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RIDE! ~ Pt.5
Oct. 29th, 2011 12:30 amThe Coffin Hop continues...
RIDE!~Pt.1
RIDE!~ Pt.2
RIDE!~ pt.3
RIDE!~ pt.4
23 Minutes to go:
The tracks have been yanked out with all the nostalgia of long neglected teeth, the rail lines ripped from the dirt and the kudzu defoliated leaving a snaking path of dust to slither through the city. Eventually it was going to be some kind of Beltway – twenty- two miles of Terminus history face-lifted and gentrified to provide an ambulatory distraction for a rapidly dwindling middle class.
As such the trail is sporadically populated with works of public art: towering abstract shambles of wrought-iron and copper hovering out of the gloom. Mitch passes the backs of garages, empty utility companies, vast parking lots and chic Cubist-inspired apartment complexes. Along the sides of the trail, there remains the occasional stretch of bramble with green vines greedily swallowing abandoned husks of stolen cars and rusted chain link fences. He see’s shadows moving within their depths, but steels his pace at a steady drift, conserving his energy for when he has to hit back into the streets.
Up ahead lies the bridge that runs over North Avenue. On the left-hand side, two buildings flank each other across the avenue. One is a stone husk of an old turn-of-the-last-century cotton mill that was gutted and converted into a three-tier night club in the early 80’s. The other is a former department store catalog distribution center of considerable breadth that briefly served as Terminus’ City Hall East in the 90’s.
When he passes the husk of the old cotton mill, he slows some to risk a glance down a potential two-story fall into the wide swath of green field behind it. The club’s music park is encased within a barbwire lined fence with the word HELP burnt into huge letters along the grass.
If he’s been there once, he’s been there a hundred times.
The 80’s nights, the Fetish nights, the Rave Nights along with the endless procession of Shows, watching the seasons of the Scene shift as the faces wilted under blooms of wildly dyed hair until gradually replaced by younger faces to bear it witness.
Drifting over the avenue he catches the front of the club. A vast flood of creeps ripple around the two-story mill, its windows long boarded up and painted black to keep the ambience in. The gates to the park are buckling under the relented press of the collective damned. They number in the hundreds. They claw at stone walls and pound at the two steel doors to the entrance. They stumble around the kiosk booth and drift under the marquee advertising what was no doubt now some bands unexpected farewell tour.
Dead center over the horizon of South Avenue behind, the 55 story obelisk silhouette of the BOA Building hovers over the carnage and smolders. A flash of red lightning ignites behind the ziggurat tip of the building and illuminates a cascade of Infected shambling down the rolling four lane wide roll of the Avenue. In the hundreds, possibly the thousands, they shuffle-march forward to join the growing pool just below him. All of them roaring, growling, wailing hungrily for their place on the club’s growing guest list.
Mitch figures whoever was down in there, wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon – leaving the anonymous survivors stranded for good in an endless club night, a wish for many he knew, now a blacked-out nightmare from which there was no waking.
Well, at least they have plenty to drink in the meantime.
As if able to hear this thought as clear as a shout, one of the Infected – vaguely discerned as a woman through the mob scene below - turns away from the forward press of the crowd and raises a blanched face to peer through the distance directly towards him. She raises a slender arm upward and with a trembling hand – reaches for, or beckons at, or waves to him.
Mitch barely represses a shiver and ups his velocity, racing over to the next bridge, this one crossing over Ponce De Leon. This time he doesn’t repeat the mistake of taking in the sights, but instead cuts off the trail, banking right into the rear lot of an orange painted brick antique store, cuts up an alleyway and reemerges back into the City’s grid.
18 minutes to go:
Time is dwindling quickly and Mitch is doing his best to catch up with it.
Add to that the fact that a pack of foam-at-the-mouth feral dogs have been chasing him for about two blocks now. Seven of them total and all of them as big as they looked nasty. So far, shaking them has been a bitch. Even with his Baby going full speed, they remain a few paces behind and closing. If it weren’t for the fact that the next ½ mile was all downhill they’d most likely be tearing away at his legs right now and dragging him down. However, this neck of the woods is Town Home Country and as such the road’s Infected packed.
Mitch picks up momentum with a corresponding burst of adrenalin – but with the dog pack doing the same. He weaves through them in a fury, circling around overturned cars, ducking under spastic tackles and swinging bear hugs. He pops up on the sidewalk to weave sharply through the foot traffic and jumps the curb to glide down a brief stretch of open road.
One by one, all the dogs except one breaks pursuit to attack en masse a baffled Infected shambling oblviously towards Mitch from the wreckage of an overturned Subaru
A glance over the shoulder shows the last of the pack, a ‘roided out Rottweiler, leaping over a downed scooter and gaining on Mitch quick.
Ahead of him he catches five creeps filing in through the narrow openings of a blockade of abandoned police cars, ambulances and news vans.
Mitch takes a deep breath, let’s the screaming jangle of thoughts dissolve into the pounding rhythm of his heart. He feels the heated breath of the Rott on his right calf and watches the Infected zoom in closer with their bloodied, snapping grins and horrified glares bolted open into an involuntary awareness. Closer and closer and…
… Mitch swerves a sharp left, circling back up the hill at the last second, staying just out of reach of the advancing creeps and surprising the Rott just long enough for its momentum to send him crashing into them.
Looping back through a tangle of cop creeps, Mitch sees the pack of Infected and the Rott. They are a huddled mass of gnawing teeth, pained barks and squirming limbs.
Leaving plenty of room for him to dive on by and out through the other side of the barricade unnoticed.
Not far now, Mitch snorts. He emerges, thankfully, onto a relatively lightly infested other side of the street, Just hang on, Val. I’m almost there and nothing in this city’s gonna stop me!
