Mean Joe Gets a Lift

Mean Joe did not feel good. He stood in the shadows of the old arcade, watching Fat Bob's goons mill around by the entrance to the disused river tunnel and pondered what it meant. He thought back to all the times he had felt this way before, sick to his guts. Something bad always happened. It was a warning and ignoring it had always had consequences. He couldn't back out now though. If he wasn't out of town soon something even worse would probably happen. Cut the probably, he would be dead. So how to proceed? Well, Fat Bob had sent four guys down, he thought, lets start with that...

Slick Jimmy was thinking of getting the job over with and going home to play World of Warcraft. He was thinking about how he was going to miss a very important raid when he caught something moving out of the corner of his eye and turned. Too late. A fist covered in brass knuckles came out of the darkness and planted itself in his face. Before he could react there was a foot in his stomach and a large man with a funny hat on took out a very large pistol and quickly shot all three of his coworkers before they could move to draw. How could a man so large move so fast? And what was with that suit? Slick Jimmy decided it was a good idea not to move from his current position. He spit out a tooth and watched as the man walked up to his boy Thug-Z who had a side wound and was struggling to get up. The man in the gray suit knelt down. He whispered something close to his face that seemed to reassure the young man who laid back down. Then the man punched Thug-Z's face in. Slick Jimmy proceeded to wet his pants.
The man stood over his now dead associate and stared down at him for what seemed like a very long time. The he got up, re-holstered his pistol, and stood over Slick Jimmy looking down at him. The thing that Jimmy noticed the most was the waves on the pier. It was such a nice normal calming sound, grounded in reality. Everything else seemed like a very bad dream. The man knelt down.
"Get up. You're going to drive." He said and stood back up.
Slick Jimmy, despite his bruised face and stomach had never moved so fast in his whole life.

The drive to the old cabin was unexceptional. It was quite a ways out of the city and the man did not make a sound the whole way. Every once in awhile Jimmy glanced at him in the rear view mirror. There was something in that face that frightened him a lot. Maybe it was those eyes or that hideous scar. Something about him smacked Jimmy as not entirely human. But that was stupid right? As the buildings gave way to trees and the pavement gave way to dirt, Jimmy tried to tell himself again that it was all a bad dream...

He almost missed the turn into the cabin's long driveway. It was easy to miss in the dark. Hell, it was easy to miss in the daytime. What would the man have done if he had missed it and had to turn around? He shivered as he turned into the slash in the trees.
It was always so dark in here, even during the day. All he could see now was the already overgrown dirt drive about a foot in front of his headlights. Jeez, they had just torn that up two weeks ago how was that possible...
Something ran out in front of the car and Jimmy slammed on the breaks. He turned his head quickly to catch a glimpse of whatever it was as it ran off into the thick woods. Before he could ponder what kind of an animal had a tail with a forked end, he felt a gun shove up against the back of his head and a voice that scared him much more than the weird old woods spoke up.
"Drive." It said.
That was enough for Jimmy. If I get out of this alive, he thought, I promise to god I won't use hacks in Counterstike again. Oh god please just let me live to see my computer again...

It seemed to take forever but when they finally pulled up to the front of the cabin, Jimmy stopped the car and turned it off. Then he sat as the man got out and came around to his side of the car and opened the door. He was pointing a gun at his head.
"Get out. You're going in first. You better pray to God your boss didn't set up an ambush inside that door or you're getting the first shots."
Jimmy wet himself again as they walked up to the entrance....

Something screamed deep in the woods and Mean Joe felt sick again. Something was very wrong here. He pushed the barrel of his 44 harder against the kids head as he turned the handle and pulled the door open....