- Joined
- Apr 15, 2014
"He came staggering and flapping up a long upgrade, the heat of the sun stewing his stomach and baking his brains. The interstate shimmered with reflected radiant heat. He had been Jace Connors once, now he was Commander Stryker forever and ever, and he had beheld the fabled City, Seven-in-One, Deagle Nation.
How long had he been traveling west? How long since The Tyce-nado? God might know; Commander Stryker did not. It had been days. Nights. Oh, he remembered the nights!
He stood, swaying in his rags, looking down at Deagle Nation, the City that is Chill, the City of Realism. He was a wreck. The wrist he had broken while Parkaying though town had not healed right, and that wrist was a grotesque lump wrapped in a dirty, unraveling Ace bandage. All the bones in his fingers had pulled up, which was like totally gay, turning the hand into a Quasimodo claw. His left arm was a slowly healing mass of burnt tissue from elbow to shoulder. It no longer smelled bad and suppurated, but the new flesh was hairless and pink, like the skin of a wolf if it had been severely burnt. His grinning, mad face was sunburnt, peeling, scruffy-bearded, and covered with scabs. He wore a faded, sweat stained black T-shirt with a rage face and "me gusta" written on it and a dirty pair of jeans. His tactical army pack, which had been new not so long ago, had now taken on the style and substance of it's owner----one strap had broken, Stryker had knotted it as best he could, and the pack now hung askew on his back like the shutter on a wolf, if wolves had shutters. It was dusty, it's creases filled with desert sand. On his feet were tennis shoes now bound together with hanks of twine, and from them his scratched and sand-chafed ankles rose innocent of socks.
He began to do a shuffling, victorious dance on the hot, shimmering surface of Interstate 15. His feet bumped up and down in a shuffling sort of hornpipe. The tattered tail of his "me gusta" shirt flapped. His canteen of Gamerfuel clunked against his pack. The unraveling ends of his Ace bandage fluttered in in the hot breath of the wind. Pink, smooth burn tissue gleaned rawly. Clock springs of veins bulged at his temples. He had been in God's frying pan for a week now, moving southwest across Utah, the tip of Arizona, and then into Nevada, and he was just as mad as a hatter who was also a wolf. As he danced, he sang monotonously, the same words over and over. 'Press-one-gamers, press-one-gamers, bump-ty, bump-ty, bump! Press-one-gamers, press-one-gamers, bump-ty, bump-ty, bump!'"
The Stand: Tiberius Rising Edition.
Apologizes to Mr. Stephen King.
Don't apologize! This is the version they should have made a movie about.
