobe firmly asked from the corner of his mouth, no more a query than a rigid instruction. With out question Grace peeled off and led Virgil, who ever since that particularly disturbing revelation had slipped back into a state of dumb catatonia, towards the horde of spotless tables. The white-haired proprietor watched them from underneath knitted brows with a gaze that reeked of suspicion. Jobe wondered if this man thought they were going to try and take off with the cutlery or, shock horror, steal the napkin dispenser.
"What can I do you for?" He breathed, and his seemingly tolerant words could easily be translated into something along the lines of 'I've got a twelve gauge sitting under this here counter and I'm just looking for you to give me an excuse to use it.'
"You still serving food?"
The man scratched the back of his head with a deliberate thoughtfulness.
"Well, I got some sandwiched but if you're hankering for something hot, it'll take me a while to fire up the fryer." Translation-'I don't want you and your freak show in here for a moment longer than it takes to get this transaction done and dusted.'
"That'll be fine…"
But Roy had disappeared into the storeroom before Jobe had even finished speaking.
"Jobe?" The man started as a voice that seemed to have materialized from nowhere accosted him from behind. He turned to see an extremely tired looking Grace offering her best attempt of a friendly smile. It failed pathetically to mask whatever morbid concern was silently nagging her.
"What's wrong?"
Grace dropped her head, laughing a laugh that was void of passion.
"You saw right through that, huh? No dancing around a point with you…" She looked up, the haggard smile looking all the more pained.
"'Fraid not. Something bothering you, isn't it?" Jobe whished she'd stop procrastinating and quit taunting him with her unsaid thought.
"It's just…" She turned, leaning her back into the wooden counter. "What are we going to do with Virgil?"
Jobe turned to Grace, but her eyes managed to dance out of the way whenever he tried to meet them with his own.
"What do you mean?" He asked in a low voice, examining the small proportion of her face that wasn't turned from him out of the corner of his eye. Grace took her time carefully choosing the right words, after all, the last thing they needed was a scene with Roy looking for the first opportunity to call the highway patrol.
"Well, we can't exactly take her back to wherever she came from after what she did, and letting her lose into society doesn't strike me as being too hot an idea either. It'd be like sticking a piranha in a bowl filled with gold fish…"
"You sure it wouldn't be the other way around?" Jobe intervened, his eyes lingering on the girl in question as she sat motionless, lost in a world of her own.
Grace grunted curtly in response and the man began to wonder if her parents were feeling particularly witty when choosing her painfully ironic name.
8 8 8
This predicament still remained unresolved by the time Jobe was halfway the over-priced sandwich that Roy had grudgingly handed over, bitterly shocked to see that this dirty, ragged man actually had the money to pay for it.
Roy glowered at them from the sanctuary of the counter, pretending to clean an already immaculate plate as he silently watched them, wanting nothing more than to see their backs. Sure, they hadn't actually done anything (apart from looking extremely worse for wear) to justify the deep feeling of dread, lying curled up in the depths of his stomach with a purr that intensified each time he looked at them. As stupid as it sounded, He felt as though he was in the presence of ghosts, each one hiding something o so very dark beneath their transparent skin. But Roy, with his mortal eyes, could only get a faint outline of whatever it was that haunted this trio so.
And that girl, the one with the hood, she was the worst.
Good fortune, who had forsaken both parties for such a long time decided it was time to let its precens be know and resolve both problems, announcing its arrival as all rare patrons of this diner did. Eight sets of eyes snapped up as the bell above the door sang out for the second time that night and the reactions from Grace and Roy were polar opposites as the two police officers stepped into the restaurant, surveying their sudden, dead silent surroundings.
While the elderly man practically pulled every muscle in his face as it exploded into a smile of relief, Grace caught Jobe's eye and saw he was closer to her own train of though. This wasn't a good progression, after all, in that rust-bucket of a car that had got them out of Silent Hill was a whole menagerie of weapons. Even she, an imaginative liar at the best of times could not think of one plausible excuse to explain their origins. After all, who'd ever heard of someone taking a fire axe on a hunting expedition?
