DD - SpiralDancer - Project One (Part One)

Project One (Part One)

Bowie sings a strung out tune into the night.The bass from the drum riffs drifting in with the deep thrum of the Firestones upon the battered blacktop.
In the distance,twin shafts of halogen fury pierce the total night and head towards the rumbling Mustang.
The cars meet, beams illuminating both pairs of passengers on the dark and lonely road. A man and a woman in the VW, all casual wear with their TV junkie eyes straining to see the couple in the Ford. The passenger, a young woman, bright red hair, pale skin, hooded eyes. The driver, a man, mid twenties, long dark brown hair, sharp eyes and a big wide killer grin. Everybody wondering what the hell the others are doing on this road at this time.

Apart from Joseph.

A brief exchange of canonfire glances and the cold red glow from the VW tails cast an alien light upon the young mans face as he turns to the girl and widens his grin, laughs and turns up the stereo.

"You were saying?". Hooded eyes taking in the silhouette of Josephs face, turned to the road. Sharp features highlighted slightly in the starlight.

"Shit! Yeah.". He looks down slightly, as if scanning a script for a lost place.

"Yeah, right. The hospital". Speaking to the road again he continues.

"So, there I was, bleeding all over the fucking road. Trying to pull myself upright when some turd decides to hold me down to the ground to check the wound out. Like you can't see it from the bloody sidewalk? Normally I'd have thrown him off but I didn't even have the strength to soil myself! Anyway, a crowd gathers, all rubber-necking like they were getting paid for it and I pass out. Y'know? I actually black out."

Staring at her now, incredulous. One hand driving the other gesticulating wildly.
"Me?" Long fingers stabbing at his chest.
"Blacked out!" Palm upwards, shaking.
Explosively, "Bastard!"

She nods towards the windscreen, stray hair drifting over her face, and he grins and turns to once again speak to the road. Gunning the car around a corner.
He continues his excited narrative, his American accent slipping as it does sometimes, she noticed, lapsing into his native English dialect.
"So, anyways, I come to in a bloody ambulance with some spotty git peering down into my eye like that's were the bullet went in. He leaves his skin a foot below himself when I sit up which kind of made me realise what had happened. Either that or he's just been doing too many hours and getting a little jumpy. But the look he had on his face said it all. Like, y'know.
'Shit! I took your pulse man and your dead. You've been dead for ten minutes. Your fucking dead man.'"
"You killed him?". She asked the question flatly. The answer had already presented itself.
"And the driver." He replied around an audible smile.

"But it happens. People do come to after being brain dead for a few minutes."
"Yeah, but not with a six inch exit wound that passes through your chest you don't. Tends to be a good indicator that you ain't getting back up."
"Road!". She shouts and nods towards the windscreen urgently.
Laughing, he looks back to the road and swerving around another corner, picks up the song where he left off.

"But why didn't... Hey?" She shouts above the music and he turns to look at her. How little it would take to piss this guy off she thinks.
"But why didn't you heal up like you do? Why'd you end up in the van anyway?"

He rolls his eyes and sighs. "During the day, girl. The day. Sunlight and shit. You-Vee. Bad for the skin." He smiles, sharp incisors glinting in the green dashboard glow.
"I'm not a scientist. I'm not quite sure why, but, during the day, I heal like you do. Slowly. And a fourty-five slug will kill me as surely as it would you. If I lose all my own blood, I die. At night, with no sunlight, my cells regenerate loads faster and a bullet won't do shit. So, once I was in the van and away from most of the sunlight, I started to heal."

"So you fed on them?"

"Damn right!" For the first time that night, his eyes smiled in time with his lips.

"I was fucking starving!"