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 66: He knew from the outside that he glass front was darkened so he couldn’t be seen, but he didn’t know if movement would show.
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. Bob swallowed hard and kept as still as he could while watching the slugs move around the parking lot. He could hear the disks this close to the window but the restaurant was soundproofed well enough that they were only a low hum.
From his vantage point he could see that the gaps between the stretchers were more than he thought. Adding up the gaps he thought that about half of the stretchers were removed. Bob watched as the Slugs used some sort of device to get the stretchers to move. There were five stretchers and he saw lights flashing on the stretchers. The slugs didn’t need to touch the people on them and they didn’t seem to notice that the people were covered with salt.
‘That won’t last long if they touch them.’ Bob held his breath as the slugs moved the stretchers through the gap in the plantings that separated this parking lot from the Bowl-a-Rama. There were five slugs and each operated one of the stretchers.
‘Once they find the salt on the bodies they might come looking for who put it there.’
Bob swallowed hard. He needed to move. Bob decided the back was the better option this close to the Bowl-A Rama as it appeared to be slug headquarters. He slipped back through the dining room and then the kitchen, letting himself cautiously out of the back door. Bob saw a dumpster near the back door and as he could see a hand and a foot sticking out of the top he decided he didn’t need to investigate it further. Instead he skirted around the dumpster and seeing the alleyway clear, he raced through it, passing the bowl a-rama and slipping to the back of the diner.
‘God bless smokers,’ Bob thought seeing the overly full ashtray and back door to the door propped open with a bit of broken brick. Bob slipped inside, leaving the door propped open. The kitchen looked as though it was still in use and not as close to closing as the rest of the restaurants. ‘Twenty four hour diner,’ he recalled.
Bob grabbed a container of salt and added it to his collection. He thought he should hide, but while the other parking lots were separated by plantings to break up the sea of asphalt, the Bowl-A-Rama’s parking lot ran into the diner’s lot. As people tended to migrate from one to the other the beautification project that installed the plantings didn’t split the two. From the diner’s windows he would be able to look into the parking lot of the Bowl-A Rama.
‘Not blacked out,’ He thought. If the slugs looked at the windows they would be able to see him as well as movement. He would need to be careful. ‘Also not soundproofed.’
Even though the slugs and their disks were in the other parking lot and farther away, he could hear them much more clearly than he did in the previous restaurant. He adjusted his positioning so that he could see most of what was going on without exposing too much of himself.
In the Bowl-a-Rama parking lot there was a gathering of slugs.
Ten til Midnight 