Hopefully this is the last stop of the night. I wondered at the amount of money left in my account, this whole thing had sucked it near dry. Didn't matter thou, it'd be worth it in the end. I climbed out of the rig, hooked the gas line up to it, and shambled inside, rubbing at the tender cut on my back as I did.
“stupid effin raghead po po's” I mumbled under my breath as my back twinged with pain.
I pushed open the door and the little morocan man behind the counter looked up and gave me a disgusted look as I went about my business. Coffee, I need coffee. And maybe I'll grab some donuts or something. I grab the biggest cup they have for the fountain drinks and start to fill it up with coffee, it slowly fills while I grab a box of cake donuts from the clearance rack beside the beverage counter. The little guy looks up at me and notices the cup I'm using for coffee. He stands up and starts swearing in swahili and gesturing at the cup. I calmly put a lid on it and walk over to the counter and place my purchases in front of him. He looks down at them, back at me, down again and starts to ring them up while grumbling under his breathe. I stop him and point at a pack of cigarettes above him. He glares at me, plucks the pack out of the dispenser and drops it unceremoniously on the counter. I honestly didn't care if I was pissing him off or not, he was insignificant to my future. Maybe later I'd stop back by and pay him a visit, but that was later. He finished ringing me up and pointed at the amount due area of the little cash register sign and made a gimme gesture. I tossed some money at him and left.
Back on the road and I was already trembling. I pulled a cigarette out of the pack and fumbled it into my mouth. I rolled down the window as I exhaled slowly. The smoke whirled around my eyes before being sucked out into the desert night. I heard a little grunt behind me as my passenger rolled over. I envied him, I couldn't think of anywhere better to sleep than in the back of a moving car. This was even better because it was an actual bed. I'd had no sleep for thirty two hours and it was starting to take it's toll on me. I rubbed at my eyes and took another drag followed by a sip of coffee. The buzz had calmed me down a little but I still felt weird.
I was about to do this. This monumental feat, something few had done before me. So few it might have been fewer than a hundred throughout all of time. And at the cost that was demanded. I couldn't turn back now, that wasn't even an option anymore. I'd given up far too much and the repercussions from my contacts and the First would be.... well they weren't worth thinking of. Instead I turned my mind to my passenger. Mike Jennings was his name and he was my brother in law. I was about to bash his skull in with a crood shovel.
He'd always begged me to come whenever I went on trips or got jobs over seas. Mike wasn't that bad of a kid, I actually really liked him. This was just the way things had to be. I had no other brothers, just sisters. I would kill all of them instead of Mike if I could, stupid bitches deserved it for how they treated me and him when we were younger. But I couldn't, it had to be a sibling of the same sex. Luckily the guidlines were a bit fuzzy about half siblings. Stupid ancient rituals always have weird rules.
A road sign notified me that I was four kilometers from the border of Algeria. Luckily this area of the world wasn't too worried about illegal immigrants. I checked the clock, it was three-twenty one. I had about an hour and a half to get sixty five miles into the sahara desert and locate the first. After driving a little bit longer I saw the lights of the border up ahead. There were a bit too many for my taste, it looked like there might be a road block of some kind.
"Aww shit, this isn't good" I quietly mumbled and flipped off my highbeams. I rumbled to a shuddering stop a good ten feet from a jeep with a few Algerian soldiers sitting in it smoking and playing cards. one stood up and hopped out of the jeep. He jogged over to my side and crawled up and tapped on the window. I obliged him by rolling it down. He was an averaged sized man with a nasty cut on his lip.
"where you going foreigner?" he drawled out from behind his hand rolled cigarette.
"I've got a shipment I gotta deliver to Bechar by morning." I answered without blinking.
"Shipment of what? You should give me some of whatever it is so you can pass." he grinned maleovently at me while he said this.
"I'll give you my passport book and if that's not enough I've got a sawed off full of incendinary rounds that you might like to see also." I replied with an even wickeder smile.
He frowned and started to call to his buddies but stopped as the afore mentioned sawed off pressed into the divet between his collar bones. He swallowed and called for them to move the jeep instead. "Keep a good hold of the side of my rig while I drive through and on the other side I'll give you a fifty and let you go. Deal?" I hissed at him. He nodded quickly and I accelerated a little bit, rumbling my way throu the blockade. I stopped once my backend was all the way clear. He looked at me as I jerked my wallet out of my back pocket and grabbed a few twenties out of it. He smiled a genuine smile this time and I placed the bills in his hand. He counted them and looked back at me. He turned without another word and jumped off the rig and started walking back to the jeep. I sighed audibly and started rolling again. I checked the clock again, I was making good time now it seemed, I'd make it there before I ran out of time.
The highways in Algeria were pretty shitty and were giving my wheels and driving skills a run for their money. The constant rumbling and shaking was also making it hard for Mike to sleep. I heard a thump from behind me and then a hand gripped the passenger seat as he attempted to get up. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he half stepped, half fell into the passenger seat where he wiggled around till he was seated comfortably. He looked at me with his dark green eyes for a couple of moments before turning to look out the window. For the millionth time tonight I questioned if I really wanted to go through with this. He was about nineteen and still living at home, my dad (the parent we shared) had decided it would be a good character building experience for him to go on a long trip like this and see some of the nastier parts of the world. He'd told me to protect Mike with my life, but shit happens right?
"Where are we?" Mike yawned out.
"The Algerian Sahara. I just passed a border blockade, you missed it."
"Dammit. Anything happen?"
"Naw, he tried to extort me and I showed him my gun."
"Oh.... I assume you didn't actually shoot him thou, right? I mean that woulda woken me up at the very least."
"Yeah I let him go, gave him some money to keep quiet too."
"Faggoty ass soldiers am I right?"
I nodded and smiled, he really was quite a bit like me. Same defined jawline, messy mop of sandy blonde hair. His nose was a little bigger, that he got from his mom who was of jewish decent. He was lanky as alot of guys under 20 are prone to be, all in all he was a handsome kid. He'd never really made much of himself even though we'd been well set and brought up. Hell, our dad had just retired when his law firm bought him out for three million. I mentally groaned at the thought of money, I was going to have to use my last hundred to get the fuck out of this God forsaken desert, and if possible this damned continent after this whole ordeal was over. God forsaken.... that's kind of a funny choice of words on my part, considering how the night was going to end up.
We drove on in silence, broken only by some static on the CB radio and Mike taking a noisey slurp from my coffee. It was now about four-fifteen and I was almost there, another ten miles and I'd see the fires probably. The fires would guide me to the First. I'd have to bullshit something to Mike about how I'd heard about this festival or something in the desert and that's why I hadn't stopped somewhere for the night. He pulled out his phone and fiddled with it for a little while. Damn thing probably had no signal so I didn't see the point. The soft glow of it washed over the cab and his face was lit up. I looked at that familiar face for a couple seconds, forcing myself to come to terms with the fact that I was going to leave it cold and lifeless in the dirt in about forty five minutes. Squeezing my eyes shut as I trembled violently, I turned away. My eyes opened to the road again, and in the far off distance I saw a line of warm red illumination. Not far to go now.
