”Are you sure about this?”
“I’m sure, Logan. This is exactly what we’re looking for. The very source of our troubles. Reason I took on this journey was to reach the people. The ordinary, everyday working men and women.”
“Well, you’re the boss. Just remember that I warned you.”
“Your vote has been counted and marked, Logan. Now, if you’ll excuse me… It has been a long day, and I’m rather tired…”
“Yeah. Sleep tight. I think I’ll hit the bar we saw earlier.”
“Just remember, Logan…”
“Yeah, yeah. No fighting, no women, no getting in to trouble.”
“And I’d prefer no drinking as well, but knowing you that might be a bit of an overkill. Good night, Logan.”
His last talk with professor Xavier flashed through his mind when he saw the hitchhiker standing on the side of the road, thumb raised to the universal gesture, one foot slung in front of the other, backpack dropped carelessly to the ground at her feet. He smirked. Xavier could screw himself and his stupid rules. He’d get bored out of his skull in this hot and vast emptiness of the desert soon. Maybe having somebody to talk to would alleviate the boredom. And the chick wasn’t bad looking either. He could get lucky… Yes. There was always the chance. And Xavier was somewhere far ahead of him. His mind already tackling with the dilemma of how to turn a town full of redneck miners more accepting and tolerant towards the mutant issue.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him…” He muttered easing his foot from the gas pedal and letting the truck roll to a halt. The hitchhiker picked up her backpack and run towards the truck. From this distance he couldn’t help admiring the curvaceous figure and the way her breasts kept bouncing and stretching the front of her shirt. However she disappeared soon from the rearview mirror. He reached over to the passenger’s side and pushed the door open. And nearly swore out loud. Instead of a woman he expected to see a young girl, couldn’t be much older than eighteen stood on the curb, slightly out of breath, fiddling with the straps of her backpack nervously. Her gaze swept over the interior of the cab and settled to him.
“Hi. Are you a decent man?” She asked. He nearly choked on his cigar that dangled from the corner of his mouth.
“If I were Ted Bundy, you really think I would tell that to you?” He asked. She tilted her head and her eyes locked briefly on to his. Then she nodded.
“I think you are. A decent man, I mean.”
“You think so? Well, hop in, then. Don’t have the whole day to sit here chatting with chicks.”
“Where are you heading?” He asked.
“Nowhere in particular… Just trekking around…” She spoke with quiet voice and kept her eyes on the road, stealing glances from him every now and then. He on the other hand stared at her openly. There was something unnerving in a person that wandered around in the middle of the desert wearing several layers of long sleeved clothes and gloves. She had pulled the gloves on as soon as she had settled to the passenger’s seat. His eyes zeroed on the front of her shirt, forest green sweatshirt with a large ‘X’ emblazoned on it with bright yellow. Tails of the letter curved over her breasts.
“What?” She asked, rather snappily for a person who earlier had acted all timidly.
“Nothing…” He turned his attention back on the road, chewing on the cigar. It was his last one, and until he got his supply restocked there was very little reason to smoke it.
“Were you staring at my tits?” The girl asked.
“No.” And that was the truth. He had done all his staring while she was running towards his truck. The letter ‘X’ had drawn his attention. It reminded very closely the trademark of professor Xavier’s academy.
“It’s okay. If you were. I’m kind of used to it by now,” the girl huffed and resumed her earlier stance, leaning against the backrest, one foot raised to the edge of the seat, head leaning against the side window and her eyes locked on to the road.
“I wasn’t staring at your tits. That X on your shirt caught my eyes. This guy I work for, he has a serious thing going on with that letter. That’s all.” There. That should have made it clear. He wasn’t some sort of pervert driving around and staring young girl’s breasts, no matter how good they looked when said girls breathed deeply making the cloth of their shirts stretch taut over their nipples. He wasn’t looking. Really.
“Shit. Okay. I was staring at your tits earlier. When you ran towards my truck. Happy?” He huffed. The girl giggled.
“Haven’t met a guy able to resist looking yet. Oh, wait. There was that one, but he was gay. I don’t think that counts. What do you think?” She asked.
