Participants:
| Scene Title | Extreme Ways |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | On the run from the government, a former Company Agent returns to New York City. |
| Date | September 10, 2010 |
The fastest speed of a human running was set by a man named Maurice Greene, who achieved a sprint speed of 26.7 miles-per-hour.
Former Company agent Henry Webb may not be a marathon runner, but he knows the distance that he can flat out run at any given time, knows the speed at which he tops out and knows how long he can sustain it before his hands start to shake from the adrenaline coursing through his system. Maurice Greene never had to run across the rooftops of the Red Hook harborside either.
Booted feet slam on the concrete rooftop, clotheslines whip past and the sound of panting breaths, shouts join the noise of an urban sprawl as far as the eyes can see. The horizon is a blur to Henry as he runs, leaping over a folded lawn chair, blood running down the side of his right arm from a six inch long cut on his bare bicep, droplets of blood serving as a trail in his wake.
Reaching the edge of the roof, Henry can hear the shouts of the man pursuing him as he rounds an air-conditioning unit and drops to one knee, leveling his 9mm Baretta at the retreating agent's back. Henry pops up one foot on the concrete railing, springs his legs out and leaps towards the other roof as the sound of a gunshot rings out over Red Hook.
In so many ways, Henry Webb's life hasn't changed just as much as it has.
Thirty Minutes Earlier
Maxwell Corporation Railyard
Red Hook
A portable radio plays tinny music out of abused speakers, a too-loud play of Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City reaches its chorus just as the rattling roar of train wheels come screeching thorugh god knows where. A light, drizzling rain is pattern down on the roof of the traincar, while two young men hunched by the sliding door are peering out an open space to the scenery passing by. "A'right, this thing's hitting a shipping yard, got all sorta' container's n'stuff. We're good t'roll whenever…" The only name that dreadlocked teen has gone by is Phil, a little scraggly and a little wiry, he hasn't much minded the lantern-jawed stranger on the train he's slipped on. His partner in crime goes by the monicker Hobbs, a little round in the face with a head topped with a swirl of curly red hair. The pair can't be much older than their early twenties, and train-hopping seems to be the way they've decided to go cross-country from California.
"Hey," Hobbs calls back to the man sitting cross-armed and head-bowed at the back of the traincar, reaching over to turn off his boom-box, "Dutch." One ginger eyebrow quirks up, "We're almost at tuck an' roll time my man, you best get your game face on."
He wasn't dozing. Wasn't -quite- asleep. Literally sleeping with one eye open, these days. He hasn't acquired that deep patina of grime that the dedicated hobos get; too clean cut, too fastidious. He raises blue eyes to blink at the redhead, and mutters his thanks, before heaving himself up, and grabbing his pack.
This insane cross-country odyssey started a few days earlier, in bucolic Nixa, Missouri. Henry's long had a habit of climbing out of his bedroom window and up to the rooftree, the better to gaze out across the prairie to the west and the slopes down to the Mississippi riverbottom in the east. Idle stargazing when he was a child, sometimes literally when he dragged his telescope up there. A way to banish the nightmares of PTSD in his adulthood.
So he was up on the roof above the back porch when he noted the little convoy of cars on the distant county road. Moving too fast to be a funeral cortege, he observed absently to himself, enjoying the cool of the night breeze on his face. Until the porch light came on, and his mother's frantic voice rang out below. "Henry! HENRY!" The sort of terror only heard in the voice of a woman whose child is in mortal danger. Fearful enough to have him just deliberately slide down the roof and land neatly before her, startling her enough to have her press her hand to her heart.
He's never seen that look of shock in her eyes, before. Like he's not someone she's entirely sure he recognizes. "Mom?" he wonders, frozen in place. "Henry," she says, more softly, "Is it true? What the news says about your Company?"
Before he can answer her, his father's a looming shadow behind her, pistol in hand. The distant headlights are growing nearer - there's the sound of multiple engines in the distance. "Son," his father says, as he flips the pistol in his hand to present it grip-first to his only son, "No matter what you did, innocent or guilty….now you have to run."
