The Continuity Police

The high, smooth concrete walls sent our footsteps echoing all the way up to the vaulted ceilings 50 or more feet above our heads. My companion was tall and thin, dark eyed and with curled dark hair that fell between her proud shoulders to the middle of her back. I had never been in this complex, deep beneath the California desert, but my friend wanted a guide with some actual drain time under his belt, and I was the only one she knew. We had been walking an hour or so before the walls opened into this vault. It was huge and well lit by sodium arc lamps on 15-foot squared steel posts. Conduit, steam pipes and industrial hose snaked across the walls and floor in a baffling network of rusty iron and dingy accordians of yellow rubber. This was unlike any storm-drain I had visited before, and I told the girl as much... This story is continued here

They're Here. Hope to see you sometime. (I'll post teasers here, if you like them, follow that linky to a place where I don't end in mid-)

It started as a relatively mundane experience. While I had never been in this house before, it was familiar enough, a classic california ranch style with bright midday sun streaming through the open parallel blinds. The girl wasn't there, and I'd be damned if I could remember who she was, but there was an implicit urgency palpable in the humid air that I protect her. I was armed, I realized. The weight of the small firearm unbalanced my leather, pulling it in an awkward way down my left side. I shifted the coat on my shoulders to enable free movement through the hall. It was then that I realized she had killed him, she was perfectly justified in doing so, he deserved every blow she had bestowed on his skull. He was violent and resentful. I couldn't recall his face, but that was hardly my concern as I had never even seen him before. She would be back soon to ask me what we would do next. I assumed she was disposing of the body, maybe trying to do some shopping in the lull be...