A Sea Of Redd

Participants:

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Scene Title A Sea of Redd
Synopsis He's coming.
Date June 7, 2019

Red and blue flashing lights dance across a rain-slick stretch of country road.

On the highway

The road meets with railroad tracks, arms up and no train in sight. Though the demolished remains of a police SUV look like it was struck by a train, practically shorn in half with glittering pieces of metal scattered for hundreds of feet around it.

Thirty people lost their lives

Some of the metal is brass. Shell casings from a 9mm APC9 submachinegun. Two more police cruisers are stopped in the middle of the road, black streaks on the sun-grayed asphalt where the skid to a stop, bullet holes in their windshields. Red sprayed across broken glass. Walking between the vehicles, a lone man in a black suit with short clipped blonde hair looks at the carnage with a lump tight and high in his throat. He's forgotten about the cigarette in his mouth and it hangs limply from his bottom lip.

On the highway

Jason Mines has seen his fair share of death in years of service to a criminal enterprise, but this is insanity. To his right, two more police cruisers are in a ditch off the side of the road, looking to have collided with one-another. Bodies of police officers are scattered up one side of the road and down the other, all of them shot, most at nearly point-blank range, often times in the back. Mines only remembers his cigarette when it threatens to burn his lip, and he plucks it from his mouth and nearly flicks it down to the road.

Thirty people lost their lives

"I wouldn't do that," comes a coarse warning about discarding his cigarette, and it comes from behind him. Mines tightens his pinched grip on the cigarette, smells gas in that moment, and looks back to see a weathered-looking man in a black leather jacket with ragged fringe pouring gasoline from an aluminum can down on the officers' bodies. "Fire hazard," he says with a too-wide, toothy smile to Mines.

Well, I had some words to holler, and my Rosie took a ride.

"Jesus Christ," Mines says with his voice catching in the back of his throat. He takes a fumbling step back from the rail-thin man, watching him douse the bodies with gasoline. "Where— where the fuck did you— "

In the moonlight

The man with the gasoline stops what he's doing and looks up to Mines, his forehead a wall of wrinkles from his incredulously high his brows are. "Come on now, Jason. I'm Mr. Redd." He blinks his attention back down to the bodies, creating a long trail of gasoline from them to the next car, which he begins dousing the seat and floorboards with. "I'm the boogieman."

See the greyhound rollin' on.

Mines had heard stories, figured they were exaggerations. "Where the fuck's the backup?" He asks of Mr. Redd, and he only turns to address Mines once the gasoline can is empty. It's dropped to the street with a series of noisy clunks.

In the moonlight

"Backup?" Redd asks, looking around, throwing his arms out to his sides and barking a laugh at the younger man. "Son, this was the backup." Without missing a beat, Redd begins to fish through his pockets for something.

See the greyhound rollin' on.

"Gideon said—"

Flyin' through the crossroads, rosie ran into the hound.

"Gideon said," Redd both cuts Mines off and parrots back what was said in a sarcastic tone. "What Mr. d'Sarthe wants and how he gets it are two very different things, Jason. Officer Venture was going to go to the press, and now he doesn't have to. Now the people of New Hope will have something entirely different t'worry about. The feds will be down here, digging with their little flashlights and brushes and their computers…"

For the graveyard

Mines is about to say something, but Redd walks over to him. Close. Intimately close. So close that Mines can smell the sink of gasoline on what feels like Redd's breath. The older man snatches the cigarette right out of Mines' mouth, turns it over inspectingly, brings it up to his own mouth and takes a long drag that turns the head of the cigarette orange with heat, then flicks it back into the SUV.

thirty boxes made of bone.

Within seconds there's smoke. Seconds more and there's fire. Then everything is fire.

For the graveyard

"They'll find a Pure Earth manifesto pinned to the chest of an officer in the ditch," Redd says, staring into the growing fire of the burning SUV. "They'll find a stockpile of firearms in the home of an emotionally stunted young man on Deer Path Drive, and they'll find his suicide note and the gun he ate in the garage."

thirty boxes made of bone.

Mines is unable to form a response, watching the fire rise up behind Mr. Redd like a curtain drawing up on a stage play that's only just begin. The darkness of night peels back and away from him, his high cheekbones and sunken features, the dead quality of his eyes, like a fish on the beach at low tide.

Mister undertaker, take this coffin from my home.

"But what'd Mr. d'Sarthe say?" Redd asks, clapping a hand on Mines' shoulder that causes the blonde to startle, looking up at Redd with wide, haunted eyes. Mines had forgotten in that moment exactly what Gideon said, so he paraphrases.

In the midnight, hear me cryin' out her name.

"Gideon wants you t— t'pack your things…" And Mines' answer elicits a slow rise of one of Redd's brows.

In the midnight, hear me cryin' out her name.

"And why's that?" Redd asks, starting to walk away from Mines, away from the flames.

I'm standin' on the railroad, waitin' for the graveyard train.

Mines turns, slowly, afraid to let his own voice leave his mouth and even more afraid to let Redd get out of his field of vision, lest he just disappear into thin air again.

On the highway, thirty people turned to stone.

"Because…" Mines' voice is almost lost over the crackling roar of the fire at his back, "he needs you in New York…"

On the highway, thirty people turned to stone.

Redd comes to a slow stop, looking back over his shoulder at Mines. He has his attention.

Oh, take me to the station

"There's somebody there…" Mines says with a shake of his head.

'cause I'm number thirty-one.

"Somebody with your face."

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