Nanowhere update and illustrated version
1
Joe and Al
DR. ERNEST STRAFF wasn’t surprised when the jumptroopers tackled him in his dining room, stuffed his head in a bag, zip-tied his wrists and ankles, dragged him into a clearing in the forest next to his house, and cabled him up into a hovering gunship. He just thought or hoped or wished he had had more time.
In seven hundred and sixteen seconds-Straff was counting-his captors had him over the New Hampshire line, crossing western Mass at a shallow angle that would take him into upstate New York. He knew their direction because he heard a voice through the backroar of the engines, deep with round tones and a slight Minnesota lilt, curiously pointing out the Mass Pike to one of his squadmates. I-90 ran east-west across Massachusetts, dipped south a bit in the middle before it headed into Boston. The ex-Minnesotan was on Straff’s left, so they must be just north of the Pike, heading west. Nothing but cold Atlantic east. If the pilot kept a fairly straight heading they’d cross into New York south of the capital toward the Catskill’s.
Straff caught all of this in the space of a few seconds. As soon as the trooper started speaking, he stopped, having seen another of his team give him a finger drawn across the throat.
This left another few hundred seconds for Dr. Straff to blindly think over his fate. The black fabric bag rubbed his nose and ears. The gunship’s engines threw off a steady high-throttled chainsaw whine with an accompanying fuselage-vibrating rumble, and his ears hurt trying to listen for distinguishable sounds out of the dense storm of noise.