Project Perses: Redemption

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Jim watched me dubiously as I bought three Pepperoni Hot Pockets, a foot long hot dog, a box of donuts and a 32oz Slurpee from another 7-11 after he’d picked me up a mile down the road where I’d been hiding in some seriously thorny bushes.

He hadn’t said much during the ride to the 7-11 at the next off ramp, giving a pretty clear example of what ‘stunned into silence’ means.  He had the radio on; listening to the local AM news channel, so we both had an opportunity to hear what was being said about the whole deal.  When he grew bored with the commentary, Jim would flip the station to the next one, listen for a bit, and then do it again. NPR was having a field day. 

Some were calling it a hoax and others we saying that the spectators had been inhaling too many fumes from the tractor trailer or something. A few of the bigger news agencies had already been able to put the pieces together enough to surmise that even though all the incidents were thousands of miles apart, they were connected. One genius already identified me as the pilot of the F-111. 

Supposedly the many of the pictures from the accident have found their way to YouTube and Twitter was on fire.  The pictures that were sure to be especially damning were the ones where the car magically levitated out of the ravine. The silence from the crowd that had fallen when the car breached the trees had been absolute; you could have heard a pin drop.  That of course allowed everyone within a radius of a mile to clearly hear the woman in the silver car screaming at the top of her lungs.  When the tires touched down, people closest to the car actually fell back in fear, while others locked their eyes on me in disbelief as I collapsed.  Talk about putting on a show. I’d fallen to my knees then, hands out to catch me before I face planted, my blood splattering the concrete. I shook to my core from the strain, kneeling on the concrete, staring at my blood and the hidieous raised veins protruding from my hands, not sure I even had the ability to move any longer.   

I don’t know how long it took me to regain my feet, but finally I rose, taking deep cleansing breaths while using my sleeve to wipe away the blood from my nose and stepped forward towards the car. The driver, a professionally dressed blonde haired woman who was maybe in her late thirties, was unleashing a litany of swear words while beating on the driver’s side door, attempting to get it open.  The physical image certainly didn’t match her vocabulary. Not one single person was willing to approach the car to help her out, all too stunned to react.

She kept up her one-sided dialog until she saw me standing there, then she had stopped and simply stared.  Reaching up, I wiped away the blood that was still dripping from one side, painfully aware that my headache had come back with a vengeance.  I took in a quick assessment of her, ignoring my own discomfort.  She seemed relatively fine, perhaps she had a mild concussion but at least she was coherent enough to curse me out.

There were murmurs still coming from the crowd, and when I raised my head over the top of the car to glance their way, some froze in shock, other stepped back in fear. The crowd seemed restless, shocked and even maybe a little disturbed.   I didn’t need to hang out any longer to hear more of what they were saying.  Knowing my work was done, I took one glance around at the display before I, at least to the crowd, seemed to disappear into thin air.

And that move caused the crowd to go ballistic behind me, but it couldn’t be helped.  It was better if no one knew which way I went.