Chiron Academy

Chapter 27: Checking Boxes

Wyatt sighed as his foot crunched through all six inches of snow that covered the ground. The snowstorm that had been threatening to unleash on the little town had finally deluged its contents onto the ground. He clutched the new thick coat he had bought closer around him. He'd learned from his day when they picked up that guy in a few months ago. Since the weather was probably going to stay ungodly cold, he might as well get the clothes to handle it.

The snow was still falling even now as if the sky wanted to taunt him. The snowflakes settled on his coat,

He squinted through the low light at the handwritten list of locations he'd received from Lt. Davis. The paper itself had seen better days at these at this point. It had been folded, rolled up, and passed from one pair of jeans' pockets to another so often that it was amazing that the whole thing was legible at all at this point.

Of the seventeen locations he'd been given, he'd managed to cross off almost all of them. Only two places remained unvisited. He'd already hit all of the downtown locations, the only places he hadn't visited yet were outside of town, which is what found the proud Flyerman picking his way across a snow-covered road to his current quarry: a mom and pop looking gas station a few miles out of town.

He'd looked it up on google maps and as far as he could tell, it looked pretty innocuous. It had a little website that was probably hadn't been changed since the '90s, pictures hinted that, aside from gas, they mostly sold little knickknacks for tourists, and had a sandwich on the menu called 'Momma June's Smilin' PB and J'. The website showed a picture of two people, a woman with a young boy beside her smiling, standing in front of the building. Judging by the look, Wyatt wanted to guess that the woman was probably Momma June. She might not have been; it was possible that it might have been no such person at all and it was all just a marketing scheme. But Wyatt doubted it. The name was too long to be exceptional marketing.

Wyatt idly wondered if she could have been a friend or loved one, but he reminded himself that it didn't matter that much to the case either way.

Focusing on the sword on his back, he called out his wings, bracing himself to jump into the air again. The frigid breeze seemed much harsher in the air, cutting through his thin costume, but it was certainly faster than trudging through the snow on the ground. Better to risk frostbite in the air going fast than die of hypothermia only a mile out of town.

Rising into the air, he squinted through the impenetrable flurry of snowflakes flying towards him. Honestly, if it hadn't been for the road for him to use as reference, he'd have gotten lost almost immediately. As it was, he'd been out in the snow for almost an hour now and it certainly felt like he was no closer to the gas station. He was just caught in the same identical white patch step after step.

He forced his stiff, pink fingers into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Although it wasn't obvious to him, it definitely looked like he was close. Based on the map, he was only a few minutes out.

Stuffing his phone back in his pocket, he flew on for a few minutes, beating his wings against the wind, before he finally noticed a building emerging behind a small hill. Now that he was close, it was immediately obvious that this was the place he had seen on his map. The small main building that housed the business was the same that the woman and child had been standing in front of in the photo from the website. The whole affair was very small: a few buildings placed just off the road, a wide space of dirt was all that there was to serve as the parking lot. In front of the main building were two faded blue gas pumps. judging by the wide on the doors that could easily fit a few cars abreast if they were swung open.

Behind the main building sat a tin building Wyatt figured was a garage. A cartoon picture of a happy man holding a wrench in front of a car had been painted above the corner of the large garage style door, implying that they had at least one point done some business repairing cars that came through. However, the sunbleached and peeling state of the painting made Wyatt wonder if that was another remnant of the time when they had made the website. The garage was a little smaller than the main building and, though old, appeared to be holding together okay. If it wasn't for use for repairs, it had found some use in recent times. There was a trail of footprints in the thick snow leading to the parking lot to a single door next to the large garage door that took up most of the front side of the building.