Standard/Publisher Word Count: 399/685
Reading Time: 1min 27sec
Langewintar had seen plenty of unseemly things long before The War had even began; it came with the territory of being an Ostbarrow native. When The War began, his parents had fretted over the announcement of a draft and sent him to school. Unfortunately, his high grades, achievements, and physical achievements led to him being personally drafted for as an Officer-Candidate. He and 128 others were drilled rigorously before being stationed on the frontlines. His father wrote to him that his mother had cried at the news.
By the grace of whatever god there may be, the young man had climbed through the ranks with a startling proficiency not seen in fifty-some years.
The clock had ticked its way through all the natural hours and was approaching witching when he glanced back at it. The tension of being awake so long, the stress of these cases, the need to hold that damn girl, were all getting to him now and his hand shook as he tried to write. He set the pen down and took another drink of his whiskey.
Brandr, a Great Wolf/Doberman mix, whined and shifted uneasily. Even he knows she should be here by now…
She was almost never later than a quarter past two.
Rudolf tried to swallow back his paranoia even as images of her (lying broken in the unsafe streets, beaten, bloodied, and raped; in the trunk of some car; on the floor of some van, bound and gagged, awaiting to be shipped out; unconscious in some sicko’s basement, chained to a water pipe) filtered through his mind.
He knew very well that the streets of Ostbarrow were almost never safe anymore.
He set the glass down and tried rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Brandr padded over and set his large head on Rudolf’s thigh and whined again.
“I know, I know,” he muttered, scratching behind the wolfdog’s ear absentmindedly. He sighed and fought off the jittery urge to go look for her. After a few minutes, Brandr’s ears suddenly flicked into alert and the boy stiffened, his head tilting slightly towards the door.
Someone’s coming… Rudolf finished his drink and picked up his pen, pretending to write as his other hand went to his gun. Anticipation and dread knotted evenly in his gut.
Brandr padded over to the door stood still, listening, ears twitching back slightly every now and then.
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