As
part of my participation in My
500 words, I am posting what I write each day. All week we’ve been
learning the backstory of Mundy Gilbert, a main character in my novel, Sidewinder.
Mundy sat in the chair, or
was he lying in it? He couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but he thought
that he was becoming more aware of his surroundings. He hadn’t tried to move,
even opening his eyes seemed too great an effort. Not that he was tired, he was
just blissfully relaxed. He continued talking, telling his life story to the
voices in the dark.
Mundy had accidently led the
authorities to the headquarters of his boss, crime lord, Dean Handler. Dean had
pointed a gun at Mundy, but when the building shook with the a flash bomb, Dean
dropped it and Mundy ran.
Mundy ducked into the panic
room and tried to shut the door. But the building had been skewed from the
force of the flash bomb. So he dove to the floor in search of the escape hatch.
“He’s not in here?” a voice
said. Mundy whipped around to look and saw the last person he expected,
Reverend Todd. This was the celebrity preacher that Dean had told Mundy to
plant drugs on. The preacher raised a handgun and pointed around the room. He
looked at Mundy and smiled.
“Dean and I go way back,” he
said. “And I went one way, he went another. But we both have, say, grudges
against each other. I’m here to settle a score.”
Mundy blinked. He hadn’t led
the police here after all. Here was a famous preacher instead, and he had a
gun. The preacher looked up and down the walls and seemed to shrug.
“Right here,” said the voice
of Dean. Reverend Todd turned and leveled the gun. Mundy saw Dean standing with
his arms out like he was trying to explain.
“You found me,” Dean said. “Now what?”
The reverend paused, then fired the handgun.
Mundy watched as Dean winced, and at the same time there was a white flash
surrounding him. Reverend Todd fired again, and with each shot, a flash
surrounded Dean, while he stood with a growing smile.
“Deflector Pack,” Dean said, tapping his
belt. “It’s just a miniature of what spacecraft use for navigational
deflectors, just personal size. Better than any body armor.”
With a quick movement, Dean’s hand moved and
there was a gun. He smiled, pulled the trigger, and reverend Todd went down.
Mundy didn’t wait to see what happened next.
He turned back into the panic room and found the hatch. Slipping in and
slamming the door shut, he groped for what he knew was there, thousands of
untraceable Alliance Credits. He stuffed as many as he could into a bag and ran
down the corridor to the street exit.
Outside the building, more vehicles were
arriving. But now it wasn’t the reverend and his helpers. Alliance Security helicopters
were swooping in. Running out the door, Mundy was almost blinded when night turned
to day. They hit the building with a stunner. Mundy imagined everyone, even Dean
Handler with his deflector, hitting the floor, unconscious.
There would be no going to a hideout. Mundy got
to the nearest launch port and took a commuter shuttle to a major orbiting station.
Feeling safer there, he found an intergalactic cruise ship and booked passage. His
ID was valid and he had no record. The ship left orbit at dawn.
Sitting in the chair, Mundy let his eyes open.
The room was dark, but he could see three people, a dark-skinned man in a medical
coat with a husky man next to him. With them was a tall, slender woman in a prairie
dress. When their eyes met, Mundy recognized her. He knew he was long gone from
Channel, Dean Handler and his past. He was safe from all of that. But now he was
in the same room with a woman from the church he had robbed. And the last thing
he remembered before being in this room was that she had punched his lights out.
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