This year I am working on a story called Bob vs. The Alien Slug Monsters. Instead of an outline I have a basic list of plot points I want to cover between meeting Bob and sending him off to fight the king of the slugs. There is more of a cast of characters than an actual outline, so we will see how the story develops. And with that intro we continue with Bob Versus the Alien Slug Monsters…
Day 25: He did strange things with explosives, but he always owned up to what he did.
He did strange things with explosives, but he always owned up to what he did. “But Eddie claims he didn’t blow up the bridge,” Bob thought as he walked. He thought about the sound from Eddie’s adventure. It had been loud, but the sound was mostly the explosive itself. He saw wood and dirt go flying and a small spiral of smoke. “But that’s not enough for the bridge to have been destroyed like it was.”
Bob recalled distinctly thinking that the bridge supports might have been damaged when he went to bed, not that the bridge itself was destroyed. “I was going to call Larry,” Bob said to himself.
Sadly this was not the first time Eddie damaged something and while Larry worked for the city he was willing to inspect things without reporting Eddie. Bob had called him more than once. Larry seemed to feel that if it got reported then they could check for damage before anyone was hurt and maybe repair a small issue before it could become a large one. Bob didn’t call him often so Larry never felt pressured into reporting Eddie for the common good, but there had been enough calls that Bob now considered Larry a friend.
Thinking of calling Larry, Bob slipped his cell phone out. He was nearer town now and reaching the curve in the road. He hoped the cell reception might be better.
It wasn’t.
“Not a single bar of service,” he thought. Bob frowned. He had never had problems with cell cservice in Centerville. The town was well connected and no matter where Bob found himself there were always at least a few bars of service. To have absolutely none was strange. He slipped the phone back into his pocket as he reached the curve in the road. Bob walked around the bend.
He stayed close to the tree line, more worried about a car coming barreling down the road than anything else. As he reached the curve and peered around it, her realized there would be no cars barreling down this road again for a while. Taking in the sight, Bob found himself retreating a little into the tree line, not wanting to stand out.
There was a giant crater where the road had been. A large section of the asphalt had been blasted. It looked like a bomb was dropped from the sky and simply blew a hole in the road. Chunks of asphalt were scattered over the remaining sections of road. Sand and dirt was also thrown up out of the hole.
“Its like out bridge,” Bob thought. He stared at the hole for a moment. It looked more like it belonged to a war zone and not to the Centerville bypass road. Carefully Bob eased himself forward, sticking close to the trees and occasionally glancing towards the sky incase someone decided to drop another bomb on the road. He had to pick his way around broken chunks of asphalt, but he managed to reach the edge. Looking into the hole he could see nothing but a blasted hole. He thought the edges might look burned, but there was no metal fragments that might be the remnants of a bomb nor to his relief anything that might look like an active explosive.
“Of course for me to know what I was looking at it would either have to look like a cartoon bomb or have wires and a count down clock. Maybe a silver briefcase.” As an accountant, explosives weren’t really his strong suit.
“Most of what I learned I got from Eddie.”
Bob shook his head and backed away from the edge of the hole. While the bomb or whatever actually caused the damage took out the road, he could still walk to the other side and get into Centerville if he had to.
Ten til Midnight 