On the Road: Two Months Later
by littlewiccan
Xander sat in his motel room and he watched as the credits from the movie he was watching began to roll. He had caught the movie Grand Canyon on cable. Xander looked over at the clock, it was only 7 P.M. so he decided to go down to The Rusty Nail, the local club for people under age. It was where everyone pretty much went kinda like the Bronze and Xander spent most of his time there, when he wasn’t working. He had been in this town for about 3 months and he had gotten use to his job as the official dish washer at the Ladies Night Club.
When Xander got The Rusty Nail he walked in and couldn’t help but notice the place was completely empty. Save for the band, the bartender and a few other kids.
“This is not normal,” Xander said to himself as he walked over to the bartender, “Where is everybody?”
“It’s been like this all night. All the kids went down to that new arcade,” the bartender said.
“The arcade?” Xander was a little confused The Rust Nail had been the hottest place in town well by the looks of the place since the creation of the town and although some kids had hung out at the old arcade never this many had, “So what’s the deal with this new place are they giving away free stuff or something?”
“No, I don’t know,” the man said and Xander turned away and walked out in the direction of the arcade.
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When Xander got there the place was packed.
“Hey, Xander come here,” a girl with light brown hair called him. Her name was Jenny and she and Xander had become fast friends. She was a waitress at the local diner, where Xander usually ate his breakfast.
“Hey, Jen. What’s the deal I thought you hated video games? You said they were for mindless drones with no lives.”
“Yeah, well that’s before I came here its way cool.”
Xander looked around at the other kids. He noticed a few in a corner, just staring into space. Xander walked over to them and waved his hand in front of them but he got no response, except one of them started to drool. Xander walked over to one of the people who worked there, “Hey, how long have those guys been here?”
“Would you like some tokens?” the guy asked in a spaced out, drone like voice.
“Umm no. How long have they been here?” Xander said, exaggerating all his words and making symbolic movements with his hands.
“He’s not going to answer you,” someone behind Xander said. Xander turned around to look and saw a guy about his age maybe a year or 2 older. He wore a brown leather jacket and knowing smile, “They’ve been here since the place opened up a week ago. They’re worse than the others.”
“Who are you? And what?”
“Pike and there’s something weird going on here, something supernatural.”
“You think so too. Geez don't towns have noraml problems anymore like drugs? Personally, I'd prefer a good drug bust right now to this zoombie people thing."
Pike just shrugged and gave an amused smile.
"I’m Xander by the way. You’re Pike?”
“Yeah, why?”
“My friend she knew someone named Pike back in L.A”
“What’s her name?”
“Buffy Summers.”
“Small world.”
“So you know her then?”
“Yeah, do you know about?”
“The slayer thing yeah. So what exactly do you know about this?” Xander said indicating the surrounding arcade.
“Not much. It seems like the video games are addicting and then there’s the whole part where the longer people are here, playing the games the more they turn into mindless zombies.”
“Okay, so what are we going to do?”
“We? No you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t know how much Buffy told you but I’m out of the demon hunting game.”
“So you were just going to let all these people get…zoombiefied and hope someone else would come around and clean up the mess?”
“Hey! I’m not a hero! And I don’t want to be! This is my gig! If you want to go all superhero and save the day be my guest but that was never my M.O.”
“Coward,” Xander said, turning away.
Pike just looked like he had gotten punched in the stomach.
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Review please.
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