“Jesus. You’re weird. Maybe I should have asked if you were a decent woman before I let you in to this truck…”
“And if I had been Elisabeth Bathory, you really think I would have told you that?” The girl asked.
“Elisabeth who?”
“Never mind. My name is Rogue.” He narrowed his eyes. Rogue?
“What kind of a name is Rogue?” He asked. His passenger leaned forward and stared at his chest for a moment. Stared at the dog tag that had slipped loose from the confines of his T-shirt and hung just below his collarbones.
“I don’t know. What kind of a name is Wolverine?” She asked, eyes narrowing to nearly as impressive scowl as his. It didn’t suit well with the image he had formed from her in his mind. He tucked the dog tag back under his shirt.
“My name’s Logan.” Conversation over. That’s what he thought, until he heard a silent whisper.
“What?” The girl cleared her throat.
“Marie. My name’s Marie.”
“So… Where are you heading?” She asked after they had driven a while.
“To Desperation.”
“What’s in Desperation?” She asked.
“My boss is giving a speech in there. And every goddamned small town and village on the map. I’m just lugging around his equipment and see that he doesn’t get in to trouble on his way.”
“A speech? Who is he? Your boss?”
“Charles Xavier.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about him on the news. He’s big in politics,” his passenger perked up.
“Yes he is. And doing his hardest to get that big, bald head of his blown off from his shoulders,” he grunted.
“He’s a mutant. Are you?” The girl asked. He nodded.
“As mutated as it gets. Still comfortable sitting in this truck?” He asked. To his surprise the girl nodded.
“I’m a mutant, too. In case you didn’t already guess from the gloves and everything.”
“Oh… Can I ask you something?”
“Shot me.”
“It’s hot enough to bake a fucking omelet on that road. Why the hell are you wrapped up like a freaking mummy? Afraid that you’ll get a sunburn?” He asked the question that had been bothering him ever since he saw her.
“It’s my skin. When other people touch my skin, something happens.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. They just get hurt. That’s why I have to keep covered pretty much all the time.”
“That’s the shittiest mutation I have come across so far… No offence.”
“None taken. I agree with you. But it could be worse. At least I can avoid touching people now that I know it hurts them,” the girl said with a brave face. He could hear the sadness in her voice. It made him to reach over the console of the handbrake and squeeze her shoulder gently.
He snatched his hand back and hit the brakes just in time, the truck nearly toppling over, rear tires rising from the ground before bouncing back. His fingers grasped the steering wheel when searing pain tore through his head.
**WOLVERINE**
In his minds eye he could see the side of a police cruiser, emblem of two miners and a rattlesnake adorning the front door, surrounded by letters and numbers. Desperation, law-enforcement from 1889.
**TROUBLE**
When he came to the girl was sitting on her haunches next to him, wiping his nose and mouth with paper towels.
“I… I thought… You… You’re bleeding! I’m sorry, I should have warned you but I thought my skin doesn’t work through my clothes, I’m so sorry…” He swatted her hands away and took the bunched up scraps of paper from her.
“No need to apologize… Oh, crap… You didn’t do this. It’s my boss… He’s in trouble…” Xavier avoided using his telepathy with him at all costs. It was just too tedious of a task to get through the murky depths of Logan’s consciousness to reach that small part of him which was able to receive his messages. What ever had made him call Logan now had to be something big. Xavier was more than able to take care of himself under the normal, and even not so normal circumstances.
“Are you alright?” He asked, trying feebly to protect his clothes from the blood still dribbling from his nose. There was a small gash on the girl’s forehead. She raised her hand to it and grimaced. There was a splatter of blood on the dashboard from when she hit her head to it.
“I’m fine. I think. I didn’t hit my head that hard. I think that sharp edge just nicked my scalp open…”
“Here. Press the wound with this,” he said handing her the last clean tissue.
“I’ll drop you off to the ER once we get in to Desperation and go from there to see what’s going on with Xavier.”
