Cornelius has a brilliant mind, and it's killing him. His thoughts are a torrent of fragmented memories and visions. And secrets...so many secrets. Determined to save his girlfriend, he ventures out into the wilds. Lost and alone, he finds an unlike...
My thoughts jag ahead again, into my future... The past now obscured...But Angie? Where did the time go? In only one word, "assignment"—that's stuck in my head.
I'm in a transport truck. This time my military garb is all clean and militarily pressed. Hat in hand... nervous as heck... terrified, as I face all my feelings of meeting the past... I am greeted by the very same sheriff again.
He's come to meet me... He's kept in touch with Angie. He's found me and made contact for her, after all of these years.
My release from the army has given me training and now a new special job...but again, I'm on "leave". This time it's sanctioned. This time under cover; and my unofficial contract recruitment's to start in a month.
It has been years and I don't know what did it. Had the sheriff felt sorry for me?
Seems, after the fact—once he turned me over to those MPs—he had wondered about it. How? My pathetic drawing of Angie seemed real?
He'd actually phoned her again. Not Angie, but the place that she worked...after he'd managed to dig through old reports, and figure out who I was...and where Angie might be then...he left his number.
"She was still on assignment," he tells me again. And then he explains how she tracked him down many months later. "She begged me to find you. Just as you had begged me. Took me some time. Guess, my wife would say, I'm a sucker for love."
Before I get out of his car the sheriff says, "By the way... I checked out the site of the tragedy you'd hinted. They found all those trucks. Thanks to you, the soldiers now have been properly honored, given a burial that they all deserved. Families got closure."
The sheriff punches something into his radio on his dash, and the sound disappears. "But between you and me, I can't say anything official here. You got mighty lucky out there." He pauses, looks uncomfortable, pale. "You got mighty lucky...
"This is only the grapevine, so I can't give it credence, but the way I found out... Well, I'm just saying there were some enormous tracks all over the place... It's... Can't say what it was.
"But them soldiers was sure un-cordial like. Whatever that was—was enormous...not even earthly at all...It was a huge beast...AND...it had been following you." He stops.
I get out of the patrol car and stare back at him, waiting. "An animal?"
He doesn't want to say more, but eventually fidgets with a clipboard."Needed elsewhere."
And then...does he feel sorry again?
"Maybe a Bigfoot. That's what it was. Well, not that maybe. But only a Bigfoot could make tracks that obvious big. And so many I saw. And if I didn't know folks. Well..."
He coughs, then starts up the motor, saying no more.
"Good luck there, fella. Sure do wish you and your prospective 'Missus' a chance at the future. I'd shake your hand, but I'm not allowed. Good luck, though."
And, Sheriff Smith's gone.
Alone again...this time on a highway...dirt everywhere...
I'm facing a bus stop. Only that—just a stick...and a sign, "BUS."
And I cross towards it.
~~~/
A small chapter, but a big jump in time...
What do you think Custer's been doing during these years...? Speculations?
A "special job"?
And this bus ride... hmmm... He's got a right to be nervous, I'd say.
Let's see what happens...
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