"My god, so quiet in here, you'd think someone had gone and died!" The older of the two proclaimed, his already lined face creasing further as he grinned at the sparse occupants.
None laughed.
His partner, even though relatively new to the world of law enforcement, noticed how the only group of customers all dropped their curios gaze like they were afraid of being caught staring when he looked at them, setting the little, whispering voice of suspicion nagging in his ear. He didn't let them out of his sight, even as his partner ordered a pot of coffee strong enough to wake a coma victim and exchanged a far warmer conversation with Roy than Jobe had had the pleasure of.
"Quiet out here tonight, huh? The elder and less observant of the two drawled from a mouth that looked as though it was happiest chewing up tobacco before spitting the cud-like mess into a spittoon and hearing that satisfying 'ping'.
"Mhumm," Roy wordlessly commented. "This is the busiest I've been in months…"
The other cop lent forward over the wooden counter, catching Roy's eyes above the rim of his opaque sunglasses, fixing it instantly.
"If that's so, then why'd you look so glum 'bout those guys?" From the low way he talked, it was clear that this particular soul's mouth wasn't made for munching leaves. Roy dropped the act, bending down low over the counter as he whispered, confessing everyone of his fears.
"There's something…I don't know…outta place. Don't they strike you as a little weird? To be honest, I want them out of here fast."
The younger cop nodded slowly, but despite his somewhat fearsome skills of observation and character judgment, he failed to see the sneer growing on his superior's face, like a dog who's position of leader of the pack has been usurped.
8 8 8
"Shit…"
Jobe looked up from the sandwich at Grace, who had gone stiffer than a pole.
"What?"
"They're coming over here!"
He looked up, and sure enough, the two men in their beige uniforms were slowly sauntering towards them.
"What are"
"Just improvise…" And already, Grace had put on a rather charming smile that Jobe found rather hard to swallow after listening to her attempt to cover up whatever truth it was she was hiding from him. But hey, he wasn't going to complain if it helped get them out of the rapidly approaching mess that was currently sitting down at the next table.
"Boy, you folks sure are close to nowhere!" The older started in a friendly enough voice that begged for conversation, his partner smiling just that little bit too hard.
Grace laughed.
"Ha, you could say that again. We've been driving for hours and this is the closet thing to civilisation we've seen in a long time…"
So Jobe left the budding conversation in the all too capable hands of Grace as she and the elder cop yammered on about nothing of importance. The fear of suspicion would have all but left him if it hadn't been for the talkative cop's younger counter-part. He said nothing, and Jobe couldn't tell what he was staring at behind those mirrored glasses but he would gladly wager that the stony cop hadn't blinked for all the time he'd sat down. He shifted uncomfortably, feigning interest in the ongoing dialogue but there was something else that nagged at the back of his mind that kept him from hearing the words. Every now and again, he would feel the girl next to him shiver as if intoxicated with cold, her shallow breathing growing all the more rapid.
'She's going to lose it…'The thought suddenly dawned on Jobe with sickening clarity and silently prayed that none else would notice how she shook with growing intensity, but, alas, the good fortune that had put the necessary components for this scene into motion had chosen its side.
"Is your friend feeling alright?" The young cop asked, his light brows furrowing ever so slightly.
"Uh, yeah…she just…has flu." The speed of that sentence must have fluxed at least four times and Jobe caught Grace shooting him a disapproving scowl. "I think I'm going to take her out to get some air…"
The man finished his horribly gushed and forced stament and jumped to his feet, the girl slowly mirroring his action.
"What the"
'CRUNCH'
And that was when everything went to shit.
Let us pause for a moment and look back at what happened all in the time for Grace to blink. In that short moment between two seconds, the elder cop had caught sight of Virgil's hands as she pushed her self up from the table and made the fatal error of reaching out to the twisted appendage in innocent curiosity. Unfortunately for him, Virgil didn't interpret it this way, rather as an action fuled by hungry aggression and reacted as any person who had spent the last two years of their life relying on brute grit to survive would.
The elderly cop, a mister Polasiky, was given a brief moment to examine the object of his attention as it slammed into his face, grinding his teeth and flesh together.