And run he has. The first foolish attempt to snag a legitimate passenger name, after that long flight through the fields, counting on one of his fake IDs to hold, nearly had them take him. And it's been a long road since. A long stretch of the rails, grubby, hot, and tired, with none of the romance Kerouac and his ilk imputed to it. He's got his pistol at the back of his hip, but only one more clip for it. A water bottle, a little food, a change of clothes or two - legit luggage abandoned at the train station. "Thanks," he says, again, patiently, as he settles himself in a crouch behind the other pair of vagabonds.
"Fuck," comes from Phil in short curse, that's never a good way to start out a new time in the city. "Fuck me sideways, we got cops all up in the fuckin' shipping yard, I'm bailing now." Reaching up and yanking the door open as the train is still speeding through the shipping yard, the noise of the grinding wheels, clunking axels and echo of the train's passage reverberating off of the metal shipping containers has Hobbs' call for sanity going unheard. Only his red-cheeked and horrified look of imploring that Phil misses with his back turned could have stopped the dredlocked teen from springing out of the slowly decelerating train towards the grassy embankment beyond. Phil disappears into untended tall grass, bouncing and rolling down the hillside.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Hobbs shouts as he whips around, unbuckling the top of his backpack as he pulls out a plastic-wrapped brick of something dark and green, hurling it deeper into the rail car, then another, then another, followed by a glass bowl and an unlit joint. "Motherfucking stupid son of a— hey— Dutch-man, you're on your own buddy, cops are all over this place, Harry probably ratted us the fuck out at the last stop that piece'a shit."
As Hobbs turns towards the door, Henry can see the gray skies out the sliding door, can see the drizzling rain moving at an angle past the frame of view provided by the open door. That there's flashing blue lights, police cruisers and dogs searching shipping containers along with rain-coated ATF agents implies that not everything is going according to plan.
From what Henry can see of the area as it speeds by, it's a harbor-side freight shipping area, if he knows the neighborhood of Red Hook well enough, it's part of the Maxwell Development Company's holdings, probably bordered by a twenty foot high chain-link fence, also a hop skip and a jump from the freeway. Local police and ATF means they're not here for him, though one wrong move could drastically change that.
That's an absurd twist of fate. And in that part of him refined and alloyed at Parris Island and the streets of Baghdad, he's hurt. He warrants a whole goddamn SWAT team, doesn't he? Not coincidence trying to piss in his eye by sending DEA guys to bust some idiot potheads. What the shit. "Gotcha," he says, succinctly. And with that, it's the end of the line, and Henry's dropping neatly out of the slowing car, having tucked the pistol around the front of his pants, where he can curl protectively around it if he needs to roll.
When Henry hits the ground well after Phil leapt from the car, he has far more control over how he lands and wear. With the train slowing to a stop, Henry is able to stay on his feet, gravel crunching under his boots as he lands, but his emergence and that crunching noise behind the squeal of train brakes and hissing pistons causes keenly attenuated ears of dogs to perk up, heads to swivel and police officers to start looking around.
By the time their eyes are on the train, Henry has already started sliding down the grassy embankment towards the shipping containers, hidden from sight by the angle of the corrugated metal in dull primary colors. What the police do see, however, is Hobbs leaping out of the train and twisting his ankle, landing in a roll on the gravel and clutching his leg. Dogs bark, leashes snap taut and police officers rush towards the embankment. "NYPD! Stay where you are!"
Hearing the sounds of footfalls rushing on the other side of the metal container he's tucked up against, Henry still has the advantage of his position hiding him, though that he can see where Hobbs is laying by the tracks at the top of the embankment means that when the cops finally swarm him, there'll be no hiding here. He has to move.
Down and out. Gotta get out of this pen before the dogs notice him. Here's hoping the two poor potheads will play decoy long enough for him to get away. Not hurt, not yet…..and move he does, not flat out, but at a fast, ground-covering run, heading for the concealment of the containers already unloaded. Pacing himself, riding the adrenaline but not letting it steal his breath.
