Preamble
This is the fourth chapter in my straight to Steemit Novel Project.
Past Entries
Chapter 1 - The Road.
Chapter 2 - The Evening Road.
Chapter 3 - The Roadside
A new chapter will be added in six days time. The cover image may change from week to week. (No new cover this week!) All images used in this project will be captured by myself as original photographs.
Chapter 4 - The Hotel Room
I don’t know if it was the knock on the door or Violet’s murmuring that woke me up. I wasn’t sleeping very heavily to begin with. What time is it? The alarm clock had been turned to face the wall, an orange glow being cast against the smoothly finished plaster and paint.
Another knock. This one more urgent. Who could that be? Violet was restless, and if it wasn’t my hand on her shoulder that woke her up, the next knock certainly did. It was more of a thump than a knock.
Light from a street lamp inconveniently filtered through the gap in the closed curtains. It was dim, and cast a yellow tone across Violet. She stirred, and then I could see she was immediately alert, and concerned at the sound. There was a slight terror in her eyes.
The door shook, again. Whoever was on the other side was likely to wake up the whole hotel. It would have to be something important. The phone in the hotel room had been disconnected from the wall socket to prevent any disturbances. They couldn’t have called ahead. This was certainly a disturbance.
The door frame seemed to quake at the next knock.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Violet exclaimed. “Go away!” She shouted toward the door, turning her neck towards the source of the knocking. The knocking ceased for a moment, and a deep, calm male voice responded, apparently oblivious to the people that tend to sleep at night. “Good. You’re awake. We need you to come with us.” Like I had a choice.
Us? Who are they? I had so many unanswered questions. “We’d prefer not to have to break the door down.” Holy shit. What had I gotten myself into? The moments of the last few hours flashed before me, the car, the flash flood, the police raid, the flashing lights. The man in the plaid shirt mumbling something about a fountain of youth being distilled in the house down the road.
Maybe the old man was right, maybe something incredible and unknown was happening, why else was this man implying that he may have to break down a hotel door? “Who are you?” I asked the question not expecting the immediate answer that I received, as though it should have been something I had known. “DPS”.
Violet’s face reflected the confusion that I felt. “What do you want with us?”
“I can’t say why.”
“Also, who the fuck is DPS.”
“I can’t explain until you’re under our protection.”
Protection? “I wasn’t aware that there was any danger until you started knocking.” She spoke urgently, as though she was the one doing the interrogation and requesting, not the owner of the voice on the other side of the door.
Both Violet and I had moved closer the door. She was standing in front of me, and was dressed in a tank top and some pyjama shorts. There was an aroma of cheap hotel soap and shampoo that seemed to hang in the air around her. I smelt the same. The hotel’s faux luxury carpet filled the space between my toes as I approached the door.
I decided to speak to the voice. “If we refuse, how do you propose you’d break down the door?” There was no answer, just the rustle of canvas, and the sound of a zipper being opened. I looked at Violet and whispered into her ear, “What do you think we should do?”
She in turn, whispered into my ear, her nose for a moment touching it. “I think it might be an adventure.” Personally, I just did not want to get into any trouble. Who were DPS?
“Why the sudden change of heart?” A moment ago, she looked terrified, now, she looked full of curiosity and adventure. I didn’t quite understand. “Car definitely screwed. Want to have an adventure? Let’s see where the road takes us?” She moved closer to the door.
“Where would we be going?” She smiled as the words left her lips.
“Far,” The voice responded, pausing for a moment. “Where it is safe. Could you please unlock the door?” Violet reached for the lock with a steady hand, and it made a piercing click in the surrounding silence. Well, relative, surrounding silence. The thumping at the door had set a new benchmark for volume in the tiny sphere that was my immediate world.
Two men stood at the door. They were both wearing what appeared to be finely tailored suits. The man on the left, held a tool bag, out of which a variety of handles, grips, and other gadgets threatened to spill.
He was powerfully built, and monstrously tall, at least six eleven. He had a lean face, and a statuesque expression on his face. Powerful jaws defined this, underlined by a veneer of stubble. He looked strong. He looked like he could eat an entire chicken the way a normal person would eat a few wings, like the sort of man you’d see in a body building advertisement, except he was wearing pinstripes.
The other man looked like a dwarf in comparison to the monster on the left. He was the owner of the voice that we had been communicating with. I guessed it was the other man who had the knocking on the door. “DPS.” He said again, expecting us to know who they were and why they were here. He was freshly shaven.
His skin was flawless, his completely shaved head seemed like a glowing orb in the hotel corridor light. He seemed to be built for agility, with the suit accentuating a lean body, which seemed inconsistent with the depth of his voice. “Please follow us,” He did not seem to care about the fact that by his standards, we were underdressed.
“Will we need to bring our things?” Where ever we were going, I wanted to take my camera.
“You can’t take anything.” It was a statement, not a suggestion.
“I’m a tou-“ He fished an Australian passport from his suit jacket pocket.
“We know,”
I hadn’t lost my passport. It was surely still at the bottom of my backpack, I looked at my own photograph. The stamps that had been inked just days before. He had somehow obtained my passport, or a very convincing copy.” How did you-?”
“We’re from the government, DPS.”
The large man spoke. He had a slight hint of pan-European in his vice, perhaps his roots were Dutch. “Ve haf our vays.” His voice was not as deep as that of the other man. His English did not seem very good.
