As Quincy turned his jeep onto the strip, the carnage was apparent. "Wow," he said to himself, "that bitch fucked this place up." He dropped down to fifteen, almost coasting up the avenue in order to get a better look at the scene. There was blood everywhere. Splattered across store fronts, pounded into the pavement, everywhere he looked was death.
Right behind him was ground zero. As he stared into the rear view, the Jeep suddenly dropped and crashed, sending his head slamming down into his steering wheel. It took about five minutes or so for him to gain enough consciousness to remove himself from the immovable vehicle. Looking around he could see that a large portion of the road had sunk lower into the ground, and he was forced to jump to climb out of the hole. Back at the normal street level, he could see the hole in the shape of a foot, four smaller holes just to the front of the larger one. Motherfucker. How big was she? Rounding the front of the hole, he almost tripped over the legs, following them up to the torso that was hanging over the side of the gash, smeared against the edge of the depressed avenue. Ouch.
Glancing around Quincy could see some official looking people near the entrance of Mandalay Bay noticing him and he took off in a dead sprint for the MGM. Catching his breath while hiding behind a golden lion, he saw they didn't follow. More important things to do. He began the trek north, carefully looking for signs of the van. With no one to harass him, he decided to follow her journey, backwards. He had counted 213 footprints from the bottom to the top of the strip. Fuck else was he going to do? There were no street performers. No pirate show at Treasure Island. The volcano was still sending flames into the air at the Mirage, but there were no cabs lined up to drop off and pick up patrons. No street urchins to harass him: click, click "here you go mang, pretty girls!" In one of the footprints he counted twelve messes. At another site, a man's body lead to a big toe print, but no head. Perhaps the most bizarre held two naked messes, one on top of the other. At least he was pretty sure it was two bodies. People aren't going to keep doing that shit if you're going to kill them anyways, damn!
Finally he saw it. CNN stamped all over that bad boy. The camera had to be somewhere, Quincy was just praying he wouldn't find it in one of those holes. He jogged across the street towards the van, careful to avoid a few puddles and a couple of piles of what was previously alive and human. About fifteen steps away, his eyes lit up as the prize appeared. Safe. He could see it sitting there, and once about ten feet away he could hear it. Still running.
Jackpot.
* * * * *
Flagstaff was about 250 miles away. Be like you jogging 8 miles. I didn't think I had much of a choice with the shit I just pulled, they would be reacting pretty quickly. So after ensuring there would be witnesses despite no survivors I went for it. I didn't have time to pay attention to where I was stepping, so I am sure there are now more than one living person who've seen me. Doesn't matter, this is going to work. Can't squash them all. Or maybe I can, just somewhere down the road.
I remember making this drive when I moved from Phoenix. It was pretty. Flagstaff actually reminded me of places much further north. At altitude, it just didn't seem anything like Phoenix, crazy since it was still so near it. There were trees with leaves that turned instead of cacti with needles that pricked. You could ski there! 90 degrees in Phoenix, and people hop in their cars and are flying down a mountain over real snow a couple hours later. Good restaurants, lots of shopping. And most of the residents were pretty well off. I was counting on all of the city's charms...
About an hour and a half later, I was leaning up against the base of Humphrey's Peak, out of breath. Those annoying fucks bombed me the whole way. As soon as I was out of range of a school or hospital, the missiles came. Dozens of them. And the stupid planes knew better than to fly anywhere near me. Shit, most of them stuck miles out. Thank you long-range missiles. Regardless, just like on the strip, they never touched me. I knew it was the presence - that sword stuck deep into me. I can be hurt, I guess just not by missiles or guns. But I didn't want to push it either. Hence my haste to reach a decent-sized city.
