HOLD THE LINE AGAINST THE NIGHT
A Hunter the Vigil Chronicle
I am the pirate signal. Let me in. I am the word virus. Let me in. I am the ear worm. Let me in. I am the brain pathogen grammar. I am the dreamers’ dream. I am what I am. Let me in – let me in – let me in – let me in. Let me in!
https://i.ibb.co/d0T8mkj/Outer-Gods-Borja-Pindado.jpg
”Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss will gaze back into you.”
- Friedrich Nietzche
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11th, 2019
Fall had come early to Terrace. Like most of Western Canada, the summer had been exceedingly wet with barely any days where the sun had shone and the heat seeped in to warm ones bones. The heavy dampness had brought with it cooler than seasonal temperatures and as the waning days of August passed by, those cooler temperatures had begun to crisp the leaves to early golds and reds. These cooler days had stifled most of the tourism to Terrace. Only the brave, the bold and those with a truly adventuresome spirit had come to bolster the city with forays into the various nature preserves and campsites that littered the thick temperate rainforests that lay vast across the Skeena Valley. Unfortunately, that had also caused some stress among the many small businesses in Terrace, and even the larger chain stores were experiencing a painful dip in profits.
By the end of the first week of September, the kids had returned to their classes for yet another year of school and the leaves were already beginning to fray on their branches. It wasn’t uncommon to see many of Terrace’s residents out getting an early start on raking up the steadily growing leaves that inevitably found their way from lofty homes to an inglorious end, mulched in yellowing grass. The mood across Terrace had been somber, as day after day weather forecasters had been predicting heavier than average snowfall on the horizon. The skies were bleak and grey, and if the sun chose to peak its radiance from behind the cover of clouds, it did little to life the peoples spirits.
The sun had set not long ago, dipping beyond the Kitimat Range of the Coast Mountains to the West of Terrace, casting an early gloom upon the town. The sun had been setting earlier and earlier as Summer made its way into the thick of Autumn. Shortly before sunset, a light drizzle had begun to fall from the grey sky and with a terse wind to break up its continuity, had become more of a misting spray that swirled about capriciously.
The Trainside Café was quiet, for a Wednesday night. Lonesome street lights flanked the small parking lot that encircled the small café, offering a brighter respite from the pervading gloom of early evening. A few stray cars sat in the parking lot. The forest green RAV-4 driven by Claudia Tweed. Luiz Garcia’s off-white Silverado. A silver mini-van owned by the Wells family, and borrowed by their teenage daughter Tanis so she could get to work. Finally, there was a black sedan bearing an out-of-province license plate and the bright sticker for Budget Rent-a-Car.
EVA
The week had been particularly unpleasant so far. The moodiness that had settled on the city from the bleak weather had smothered the desire for many of Terrace’s citizens to go out and about if they didn’t have some pressing business to lure them from their couches, their Netflix, and the comforting warmth of their homes. As such, the shift was boring. Even many of the delinquents who would skulk about and cause trouble had opted to stay in this week.
Eva had only just finished her twelve-hour day shift, and that seven in the morning start had seemed so far away. Jill had come down with a nasty cold, and was cooped up in her own house nursing a steaming mug of Neo-Citran and popping Halls like there was no tomorrow. That had left Eva to patrol on her lonesome. Her watch-sergeant, Gill Mayweather, was apologetic. But the aging officer could only work with what they had available, and it seemed like that wasn’t much at the moment.
The patrol car had been parked just off highway 16, with a photo-radar gun propped up on the dashboard for most of the morning. A small stack of traffic violations for speeding had been neatly sorted on the passenger seat. The doldrums of having to sit and file all of them with the Provincial clerk weighed heavily on Eva, but she figured there was time to grab some food before she had to return to the precinct.
As she had been sitting out on the highway for most of her day, the closest place was the Trainside Café.
The drive there was relatively quiet. The road was practically empty as she made her way towards the intersection of a rail line and the highway that the café sat adjacent to.
Eventually, Eva pulled into the small parking lot. There weren’t a lot of cars present. A single rental and a few with plates that indicated they were local. Eva stepped out of the car into the chilly mist that was permeating the air and made her way towards the front entrance to the café. As she passed, she saw Luiz Garcia puffing on a cigarette just out back with a couple overflowing bags of trash sitting next to the dumpster. The cook tipped his head and gave the RCMP constable a small wave of acknowledgement before she stepped foot inside.
The warmth was palpable, heaters already running strong and the air was filled with the smell of coffee, doughnuts and burgers sizzling in the back.