RIDE!~Pt.1
RIDE!~ Pt.2
RIDE!~ pt.3
RIDE!~ pt.4
23 Minutes to go:
The tracks have been yanked out with all the nostalgia of long neglected teeth, the rail lines ripped from the dirt and the kudzu defoliated leaving a snaking path of dust to slither through the city. Eventually it was going to be some kind of Beltway – twenty- two miles of Terminus history face-lifted and gentrified to provide an ambulatory distraction for a rapidly dwindling middle class.
As such the trail is sporadically populated with works of public art: towering abstract shambles of wrought-iron and copper hovering out of the gloom. Mitch passes the backs of garages, empty utility companies, vast parking lots and chic Cubist-inspired apartment complexes. Along the sides of the trail, there remains the occasional stretch of bramble with green vines greedily swallowing abandoned husks of stolen cars and rusted chain link fences. He see’s shadows moving within their depths, but steels his pace at a steady drift, conserving his energy for when he has to hit back into the streets.
Up ahead lies the bridge that runs over North Avenue. On the left-hand side, two buildings flank each other across the avenue. One is a stone husk of an old turn-of-the-last-century cotton mill that was gutted and converted into a three-tier night club in the early 80’s. The other is a former department store catalog distribution center of considerable breadth that briefly served as Terminus’ City Hall East in the 90’s.
When he passes the husk of the old cotton mill, he slows some to risk a glance down a potential two-story fall into the wide swath of green field behind it. The club’s music park is encased within a barbwire lined fence with the word HELP burnt into huge letters along the grass.
If he’s been there once, he’s been there a hundred times.
The 80’s nights, the Fetish nights, the Rave Nights along with the endless procession of Shows, watching the seasons of the Scene shift as the faces wilted under blooms of wildly dyed hair until gradually replaced by younger faces to bear it witness.
Drifting over the avenue he catches the front of the club. A vast flood of creeps ripple around the two-story mill, its windows long boarded up and painted black to keep the ambience in. The gates to the park are buckling under the relented press of the collective damned. They number in the hundreds. They claw at stone walls and pound at the two steel doors to the entrance. They stumble around the kiosk booth and drift under the marquee advertising what was no doubt now some bands unexpected farewell tour.
Dead center over the horizon of South Avenue behind, the 55 story obelisk silhouette of the BOA Building hovers over the carnage and smolders. A flash of red lightning ignites behind the ziggurat tip of the building and illuminates a cascade of Infected shambling down the rolling four lane wide roll of the Avenue. In the hundreds, possibly the thousands, they shuffle-march forward to join the growing pool just below him. All of them roaring, growling, wailing hungrily for their place on the club’s growing guest list.
Mitch figures whoever was down in there, wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon – leaving the anonymous survivors stranded for good in an endless club night, a wish for many he knew, now a blacked-out nightmare from which there was no waking.
Well, at least they have plenty to drink in the meantime.
As if able to hear this thought as clear as a shout, one of the Infected – vaguely discerned as a woman through the mob scene below - turns away from the forward press of the crowd and raises a blanched face to peer through the distance directly towards him. She raises a slender arm upward and with a trembling hand – reaches for, or beckons at, or waves to him.
Mitch barely represses a shiver and ups his velocity, racing over to the next bridge, this one crossing over Ponce De Leon. This time he doesn’t repeat the mistake of taking in the sights, but instead cuts off the trail, banking right into the rear lot of an orange painted brick antique store, cuts up an alleyway and reemerges back into the City’s grid.
18 minutes to go:
Time is dwindling quickly and Mitch is doing his best to catch up with it.
Add to that the fact that a pack of foam-at-the-mouth feral dogs have been chasing him for about two blocks now. Seven of them total and all of them as big as they looked nasty. So far, shaking them has been a bitch. Even with his Baby going full speed, they remain a few paces behind and closing. If it weren’t for the fact that the next ½ mile was all downhill they’d most likely be tearing away at his legs right now and dragging him down. However, this neck of the woods is Town Home Country and as such the road’s Infected packed.
Mitch picks up momentum with a corresponding burst of adrenalin – but with the dog pack doing the same. He weaves through them in a fury, circling around overturned cars, ducking under spastic tackles and swinging bear hugs. He pops up on the sidewalk to weave sharply through the foot traffic and jumps the curb to glide down a brief stretch of open road.
One by one, all the dogs except one breaks pursuit to attack en masse a baffled Infected shambling oblviously towards Mitch from the wreckage of an overturned Subaru
A glance over the shoulder shows the last of the pack, a ‘roided out Rottweiler, leaping over a downed scooter and gaining on Mitch quick.
Ahead of him he catches five creeps filing in through the narrow openings of a blockade of abandoned police cars, ambulances and news vans.
Mitch takes a deep breath, let’s the screaming jangle of thoughts dissolve into the pounding rhythm of his heart. He feels the heated breath of the Rott on his right calf and watches the Infected zoom in closer with their bloodied, snapping grins and horrified glares bolted open into an involuntary awareness. Closer and closer and…
… Mitch swerves a sharp left, circling back up the hill at the last second, staying just out of reach of the advancing creeps and surprising the Rott just long enough for its momentum to send him crashing into them.
Looping back through a tangle of cop creeps, Mitch sees the pack of Infected and the Rott. They are a huddled mass of gnawing teeth, pained barks and squirming limbs.
Leaving plenty of room for him to dive on by and out through the other side of the barricade unnoticed.
Not far now, Mitch snorts. He emerges, thankfully, onto a relatively lightly infested other side of the street, Just hang on, Val. I’m almost there and nothing in this city’s gonna stop me!