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 65: While he was thus far doing well with his salt protection plan, he knew his luck couldn’t hold.
While he was thus far doing well with his salt protection plan, he knew his luck couldn’t hold. The closer he got to the Bowl-A-Rama and the clustering of slugs, the more dangerous it would become.
‘Several more buildings to go,’ Bob told himself, trying to bolster his courage. At this point he didn’t want to think about what he might need to do once he finished with the outer parking lots.
‘Still it is a row of restaurants until the Bowl-A Rama and then there is a diner on the other side. Bob couldn’t remember at the moment what was beyond the diner. He knew it was a stretch of retail but as he avoided the area he wasn’t sure what the shops were now. Once he knew there was a shoe store and then a book store on the other side of the diner. He knew the shoe store closed up before he started high school and sat empty until he went to college.
‘For all I know it is still empty.’ He liked the diner and the book store. The diner he knew was still open as he could see it and it’s busy parking lot just as easily as he saw th Bowl-A-Rama. The retail was more of a mystery and since he enjoyed the book store, he didn’t want to find out if anything else replaced it.
‘I guess I’ll see now.’
He still had a ways to go before then though and Bob concentrated on putting his salt to good use. The box he held got him through the parking lot and he finished his coating of the people before dipping into the restaurant to restock his supply. Bob continued his plan through the remaining restaurants and parking lots, inching closer to the Bowl-A Rama.
He finally reached the last parking lot full of people. Well stocked with salt he began his routine dusting of the people. Here he noticed something strange. There were gaps between the people. In all of the other parking lots, the stretchers were evenly spaced. He thought it was designed to use all of the available space. Here, while the stretchers seemed to be evenly spaced, there were gaps.
‘Like stretchers were removed.’ Bob swallowed hard, thinking of the emptied stretchers in the first lot. While he thought the two slugs he killed were sneaking out to try to wear the humans as people suits, he didn’t think they were the only ones. Bob swallowed hard. There were two likely scenarios for the gaps in the rows of stretchers. Either the slugs tried to wear the people and failed, killing the people they tried to inhabit or there were slugs walking around looking like people.
‘Not happy with either scenario,’ Bob thought. He made it through the parking lot with much more salt left than any of his previous parking lot saltings. ‘Maybe it is a smaller lot,’ he thought to himself. He slipped to the restaurant and went inside. The dining room looked more disturbed her as though there were more people who realized something was happening and jumped up from their chairs.
He tried ignore it as he went to the kitchen and back into the pantry. He restocked his salt and as he made his way back to the front he caught sight of movement. Bob ducked low, staying out of sight and creeped to the edge of the window. He knew from the outside that the glass front was darkened so he couldn’t be seen, but he didn’t know if movement would show.
Ten til Midnight 