The Wanderer [1st Draft]

Day One

Eastern Minnesota

October 24, 2019 – 2:07 A.M. Central

Scott sat up in bed, sweating profusely and breathing like he'd just been running for miles without a break. Clenching his sheets tight, he looked around in panic, then shook his head in an attempt shake that image out of his mind. He leaned forward and cupped his face in his hands, groaning. Slowly, he shifted on the bed and tried to get comfortable again, but just as he was nearing sleep, he was jerked awake by a scream of absolute terror coming from his bedroom. He scrambled to unwind his legs from the sheets, then race to the room where the woman was.

She was sitting up, eyes wild with a look of sheer horror on her face. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her good arm reached out as if to grab someone. Scott flipped the light on before walking over to the bed. As soon as he saw her eyes, he knew that she was dreaming, or... maybe being haunted by memories. It was nothing new to him.

Scott turned off the light before carefully getting her to lay back down. He lay partially down next to her, offering her soft words of comfort to get her to settle back down. She murmured a name that he figured was most likely 'Michael'. He suspected the dream and the scars were related, since those scars were not exactly clean, meaning something tore through her skin, and it wasn't a bullet. The one on her right side was over three inches long.

Idly, he wondered about what might have happened to her to cause those types of injuries. Just shy if fifteen minutes later, Scott had fallen into a dreamless sleep.

9:22 A.M.

Scott rolled over on his back, groaning softly as he drifted into wakefulness. He slowly opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Damn, he felt good. Like he'd slept peacefully a whole night. As he sat up, he realized there was a warm body next to him, startling him. When he looked over and saw the brunette lying next to him, the events from the day before returned to him. With sigh of disappointment, he slipped out of the bed and walked out of the room.

After going to the bathroom, brushing his teeth and combing his hair, Scott went to get some clothes out of his closet – socks, a pair of jeans, an undershirt, a thermal, and a thick flannel shirt. Once he was dressed, he walked out to start a pot of coffee and rebuild the fire, after letting it burn slowly over the course of the night. After putting in the grounds and pouring the water in, he flipped the button to get the machine going. A few smaller and a couple of mid-sized wooden logs were added to the fire, using the poker to stir up the coals and the small remains of the overnight log, then blowing a bit on the fire to spark up and encourage flames to appear.

Once things were going, he went to fix himself a cup of coffee. When he looked out the window, he briefly forgot about coffee. From his tree markers, the snow was already nearly two and a half feet deep and it was still coming down heavily. It did not look like the storm was even close to petering out. 'God, please don't let this thing stall'.

Scott returned to fixing his coffee, his mind filling with questions about the woman either unconscious or sleeping in his bed. What was she doing on such back roads? Why was she carrying two guns? Also, why did she carry a Buck Knife on her belt? And lastly, why is a girl from Maryland with a platinum card riding a 30-something-year-old Harley out in the middle of nowhere all by herself? You didn't get a platinum card unless you had some serious money.

Everything she had was high-quality, which usually meant it was more expensive. The Harley appeared to be in great shape outside of the messed up forks and front tire. Her leather was thick and heavy-duty, as were her saddle and duffle bags. The helmet was high-end and clearly well designed. Her clothes, though, he couldn't tell, since he'd not bothered to look at the labels, but what she did see were mostly unisex practical clothing with a skirt and two blouses, plus one relatively short dress. The latter looked more like the kind of clothes a woman might wear to seduce a man at a bar or something. Scott could imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for her to pick someone up. To his estimation, she was well above average.