For the time being, the hounds are set on Hobbs' immobilized form, both of his hands raised helplessly in the air with pleading shouts to not 'shoot him' being whined out at Henry's back. As the former Company agent begins sprinting through the train yard, the metal containers form something of a steel labyrinth through which he runs. Outside of the yard of padlocked and stored containers, the razor-wire topped and twenty foot high fence is an uninviting sight, scaling it would take far too long and leave far too much open to chance.
Across the yard, the presence of a three story warehouse sitting adjacent to the fence is an inviting possibility, along with its blackened metal fire escape scrambling up one side and neighboring buildings jam-packed close enough to make a rooftop escape seem like the most possible route of exit that won't involve being out in the open for too long.
It's a long haul through the freight yard and through the rat maze, but the alternative is behind him, yellow-jacketed police officers shouting orders at a train-hopping pothead on his knees with his hands behind his head, dogs barking, radios squawking.
Why'd he come back to New York?
It's weird, really, when you're in that zone where conscious thought is lagging behind, and it's reflex and instinct and training that are in control. He doesn't pause, doesn't dither - just reorients on that warehouse. If he's lucky, he can get up there without them ever realizing he was present. Not running, just heading at a fast walk. Running attracts attention. Walking makes him look like he's meant to be here, in his grubby hoody and jeans, right?
The sound of baying hounds at Henry's back evokes mitochondrial memories of primitive man stalking in the dark, hunting for food. Perhaps its the adrenaline talking, perhaps it's the thrill of the chase, but there's still some excitement to be had in this line of work— such as it is. When Henry disappears into the steel labyrinth of the shipping containers, Hobbs is being thrown tot he ground by the ATF officers and the NYPD that are swarming his position, but the dogs are barking too much, people are talking too loud, this can only hang on for so long.
"Dutch!"
So much for every man for himself.
Scrambling out from the shadow of one of the shipping containers, Phil's expression is ragged, there's a cut on his forehead and a bruise on his cheek from his fall. "Dutch we— we gotta get out of here, man! We gotta'! C'mon," Phil rapidly staggers closer, hands reaching out in imploring grasping. "I saw a split in the fence, we— we gotta' run you gotta'— I saw your gun, c'mon— c'mon they're gonna' catch us!"
This job would be great if it weren't for the people he had to work with.
The look Henry turns on Phil isn't….friendly, at the very least. Because whatever's driving right now is the part of him responsible for dealing death down a scoped rifle. Not fierce, not angry, just cold and considering, before he blinks, and it's "Dutch" again. "Shh," he says. "Don't panic. We're not going to try the fence, we're going into that warehouse and up." 'No Man Left Behind' is the motto. And lucky, lucky Phil just got promoted to 'one of us' in Henry's mind. Even as he pulls a wry face at himself. This kid's a burden, and if he had any sense, he'd leave him. Though he just knows if he tried, it'd be to leave Phil squalling like a lost kitten and calling down every cop in the place.
"What? But— " a shout from one of the cops out of sight has Phil suddenly cutting off his querelous second-guessing. "Okay— Okay shit, okay. Okay whatever you say man just— you gotta' get me out've here the cops can't find me with what I got on me or I'll be so fucked." Perfectly assuring words, of course.
With Henry breaking off from Phil to head towards the warehouse on the other side of the container yard, Phil is doing his best to try and keep up with the agent's pace, though the out of shape teenager is mostly wheezing and panting already by this point. Further shouts and then sharp barks from the dogs come right before Henry hears someone shouting, "Go, boy! Go!"
Claws on asphalt scrape out of sight, the hounds have been released and Henry still has another hundred yards or so to clear the shipping yard and get around the side of the warehouse to the fire escape.
"Whatever you have, drop it right fuckin n-" order Henry, curtly. And then that shouted command lends wings to his feet. HE goes from that relentless jogging lope to a full on sprint for the gold, the rusty iron contraption suddenly turned into the Grail-Shaped Beacon.
"Wh— Dutch!" Mewling kitten left out in the rain indeed. The moment Henry bolts, Phil is yowling in the rain for being abandoned. He breaks into a wheezing run, weaving between metal shipping containers, running head long into the side of another, hands slapping against the metal before tiredly pushing off of its surface and scrambling down the asphalt towards Henry's ever distancing silhouette. By the time Phil clears the last shipping container, Henry is already across the parking lot and leaping up at the hanging ladder for the fire escape, legs kicking as he pulls himself up rung by rung.