"NO!" Jobe barked, but it was too little, too late and he was helpless to watch as the whole ugly scene unfolded before him.
The girl barged past him, but the younger cop was already up on his feet (sadly, the same couldn't be said of his superior, who lay incapacitated on the floor and cupping his blood-stained hands over a mouth that was bubbling with the stuff), a can of mace that seemed to have come from nowhere gripped tightly in his hand.
"FREEZE!" He'd already predicted Virgil's obvious escape route, sliding out in front of her as she ran headlong towards the door, the can primed.
Even if the girl wanted to stop, the frictionless floor and her built up momentum were both against that plan of action and ploughed straight towards him.
Grace winced in preparation of the immanent collision…but the young cop had other plans, pressing down on the little red button and emptying as much of the can's misty spray into the atmosphere. He dove out of the way as Virgil tripped past, howling as her eyes exploded with a sensation, as if someone had just rammed two lit matches into them, but that wasn't the end of the sudden pain. The fiery liquid seeped into her skin and the already raw and torn organ began to scream along with her as she staggered to a halt, clawing at her face as if she could dig out the pain. The only thing she succeeded at clawing out was her own flesh.
The cop surveyed his handy work with a silent, sadistic pleasure, pulling the nightstick from his belt and slowly approached the writhing girl.
She turned, looking up blindly at the sound of on-coming foot fall, rabidly looking for something to lash out at.
But the footsteps stopped.
The fair-haired cop stood motionless his face twisted with and expression of failed comprehension, trying to work out if his eyes weren't just showing him some fabrication of his mind. The…supposed girl before him snarled back from under a mask of charred skin, tainted red with blood.
"Holy"
He stopped as the pair of streaming eyes locked on to him, narrowing into thin, white slits. Had Virgil been given the chance to launch herself at the unfortunate cop, well, it wouldn't be worth thinking about but she never got the chance.
Polasiky had long since pushed himself up from the floor, still dribbling blood that slipped out from between the new gap in his teeth.
Virgil never saw the blow coming as the old cop sidled up next to her, nightstick a swinging. The leather baton smacked into the side of her head, sending her sprawling on the floor and Polasiky didn't waste time descending on her, a pair of handcuffs clutched tightly in his hand.
8 8 8
She was still thrashing when the younger cop threw her into the back of the squad car, slamming the door quickly behind her.
"Where the hell did you pick up this god damn animal anyway?" He turned on the man and woman who stood several feet off.
"Silent Hill, she was hitch-hiking and, well, we though we should the Christian thing. I had no idea she was so…" Jobe couldn't listen to the silver-tongued woman next to him anymore for fear of being sick. How could she just lie like this? Was she going to damn the one (questionably) good thing that had from that town to the mercy of the judicial force.
'I don't see you doing anything, either, hero.' The small voice that resided with in his head whispered and the shame came crashing down on him. It was right, he wasn't going to stick his neck out to save her either, no matter how much he wanted to pass judgement on Grace to ease his own conscience.
"What's her name, anyway?" The nameless cop asked as he pushed his glasses up the smooth ridge of his nose.
"Angela Orosco" Grace hadn't meant for the name to roll off her tongue so effortlessly, but the speed at which she'd been spurting non-truths just dragged it out.
'Whoops…'
Grace licked her lips and forced a smile, hoping neither of them would recognise the name but her hope all but disintegrated when she saw that the word 'Brahms' adorned the young cop's badge, and as already mentioned, good fortune had chosen whom it sided with.
"Orosco?" Polasiky's muffled voice spoke out from behind them, muted with the bloodied tissue he held over his mouth.
There was an uncomfortable silence; save for the sound of reinforced glass relentlessly being beaten with bloodstained palms.
A/N: For all of those asking, the girl in chapter 27 (The cake theorem) was indeed Angela and Rodardian pretty much hit the nail on the head in his review. As to why she doesn't appear as 'Virgil' and isn't confined to that level of existence, well, that will be explained in a later chapter.
E.P.O: Heh, 'fraid not. She's just sympathetic
