Travelling Mercies

 

             Hey Chris,

            My name is Vincent Montgomery. This happened just a few days ago. I drive a delivery van for a commercial laundry serving the kitchens of high end homes and businesses. Not glamorous, just as pragmatic as a person could imagine.
            Or I did drive for the laundry company until the events of my story happened. 
            It’s all burnt now. The shop, the street where it was down town, the fancy houses where I used to drive up to the back doors to deliver clean towels and linens in my spiffy pale blue uniform. The company name was Wildwood Commercial Laundry.
            The city was burning. The fire spread incredibly quickly. The wind didn’t help, and it  had been dry for a couple of years.
            Something was haywire with the fire departments or the equipment or the water supply or something. Maybe all of that. We didn’t know what is was that first day.
            See, what happened was this. I had a wall of fire behind me. Really close and I was driving that Wildwood van just as fast as I could get away with down straight avenues at about 50mph, trying to evade other evacuees. Had to slow down to take some corners. Then the fire would catch me up a little.
            That fire was awful close, and it wasn’t slowing down. When I looked in the mirror I saw terrible things. Cars blowing up, sparking powerlines, whole houses going up in pillars of flame. After that I just looked ahead and kept going.
            I made it outside the city limits, out into the suburbs, and that wind was still pushing the fire. But, soon I could see that I would be out in the desert. There’s nothing much to burn out there. That should slow the fire down, as there is much less in the way of fireload there.
            So, as I was travelling I saw to the right of my lane, on the verge, a running figure, taking huge loping steps. He was big. I was thinking football guy, but he was even way big for that, very tall and bulky. He was wearing a big white hoody and dark pants, I think. I was curious about what brought this huge man out to run along the road. Did his car burn back on the streets of the city? Or did he run all the time because that’s what a big athletic guy does? But added to the evacuations, it was a weird scene.
            I decided to check on him, to see if he would like a lift, to get further from the burning city. I slowed down to match his speed. I honked my horn just a little and he looked over. Black guy. Well, that makes both of us.
            He stopped running and I stopped driving. I rolled the right side window down and said, “you want to get out of here faster?” He walked over to my van. Man, he was big. The guy had to be eight feet tall. Where did he get that hoody, I wondered idly.
            “Yeah. Fire…,” he said.
            “Well, get in,” I said. And he did.
            He just sat there. He didn’t even pull his hood down or say anything.
            Well, two can play that game. I just got back up to speed and continued out into the night time desert. Behind us it looked like Sodom and/or Gomorrah. The light of the burning illuminated about a third of the night sky. But we were putting some distance between ourselves and the fire.
            I drove on. The desert closed in around us, dark and wild. I didn’t spend much time out here usually. I’m more of a town guy. This was almost terra incognito to me.
            Out in the middle of nowhere that I knew anything about he suddenly put a huge hand on my right arm and said, “stop. OK?”
            I said, “OK” and pulled over.  He got out and stood there long enough to get out of that big white hoody. I couldn’t see clearly, but I saw enough to know he wasn’t some random football player. He was covered in dark hair, maybe six inches long. His face was humanoid, but different. I’d heard about these beings but assumed that it was all lies or delusion. Now I knew why he hadn’t chatted on the way. I think he didn’t want to scare me!
            He stuffed the hoody into the passenger’s seat, and I could see then that it was the only thing he had been wearing.
            He looked into the window there, bent over and said, “you need help out here, I will know you. I will remember you.” Then he stepped off into the darkness and was gone. Just like that!
            Before I took off again, I wondered if they had names. He sure didn’t tell me his, if he had one.

            I don't know. Maybe he liked the trees painted on the side of my van.
            That’s the most interesting part of my escape from the city.

            Thanks, Vince M.