Somewhere out in the Nevada desert, a small dust cloud was making it's way up a small and empty two-lane highway. It had been moving along it for the past few hours and hadn't had the chance to pull off any other streets; this was mainly due to the lack of any.

  At the center of this cloud was a silver jeep with a dulled finish caused by the sandy roads past the California border. The windows were rolled down and the driver slid a long lock of whipping hair away from his temple before resting his elbow on the open sill. The rest of his dark brown mane flew behind him in the rushing wind. He checked to see if his sunglasses were straight in the rearview mirror before reaching down and flicking on the radio. The California stations crackled as they struggled to push their signals through miles of open space and rocky mountains. One such station sputtered with some semblance of life before clearing with a DJ's voice ringing through.

  "...Steppenwolf singing Magic Carpet Ride."

  The driver shook his head as he frowned.

  "Damn, I can't believe I missed that." He turned up the volume.

  "I just want to take a second from this killer block I'm puttin' out to give some of my best wishes to a good friend of mine from high school. That's right, I'm talking to you Benjamin. This cool cat just announced his plans for marriage and we here at the station are all tickled pink!" The DJ pressed a button and canned applause filled the airwaves.

  "Tinkled pink?"

  "He just got together with his main squeeze, I think he said her name is Sara, about a day ago and he swept the babe off her feet! And you just know it's love when both are ready to get hitched right away." A lewd whistle gave out a high pitched screech with another round of canned laughter. "I get to meet the lovely lady tonight over a double date, Benji says I'm in for a 'big' surprise when I see her too; of course, I don't know what he could 'see' that would catch me off guard," the DJ laughed to himself. The driver scratched at a small scar on his face as he grimaced, thinking he had missed a joke of some sort.

  "Anyway, this one's for you Benjamin, for both you and Sara. Admit it, you're latchin' on the old ball and chain and it's time to get a little Kink-y." A familiar guitar rip spilled out of the speakers. The driver pumped up the volume and bobbed his head to the rhythm.

  "Girl, you really got me now. You got me so I don't know what I'm doin'." He slid his hand down the outside of the door and began to tap on the silver metal with the drum beat. Without any other cars speeding along the road, he felt free to start weaving back and forth between the dotted lines. A chorus sang by. "See, don't ever set me free, I always want to be by your side." The driver looked at himself in the rearview mirror, posing in typical male fashion while trying to impress himself with his baritone voice and devilish looks. "Girl, you really got me now. You got me so I can't sleep at night."

  He pressed down harder on the gas pedal and the jeep sped off into the late afternoon. It quickly passed up a broken sign that had been gathering dust for years. No one from Paradise had ever bothered to put it back on it's stand after a tornado took it off back in the early nineties. Luckily the driver spotted it as he drifted onto the shoulder and began to look for the hidden offramp.

  "Yep, I think I could get to like this whole bounty hunter business," he began to pull off the interstate and onto an even dustier side road as he nodded to himself. "Set your own hours, long drives, plenty of fresh air."

  Lost in the middle of nowhere.

  He frowned.

  "I'm not lost."

  He squinted as something appeared far off down the way. It quickly sharpened itself into a motley group of people milling about. They were pulling, what looked like, long and flat bricks of colorful metal into the road with wire cables and thinning ropes. As his jeep approached, they stopped their labor and looked up with somber and stoic expressions, slowly turning their heads as he passed through their field of vision. There was just enough room for him to squeeze through between their inadvertent roadblock and the rising hill on the side of the road. The driver ran a hand through his long-brown hair and looked in his rear-view mirror in disgust.

  "What the hell are they doing? I hope they have that out of the way when I leave."

  He looked back ahead and slowed down to a modest twenty as he gazed at, what was once, a tract home. By the amount of roof that had been blown off, the only thing he could think to have happened was that a bomb had gone off inside. A huge hole dominated the ceiling and bits and pieces of it were still flittering about in the lazy wind. A large pile of hay, that should have been covered and tied down, was slowly spreading about the front yard. The driver shook his head.

  "Bizarre." He sped back up and wiped a hand over his thin goatee, "I'm not lost."

  The rest of Paradise didn't seem to be in much better shape. All of the cars seemed to be either overturned or in worse straits and a few buildings were fairly beaten up. He stopped his jeep in front of what was left of the only general store in sight. As he pulled on the parking brake and turned the key off in the ignition, he gazed out his window at the local diner.

