Choices of a Darker Spirit - Short Fiction

Choices and motivations of a darker weaker spirit
July 20th entry for the Writer's Cramp  (874 words)

He picked up the rattan sword, hefting it easily in his left hand.  The training grounds where he was meeting his contact were dusty and windswept, the sun-baked Texas clay almost as hard as the concrete of the buildings it surrounded.

Dave had asked him to be here at nine in the morning, suggested that he couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity he would be presented with.  As he idly swung the crafted and balanced rattan back and forth, Marcus wondered where Dave had gotten himself off to now.  He recalled with some irony that Dave was never on time, and nine in the morning could mean eleven by the time he showed up.

Shrugging, Marcus decided to make the most of his time here.  The rattan sword wasn't the staff  he was used to for his training, but it would do in a pinch.  Taking a deep, lung clearing breath, Marcus dropped into his opening stance and began.  Flowing from one set to the next, he spent most of an hour just exercising.  

Off in the distance Marcus noted a plume of dust, whatever was causing it was getting closer.  Standing up straight, and putting the rattan back where he found it, he settled in to wait.  The dry air quickly drying his sweat stained shirt.

Sure enough, Marcus noted, it was Dave, just over an hour late.  He noted Dave was making some indifferent excuse for the time and everything.  Not paying much attention to this, Marcus just let it pass, and got right down to business.

"Why in the hell did you ask me here Dave?"

"As I said, I have an opportunity for you, but it's your choice.  No pressure."

"And?"  Marcus hated having to drag the conversation from anybody, let alone someone as smug as Dave.

"And here's the good part.  If you and I can drive this truck across the border, straight into Canada at one of the flatland border crossings, then we can each make twenty thousand dollars."  Dave dropped the whole thing on Marcus at one pass.  That fact in itself, thought Marcus, was significant.  Dave only did that when he was so excited he was about to burst.

"What's the catch?"  

"No catch, well, alright, one catch.  the truck is loaded with contraband."  Dave was positively jittery by this point.

Marcus, never one to take things quickly, paused for a moment.  After considering the situation from all angles, he decided to go ahead and help.  

"One question first, what kind of contraband?" Marcus was adamant about the information, without it he wasn't going.
"Cash." the word echoed in the empty space between them before Dave continued.  "Every so often money get's discarded, and it is shipped by the banks, back to government for disposal.  The guys that contacted me to drive the truck managed to,  umm, redirect this discarded currency into their own keeping."

"Alright.  We get the truck, we drive to Canada, where we meet the original perpetrators and give them back the money."

Dave looked up from his study of the truck's hood.  "Yep.  Unless you're not up to the challenge of driving for a day or two."

* * *

Two days later, north of the 49th parallel.  

* * *

Marcus looked over at Dave.  It was about sunrise, they had just filled up again and were back on the road for the morning stretch.  Two hours north and west would see them in Sedley Saskatchewan, just south and east of Regina.

They were supposed to meet their contacts at around noon, at the intersection provincial highway 33 and highway 620.

As Dave drifted off to sleep for the duration of the next leg of the trip, Marcus started thinking.

* * *

Two hours later Dave awoke with a start when Marcus prodded him with the sharp end of the hunting knife.  The truck was sitting on the side of Highway 13, they were facing west.  Marcus indicated the sign ahead of them that showed the distances to the next three towns, and then pointed to the barely visible roofs of the town they had just passed through.

"Twenty-four hours ago, in the middle of Texas, you challenged me to run to Canada in this truck with you.  We're here, I did my challenge, so it seems to me you have a choice to make here old friend.  See, near as I can make out, this truck is holding somewhere on the order of three or four million dollars in unmarked untraceable US currency.  Now I can go and drop this off like we were supposed to do, but that's two hours east of us right now and it'd be a hard drive to make it there on time.  Or I can keep driving, and settle down nice and cozy in Alaska somewhere.  The choice you have to make is whether you prefer another three day's driving, or if you'd rather walk back to Ogema, and then explain what an American is doing stranded in Ogema, without going into why or how you got there and what we were doing driving this truck in the first place."