The Lost Trucker (The Trucker Saga) (16 page)

Book 2 will pick up where this leaves off in Ryder’s mind. You have read Faith’s outlook & gotten a back-story on Ryder. Well, see how he takes meeting Faith through his own eyes and what happens on his final run and the drama with trying to leave the club!

Chapter 1:

A soldier of God is what they used to call me. Now I'm not much of a soldier of anything. Once I had purpose, I had meaning and drive to my existence. I am nothing more than a husk of my former self now.

            My purpose, like everything else in my life, has dissipated with the years passing, ripped from my being like a favorite toy to a misbehaving toddler. No, I was not who I used to be. The little things in my life that I used to give me purpose in this age were ripped away, dying or I had managed to just plain screw up. Memories, I am left with those fragile and faint images of my painted past.

The thought of where I came from makes even my toughened flesh recoil. Mainly because I can’t even think of that horrid place without thinking of all the closed, or opened, hands that came beating down on me like summer rain.

Back then I didn’t live in the bad part of town, so my brutal punishment truly wasn’t justified by markers of ‘where’ I grew up. It was far more than decent where I lived in that time, wasn't much to speak of considering it was in the years of 2400 BC.    The flood had taken place sometime back and we all were still trying to reform and start over, from the fall of so many dynasties and the ending of many empires. It was right after the construction of the Tower of Babel if memory serves me well.

I lived on the northern tip of Turkey, a place called Arbel. Now I live in the grittier side of New York City. What a jump in society and time. It’s enough to make one cringe when you stop to really think about it.

A scream reverberates down an ally way somewhere in the windy streets and sidewalks of the city, and the noise finds its way to my poorly insulated living room window. I simply close the window and think,
 'How sad, no one will find their way to help that lady.'
 But that’s how it is. Stick up for yourself; no one else is going to do that for you, not unless you’re a good person, and these days you simply don’t have the time to find that out.

I didn’t always think like that, but what can you do right? As the world goes round and the days pass, that little smiling inner child disintegrates with the filth that over runs this world.

Corruption, in the end we all fall prey to it in one way or another.

 
I stared out at the streets of the city. It was too hot in New York at the end of August, you wouldn’t think so with it being so far north, but it is. The rain starts again. I hear it tapping on the rooftops outside of my apartment. I wish these places were more soundproof. Should be for the amount of money I pay for it.

The only promise that the rain brings is that the garbage outside between the apartment buildings won’t smell as bad tomorrow. I can almost see it, the bags sinking in with the heavy rain drops, the late summer water falling about and bringing little reprieve from the heat outside. What a shame… to think that at one time I used to love the rain.

I shut the blinds, bored of looking at the city lights and illuminated night scenery and headed for the kitchen. The growing taps of rain on my window filling the hollow empty rooms making me think of the first time that I saw Kira; it was raining 
then
 too…

Back then she was lost in the park and staring at a soggy map she had bought from a local street vendor. I was just taking a stroll and not concerned with the weather. She looked lost and about to cry. Shivering lightly as she gripped the map looking so confused.

Having just moved here and returning from a horrible date, she had stormed off and found herself lost. Poor girl didn't have an umbrella, just a tank top, skirt, high heels and one wet map.

Her red hair was sticking to the sides of her face. I couldn't help but smile, remove my jacket and approach her. Silently I got to her side and held the jacket over her head.

"I'm not going to ask if you’re lost, I'm just going to ask where you need to go."

The look on her face was priceless when those pretty eyes met mine, like I was her hero. The memory made me smile just before the pain of remembering that she was gone sunk in. She had left me... I guess if I stop to think about it, I deserved it.

My salvation came from the fridge. With a swift snap of the wrist the hissing of the bottle whispered everything I wanted to hear that night…

I will warm you, I will keep you, and I will hide you away when everything doesn’t want to hide from you.

 
I hear her coy lies, that of the alcohol, and I believe them. But when it’s something that you want to hear, no one, not even God himself can tell you different.

 
The chill of the bottle against my hand was almost enough to sooth the addiction. But the remedy was short lived, for every fiber within me quivered with the anticipation of the first measly drop.

How sad I am to be over taken by this, alcohol rules the mighty warrior.

 I think to myself right before I turn the bottle up and pray to Lady Luck that this night, the twelve pack that I purchased will get me through the twilight hours.

I wasn’t always this way. Kind of sad, no, even more than sad, that I barely remember all the details of how I came to be like this. A bottle of booze or a case of beer to pacify me till everything inside of me was numb. And even then, that doesn’t seem to be enough.

Dull the pain, strengthen the soul and make life more colorful by the day. But it doesn’t work like that. No matter how hard I try, I fail each and every time. Oh, when 
she
 was here, she knew how to do it, but on my 
own
? I can’t seem to manage everything that she did as gracefully as she had.

Her name was Kira, but it didn’t matter what her name was, as long as she was mine. Not anymore though… she’s not mine anymore.

 I remember her red curly hair, oh, how she would complain about how much she hated it. And those green eyes. Like God himself had planted a valley in them. But the bottles were too much for her, she claimed I preferred their slender bodies instead of hers. Who knows? Maybe in some screwed up way I did.

After our last fight, she begged me to stop drinking; my silence was enough to let her know I wouldn't. So she walked out on me.
        

