Shanty Town

The remainder of Anton Flores trek to Sacramento occured without incident. The Haunt had walked the rest of the way, from a disused airstrip and a drained corpse now decomposing in a four wheeled tomb. He walked alongside the railway, gazing out at the twinkling lights of skyscrapers and hearing the muted snarl of distant cars. Anton hummed a half remembered Cancion standard as mirth washed over cruel features, lending credibility to the slack corpse grin so often abandoned by the rest of his face. Civilisation did that to a travelling man, in Anton Flores' experience. When viewed from a distance at least.

As the city stopped winking at him with it's buildings and it's lit windows, the car noise became less soothing and more like something he wanted to silence. The lazy Cancion hum stopped as the nomad muttered a prayer through receded lips.



He eventually comes to the riverside, and the sincere smile he had for the distant dwarf Sacramento is renewed, for he spies a sea of kine, living out of tents and cars, stretching all the way into the distance, 'neath an underpass. Mostly working and middle class familys out of work and luck, house and home. He stands stock-still as he watches from the top of the bank. He sees the slow shapes and hears their chorus of weary murmuring. Somewhere out of sight a bitter argument takes place in that hushed shout whisper people use when they don't want their kids to hear. It competes with the sizzle of a frying pan somewhere and a droning car radio. His beast racks his body, tugging him away from the burning braziers and towards those morsels in the shade. But Anton ignores its silent crys. Tonight the beast is sluggish and weak, its thirst slaked on recent vice.

He descends the bank, and wanders through the city of tents for a time. People seem too wrapped up in their own problems to pay much mind to the stranger with the lazy rigor rictus. He weaves through tents and people, deciding that a cautious kindred could make this strip their meal ticket. But surely someplace this convenient is taken. He still needs to find out the law of the land and he half expects to meet one of the local Damned here.

Hours pass and most tentdwellers have retired for the night before Anton decides to cut his losses and find shelter. He wanders downriver to a particularly deep looking spot. Emptying his hold all to the ground, the haunt takes check of his belongings and places them in a plastic bag. He gathers up rocks and stray bricks as he searches the grass for a spot high up and out of sight. Digging a shallow hole with his shorthandled shovel, he burys his belongings. He undressed and burys his clothes. He even burys his shovel so that it's handle sticks out perhaps half a centimetre from the moist earth. He covers his spot with undergrowth and fills his empty holdall with rocks and bricks, twisting it around his marked neck. Anton walks down into the river until he's completely submerged. The weight around his neck drags him deeper and deeper below.