01 Rumbling In

The opening chapter to my book Storm

01

Rumbling In

 

Jack peered his eye over the scope, squinting to see the hole he had made in the target.

“Pretty damned close?” He asked Luke, forming more of a statement than a question.

Jack repositioned his grip; he carried the crossbow by the middle of the body and started walking toward the stack of pillows. Jack was 28 years old, 6 foot tall, slender, clean shaven and good-looking. He was wearing his brown hiking boots with brown laces, a cheap pair of grey sweat pants and a faded green shirt.

As he walked toward the target sheet strapped to a pack of pillows, he looked beyond the trees and into the setting sun; there was a storm blowing in, which Jack determined to be directly from the west.

“We should move in about 10-15 minutes don’t you think?”

Luke agreed.

Jack approached the stack of pillows, he knelt down and used the crossbow to lean on, and he pointed at the small hole in the middle of the target sheet.

“See that? Not f*****g bad eh, for a beginner!” Jack looked up to Luke and couldn’t help but grin at his feat. He removed the arrow carefully from the stack of pillows and handed Luke his crossbow, in exchange, Luke handed Jack the corncob pipe.

In the background, the sound of thunder was getting louder and closer. The clouds were approaching quickly and angrily, but they still had time. The two friends walked back to their firing line and looked back toward the range they had set up. They were in a small quarry off the side of a dirt track. They had driven 6 kilometers off of the main road to reach their shooting ground. Jack liked the feeling of the crossbow; it was silent, but devastating nonetheless, delivering arrows from a bow that held 200 pounds of pressure.

As Luke began loading his crossbow, Jack walked over to the hood of his blue 4-door car and began grinding up smoke. As he was emptying the grinder into the pipe he looked over at Luke who was now lining up his shot. Luke was about the same height as Jack, he was 27, had a handsome, thick moustache and was a bit stockier than Jack. He was wearing his black shorts, black skate shoes, black ‘Slayer’ hoodie and a black baseball cap pointed toward the sky. Beyond Luke, Jack could start to see the lightning flashing up the valley and through the trees, the cloud was thick and black like smoke, it seemed to be heading right at them, he figured they had at least another 5 minutes before they should start moving so they could avoid getting caught. It would take them 20 minutes to get back to the main road, which was in the opposite direction to the storm.

Luke took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His finger started teasing the trigger, and finally; Therwoomp! The arrow flew out of the crossbow, 100 miles per hour it seemed, hurtling towards the stack of pillows. As it hit the target in the same general area that Jack’s arrow had hit, a zigzag line of fluorescent electricity discharged from a few kilometers away out of the approaching fog. It was time to leave now.

Author's Note

subject to change, work in progress