The Storm: Chapter One: The hitchiker

At six forty seven in the morning, on a cold November day, a grey Ford truck sped down the Interstate 1, a highway that runs along the southern part of Maine. The man driving was a twenty-six year old named Noah Lawrence. Noah had dark brown eyes, curly black hair, he was six two and weighed about two hundred pounds. He had grown up in the Upper East Side district of Manhattan and had moved to Maine for work. He was a bachelor, he had never been married, had no kids. Currently unemployed, he was driving from his home in the city of Harrington to the nearby town of Machias to apply for a job at the Bangor Savings Bank there. Unfortunately, he would never reach Number One Center St.
Noah’s brown eyes were accented by dark circles; he was tired. No, tired was not the word for it. He was weary. He had been looking for work for three months now, application after application, interview after interview, rejection after rejection. He was sick of it. Noah was beginning to think that he wouldn’t ever find work, that he would be evicted from his apartment and die, homeless and starving on some sidewalk somewhere. No. He shook the thoughts from his head, ridding his mind of the disturbing idea.
He flicked a button on the side of the wheel, increasing the speed of the windshield wipers to match the rising intensity of the rain. Dark clouds loomed overhead, and even darker ones sat on the horizon. Thunder boomed in the distance, and far away there was a flash of lightning. A storm was coming, and it was a big one. Noah stared out of the windshield, his eyes focusing on the barely visible road, and he continued to drive toward Machias, toward the ever-growing clouds on the horizon, toward the oncoming storm.
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The rain fell onto the tops of the trees, splattering against the leaves then running down the branches to the trunk, streaming down the dark pillar of bark and wood, finally hitting the earth, soaking into the soil, saturating the ground. The forest was dark, the already weak morning light obscured by the dark clouds and overhead branches made it almost impossible to see.
A man was running through the forest, dodging between trees, leaping over bushes and piles of underbrush. He was tall, and thick but not fat. He was wearing dirty, worn out jeans and a soaking hoodie which hid his face. He was running as fast as he could, sprinting through the darkness and the wetness. His breath was coming faster now, and his heart was throbbing harder. His thighs were burning and his neck and chest hurt. But he couldn’t stop now, not after he had evaded them for so long. He could hear them, a couple meters behind him, their footsteps almost silent against the soft ground. He couldn’t stop now. For to stop, to let them catch up, meant death.
The pain worsened. Even though it was freezing cold in the forest, sweat blossomed at his hairline, rolling down his forehead into his eyes. He quickly wiped it away, but just as fast another stream obscured his vision. He felt a wave of nausea and his vision went bright and fuzzy, a stab of pain assaulting his forehead, a buzzing noise attacking his ears. He shuddered, then bursting into a clearing slowed and stopped. He bent over, and vomited onto the ground. He was so close to fainting, but before he did, he summoned up a last reserve of strength and rummaged in his bag, pulling out a black cylinder with a ring on the end. He pulled the ring, dropped it on the ground, then staggered to the tree line. He limped another few feet, then fell onto the wet ground, into darkness.
Back at the clearing, black smoke poured from the cylinder, enveloping everything, reducing the already low visibility to none. Footsteps echoed in the silence, growing louder and louder. The noise consisted of four soft thumps, one after another indicating two pairs of feet. The footsteps stopped, then a voice cut through the silence, seeming astronomically loud compared to the soft volume of the footfalls.
“Fuck! What is this stuff? I can’t see anything,” said the voice, in a raspy tone. There was a cough.
“It’s like smoke,” said another voice, also coughing.
“Where the hell did he go?” asked the raspy voice, “Fuck! We can’t afford to lose him again. The boss will be furious!”
“The boss will fucking kill us!” shouted the other man, “We can’t go back—” The man broke off, as a third voice broke in. This new voice did not belong to either of the men, nor the man they were chasing, nor anyone either of them knew. It was soft, but easily heard, and the sound of it was almost slippery, the way it curled and swam into their minds like an insubstantial fish.
“Yes,” it said, “if you go back to the boss, he will as you put it, ‘fucking kill’ you, but this isn’t as big a problem as you think it is,”
“Who the fuck are you?” said the raspy voiced man, “What do you mean not such a big problem? I don’t want to fucking die!”
“You don’t need to know who I am. And as for your second question, because either way, if you go back to him or stay here, you will die,”
“What?” said the other man, “How? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I was sent to kill you,”
“Fuck that! Do you know who we’re working for? If you kill us, who are his men, you will be dead in the next twenty four hours, get it?”
“No, I don’t think so. What you don’t understand is my employer is the same man as yours. I was sent as your replacement,” And with that, there was silence.
Much later, after the man that they were chasing had arisen and continued on his way, the smoke cleared from the clearing, revealing two bodies, of one largish man and one smallish man. They were wearing army camouflage and each had a gun in his belt and a knife in his pocket. They were unmarked save for a thin rectangular slice in the middle of each of their foreheads. They were both unmistakably dead, both of their sets of eyes were wide open, surprised, and empty.