A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 61 Cruise 1

Chapter 61 Cruise 1

Callin looked down at the ocean, at the docks and the throngs of people. A scene so normal, yet so distant for him, that he felt like he was looking at a dream. Up here, on a small hill overlooking the ocean, the wind tossed his shaggy, black hair and ruffled at his ill-fitting clothes.

Two nights ago, he had stolen a pair of blue jeans and a black T Shirt from a clothesline from a subdivision that sat on the edge of the woods. Clothes obviously sized for somebody considerably taller and larger than him.

He wished he had been able to find a long sleeved shirt, to hide the bruising and raised welts on his wrists from the handcuffs. His healing power still wasn't back. He supposed he must be healing at a normal rate now, and he found himself wondering how people could live with so many, constant, irritating aches and pains every day, all day. How many of the people he could see down below, swarming the docks leading up to the huge cruise ship, were in some form of pain right now?

He absently rubbed at the welts, then scowled at the fresh surge of pain that simple contact brought. His feet ached, the crocs he had found in a Goodwill donation box one size too big, giving him blisters. He had never had blisters before, had never even imagined such a thing was possible. Is this what all those people down there just lived with every day? He figured a couple more days of this annoying pain and he would be snapping at anything and everything, like a wounded dog.

As the crowd began to thin, the last small groups beginning to climb up the walkway to the massive ship, he realized he had better decide something now or he might lose his chance. His instincts, his sense of the general direction of those he was hunting, told him they were on the other side of this ocean. In some other country, on some other land.

He loped down the hill, his mind frantically trying to come up with a plan to get aboard the cruise ship before it left. He had no way of knowing if it was heading where he needed to go, but it was going out onto the ocean and that was enough for him. That was where he needed to go.

He had no money. No food, no belongings. Nothing except the baggy clothes he wore. And he was so hungry that it was making him feel faint. Once he had dropped down out of the woods and hills and began to head directly to the coastline, he had been traveling through one subdivision and small city after another. He had found hunting in these urban area incredibly difficult. Especially without his powers to guide him.

As the hill leveled out, he entered a massive, nearly empty parking lot. Far to his right, a yellow taxi cab pulled in and stopped, an older couple hurriedly climbing out, the man reaching inside to toss a wad of bills at the driver. Even across the parking lot, Callin could see the drivers eyes pop at the shower of bills.

From how they were dressed to how casually the man had thrown what looked to be a large sum of money into the taxi, Callin could see they were definitely wealthy. He wondered how they had gotten their money. Was it through investing in evil, underground corporations like the labs? Or maybe they had inherited the money, or maybe they owned a successful business? He realized he actually had no clue how normal people lived day to day. It made his feeling of separation even more pronounced.

The taxi sped off and the couple began to hurry towards the waiting cruise ship. They disappeared from his sight as they stepped between two, black panel vans. Callin stopped running, holding his breath in order to listen better, as he heard harsh voices, the sound of a fist hitting flesh, and a female scream. It sounded like it came from between those black vans.

Without thinking, moving purely on instinct, he raced across the parking lot, heading directly towards the vans. They were broadside to him, so he couldn't see what was occurring between them, but he heard the back doors open on one of them, he heard multiple voices.