undoubtedly much better: Funny Like ThatI never liked the Hudson River. It was always filled with debris and pollution, like the Ganges of America, but with slightly fewer dead bodies at the bottom And In fifteen minutes I would be one of them. How I got to this position I’m not entirely certain, maybe it was because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe it was because of that bad bet I placed, or maybe it’s because I broke into the vault of a military contractor and stole some documentation that will expose their double dealing. It doesn’t really matter; all that was of concern to me is that I would be dying in fourteen minutes and forty six seconds.
My hands were bound behind me and my right leg was cemented into a bucket. It’s the kind of thing people only see in movies, unless of course that person’s name is something like Tony “The Brick” Bonitelli then this kind of thing is most likely a weekly occurrence. I asked them why they only did one leg, and got no response. They were still a tad bitter about my killing four members of their payroll. I wasn’t the man directly responsible for their deaths but they were unaware of this fact and unwilling to listen. I had already assumed they only cemented in one leg so that I could drag myself along the pier anyway, but as I sat in the back of their van I grew tired and started making attempts at conversation.
We were in the warehouse district on the water front, abandoned buildings sat only a few hundred feet behind us bearing the logo of Excelsior Armaments with a blank white van to my left. There I stood on the edge of the dock looking down at the river below, it was high tide, but as deep as the water was at this spot it wouldn’t make a difference. Once I fell over the side they would forget about me and drive off into the sunset. Too bad it was a quarter past one when the sun is just past its apex, so there would be nothing really cinematic about it. I needed to buy time just in case the cavalry showed up. I needed to buy time to complete the mission, but most of all, I needed to save my own ass. But my chest heaved with every breath and my side ached with every motion. Its times like this that made me think about the decisions I made and how they got me to where I was.
***
It was eight in the morning and I hadn’t showered in three days. That was just one of the perks that came with camping in the sewers. The smell was not so horrible; I had grown up near a sewage treatment plant so the aroma of excrement was a subtle reminder of warm summer days during my youth. Nor was it depressing to be in a cement tube, I had spent summers in my parent’s basement playing Silence of the Lambs with a neighbor child who always went a little overboard with the role of Buffalo Bill. No, it wasn’t either of those, the real problem came when the rats moved out of the water and covered the small walkways on which I slept. They would swarm the area biting and crapping indiscriminately over my sleeping bag, clothing and gear which rested only twenty feet from where I had been drilling. By far the worst of it came when I was dreaming of a gummy worm that had come to life. I was determined to eat it though, so I clenched down my teeth and only awoke when I felt a sharp pain of a rat bite on my cheek. The tailless rodent scurried away once I shot up, but the distinct texture of the gummy worm from my dream remained on my tongue.
I had been digging through the walls nearly nonstop for all three of the days I had been in the sewer. I was only able to operate the drill with the passing of the subway which lied just overhead. The vibrations from my drill would be enough to raise alarm if it weren’t timed perfectly with the rumbling train. I know that the men on the other side wouldn’t be happy to see me and my partner, and my partner wouldn’t be happy to see them before we were completely ready. That’s why I came up with the idea to evade the security team entirely by tunneling directly into the vault as a shock and awe campaign. My drill was small only able to create a hole big enough to fit one man at a time through the narrow tube. This was only an issue during the drilling process as the plan was to use plastic explosive to open up the wall as soon as I had drilled close enough. If I had timed and placed everything properly, we would be in and out in a matter of minutes leaving nothing but dust and an empty room in our wake.
Thoroughly convinced that we would succeed, my partner had suggested walking in the door and taking the service elevator. After about two hours I finally managed to convince him that fighting our way through a fully staffed security force of thirty three would be rough, even for us. But that was the kind of guy Erok was, a level seven gun wielding wizard. He was one of the best shots I had ever seen, doing on impulse with a pistol what most men struggled to achieve with a rifle. Erok, in all his regalia, was dressed for Black ops and I in my dirty jeans and worn out T shirt was dressed to find plastic bottles at the city land fill. Standing just shy of six feet, his dirty strawberry blonde hair was worn like a slightly grown out crew cut. He had specialized mat black goggles around his eyes with lenses to match. His tactical black pants were customized with small pouches and stitched on sections of an ammo belt. Around his waist were two Colt Double Eagles and a black ten inch barrel Anaconda sat in the holster next to his heart. He also had an AMT Automag V strapped to his upper thigh in case he wanted to stop an elephant mid charge. I on the other hand was a minimalist by comparison; content with my dark walnut handled kukri, black paracord wrapped tanto, and Smith & Wesson M&P40 pistol.

