by Amorphous on Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:00 pm
As Joe Everyman walked along the beach, he smiled to himself with simple satisfaction. Until very recently, a lot of things hadn't been going his way - friends suddenly disappearing, sighting of rabies-infected monkeys, gunmen sneaking into hospitals. The last one had cost him his job as a security guard, and that had merely been the beginning of the trouble.
Still, no point in dwelling on all that now, it had become irrelevant. An internal hearing at the hospital had found him in no way responsible for the incident, so he'd got his job back. The latest reports were that the rabies-infected monkey had been captured and was, in some vague and ill-defined way, repaying the community. While he was still concerned about some of his missing friends, he'd been named in the will of another to receive enough money to pay off his debts, so he was no longer in risk of losing the house. And after a heartfelt talk with his briefly-estranged wife, she had realised that leaving him was a terrible idea and moved back in, bringing their young daughter with her.
Yes. Life was good.
As he continued to walk along the beach, hand in hand with his wife, he saw his daughter running towards him in a state of great excitement. As she got closer, it was clear that she was carrying something.
"Daddy, Daddy! I found this in the sand! What is it, Daddy?"
Joe took the object from his daughter and turned it over. From the looks of things it was some sort of fancy Christmas card; if the lump between the pages was anything to go by then it was the kind that 'sang' at whoever opened it. It seemed a little odd, but he was in too good a mood to question it further, and curiosity demanded that he open the card.
There was no singing. Frowning, Joe began to shake the card gently, wondering if the battery in it had died. As he stared, a red light on the small black electronic pack started flashing and there was a quiet whining sound - low at first, but steadily increasing in pitch and volume.
Joe's last thought was that it was the sound of something charging up.
Barely an hour later, Chief Constable Smith looked down at the carnage and sighed. In all his years in the force, he'd never seen such senseless violence.
"Chief!" called out one the younger and more excitable policemen from behind him. "We got what you were looking for."
Chief Constable Smith turned to be presented with an ice cream cone, vanilla, missing a chocolate flake.
"They said they were out of 99's, sir," the younger policeman explained apologetically. "I can go back and interrogate them further if you want."
Chief Constantble Smith shook his head, looked down at his snack and sighed. In all his years in the force, he'd never seen such senseless ice cream.
"Oh... Chief... we also found this," the young policeman continued, taking out an evidence bag. Smith took it from him and stared at the contents, what appeared to be a small, charred piece of card. Peering through the soot, he could just make out of the words 'From your friend, Bullet_MaGnEt'.
Ah, a lead. This was much more like it.
If Jack Bauer was put in a room with Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Nina Myers and handed a gun with two bullets, he'd shoot Nina twice.