"Fuck'n— " Phil huffs, hunching forward with his hands on his knees, "F— Fuck'n wait!" As the teen straightens, dreadlocks bobbing as he starts to run again, Henry can see the inevitability of the young man's future from his height on the fire escape. The dogs have closed in, wheeling around a corner, one German Shepard barking ferociously as Phil turns towards the sound.
Pack mentality kicks in, one goes high to grab at an exposed arm, one goes low to take out the legs and Phil is ass-over-heels slamming down onto the ground. Syringes spill out of the pouch of his hooded sweatshirt, each one phosphorous and blue like a little neon glow-stick. Refrain is going to net that teen twenty years behind bars, easily.
Ooh, that -has- to hurt. And Henry makes the appropriate face, that grimace of sympathy, from where he's crouched on a landing of the fire escape like a monkey. And then there're the little glowing bars of Refrain, and sympathy is abruptly banished. Kid….it's a lot harder to have sympathy for someone who trafficks in that stuff. Without another backwards glance, he's squirreling up the next stories of the fire escape. If only he can be gone before the cops catch up. Dogs can't easily leap and climb up fire escapes.
One clanging step after another, Henry is making his escape up on foot, distancing himself from Phil's howling screams of fright and pain and from the barking and baying of hounds and the shouting of police. As Henry winds himself up the next flight of stairs and towards the third floor landing, the cops come into view, one of them spotting his movement up the side of the building. A warning is shouted, details lost on the sound of blood pounding in Henry's ears as he runs.
But this is where the laws of the world get turned on their ear. One of the police officers motions for the other to radio for backup, then crouches to the ground and leaps some sixty feet into the air, springing like a grasshopper before landing on the fire-escape behind Henry with a noisy clatter and clang of the metal. "NYPD!" The officer screams as he levels his gun up at Henry's back through the slatted metal threateningly. It's all an open threat though, the bullet would never make it to him. "Stay where you are and get down on the ground!"
One flight of stairs left.
Oh, my god, that's so unfair. Fucking Evos. That's why he signed on with the Company in the first place. To prevent those cheaterpants from taking over the world. A frantic glance over his shoulder reveals the apparent impossibility made flesh, and Henry scowls like a teacher finding out his favorite student just plagiarized his book report. Once upon a time, he'd've had a Fed's badge of some kind to bullshit this peon in blue with. But those halcyon days are gone forever…and thus Henry scrambles up that last flight of stairs.
Hitting the roof, Henry finds himself scrambling across the sure grip of tar-papering that grabs the soles of his shoes like glue and gives him a sure-footed traction even in the rain. Weaving around an air-conditioning unit, Henry can see the adjacent building's roof only about a ten foot span away from the top of the warehouse and several feet lower, safe enough to make a running leap. The clatter of the fire escape behind the ex-agent implies just how pertinent that leap is going to be.
"NYPD! Do not run!" is screamed up the fire escape, "Stop where you are right now!" The opposite roof is largely clear of obstructions, and there's a third building close enough to continue the chase on, though it looks residential from appearances. Something in the distance catches Henry's eye as well, but the dump truck well beyond the chase down the road isn't important yet, but it will be.
The leaping cop makes it up onto the roof, panting and short of breath, "I said freeze!" is shouted as a Baretta is leveled towards Henry.
There's fear in this. There's annoyance. He's a Marine, Marines don't -run- from threats. They turn and fight like the bulldog that has been their mascot since the second world war. And then there's the exaltation of the chase, even if he's sure he should be the pursuer, not the prey. The unfortunate leaping cop is not heeded, as Webb barrels for the edge of the roof. Here's hoping he makes that improbable, impossible leap. Or his career ends abruptly, on the pavement stories down. «Thank god» he thinks. «They got rid of that speedster cop»
It's not far, not too far anyway. Six feet of horizontal distance with four feet of descent to the adjacent rooftop has Henry landing and instinctively falling into the roll the moment he hits the other side of the roof. At some point in all of that there was a gunshot, he only remembers the sound after he lands, after seeing a splotch of red smear on the concrete behind where he'd rolled. On coming up from the roll, Henry's shoulder slams against a metal air conditioning unit and when he rises, there's a tight tug on the fabric of his jacket, sleeve tearing around where a bullet grazed his arm.
