The Hellhound Duke [Part1/2]

Chapter 6

     Lucas

     After leaving the cemetery, I get back on the road. My gas tank is already half empty; I decide to take a gamble in hopes I'll make it to the concert hall on time and fuel up on the way home.

     My watch reads 8:15. With every mile closer to the elevator to Pride, I grow more and more nervous. By the time I roll inside, surrounded by guards and other travelers, I'm close to panting, my stomach tight and tongue dry.

     The lights change to purple, and the elevator starts its scenic ascent. An hour later of agonizing anticipation, it stops and the doors open. I hold my breath, grip the wheel, and wait to be signaled.

     I was one of the first cars to park, a terrifying concept at the moment, as I now witness the armed guards flag people out ahead of me, checking permits. I watch one truck get handed a ticket and hope I'm not next. This time of day, it's packed; there could be three-hundred cars in here with me, maybe more, and I have to hope it's too many for them to care about me in particular.

     The one who's supposed to be checking my permit is a few steps in front of my hood, occupied with lacing up her boots, which ride up to her knees. The vehicle next to me, a shiny two-seater, with a booming engine and neon lights on the jet-black undercarriage, rolls down their heavily tinted window to chat to an officer.

     His music is so loud I can feel the bass through the floor of my car; he angrily turns it down.

     A few sentences are exchanged between the pair. After the third, the driver barks something that gets a rise out of the officer, who says something back and takes out a pad and pen. The rest of the guards crane their necks, more surprised than startled.

     The woman in front of my car finishes lacing up her boots, brushes her blue trousers off, and starts strutting towards me, the parallel yellow stripes on her shoulder blades that of a high-ranking officer. I gulp and sulk into my seat.

     It all happens in a blur; next to me, the officer leans through the window and the driver punches him in the leftmost of his three heads. One of the other officers yell a few words into the radio before the car shifts gear, revs its engine, and books it towards the sunlight; in a blink, the lights change from dark purple to blinding white; the horrific sound of grinding metal makes me clench my teeth and close my eyes, and when I look up, the car's stopped about forty feet ahead, on its rims with a big dent in its front, the windshield and headlights shattered, airbags deployed, and alarm ringing. The high-ranking officer runs over, pistol drawn. If nobody suspected anything before, they sure do now; red lights go off above the gate.

     A couple off-duty guards sitting at a table on the balcony that wraps around the elevator look at me, shaking in my beat-up sedan and neat clothes, assume I'm not an accomplice, then turn their attention back; someone drunkenly staggers out of the vehicle, a Greater Imp with one of his horns broken and bleeding and a seatbelt burn on his bare, red-haired chest. The doors at the side of the elevator swing open and half a dozen people march towards him; he gets on his knees and puts his hand on his head as the sharp spikes in the road retract and the barricades- shaped like stubby, metal teeth- descend back into their slits in the ground.

     They lug him away in handcuffs, and an officer finally walks up to my window. I roll it down and I'm surprised to see he looks as shaken as I do.

     "Yeah... it's usually drugs, whenever people run like that," his breathing is uneven, and he lets the rifle hang loosely by his side. He turns his radio down as people rattle off codes and numbers and information to one another. "It's crazy how many think they'll make it through. Do yourself a favor and don't smuggle shit in from the Overworld, and if you do, don't be an idiot about it, because that's what happens when you are," he turns his head; we watch as the driver gets escorted through one of the doors at the side of the elevator.