Missing Vampire: Reward Available (Hypernaturals 6)

Crossing the Line

There is a wind farm between where I am crouching and scanning and the border. I am on the edge of tree cover. I feel OK: ate a solid breakfast. I watched the roads to the wind-farms and their individual windmills for a while and saw no vans. I guess they are private, service roads? They must be how maintenance people get around to oil things or whatever you do to a windmill. I mentally sketched out my next path: by skirting to the right, I can stay in cover. It is a little out of the way, but this is going to be a slow approach and reconnoiter day. Well. Night.

Night is day for me now. With Vampire vision, it doesn't matter to me either way, other than the staying hidden part.

At some point along this hellacious journey, I must have entered Bulgaria, because I came across a road not on my map. It is about where I guess the political border is.

After the traverse of the windfarm, I continued along mapless once again. My only direction back to being the cardinal compass points. 

Open areas and trees alternated for a while as I moved mostly pure North West. I may be in a different country, but it all looks the same to me. It all feels the same. More land I have to get across to get to Claremont, and to Helen.

I am in no way cocky about this. I want to get to her arms and be held and be safe. I am a child again, running scared.

After a bit of a speed-trek, I came to a small town, with the sidewalks rolled up.

It is open all around the town. It turns out it is actually easier on my fear reflex to cross fairly near the town where there are at least some trees. I had no good choices, so I went through the town at fast human speed, listening for anything or anyone that I need to avoid. If anyone quietly peeked out the window, they saw the strangest looking jogger ever: a man in boots and dirty clothes and a rucksack running like he is training for the hundred-yard dash, over and over, the dash stacked on another dash, all down the lane. No human could actually run this speed this long. I am not technically exceeding human speed, only how long they can sustain it. The idea is that if a person is looking quietly out a window, late and night, they won't see how LONG I am doing it. Only that I went by their place at fast human speed. Once on the other side of the town, I regained trees.

For a while.

I am starting to learn to really love trees.

All night I ran from tree to tree. A small patch of woods to the next. There came a huge open area to cross after that, but it is well away from roads. This terrain is also gaining a third dimension, which will make it easier to duck behind when I am near a road and I spot cars.

Also vans. I do not want to be seen by EITHER of those things. The Vans are overt and obvious for their threat, but I want to ghost through this landscape. No reports of a weird man out hiking. No HPA spotters running in stealth mode in cars. No one can find me. Not for any reason. It is bad enough I have to break and enter to eat. If authorities connect those minor break-ins and draw a line? In the fugitive trade, we call that 'Bad'.

The Vans are here in Bulgaria too. Not as many, but it is them. Trolling along the road, door open, IR goggles out.

I know the sound of that particular vehicle's motor very well now. In the USA it is called the 'Sprinter' and it's made by Mercedes. Five cylinder diesel motor. I can hear it a mile away, easy. A five-cylinder motor is a distinctive sound. There is nothing else like it.

Just before dawn, I came to a little town.

If I had a map, I might have known to stop a bit earlier, in a place with cover. I am very exposed here, and I hate it. Trees appear to have been cleared except ornamental small stands of them dotted here and there. Big trees, but not close together with other big trees, as I like it.