THE DOG HUNTERS (completed)

33 - MR. MISSION

I thought if I moved quickly at night, I'd be moving twice as quickly since they weren't moving then and everything is faster when there's no sun and less people and dogs.

I was right.

It was kind of nice running around at night. I didn't feel much fear. I felt focused.

The air felt good, cool, clear. I wasn't in a huge hurry because I knew I had an advantage. Very few people, very few cars. Even the police seemed to be somewhere better.

I moved in what might have appeared to be a random configuration. What I was really doing was I was charting the sort of path I figured LuluBelle would be drawing from his notebooks. I still didn't understand the logic of how he plotted things (and maybe there wasn't), but I just let it happen. I was playing. I tried to have fun.

It was a good game, and by morning I was surprised it was morning. There was an open door at the back of a Taco Bell, and I asked a sloppy-looking man hanging by it, smoking a cigarette, if there was any waste I could help get rid of. He was barely out of his teens,looking tired and bored, and ended up giving me a sack of soggy tacos, something someone hadn't paid for, he said.

Soggy or not, the tacos were first rate, and then I had to look for water because they were also really salty. Tasks – but unlike when I was under the little clock, they didn't transform my time, because I was rocking a greater mission.

I decided to keep going until I couldn't go any further, and then bunkout somewhere and decide what to do next. The mission was not as much fun during the day. It was hot and I felt I was absolutely wasting my time, no progress appeared to be getting made. As I got hotter and sweatier I felt this was becoming an incredibly stupid game, and I was an idiot.

Probably around noon (the sun appeared to be directly overhead) I decided,fuck it, time to nap. The only the issue was, I deep into this residential terrain and there was no safe place to crash. I tried to get back to a boulevard, but it was hard to concentrate. After a while I found a commercial street, flower shops, real estate offices,dentists – but no alleys.

Feeling like a complete loser, I just humped up the street from shady spot toshady spot, looking this way and that, hoping that I was going in the direction where things were more overgrown, where things get left behind.

If you just keep going, sooner than later you reach the end. It turned out I was going in the right direction – real ugly nature appeared,and I could hear a freeway blaring somewhere, and that meant an overpass maybe too. It was true, suddenly there were a bunch of roads, which all seemed to converge in a way that reminded me of a group of snakes trying to dance or fuck. Suddenly the land sloped down to a freeway, and thank goodness, there was scrub forest at all the points where the points weren't converging. A prime spot not to be bothered. I went to a particularly well positioned area, with ahill at it's back, and more forest to throw yourself into should someone come at you from another direction who was not very friendly.

And by the time I stopped moving I was so out of it I didn't even notice Lulubelle, until he'd almost blown my head off.