Bound For Sacramento

Straining breathlessly against the back of a car, Anton Flores heard a dull click as something in his right arm gave, provoking a muted string of cursing en Español. Inspecting his right forearm, the Haunt saw how one of those little forearm bones poked out under the olive skin of his arms, branded and inked in the cyphered missives of the Monachal Creed. Would you look at that? Right under the 'Sum' in 'Sum Sanctus'. Anton wrapped a hand robbed of a few fingernails around the fibrous meat and jutting out bone. He considered the circumstances leading up to this moment as he waited for bone and sinew to knit back together.

The East Coast hadn't been all that prosperous. Not for Anton. Not for the Sanctified. Not in Baltimore anway. Maryland's Sanctified heyday had been and gone. After two decades of trying, he found himself slowly being backed into a corner of heathen servility. Anton decided to cash in what remaining prestige and influence he had on a secure freight arrangement back to the South-West. He'd spent the formative years of his Damnation here. San Francisco. Imperial Valley. The deserts. And he'd found disappointment again. This wasn't like the depression. Maybe it just took more to slake Anton's Beast these nights. Perhaps there were just less transients to gorge on. Something had changed. He was tired of living on scraps. So when he happened across that Legate in Imperial Valley, he wanted to know everything about the nearby domains. Nomad life had lost its appeal. She'd told him about Sacramento's Sanctified. She'd even given him a roadmap. Apparently any Legate worth their salt used GPS these days, whatever the hell that meant. Joining the Gilded Cage had become an attractive option, so it was 'Thanks Pilgrim, walk as Grandeur' and a cross country trek Sacramento way.

It looked to be a two night trip on foot until some simple slob had actually picked Anton up. The small act of charity would've ended in the pair parting ways had the good samaritan decided against lighting himself a Newport. Anton's Beast hadn't liked that at all, not on an empty stomach. It'd flailed Anton gracelessly against the car door. Cracked the passengers window. Then it got bold; whipped Anton's wiry arms around the driver. It'd pushed a thumb through a spectacle lens. It'd put the drivers eye out and clamped those cadaverous jaws around his fat neck. When the mist cleared, Anton found that the car he sat so contentedly in had veered offroad and that the beast had reduced his driver to a leaking wreck slumped across his lap. Bundling the carcass up into the trunk, he'd driven into the wilderness until he'd spied an abandoned airstrip which didn't seem to be on the map the Legate had given him. That was before he'd run out of fuel.

'So I got out and pushed' the Haunt thought bitterly. He prodded lazily at the spot where the bone in his arm had gone astray. The bone seemed to have set. Anton felt fresh vitae dissipate in faded grey veins as it lent that strange strength to dead muscles. With one last push, the car, a rusted heap, rolled effortlessly up onto the airstrip and sailed into a neglected hangar of corrugated iron. Anton followed it, popped the trunk and checked on his victim. He was a heavyset man, wedged in there tight. One dislocated arm hung out of its socket to accomodate the closing trunk. Amazingly, Anton had been able to lick the neckwound away, even after the Beast had gotten it's fill, but there was still loose blood and heavy bruising underneath the pasty skin. The Haunt went through the driver's pockets, finding nothing but an empty wallet and a ruined pack of smokes, soaked through with blood. He dropped a holdall from his shoulder to the concrete floor of the hangar, fishing out his map, a pencil and a poorly maintained handgun from under a shorthandled shovel. He penciled in his rough location on the map and tucked his tie between shirt buttons. Levelling the pistol at the corpses neck, he managed to squeeze off a staccato burst before the gun fell apart, scattering the rest of the magazine into the trunk, bang-click, clack-clatter. Anton frowned and dropped the pistol next to the corpse. He'd disguised the neck and eye wounds as well as he could. Slamming the trunk shut, he consulted his map. He was southeast of Sacramento, about three hours on foot. Maybe half that if he ran. That left about four hours to find shelter before daylight.

He didn't have a lick of sympathy for his departed driver. The Beast, the weight of Sin, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes it bleeds through. It's an act of God. 'Besides', Anton thought, 'anybody fool enough to pick me up a ride deserves everything they get.' Callous maybe, but also a valid point. Anton Flores stood in that abandoned hangar looking no less terrible than he had when the driver picked him up on the side of the road. Tall, lean and unclean. All dead tendons under taut olive skin. Dry earth stained his shortsleeved shirt, 'matter' caked his tie, and the faint stench of scorched vegetation hung about him. Then there was the slack grin frozen across his narrow face like rigor mortis. It contrasted brutally with the humorless set of eyes, vacant bar the odd glimmer of the Beast's ugly hunger. The end result appeared as though the lower half of his face was enjoying a joke at the expense of the upper half; perhaps a joke told by the paler, puckered smile of partially healed scar-tissue crossing the gristle of Anton's throat. The corpse in the trunk had chosen not to judge a book by it's cover and it'd cost him. Yes indeed, the driver had proved himself weak and his demise had been an act of God.

Satisfied that his works have been adequately disguised and put into a religous context, Anton checks his compass and bundles his belongings back into the hold-all. He assures himself that he'd make it to the city and find shelter within the night as he starts off in the direction of his destination. He was bound for Sacramento.