  Whatever had happened hadn't spared it either. The front of it was smashed in with part of the roof missing and most of the windows shattered. Apparently an accident had happened in front of it as well; where a squat and plump woman in a waitress apron was sprinkling sawdust over a large red puddle in efforts to soak it up. She seemed disgusted by her task as the wooden flakes flew from her hand. She tossed the last bits of it away and dusted them off on her pants before picking up a small white package. He assumed it was meat of some sort as one paper end was starting to stain a dull red.

  The driver stepped out of his car and closed his door; he twirled his keys around his index finger while glancing about. His nose caught the scent of burning oil and it wrinkled from the smoke of it. A few curls of scorched wind drifted up into the sky off in the short distance.

  He shook his head and turned to face the general store. In front of it was a tall, gawky man that was sifting through the dirt and stone rubble that littered the beaten porch.

  "Hey there buddy."

  The man opened his eyes a little wider, supposedly in meager acknowledgement.

  "Are you, uh ... are you open for business?"

  He found a red checker and put it into his pocket with a smile before finally looking up at the newcomer.

  "Yup." His jaw smacked a few times, as if chewing on a bit of imaginary cud.

  "Good, good," the driver took off his sunglasses and waved off in the distance that surrounded them, "what the hell happened here? It looks like you guys were hit by a tornado."

  "It was Laura," he said matter-of-factly.

  The driver nodded to himself in mild admiration.

  "Cool, they name them here like they name hurricanes out in the ocean." He scanned the crowds again, more than one person was staring in his direction; their blank demeanor gave them a slight 'Children of the Damned' feel. "Do you sell gas here at your store? I'd like a few cans worth and I didn't see a station when I pulled in."

  "That used to be it there yonder," he jerked his head and the driver turned to see him indicating the curls of smoke that continued to puff into the sky.

  He turned back with wide eyes.

  "The gas station is on fire!?!"

  "The gas station is gone," the store owner began to chuckle to himself, forced giggles that he clung to to lighten his mood, "that explosion was purty."

  The driver took a few steps backward and scratched the small scar on his face while reaching for something in the back of his jeep with his other hand. He tugged a thick blanket over the small, red metal barrels of spare gasoline he kept for these long desert drives. He walked back with a low whistle.

  "Well I guess I'll just take a ... uh ... a gander in your fine store here."

  "Suit yourself."

  The driver nodded once more before setting his sunglasses on his head and walked inside the store.

  The back of it turned out to be missing along with a good portion of the roof; one of the three freezers had been knocked on to it's side as melting ice-cream oozed out in a sweet smelling river. The shelves that dominated the store were pretty much in order, save for one snack bar. He paced up and down a few aisles, carefully scanning for what he desired, and then walked out in despair. The owner was busying himself with fixing a wooden chair in a small area on the porch that he had cleared of debris.

  "Don't you guys have any shampoo and conditioner? This hair doesn't wash itself you know."

  "Nope, Laura took it all. Put little Lucy up on the water tower too." The dullard pointed out into the town square. A child of about eight was scratching at the paneling on top of the tall wooden structure. The ladder had been torn away and she was apparently trapped. No one around seemed to care, they were more involved with their own problems.

  "It must have been some storm."

  "Yup."

  The driver looked around to find some of the townspeople beginning to crowd around his Jeep. They were peering inside of it and pointing at him as they muttered amongst themselves. He scratched at his small scar again and looked back at the store owner with a creeping nervousness permeating his voice.

  "Well ... uh ... maybe you can help me with something else then," he reached into a pocket and fished out a small index card. "I'm looking for a Greg ... uh, I can't seem to pronounce his last name."

  "There's only one Greg in this town." He raised a dirty hand over his head, "tall, goofy lookin' fellah with corn-husked hair?"

  "Yeah, that should be him. His brother's wanted out of state by Los Angeles authorities and I was hoping Greg could help me out."

  The store owner shrugged.

  "Laura took him too."

  "What the hell kind of town is this?"

  "Beg yer' pardon?"

  "Nothing, nothing," he shook his head. "So where do you think 'Laura' took him?" The driver brought up his hands and made quotation marks with sarcastic fingers; a gesture that went totally unnoticed.

  "Upstream, towards the central mountains."

  He squinted into the daylight. The mountains seemed to have this little 'burg surrounded on three sides and the store owner seemed to be pointing towards the middle of their crescent-shaped formation. It would probably be a steep climb, but he was sure that his jeep could make it through; it was new, but it was tough.

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