The Oddities Of Grand Marquis - Book 1: Galactic Seed 🪼✔

Fifth

I guess I must be losing blood because I haven't stopped shaking since I hit the highway. I checked the 'tourniquet' but it was as tight as I could get it. Moving my arm was a chore and any slight movement made me want to cry. I don't really recognize anything at the moment, but I know that I'm on top of a mountain or something. I just followed the road in front of me down the hill, feeling the incline going down and down. Shit, my eyes are getting blurry now. I shook my head to try and focus as I looked down at my bleeding arm. It was dripping past the shirt and down my arm (that I couldn't feel anymore) and down my hand to drop from my fingers. I made a face and just kept on trucking. Eventually, I'd get someone's attention but for the meantime, it looked like I was going to have to buck up and take this nice and slow.

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By the time I finally got all the way down the mountainy-hill thingy, I was about to pass out from exhaustion. I leaned on a tree and tried to get my bearings, but my eyes were just not cooperating. I blinked several times to try and get them to focus as well as stop trying to close on me. I had to get somewhere quickly, or I was going to die of blood loss and then this whole stupid thing would have been for nothing. My stomach growled and I felt the familiar feeling of bile churning in there, ready to send some up my throat. I didn't have any problem on the ship, but I remember what it was like those last couple of days before I escaped. It was like the vomitron meter in my stomach had been turned on high and everything I ate would come back up and every time I moved, it would activate it. God, I hope that isn't the case here because if I vomit now, I'll just pass right out.

I breathed in to try and keep my cool and stood back up, looking around. I came across what looked like the edge of a town and shuffled towards it. As I got closer, I realized that I knew this place. This was downtown... I looked around for a second and saw the antique shop my mom always went to, the hardware store my dad never abandoned even when a Harbor Freight store opened up like six minutes from the house. Dad said, "I'm not going to that cheap-for-nothing chain store! If I want cheap tools and equipment, then I'll just go to Larry's. He's known me and your grandfather for so long that I get a good price on everything I buy. Besides, I know it's quality." And he was always right.

This was home...

But if this was home, then that meant that people would see me. Right? I looked around but there was no one there. Weird... As I passed through the heart of downtown, I looked in the windows and noticed that a lot of them didn't have anything in them anymore. I made a face and then finally got to the entrance of downtown where you turned to go to the main highway. There was a blockade there and a note.

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As of August 15, 2018, the Downtown District of Grand Marquis County has been permanently closed to the public. The shop owners and owner of this property would like to thank its citizens for a long and healthy shopping experience that has been well established for over 75 years. The County of Grand Marquis has designated this site as a historical site to leave behind as we press forward into the future.

Thank you.

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"Dafuq..." I growled, ogling the note with a hatred I really didn't understand. "So, they just up and closed the whole downtown district because they wanted to site it as historic? That don't make any sense..."

I shook my head and headed down the path towards the road to the main road, where I saw a bunch of cars going by. If I was where I thought I was, then the hospital actually wasn't too far...

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Luckily, I was right and one of the hospitals wasn't too far from the downtown district. It wasn't the nice new one they built a while back, but it was the older one that was only like one story and still had their nurses wearing candy striping outfits that were not cute and sexy like the ones at Halloween. Most of the older doctors and nurses worked here while the more advanced or more technologically inclined people went to the bigger one. I can't remember what they were calling that one but this one was called the GMH, or just Grand Marquis Hospital. I think the big one had a fancy name to it...