The Permutation

Apex (Part 13) Paul

The truck hit a bump in the road and sent a jolt of pain ripping through his spine, pain that shocked him back into reality. None of these people gave a damn about him.

When all the action fades, these mouth breathers are going to want my head on a silver platter. They won't give a rat's ass that I saved their bacon. They would rather focus on the fact that he'd killed that lunatic of a police officer when Paul had just saved them from being human barbecue

Life's just not fair, people are ungrateful bastards.

Paul did not relish the thought of going to prison. He couldn't imagine how a paraplegic, morbidly obese murderer would be treated, and he didn't want to find out. That is assuming they even let him go to prison. If the government even got a whiff of what he could do, he would be whisked away to a government facility where he couldn't even get a decent meal. If they didn't want to study him, they'd probably eliminate him on principle.

America tends to nuke and ask questions later. Why solve a puzzle when you can blow it up?

The Being drove at grandma speed, a speed that Paul would have found infuriating if it weren't the only thing keeping him from spilling onto the gravel.

On accident.

Paul wrapped himself in his tendrils until he was as snug as a pig in a blanket and rolled out of the moving vehicle with his eyes clamped shut. Someone with as much loose folds of fat as himself did not land with grace, but his smooth and oily tendrils softened the impact. The only effect the fall had on him was the wind being driven from his lungs.

He looked at the truck as it faded into the night. It hadn't slowed down at all. Paul was surprised that such a drastic change in weight hadn't tipped them off. The suspension must have shot up like a teeter-totter. He attributed their error to stupidity or shock, more likely, it was both.

Paul's position, helpless in the middle of a road was less than ideal but more ideal than being behind bars or murdered by a crazy Asian. It was only a matter of time before even people as slow-witted as those people realized Paul was missing, so he needed to come up with a plan fast. He couldn't crawl across the road even if he had enough strength to do so. He'd been too heavy to move for a long time.

Something niggled at the back of Paul's mind, like a word on the tip of the tongue, but trying to focus on it made it scurry away. It was something that happened over the course of the night, something he should've noticed but hadn't. Paul did not operate well under pressure, and this was no exception. He knew deep down whatever he had missed was vital to get him out of this predicament, but all he could focus on was what he'd lost.

He longed for the comfort of the Relaxzen Rocker and his mother's quilt. He wished he had grabbed it when he had been crawling for his life, but one rarely thought of blankets when they were on the brink of death. Paul imagined the look of deep hurt in his mother's eyes when he had to tell her that he'd lost her quilt.

I'm going to get that damn quilt back whatever it takes.

Already knowing the effort was futile, Paul tried to use his arms to pull himself along the ground, but his arms felt like lead weights instead of anything useful. The top half of Paul's body still ached from falling twenty feet and then dragging himself against asphalt. The thought of wearing down his already tender and bleeding skin did not sound like his idea of a pleasant time. He decided to lay on his back and admire the night sky and hope that the rest of the night would prove uneventful.

It really is a beautiful night.

Stars crowded the sky. They clustered against each other polluting the pure, inky blackness of the night sky. Stars made it impossible to truly appreciate the oblivion of space. Annoying as they may be, Paul couldn't take his eyes off them. Right before his eyes, the stars had started to rearrange themselves. Paul watched them with rapt attention, not able to decide whether or not they were real or the product of bone-deep exhaustion.