“Who is DPS?”
It was the small man who responded again.
“Department of Planetary Security.”
Planetary Security? Since when did any government have such a department? “I know he’s a tourist, but an alien?” Violet laughed at the absurdity of their titles. I had a feeling they were serious. Neither man made a move to show credentials. They didn’t seem like goons or simple kidnappers, but who knew? Adventure.
The gadgetry that was in the tool bag seemed to suggest that they well-funded. They looked like very high-quality instruments.
Violet had gone into the bathroom with a change of clothes and locked the door, I figured I should change as well. I grabbed some jeans, a t-shirt, and a faux leather jacket that I had originally thought was real leather. I smiled at the men and closed the door, “It won’t be locked.”
I changed hastily and decided just in case… to raid the toolbox from the vehicle. I grabbed two short screwdrivers, the tool set didn’t seem to have anything else of appeal. You could do a lot with screwdrivers.
Violet emerged from the bathroom, now in jeans, a button up shirt, and her hair tied back. I looked at her, and she seemed vacant, a passenger to the unfolding scenario. She nodded, walked past me, and closed the toolbox, putting it back where it was before.
She opened the door. The men still stood, patiently. “So where are we going?”
“Far.” The men in the suits repeated I unision.
The hotel room swung shut behind me as Violet and I followed the men down the corridor. Is this how I’ll get axe murdered? “So, why are we coming with you?”
“Secuirt-ee” The burly one spoke.
“We will be able to explain once you’re in-transit.”
Transit. Transit to somewhere else. Maybe they were going to somehow, and poetically take us on a guided tour of the country. “For the time being, please remain si-hlent.” Somehow, these men were good at finishing each other’s sentences.
The walk was silent. There was no squelching of wet shoes and socks unlike the earlier journey down the very same corridor. For a man of his bulk, the larger man was soft footed as he bounded ahead, his long legs carrying him forward faster than the rest of the procession.
The lobby was unattended. There was no one in the lift. We passed no one in the corridor. There was no traffic passing by the hotel. The world seemed completely still; the way it should in the early AM. There was only the sound of crickets, and the footsteps of four humans.
Piercing orange light tore through the night. The vehicle had been unlocked from an unseen remote. It was a white van, completely unremarkable. It had a long wheelbase, and no windows on its side panels. The back of the van had the type of doors that swung open as two pieces. The glass was tinted exceptionally dark.
“Does this feel like an abduction to you?” Violet made the query in a nonchalant manner. It kind of did. It was too late to turn back now, and I hate to think what would have happened had we not agreed to, or indeed, not opened the hotel room door to the gentlemen who had insisted that we did.
The shorter man opened the back panel of the van. A step unfolded from the rear side of the door as he did. Inside, there was nothing but black. This wasn’t due to the fact that the interior of the van was an abyss, but more to do with the fact that an expensive looking curtain hung from the van’s ceiling, obscuring whatever was within.
“Enter.” The larger man had moved behind Violet, and I was stuck in the middle. There would be no escape now. I stepped into the van, ignoring the step, and pulled aside the curtain. Beyond the curtain, there was two identical leather bench seats lining both sides, and in the middle, a rich and tastefully stained hunk of expensive timber. It was a nice table. It looked very heavy to be transported around in the back of a van. There was plush carpet on the inside, and the space gave the impression of a boardroom.
Violet entered directly after me. I sat, and she joined me, sitting close, not due to the lack of space but from the look in her eyes, for comfort. The large man sat about half a metre down the bench, blocking our exit. The door clicked close. He opened a panel beneath the table and stowed his gadget bag. He smiled.
If it was quiet outside of the van due to the night being past the hour of drunken stumblers and calls of last drinks, inside the van, it was even quieter. You could hear a pin drop, if it wasn’t for the rich carpet that would muffle the sound.
The silence didn’t last long. The driver’s door opened, then softly closed, before the sound of a diesel engine spurred into life. We were away. But to where?
“Can you tell us where you are taking us now?” I looked to the large man. They hadn’t given us their names. He replied with something that wasn’t a refusal, nor an answer. “Soon.”
The van rumbled, picking up speed. It was impossible to know what direction we were heading in. The ride of the van was smooth, massaging each and every bump out of the road surface. There were two lights on the roof of the van, and it was otherwise disinteresting. I made the time pass by marvelling at the fine and intricate knotting in the table that was before me. Violet traced the patterns with a meandering finger.
“Can we know why?” I expected the same answer again. I wasn’t surprised by the response. “Securit-ee”, it seemed to be one of the few words in the man’s vocabulary.
“How long will we be under your…” Violet paused, not being sure what the right word to use next was. I would have used custody. “… Guard?” she finished the sentence, not entirely satisfied with the word that she had used. “Until it is safe.”
More ambiguity. At least it would be a journey. It would be an adventure. This wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned as a road trip. It was happening though. I was tired. Questioning wouldn’t achieve anything at this stage, I would have to wait a little longer for answers.
“Our journey in this vehicle will be about an hour. Please rest.” His accent was gone. It was an act. “You will be informed of why we have collected you shortly.”
I forced a yawn. The least I could do is try to get a little sleep. Violet already had that idea in mind, and had already dosed off. It didn’t take long for me to join her.