He started the engine and turned the truck on the right lane, trying his hardest not to break speed limits. It wouldn’t do to get arrested from speeding when his boss had already gotten tangled up with the law for some reason.
They were still about a half an hour from the Desperation when something caught his eye. Something dark and gleaming in the desert, amidst of cacti and dried up bushes. He stopped the truck.
“Wait here.” The girl stayed in the truck obediently, probably still shaken from their earlier ordeal when he stepped out to investigate.
Wind that rustled his hair was hot and dry, driving stinging bits of sand at its wake. He made his way to the desert with dread tickling his gut. He hated that feeling. And hated his gut with a passion, because it rarely was wrong. When he reached his destination he kicked the sand and cursed out loud.
Hidden under a pile of dry branches sat the car professor Xavier had been driving. Dark SUV from the academy’s fleet specially modified for a handicapped driver. He started dragging off branches from the top of the car, trying to figure out what had happened. To his immense relief there was no blood. Not on the outside, not inside of the car. Gleaming black paint had acquired few scratches, but they had probably come when somebody had driven the car in to the ditch and covered it with branches.
What he saw when he walked around the truck made the saliva on his tongue to turn bitter, metallic. Xavier’s wheelchair, turned around and partly buried in to the sand. There was no way the professor would have left without it, seeing as Logan was transporting his spare chair at the back of his truck.
“Jesus, was that a cat nailed to that road sign?” The girl gaped from the window the scenery that flew past at alarming speed.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Right now it’s more important for me to get to Xavier. Fuck… Why the fuck did I ever agreed to take on this goddamned gig…” He puffed his cigar, fingers gripping the steering wheel with a death grip, leg pressing heavily on the gas. Fantasies of tank of nox installed to the heap of trash he was driving were floating on the forefront of his mind, accompanied with Scott’s offer to tinker with the truck. And himself laughing at the offer, telling Scott he could do it after this little trip with Xavier if there was anything left from the old lady to modify.
He had to force himself to slow down when they arrived to the Desperation. Wouldn’t do to drive over old ladies and little kids. He could be wrong. He could be wrong with so many things. Maybe this wasn’t a life and death situation for professor after all. Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. Maybe…
“Oh, my God! That man was dead!” His passenger squealed.
“What man?”
“The one that sat on the bench outside of the grocery store. I think… I think his head was blown off…”
“What is this? The Sixth Sense? You see dead people?” He snorted nervously.
“No. Are you laughing at me?” The girl asked, the look on her face challenging him. Laugh and she’ll strike at you.
“Not laughing. Just… You said you saw a cat nailed on the road sign. Then you see a dead man sitting in front of the grocery store like… Like… Uh… What the fuck is going on in here?”
He let the truck roll to a halt, his eyes fixed to a sign, a large notice board that stood in front of an official looking building. The board was wooden. At some point it had been welcoming travelers. He could still see the text carved on the wood. ‘Citizens of Desperation Welcome You, Stranger!’. On top of ‘Citizens’ somebody had written ‘Dead Dogs’ with bright red spray paint. At least he hoped it was spray paint. He wasn’t going to get out of the truck for a closer look.
And where the hell was everybody? At this time of the day the town should have been buzzing from life. Miners from the freshly opened mine on a coffee-break, women and children doing their daily shopping, old-timers sitting in front of the stores… He let his gaze roam over the quiet streets. Nobody. There was absolutely nobody alive and moving aside from him and the girl sitting next to him.
“How’s that head of yours? Still feel like going to ER?” He asked.
“I think I’ll rather stick with you, if you don’t mind,” the girl answered, her eyes still fixed to the small park between the notice board and the building. There was somebody lying face down on the grass, at least dozen black vultures hopping around and tearing in to clothes still covering the body.
“Okay. Lets go and find the police station. Xavier’s probably in there.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
For this I'm in debt for Marvel, and the master of all storytellers, my first true love, Stephen King. I took what they had, Marvel in the X-Men trilogy, Stephen King in "Desperation" and mixed them up. Everything good you can thank for them, everything bad you have me to blame for.