undoubtedly much better: Funny Like ThatI never liked the Hudson River. It was always filled with debris and pollution, like the Ganges of America, but with slightly fewer dead bodies at the bottom And In fifteen minutes I would be one of them. How I got to this position I’m not entirely certain, maybe it was because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe it was because of that bad bet I placed, or maybe it’s because I broke into the vault of a military contractor and stole some documentation that will expose their double dealing. It doesn’t really matter; all that was of concern to me is that I would be dying in fourteen minutes and forty six seconds.
My hands were bound behind me and my right leg was cemented into a bucket. It’s the kind of thing people only see in movies, unless of course that person’s name is something like Tony “The Brick” Bonitelli then this kind of thing is most likely a weekly occurrence. I asked them why they only did one leg, and got no response. They were still a tad bitter about my killing four members of their payroll. I wasn’t the man directly responsible for their deaths but they were unaware of this fact and unwilling to listen. I had already assumed they only cemented in one leg so that I could drag myself along the pier anyway, but as I sat in the back of their van I grew tired and started making attempts at conversation.
We were in the warehouse district on the water front, abandoned buildings sat only a few hundred feet behind us bearing the logo of Excelsior Armaments with a blank white van to my left. There I stood on the edge of the dock looking down at the river below, it was high tide, but as deep as the water was at this spot it wouldn’t make a difference. Once I fell over the side they would forget about me and drive off into the sunset. Too bad it was a quarter past one when the sun is just past its apex, so there would be nothing really cinematic about it. I needed to buy time just in case the cavalry showed up. I needed to buy time to complete the mission, but most of all, I needed to save my own ass. But my chest heaved with every breath and my side ached with every motion. Its times like this that made me think about the decisions I made and how they got me to where I was.
***
It was eight in the morning and I hadn’t showered in three days. That was just one of the perks that came with camping in the sewers. The smell was not so horrible; I had grown up near a sewage treatment plant so the aroma of excrement was a subtle reminder of warm summer days during my youth. Nor was it depressing to be in a cement tube, I had spent summers in my parent’s basement playing Silence of the Lambs with a neighbor child who always went a little overboard with the role of Buffalo Bill. No, it wasn’t either of those, the real problem came when the rats moved out of the water and covered the small walkways on which I slept. They would swarm the area biting and crapping indiscriminately over my sleeping bag, clothing and gear which rested only twenty feet from where I had been drilling. By far the worst of it came when I was dreaming of a gummy worm that had come to life. I was determined to eat it though, so I clenched down my teeth and only awoke when I felt a sharp pain of a rat bite on my cheek. The tailless rodent scurried away once I shot up, but the distinct texture of the gummy worm from my dream remained on my tongue.
I had been digging through the walls nearly nonstop for all three of the days I had been in the sewer. I was only able to operate the drill with the passing of the subway which lied just overhead. The vibrations from my drill would be enough to raise alarm if it weren’t timed perfectly with the rumbling train. I know that the men on the other side wouldn’t be happy to see me and my partner, and my partner wouldn’t be happy to see them before we were completely ready. That’s why I came up with the idea to evade the security team entirely by tunneling directly into the vault as a shock and awe campaign. My drill was small only able to create a hole big enough to fit one man at a time through the narrow tube. This was only an issue during the drilling process as the plan was to use plastic explosive to open up the wall as soon as I had drilled close enough. If I had timed and placed everything properly, we would be in and out in a matter of minutes leaving nothing but dust and an empty room in our wake.
Thoroughly convinced that we would succeed, my partner had suggested walking in the door and taking the service elevator. After about two hours I finally managed to convince him that fighting our way through a fully staffed security force of thirty three would be rough, even for us. But that was the kind of guy Erok was, a level seven gun wielding wizard. He was one of the best shots I had ever seen, doing on impulse with a pistol what most men struggled to achieve with a rifle. Erok, in all his regalia, was dressed for Black ops and I in my dirty jeans and worn out T shirt was dressed to find plastic bottles at the city land fill. Standing just shy of six feet, his dirty strawberry blonde hair was worn like a slightly grown out crew cut. He had specialized mat black goggles around his eyes with lenses to match. His tactical black pants were customized with small pouches and stitched on sections of an ammo belt. Around his waist were two Colt Double Eagles and a black ten inch barrel Anaconda sat in the holster next to his heart. He also had an AMT Automag V strapped to his upper thigh in case he wanted to stop an elephant mid charge. I on the other hand was a minimalist by comparison; content with my dark walnut handled kukri, black paracord wrapped tanto, and Smith & Wesson M&P40 pistol.