A cursory glance around the diner revealed Claudia behind the counter, wiping down some basic white coffee mugs and placing them on a rack next to the three coffee pots that sat next to the soda fountain. A plump young teenage girl in black leggings, an athletic T-Shirt from one of the local high schools and a black apron was busy handing a plate of rare steak to an older gentleman in a somewhat damp beige overcoat at the counter. He had grey, thinning hair that barely covered the sheen of a balding head and a pair of thin, wire-framed spectacles balanced on a slightly overlarge hook nose. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes were shadowed by the dark circles that accompanied one who put far too much overtime in at work. A thick, steel briefcase sat on the floor next to his stool and Eva noticed he kept brushing it with one of his legs as if to ensure it was still there. A nervous tick if Eva had ever seen one.
The teenage waitress, whose name-tag proclaimed her as Tanis, smiled as Eva approached, and tipped her head towards one of the many empty booths.
”Have a seat, officer. I’ll be with you in a jiffy!”
ROSA
Rosa had arrived via Flight 3105, operated by West Jest Encore from Vancouver a couple weeks ago. The hacker had planned more than enough time to settle into her room, and grab some take-away lunch at the small restaurant on the main floor of the Best Western hotel. The rest of the two weeks had been spent getting the lay of the land, and trying to uncover more clues as to what exactly she was looking for out here from that strange little program secreted away on a portable hard drive.
Presently, she was gazing out of the fourth floor window at the grey and dreary sky, and Rosa was struck by how strange it was to be led out here of all places.
Sure, Terrace was well-situated on several major roads and railways through Western Canada, but it was just on the edge of being considered a backwater city. There was one Best Buy in town, and a couple of folks ran electronic repairs out of their stalls at the Skeena Valley farmer’s market. It was very probable that Rosa was the most competent living person in Terrace when it came to computer sciences.
Sitting on the bed, covered in a faded floral-print comforter, Rosa cracked open her laptop and began to boot it up in between bites of the toasted clubhouse sandwich sitting next to her in its cheap white Styrofoam carry-out container.
When Rosa was sure that she’d secured her connection to the hotel’s WiFi, and ran all her usual sniffer and protection programs, she finally allowed herself to bring up the command prompt for the closed network she’d stored on a portable hard drive.
That had been a challenge, to say the least. The script and programming code she’d stumbled upon seemed unusually hard to contain. It moved – flowing and puddling through the script on her original hard drive. It was only the shock of seeing such elegant, but alien, programming before her very eyes that delayed her responses long enough for whatever she had found to infiltrate every corner of her workstation. It had taken her four solid days to clean that mess up, purge the strange code and transplant it into a well-protected…and well-contained network on the portable drive.
Rosa opened a read-only access to the drive, and allowed herself once more to look upon that strange code.
And the message contained within.
BLUEHAWKBIOS©2017
BIOS Date: 2/22/17 20:54:23 Ver: 03.00.01
Press DEL to run Setup
Checking
777MB OK
Auto Detecting Pri Channel (0)….IDE Hard Disk
Auto Detecting Pri Channel (1)….Not Detected
Auto Detecting Pri Channel (0)….CDROM
Auto Detecting Pri Channel (1)….Not Detected
Pri Channel (0): 1.1 Virtual HD
Pri Channel (0): uVirtual CD
C:\hd program files
C:\Program Files>cd world_engine
C:\>dir
Volume in drive C is Windows
Volume Serial Number is 3929-5BA3
Directory of c:\
08/22/2019 04:42 AM <DIR> inetpub
08/22/2019 05:46 AM <DIR> intel
08/24/2019 07:11 PM 904,485 msdia80.dll
09/01/2019 03:50 PM <DIR> perfLogs
09/01/2019 04:21 PM <DIR> Program Files
09/01/2019 04:31 PM <DIR> Program Files <x86>
09/01/2019 07:14 PM <DIR> Loading…
C:\cd_world_engine\
C:\cd_world_engine\start [world_script.exe]
.
..
…
….
…..
GC.CG.CG.AT.GC.TA.TA.CG.AT.G.A.GC.TA.TA.C.C.G.A.AT .GC.AT.TA...ERROR.
Theh yeh alef-hamza-below noon qaf noon seen reh waw noon beh waw teh waw heh reh yeh alef-hamza-above reh yeh theh yeh beh waw lam dal reh seen
WARNING: SYSTEM FAILURE
That was as far as the code would go. It would continue to repeat, over and over, ad nauseam until it crashed her system. The strange words upon her screen meant little to the hacker, but through careful prodding and poking, she had eventually made out a sequence of numbers buried within. It had taken a day or two, but eventually, Rosa had figured out that it was a set of coordinates in longitude and latitude.
Coordinates that had led her to Terrace.
Rosa hadn’t been able to bring herself to go to that exact point, but she had found it easily enough by surreptitiously accessing Google’s GPS satellite systems.