Tugging the jacket free would take too long, and by the time he's levering his limbs around and out of the coat, he can see the agent that was on his heels doing his best impression of the Springheel Jack and leaping off of the adjacent roof. Henry's on the move, sprinting now, watching the shadow of the leaping agent as it grows larger and larger directly over him. He misses, by the barest fraction of inches, being leapt on.
When the agent lands on the rooftop he shouts again, "Stop or I will shoot!" That gun is leveled up again, and Henry can see the rooftop acros the way, plenty of cover and obstacles between him and the next jump, lawn chairs, clotheslines, but doesn't matter how far away the roof is, it just matters how soft the landing coming up will be.
You know, sometimes, that luck is with you. Some invisible tide flows in your favor, and your enemies will be swept away. Lungs straining for air, feet pounding, the pain of his wound held off by the flood of endorphins, Henry gives the agent the finger, and runs for his life. He's grinning, the crazy, incredulous grin of the athlete who knows the gold medal is within his grasp.
The fastest speed of a human running was set by a man named Maurice Greene, who achieved a sprint speed of 26.7 miles-per-hour.
Former Company agent Henry Webb may not be a marathon runner, but he knows the distance that he can flat out run at any given time, knows the speed at which he tops out and knows how long he can sustain it before his hands start to shake from the adrenaline coursing through his system. Maurice Greene never had to run across the rooftops of the Red Hook harborside either.
Booted feet slam on the concrete rooftop, clotheslines whip past and the sound of panting breaths, shouts join the noise of an urban sprawl as far as the eyes can see. The horizon is a blur to Henry as he runs, leaping over a folded lawn chair, blood running down the side of his right arm from a six inch long cut on his bare bicep, droplets of blood serving as a trail in his wake.
Reaching the edge of the roof, Henry can hear the shouts of the man pursuing him as he rounds an air-conditioning unit and drops to one knee, leveling his 9mm Beretta at the retreating agent's back. Henry pops up one foot on the concrete railing, springs his legs out and leaps towards the other roof as the sound of a gunshot rings out over Red Hook.
In so many ways, Henry Webb's life hasn't changed just as much as it has.
And Now…
The steering wheel turns with hand-over-hand movement, allowing the massive frame of the New York Public Works dumptruck to turn a slow and steady corner. Over the radio a tinny song plays, Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City to which the driver bobs his head to the rhythmic beat.
Turning on to Hanover Street, the dump-truck fits snugly in the alleyway between two tenement buildings, cutting out the intersection and getting right out ahead of traffic. A shortcut is a good way to start the day, and this rainy Friday morning is just a good a day as any. What the driver of this public works truck doesn't realize is that he's carrying more than mulch now in the back….
Laying on a heaping pile of rain-sodden bark mulch, Henry Webb stares up at the cloudy skies, rain pattern down on his face and arms, the stinging cut of the blood on his bicep soaking into the soft wood pulp beneath him. That there's another now lodged in his shoulder is something he'll have to deal with sooner rather than later, but at least at the moment it's something that can wait, at least until he catches his breath.
Two rooftops away, a New York Police officer is on his radio. "Suspect's lost… he escaped in the back of a dump truck, last two of the license plate is Six Five. I can't read the rest from here. Over."
«Come on back Cirillo, we'll see what the kids know about him,» crackles over the cop's radio, and the police officer narrows his eyes in view of the disappearing truck, «we've got cars headed in the truck's direction to cut it off.» It's a mild comfort to the officer, though there's steady realization that the man he was chasing was not just a train hopper.
When the cops finally do stop the dump truck, there won't be anyone to find, just a bloodstain and more questions.
Henry Webb has disappeared into New York City.
And the Hunter has become the Hunted.