Silver Wrapping Paper

New Mexico. 1948

I like driving at night in the desert. But tonight I have no time to enjoy the cool walk. Tonight I'm here to work.
There have been several accidents on this road, in the last two weeks. Without witnesses or survivors. Only wreckage. Cars destroyed, fly out from the ribbon of asphalt at full speed. Wheels exploding vehicles flying in the air and fall to the ground. In addition to fifteen dead, traveling salesmen, tourists and employees. Normal people. The latter was County Sheriff, a couple of nights ago.
Yesterday, finally, someone noticed that something is wrong. So in the end they decided to call me. Because this is the kind of things I am, for some 'time.
Until last year, I was a police officer in Los Angeles. I sensed that things were going pretty strange in the city. But I thought it was just sick. Deformed. With skin diseases.
Then one day, in Chinatown, I had to blow a motherfucker four meters high, with pointed horns and wings. All red. I blew up with the fireworks of the Japs half a block, to pull him down. Do not even remember how many deaths were among those torn from him and those caused by my sudden off-season. I was kicked out by police. At noon, I no longer had a job. But see how the United States: not even twenty-four hours later, I had a new one. Hunt down the invaders.
What invaders? Well, we have combined a mess with atomic bombs. In short, we have opened a passage to another world. A world populated by monsters with fangs that have nothing better to do than come here and try to kill us all.
I am part of a secret. So secret that the CIA is compared to the Mickey Mouse Club. We have several sections. Some seek to defer more possible when people will realize what is happening. Others, the sorcerer's apprentice, working to close the damn gate. I deal with deletions. I spare the bastards, when I find them. A good job, after all: go around, meet the monsters kill them. If you do not think your boss is Adolf Hitler, is amazing. But then, Uncle Sam does not keep a grudge. You can be a murderess and genocidal madman, but if you are the best magician in the square just as it is needed ... Well, welcome aboard, son.
fucking life.

However, I left this morning with a flight from Los Angeles. Target, a military base in New Mexico. There I have given a car, a road map and a pat on the back to wish me good luck.
According to our local branch, there's something strange in the values \u200b\u200bof the measurements of energy on this path. They should have thought to do it, the readings, without waiting for a sheriff to leave us some skin and you decide to take it seriously. Even I know that the first tests of the bomb have made here. Eggheads of my boots.

The street is deserted. I was told that the incidents of recent days have convinced many drivers prefer secondary roads. Or not to drive at night.
What they see, those poor, in order to destroy the gas until the car to fly off the road on a road as straight as the barrel of a gun? No doubt something scary and hostile. Something that prompted them to flee as if they had the devil at his heels. In fact, he probably had too.
remains a fact: the corpses showed only injuries caused the accident. Which is strange though, because demons love the torture and suffering. The deaths in recent days, however, were all rather quick or immediate. I look forward
. I have just passed the 2. Of sleep, not even the shadow keep me on pills and coffee, which I took before going to drive. I only have a great boredom. I keep an eye on the road, with hands on steering wheel, ready to react to unexpected minimum, but there's nothing to see, nothing to do. Nothing happens. I have not even seen a car, since I embarked on the road an hour ago. Another ten minutes and so I will be the next dead. Suicide out of boredom.
Hell, I have to invent something.
In fact, even know what.
The machine I have under my ass is not any machine, even though it may seem from outside. The secret is under the hood. When I have time, those of the base here I was advised to be careful. The engine is an experimental model. It should be strong, very strong. The body and all other parts are modified and reinforced to withstand the maximum operating speed. So far no one has ever achieved. No one has yet had the guts to push so hard.
Well, I think, maybe I will not be what Domer the beast, but at least I have the satisfaction of hearing how strong buck knows.
I turn off the radio, now bored with the music and get ready to hear the song of the engine.
So far I have had a normal cruising speed. Nothing that I had not already done with other machines. Now start to crush the foot as it should. The engine responds immediately as an obedient horse and the road begins to flow stronger.
Acceleration is smooth. The breeze coming in from the open window turns into a strong wind.
Better, better already.
Checking the reaction of the gums with a series of quick shots of the steering wheel left and right, as if addressing a slalom. Everything perfect. Satisfied smile in the mirror.
Then the smile freezes on my face: I see a sort of blue glow, like a flash at the edge of my field of vision on the left.
Now there's something, next to the machine.
Something that runs on a pair of long hind legs, which has a slim body covered with scales, almost non-existent arms and a big mouth full of fangs. I am traveling at 90 mph and he is next. And look at me. His eyes gleam like fire.
A demon, a fucking demon.
Now I know what would be the right thing to do: grab the gun, point it through the open window, pull the trigger and then go back and pick up the pieces of this bastard. I know, but I do not do. I can not get it.
I do not want to do it.
What do I do?
Accelerate. Only accelerate.
I want to push this car beyond its limits.
I want to feel the wind on my face, I see the world fades and goes over to a small spot of heat.
I want to feel the burn gasoline, tires, asphalt.
I want to hear the roar of the engine and the wind howls on me.
I want to run, become the wind, fire, steel, asphalt, rubber. There
nothing else. Nothing outside of the road, the car, the thing that stands beside me.
Nothing beyond its fiery eyes and his voice in my head. A voice tells me faster, faster, faster.