It was out in the middle of no-where. Out in the wilderness and the woods, on the slopes of the Coast Mountains near an old mine closed in the eighties after one too many industrial accidents. The closest point of interest had been a little truck stop diner called the Trainside Café on the outskirts of town. It was sitting along highway 16 and one of the major rail lines that ran through the countryside. She had driven past it once or twice on her forays through town, but had only stopped in once to grab some lunch before a brief visit to one of the Provincial nature parks that lay between the café and her eventual destination.
Rosa wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Even if she had driven all the backroads through the Provincial park, she would still likely have to walk for a couple hours to get to the mine. The single old road that led there had been blocked with a large chain-link fence capped with rusty old barbed wire and a plethora of ‘No Trespassing’ signs.
Having spent most of her day trying to glean new insight from the alien code, Rosa was drawn from her work by a grumble from her stomach. Maybe another trip to the Trainside Café would serve a dual purpose. Food, of course, and maybe she’d encounter a local who had some more intimate knowledge of the area.
Rosa packed up a messenger bag with what she thought she would need. Her laptop, the portable hard drive, and other odds and ends. Grabbing her keys from the nightstand, Rosa made her way to the parking lot where her hideously orange rented Acura was parked. Just looking at that paint job made her skin crawl.
The trip from the hotel to the Trainside Café was a bit winding, but at least the streets were clear enough.
As she pulled up, she saw a police cruiser parked in the lot next to another rental and a few of the vehicles she’d recognized as some of the staff.
Parking it the lightly occupied lot, Rosa made her way towards the Trainside Café. As she was approaching, she saw a bus pull up to a nearby stop and a young, beautiful teenage girl get off. She was clutching an olive green messenger bag in her thin-fingered hands. The bag bore a white imprint of the Triforce on its side and long, wavy locks spilled around a slightly-too-large black hoodie bearing the visage of Jack Skellington.
The young girl, head down, barreled into Rosa as she thumbed through her cell phone with a pinched expression on her pretty face.
”Oh!” she exclaimed. ”I..I’m so sorry!”
JEREMY
The bleary sky was about as optimistic as Jeremy’s overall mood. He’d just spent the day trying desperately to ignore the many housewives who’d taken to coming to the gym since he’d started working there. Husbands off at work, these women had often come in wearing clothes as revealing as they could, trying to attract his attention. Something about the ‘danger’ of a former fighter.
The last client of the day was Lynn.
Mother of two, with a pear-shaped body that didn’t do much to inspire confidence in Jeremy at how serious she was about working out and getting into shape. She’d spent most of the time talking about how she was lonely at home, and rubbing up against him at any opportunity she got. A couple of the other trainers had flashed Jeremy pitying looks across the appointment.
But, all through the day, one thought kept him going.
He’d finally managed to get ahold of Cat. While Liz hadn’t been overly forthcoming, she also didn’t immediately shut him down. His ex had told him, in no uncertain terms, that this decision was entirely on Cat now that she was sixteen. IF she wanted to give him a chance, then so be it. But Liz was expecting the most upstanding behavior he could muster.
And now? Now he was supposed to meet Cat at the Trainside Café for a late dinner. Cat would have just gotten off a soccer game after school, and figured the Café was a safe place to meet as her friend Tanis worked there and could give her a ride home.
Just in case.
Jeremy had time for a quick shower after Lynn’s appointment, and pulled on the nicest clothes he’d managed to pack into his suitcase with him when he arrived in Terrace.
Despite running quite late to begin with, the lack of traffic had made the trip as painless as it could otherwise be and he even managed to make up some lost time.
As he turned the corner onto the street that the Café sat alongside, he saw the city bus pulling away and the slim, leggy form of his estranged daughter bumping rather abruptly into a young woman. Even as he was pulling into the parking lot beside them, he recognized them both. Cat, from pictures on her mother’s social media site, and Rosa – a young woman who he’d encountered at the gym a couple times in the past.
That was a surprise.
HENRY
Laying low sucked.
It was boring!
It’s not like he could go joy riding that often. Even in a smaller place like Terrace. Admittedly, that didn’t entirely stop Henry. There was a reason he was called ‘Driver’.
He’d spent the day out in the back country on some old roads in a nearby provincial park. Aside from some park rangers, the area had been desolate of hikers, campers or backpackers since the weather really turned south. He’d been keeping his skills sharp on some of the more treacherous trails, hoping that he wouldn’t hit a root or a stump that would put an end to his vehicle.
He’d stopped after a couple hours, and sat on the hood of his car and cracked a beer open while he took a breather.
Henry had only been hanging out for about a quarter hour when he heard the shouting in the distance, the roar of an engine, and two sudden cracking booms that he immediately recognized as gunfire. Nothing big. Probably a basic rifle of sorts. The kind that a lot of backwater families kept to scare coyote’s and mountain lions away from their yards and their pets.
