Hey, everyone. This is the first part of story I'm working on. Let me know what elements work for you, and which ones you think are on the weaker side. I would especially like recommendations on how to make the action seem more fluid.
-------
Our van came to a halt as we approached the checkpoint on I-95. Peter sat calmly in the driver’s seat, with a look of Zen-like composure on his face. In the backseat, Miguel looked considerably less relaxed. From the rear-view mirror, I saw that the snake tattoos that covered his arms were quivering, giving the illusion that they were slithering across his arms. In a different scenario, it might have been an amusing sight. For somebody who was accustomed to seeing death and violence on a regular basis, Miguel constantly seemed to be the most fearful of all of us. Maybe it was the fact that he was no longer one of the guys with the guns. Not like guns would have done us any good, anyways. Our most valuable weapon was sitting right there in the driver’s seat.
Peter rolled down his window. A young and scrawny-looking soldier cautiously approached the car; he couldn’t have been older than nineteen. “Where are you heading?” he asked Peter, the uneasiness clear in his voice.
“Richmond,” Peter replied without any hint of hesitation. “My name is Peter Steinberg. I am a professor of Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. We are on our way back from a conference at NYU.”
“Let me see some credentials,” the soldier said doubtfully.
Peter gave the young man his driver’s license and university ID. The man carefully examined it while keeping his rifle aimed at Peter. After a few moments he handed the cards back to Peter, slightly more at ease. “Who is in the car with you?” asked the soldier.
“This is Stacy Oakes and Miguel Rodriguez, two of my graduate research assistants.”
The soldier poked his head in the car and regarded us with suspicion. His eyes rested on Miguel, who was still trembling. “You don’t look like a grad student.”
Miguel quickly regained his composure. “What, you saying ‘cause I don’t look look like some preppy-ass white boy that I can’t go to school? That’s some racist shit, yo! What the fuck is that?”
“If you’re a graduate student, then what’s your research in?” the soldier countered.
“Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics! I’ll bet your dumb ass doesn’t even know what that means!” Peter had made us carefully rehearse our answers precisely for this type of scenario. Miguel had a tendency to improvise more than we liked him to.
The soldier hesitated for a second before turning his attention to me. I don’t think he had gotten a good glimpse of my face before, because he turned bright red when he saw me. Men have a tendency to do that around me. My mother used to say that my body was capable of distracting an entire army. “Do you have anything in that trunk that I should know about, ma’am?” he asked me politely.
“Just our luggage and some of the materials from our presentation, sir,” I replied with a smile.
“Would you mind stepping our of the car and showing me? It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I’m required to do this for every car that comes through. There has been some movement of weapons by guerillas of Marked Manifestors in the area. It’ll just take a moment.”
I opened the door and carefully stepped out of the car. He didn’t put his gun on me, which was a good thing. It meant he trusted us. I walked to the back of the car and lifted the trunk. The soldier came around and poked his head in for a second. Lying in the trunk were three suitcases, and a poster-board that Peter had used for a research presentation two years ago. The soldier opened up Peter’s suitcase and gave a cursory glance at the contents: a pair of nicely folded button down shirts, a pair of slacks, two pairs of jeans, a VCU tee shirt. The young man zipped up the suitcase and closed the trunk.
The soldier walked back up to Peter. “It looks like everything’s in order,” he said. I felt relief sweeping over me. I had been terrified of Peter’s plan of staying on the main highways, but he was confident that this was the safest route. He was probably right. “You’re almost free to go,” continued the soldier. “There is just one more thing we have to check, but I’m going to need you all to step out of the car, first. We are making sure that no more Manifestors make it to Washington. I’m sure you understand.”
In an instant, all the relief that I felt went away. There is only one thing that he could be looking for: the mark. If the soldier saw it, things would not end prettily. Peter stepped out of the car with his usual calmness, but Miguel didn’t move. I could see from the window that he was shuddering so much he was practically convulsing. The soldier glanced in at Miguel. “Sir! I said get out of the car!”
Miguel screamed in a panic, “Why do we need to get out of the fucking car? We don’t have any weapons? You said everything looked okay! Why don’t you just let us go? We’re in a hurry!”
The soldier pointed the gun at Miguel. “Sir! I said get out of the goddam car! I do not have the time to fuck around with loudmouths like you! I have a job to do!”
“No! I’m not moving!”
“Sir, I am going to count to three, and if you do not get out of the car by then I am going to blow your fucking head off! One… two…”
Miguel quickly scrambled out of the car.
“Good,” said the soldier. "Now face the car and put both of your hands on it where I can see them."
I could see the fear on Miguel’s face as he slowly and reluctantly complied. The soldier lifted up Miguel’s wife-beater shirt from the back. His face quickly turned to one of horror. “Don’t move, Manifestor!” He aimed his gun at Miguel and picked up his handheld radio. However, before he could call for back up, he disintegrated and his clothing fell into a heap on the ground. Miguel look back to see Peter pointing his hand in the direction where the soldier had previously been standing. Miguel looked at Peter in shock, despite having seen him do this before.
Soldiers from the surrounding kiosks had begun to notice the commotion and were starting to move in on us. With a sweep of his hand, all of them met the same fate as their counterpart.
“Quickly! Get in the car!” shouted Peter. “We need to get off of the highway! I’m positive that one of those guys radioed for back up! We need to get on the back roads where they won’t follow us!”
“I thought you said those roads weren’t safe!” I cried.
“They’re not! They’re surrounded with Feeders!” Peter replied. “But if we stay on here we’re bound to get caught! I don’t have enough strength to fight off an entire army! I used up a lot of my energy back there. I’ll be able to ward off Feeders for a couple hours, but we need to find a safe house by nightfall!”
As we were pulling off the highway, I saw a squadron of military vehicles pulling in by the kiosk. They weren’t going to follow us. Not even the military wants to deal with the Feeders.
Gender:
Points: 300
Reviews: 0