Puddle Driver: Chapter 24
Written and read by ApocD
The only moving vehicles they saw were motorcycles and bicycles; the streets were too cluttered for anything else. Streis knew that neither would be an option with the homeless man, so they walked. They passed decrepit apartment buildings with sets of eyes in the windows, people who had been lucky enough to have been inside when the pre-phants came, people who would start wondering soon how they would get food, how they would live. The people on the streets looked confused. They were either walking aimlessly or running, as if they had somewhere to go, somewhere to hide. They saw no guns as they walked; they only heard occasional gunshots in the distance. The phantom followed close behind them. About half of the people on the streets seemed to see it; the other half either ignored it or didn’t see it. Those who did see it eyed it as if they’d seen one before, as if it was nothing new. Streis wondered how many phantoms there were in the city now, how many pre-phants had been taken down with gunshots. He wondered where the military was in all of this, that group of heroes was conspicuously absent; perhaps they were still cleaning up the mess at Ocean Beach.