In his day, he’d learned not to stick his nose into business that didn’t involve him. But some of the shouts sounded like a woman. And that didn’t quite sit well with him, much as a part of him kept repeating a mantra in the back of his mind:
Just drive away. Ignore it. Just drive away.
He was still warring over the thoughts when the decision was made for him.
A young man with a black eye broke through the underbrush at a break-neck speed. He was wearing a black and red checkered flannel shirt that was tattered and torn and he bore some scratches from where he looked like branches had whipped into him during his flight.
The young man came to an abrupt halt as he approached Henry.
”Hey! Hey, man! You gotta help me! We gotta get out of here or we’re dead!”
He was immediately moving towards the passenger-side door of Henry’s vehicle. Henry stared at this young man incredulously, until he heard another gunshot.
And a second later, one of his break lights exploded as a bullet shattered it.
Now they were shooting at HIM! Whoever they were…
Wasting no more time, Henry was into his vehicle and gunning the engine. Even as they peeled away, a couple more gunshots sounded through the forest, and in his rearview mirror, Henry thought for a half moment he saw a dusky-skinned woman covered in blood staring from the foliage.
But he blinked, and she was gone.
They began the trip along highway 16 back to town. The young man introduced himself as Roger, but aside from a soft ‘thank you’, spent the drive back to town staring blankly out the passenger-side window with a glassy, glazed expression. The only words exchanged otherwise was a promise to explain later.
After a bit of a drive, Henry pulled up at the Trainside Café – which seemed busier than he remembered it – and as Roger was getting out of his vehicle, the young man turned back to Henry.
”Hey..uh…man?” Roger asked somewhat quietly. ”Thanks. Again. Really…I…appreciate you helping me out. It’s been a ****ed up day. Do you..uh…want some dinner? I can tell you what happened. Sort of owe it to you, you know? If you want. And my brother…Harvey…he’s got some cash, so he can pay for the gas.”
Even as Roger asked, another car began to pull into the parking lot. The occupant was driving furiously, his tires squealing as he peeled in.
”That’s my brother…” Roger said after looking up at the sound of burning rubber.
HARVEY
For a Wednesday, the day seemed like any other for Harvey. He’d idled around for much of it, before meeting up shortly after lunch with some of his friends – the same friends his parents would have called hoodlums and ne’er-do-wells. They’d cracked some beers open, and before long there were even a couple of joints passed around in rotation.
Thus, his day passed in a pleasantly blissed manner.
Until, at least, he got the call.
It was from Roger, but was showing as an unknown name – someone named Henry Baker – and an unknown number with an area code that most certainly wasn’t local. His younger brother spoke in an anxiety-laden whisper, rushed and yet with forced softness as if he was actively trying not to be overheard.
The call was extraordinarily brief, lasting just under a minute.
In a hurried tone, Roger practically begged Harvey to come pick him up. Claimed he needed help. He’d been picked up from one of the local provincial parks by a passerby. The aforementioned Henry Baker. The tone of voice was worrisome for Harvey, but the fact that Roger of all people seemed to be having some trouble with something was all the more concerning for his older brother. Roger was a pretty upstanding young man, and it was rare he ever got involved in anything that would give his parents pause.
Harvey had packed it in right then and there, and made the trek to where his brother had claimed to be waiting – at the Trainside Cafe. As he pulled up, he saw his brother standing next to an African man. His brother was sporting a black eye, and the red and black checkered flannel shirt he wore over an old Metallica t-shirt was ripped. Harvey was sure some of the dark stains on it were likely blood. There was a police cruiser sitting in the lot next to a number of other cars. One of them even looked like one he’d tried to break into a few months back. But he couldn’t exactly be sure. He’d partaken a bit too much of the ganja that day and the details were a bit fuzzy.
The place was popping!
Once out of the car, Roger turned to Harvey and got a good look at him for the first time, and Harvey thought that Roger looked…off.
That’s when he noticed bruising on his brothers neck. At first, he thought it might’ve been a hickey. But Roger was notoriously bad with the ladies.
What the hell was going on?
Spoiler: OOC for ALL
Alright folks. It may seem a touch disjointed. I’ve gone through a couple revisions on the post to try and fit everything in effectively.
Eva got there first. Then Rosa bumped into Cat Coleman, and Jeremy showed up moments later. As they entered, Henry and Roger showed up – followed very closely by Harvey.
For all intents and purposes, I’ve tried to set this up to get you all together in one room within a couple posts.
If there’s any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
On an unrelated note about SPOILER boxes. I’m going to ask that if you see a spoiler box like this:
Spoiler: SPECIFIC CHARACTER NAME
Example!
You don’t read the contents unless you are the named character. This will obviously not be able to be enforced, but I’m going on the honor system here.
Thanks!
And welcome to the Hunt!