A voice I know.

was 1942. In France. I was there as a member of a commando sent into enemy territory. Our mission: to help the local resistance, to prepare the ground invasion in the future.
Three months of hell, culminating in an action or almost suicidal.
A big piece of resistance, one that he knew many things and was the only one to know them, had fallen in the hands of the Nazis. He had been captured during the most successful remediation that the Wehrmacht had ever put together. Those of us who survived could never forget the lesson of that raid the Boche have given us. They were plunged into the valley where we had mass refugees, were emerging from nowhere and within ten minutes, the forest was swarming with gray uniforms. We were enveloped in such a network.
of my group were left alive in a dozen, from that day. Others were rescued on the other side, cut off from us. We knew it was not over: we had to take back his head, a Marseilles who called himself the Dark. We had to do it now, we had no time to wait for the rest of the men gather together to us. But as desperate as we were, we could only conceive of a desperate plan: raid the prison where he was held. A frontal assault, weapons in hand. A plan so crazy and impossible that the Nazis had not even taken into account.
balls proud. They were so convinced that they had destroyed us thought about the possibility that someone would return to resume the Dark.
So instead of more money than we could ever imagine, there just before we found many. Precisely for this reason we were able to free the Dark, but it was not a walk. All my mates came under enemy fire. In the end I was left alone. Frog loaded it on the passenger seat of a side-car and threw me on the run, towards the latter part the plan. This required that
to flee through a tunnel, the only way to break quickly from the valley. , We had already undermined, before leaving, but we could not afford to leave behind someone who did jump the posts at the right time. We had even more radio-commands to the detonator at that point, was already so if we had the ammunition. So we set a device to watch, establishing a reasonable time.
One time, when I go into the tunnel, pursued by a truck packed with SS and their devilish fire, was about to expire.
I accelerated, turning the knob up almost breaking my wrist and receiving heartfelt, at that time, the voice. The voice said louder. Then I saw the world blur into an indistinct mass of color, darting at the sides and in front of me disappear.
remember having laughed at some point. I felt the bike, a sturdy German motorcycle, engineering and mechanical state of the art, to plead for mercy.
would not hold much longer. I would not right any longer. Not even the Dark would not hold for long.
I knew it, but I do not care about. At that moment I was free. It was as if I belonged to the same damp wind that I had on the face of that air that smelled of earth and rock. The war, the Dark, Hitler, none of them mattered. I no longer mattered. I just run. Be fast. Faster than any other shit I have ever believed to be fast.
We have already seen, now I am and who runs alongside. But it was another time and the world was different: I could not even see his ugly mug, but only feel its presence.
In 1942 he was the explosion that bringing down the mountain behind me to call me back to reality. I was just out of the tunnel. It was like the roar of a dragon. The Germans were in all, down to Fritz. I had only continued slowing of the little that was enough to not blow up the engine, but no longer feel that sense of exhilaration. The part where I live to be fast was over. Shortly thereafter, I stopped the bike and I would be dragged back in Marseille on a long flight through the woods.
Now, to save me is a big red light that flashes on the dashboard and a siren sounds at regular intervals. There are car alarms, I warn that I'm reaching the maximum speed. I must just given us in with the throttle, without even realizing it. A big red light flashes on the dashboard, while a siren sounds at regular intervals.
The thing with eyes of fire is always there. But he has more power. Not on me.
I will not try to go faster than him. I will not do because I know it is not possible. I will not make his game.
If I remember something in the classroom, this is a demon of the second class. Ideological demons, call them. Vices, in other words. Personifications of vices. Minor Demons, though. Stupid bullies who have not yet figured out something fundamental to their survival in these parts: they have a body.
But I know a way to understand this stubborn boy to be a simple idea that is different from being an idea embodied in a physical form and in this way is a good turning to the left. Almost
I can see the surprise in her eyes as a ton of good metal American invests in a cruising speed more suitable for a runway than a road.
The machine is heavy and reinforced to make them stand high speeds, but the idea is embodied in a tough body. For a moment I'm afraid that the car will not hold the road. That I will be the next to leave the pens. But it is only a moment: the rear wheels first jump on something that offers resistance and then relents. I'm back with all four wheels on the asphalt. The car swerves, tires hiss but it's nothing that can not control.
Now I know that if it were to go wrong with the demons, I can try with the car races.
Here is the car on track and at a normal speed. In the mirror I see now that the demon is on the ground, writhing in the street. Try to stand up, but her leg is gone. Poor guy.
I make a U-turn The lights illuminate it. She looks at me. Do you realize what is about to happen It looks like a deer paralyzed by fear.
Accelero. The engine seems to have suffered little effort first. 88 mph in an instant. The monster growls with anger, but I do not feel nearly so.
The impact this time is truly devastating. The machine makes a good jump, while an explosion of organic matter fills the windshield. Something comes out of the window well. It stinks worse than shit, but now I'm used to.
I think the pig is gone. To be safe, I put the back and step on again.
Then do it two more times. I like the noise it makes.

Mission accomplished.
According to the agreements, should I return the machine where I got it. I look forward
. It's still early. I still have too much adrenaline in my body, too much excitement here to close.
I clean the glass to the good with the wiper. I remember seeing a car wash, about fifty miles from here. I'll stop there for the full and for me to clean the glass well before leaving. Maybe even a slice of apple pie, if the diner is open. And then run again.
Should I return the machine where I got it, it's true. The fact is that I'm curious to see how long it takes to get to Los Angeles. I turn off the radio, roll down the window at all and let the engine sing a serenade to the demon of speed at which we made the skin tonight.



Alessandro Vicenzi, 1979, he worked at Ayaaaak.net and was among the authors of the collective novel "The Power of Eymerich. From time to time write fanfiction for the site MarvelIT .
For the record, has never driven any vehicle more powerful than a Hello.