As I sat and waited, I thought about everything that had happened the past three days. Wow, had it really only been three days? Three days ago, I was basically a porn star. I liked being with girls much more, but guys paid better. I had a couple million in the bank, and about twenty really rich men wrapped around my finger. I had everything I wanted. Now I have even more. Nearly 300 people had faced me at this point. Every single one of them lost. I embarrassed them, I diminished them, and I dominated them. Some of them I devoured, sending them to the depths of hell. Sure, I needed to eat, but it was their death I was really feeding on. Their insignificance and their fear. Their terror when it hits them. They're going to die. None of them ever saw it coming. They woke up, scratched their nuts and stumbled to the bathroom for the usual morning ritual. Some of them showered, some pigs didn't. Some ate breakfast, some were running late. Some said good bye to their wives, some their husbands, some their partners. Some of them dropped kids off at school, some of them took the bus. But they all died. And they all had that moment. The moment when it all makes sense. The moment you never believed was going to happen. It's why you kept smoking. It's why you sky-dive, or rock climb or eat nothing but Whoppers. You thought you were invincible. You had heard that people died, but it wasn't going to happen to you. Only it is. It's going to happen. It's about to happen. What I love most is tearing that invincibility from you the second before I tear your soul from your body. I get more out of it when I wait long enough to share that moment between the two of us. We don't talk, I don't talk to prey. I am not interested in hearing you beg, or seeing you piss and shit yourself. All I want is the look in your eyes. When you get it. When you understand. When the disbelief disappears and the reality sets in. Holy fuck, this is not happening, I had tickets to Cirque du Soleil tonight. My daughter has a wedding I need to be around to pay for. i never got to go to Paris. Oh shit, this IS happening. That's when I snuff them out. Haha.
I was exhausted. Destroying lives is hard work believe it or not, and I'm sure the shock and awe of what I had become had taken its toll mentally as well. I considered my options. I really wanted to sleep, and I'm a lazy bitch who does what I feel like. I knew reason wasn't going to get the best of this battle. It's not like anyone would come near me, and obviously somehow I was immune to most of what the army was throwing at me. Flagstaff had 60,000 people calling it home. Laziness sometimes breeds riskiness, and arrogance always breeds impetuousness. I laid down and went to sleep. I dreamed a nightmare in which I was the little priest I had kicked the shit out of. Literally. I remember looking up at myself, the most gorgeous sight I had ever seen. While I used to be bratty and kinda scrawny, now I was elegant and powerful. My movements were smooth and confident, my gaze was overpowering. My eyes never closed, and they seemed to see all. Stuck in this tiny pathetic body, I felt the terror he must have felt. Most of the time they don't move. I am terrifying to the point of petrifying. Like Medusa and her gorgon sisters, my gaze will turn a man to stone with fear. He will stand there, he will accept it, and he will suffer his fate. Sure they'll run if they see me coming from a mile away, but once I see you, you're mine. You know you don't have a chance. You hope I will show mercy or someone else will grab my attention before I can scoop you up and devour you. Facing myself may have been a ploy by the good guys to shame me into turning away from my path. Forcing me to feel what I was forcing on the population of Las Vegas did not have that effect, if intended. Yet it did nothing to fill the void deep inside me. As much as I fed off the feeling of dread I inspired, I hungered still. I cannot be satiated.
The moment my pretty little (well, used to be) foot came at me and sent me flying into the fountain, I woke up. Surprisingly there were little people all around me. Little perverts. Fucked in the head romantics who love me. Haha. I grabbed the man standing outside the entrance to my loins and ate him. Hell was he thinking? Sitting up, a bright light caught my eye and I looked up into the heavens. Uh oh, I had made a very costly mistake. No fucking way was this happening. There were 60,000 people here, they wouldn't!
They did. Wiped the whole city right off the map. I wasn't mad they did my job for me. I wasn't mad that they just killed 60,000 people much more efficiently that I ever could. I was pissed because I had been wrong. And when I stood up and brushed the ashes of the annihilated city off of my skin, I had a new plan in mind. One that involved wiping the US government and their fucking nukes off the face of the planet. And armed with the knowledge that I was also nuke-proof, I could take my sweet time and not worry about running from population center to population center like I thought I had to. Not like that strategy deterred them from using their deterrent anyway.