It was a rainy, crapass day ( Read more... )

John paced the short length of their hut with both hands held out in front of him. Seven hours since they'd found a second body. Seven hours since they'd all learned that another innocent woman had died ( Read more... )

There were a billion stars in the sky over the Gulf. His father had told him that - not to discourage his young son from counting them, but to remind him just how big the universe was, and how many dreams it took to fill it ( Read more... )

John sat very still in the grass. The wind moved the leaves on the trees around him, lifting his short hair in tufts that rose and fell, but John himself was still ( Read more... )

From a clinic bed, one lone, slightly off key voice rang out and echoed off the Compound walls ( Read more... )

John awoke to a curious sensation, rather like he'd been prepared as one might a piece of dried meat. As soon as the initial sleep-induced fuzz wore off, he felt quite a bit worse. He was hot, thirsty, his head ached, and if anymore sweat developed inside his leather pants his flesh might actually start boiling ( Read more... )

John was pretty sure he'd gone to sleep with an uneven cave floor beneath him, that same old jagged rock sticking up through the blankets to make nice with his kidneys. So why he was waking up on a much smoother, if no less chilly surface, that --now that he thought about it-- smelled damn familiar was anyone's guess ( Read more... )

[continued from here]

John marched steadily out of the door to the Compound, one very drunk scientist over his shoulder and a satisfied looking grin on his face. From above he thought he heard a giggle, and he smacked playfully at the ass dangling so conveniently near. "Quiet, you. I'm a man on a mission."