After a week, I gave up on scouring the streets searching for her. After a month I gave up on calling all her friends in pursuit of her, never knew much about her family and definitely not enough to contact them in search of her. After a few months, I gave up hope that she was coming back home.

 I should have tried to save what we had, or at least see what she saw in me. If I saw in me what she did, I could try to drag myself out of this man made hell I was in at my present moment.

 
Hell, if I was more than what I had become, I would have stopped this and gone to her by now. But I’m hopeless. I just turn up the bottle and promise I will swear it off tomorrow. What a wretched lie.

I have often thought about moving, maybe getting out of this hellish city would broaden or brighten my horizon. Then again, doing anything with my horizon would be an improvement.
 

There was a small bark from the bedroom. Daisy, the basset hound I bought her, was telling me to come to bed. Yeah, Kira took everything that was hers when she left; I was surprised she left the dog.
             

She’s still a puppy, a big puppy but still under a year old. I hoped that maybe it would have been too painful to take something that I had given her that gave her joy. Not the fact that she didn’t have the money to care for Daisy. To be honest, I doubted the latter of the two to be true, but give yourself long enough and you can convince yourself of anything that you want to.

I more than often wonder if she is doing better than me. But then, it’s not hard to walk the streets and back alleys and find more than a dozen that are doing better than me. The only difference between me and old Man Patches' warming his hands over burning 'Old newspapers in a rusted garbage can, is that I managed to keep a job and a roof over my head.

My job sucks but it pays well. I work from home too, so it doesn’t matter if I’m plastered twenty-four-seven or not. Eighteen bucks an hour to send out e-mails to customers for faulty equipment and a few other auto responses like messages. Yeah, who couldn’t do that shit faced?

I had the next three weeks off, paid time that I had racked up for the past two years, told me I had to use it or lose it. So here I was day two into my lonely pathetic vacation drinking my life away in the warmth of my loving four bare-walled apartments.       

You would think that with my infinite age, there would be more of a refined life. A luxurious living style brought on by some huge life savings or monumental cache of treasures in some secluded place that I only knew the whereabouts of.

Truth is, immortality doesn't exactly mean you live the life of luxury, or that you always make the right decisions. Boy was I ever proof of 
that
.

Turning the bottle up one final time I growl when I realize that there wasn’t more than a dribble left. Shuffling feet find their way to the fridge again, and what do you know, my hands find another bottle. Something that would quiet my thoughts and dim this pain of Kira's memory that seemed to want to keep me company this dreary and miserable night.
             

How sweet that empty song is to my broken heart. But that song is muffled out by the annoying voice of a woman that I thought had left me three months earlier.

“
That’s right… Drown yourself again…I’m still right here for you, I’m always right here for you.”

 
            Her voice was a crude reminder to me that she was one of the reasons that I tried to drown the world out in poison. It was the reason that had led to Kira leaving me. The reason why I hated myself to a degree that was too painful to bear.

 
           Her form was the same as always. Long slender body with those perky breasts, all covered up in a long simple white sleeveless dress. Auburn colored hair pulled back in a French braid bun sort of hair do. Wide almond shaped gray eyes that were both soft and cold. She would have been beautiful if she had flesh. She was dead though, and had been for much longer than I had been alive.

 
           “Dear God don’t tell me you’re back again. I thought that I had…”

 
           “That you had what… drank me away? Run me off like you had that pretty little woman that stayed by your side praying that you would come to your senses?” She said in that annoying sarcastic tone of hers.

 
           “Sort of hoped that was the way that it had happened.” I said annoyed, under my breath.

 
           “Ha! You are a 
fool
 you know that, Angel!” She almost laughed at me.

 
           “Tell me something that I 
don’t
 know Sarre.” I mumbled as I went to plop down on the couch and searched for the remote.

 
           “You seem down to know that I have not left you, my dear. I must say that it pains me to know that your war spirit doesn’t bring that smile to your face like I used to.”

 
           “Yeah well you sort of became a nuisance to me, became that voice that seemed to drive me mad, and when I tried to drown your voice out, it pushed Kira away. So forgive me if I’m not happy to see the reminder of everything that I have lost.”

 
           “Don’t you dare blame me for this, Angel! Take responsibility for your own actions like you 
used
 to, and stop blaming me for the mistakes you chose to make. It’s part of being 
human
.”

 
           “It’s part of what I shouldn’t be!” I said clearly showing her in tone alone that I was getting angry. The look on my face however was clear of any emotion. My hand reached between the cushions and I found the remote. Thank God! I couldn’t bare this conversation with her. Not again. I knew where it was heading, and I didn’t want to go there. So I pushed the power button on the remote and waited for the television to turn on.

“It’s the part that you deny with such conviction, yet I
 
know
 your thoughts, you forget, I am your war spirit. I 
know
 what makes and breaks you. And you are delusional if you think that for one moment I will let you…”

 
Her voice was quickly drowned out under the sounds of the television. I was forcefully pushing down on the volume button as though I was trying to push the volume button through the remote all the while Sarre tried to raise her voice in an attempt to speak over it.

Sounds of bullets and techno music boomed through the living room, hell through the entire apartment as I turned it up to the max. I was thankful for the “Matrix” being on that night.

Her ghost like mouth still moved, but I couldn’t hear the words anymore. Two points for me! I playfully put a hand up to my ear as if I truly was trying to hear what Sarre was saying and then shook my head no with a fake pout at the fact that I was unable to hear her retort.