Weird Appalachia - TAG Sundancer

As Xanthe Wingard was driving down that Applachian road, deep into backwoods Tennessee, Johnny Hooker was making his way down as well, just slightly behind. He wasn't driving, though. Johnny never drove, he ran. He ran with an easy, loping gait that looked far too slow for how fast his body was moving. He was running at about 40 miles-per-hour, and making it look like an easy jog. And he ran at this speed without fear and without extra lights, he could see far better in the dark than most people could, and could see and feel a lot more than headlights would have revealed.

That was how he knew someone would be waiting for him at the abandoned gas station he'd been camping out in. He felt a sort of tingling sensation, and saw something flickering at the edges of his vision, just over the next hill. It was headlights, pulling and turning into the gas station... It looked like some sort of van, though Johnny couldn't tell the color in the dark. He didn't recognize it, but it didn't scream "Federal Agent" or "O.S.E. operation" to him. Neither did the woman that stepped out of the driver's side door. He was sure she was armed, and she definitely wasn't alone, but she probably didn't know he was there. She wasn't looking for him.

To be safe, Johnny decided to approach slowly. He wound down his run until he was walking easily along the road that probably had needed to be repaved twenty years ago, slowly making his way to the station. So as not to take the woman and her friend by surprise, Johnny started to sing an old John Denver song that he'd heard quite a bit as a kid...

"Almost heaven, West Virginia!/Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River/Life is old here, older than the trees!/Younger than the mountains, growin' like a breeze..."

He wished he had his guitar, it would have helped with musical accompaniment... however, he'd left inside what had once been the store room of the gas station that evening when he'd left for his night-shift as a "floor and maintenance technician" (a janitor) at the Bledsoe County Highschool. He'd also left his clothes, toiletries, and other supplies with it...

"Country roads, take me home/To the place... I belong!/ West Virginia, Mountain Mama/Take me home, country roads!"

He ceased singing as he came up to the van and the gas station, walking off the road towards Xanthe. Johnny stopped about thirty or forty feet away, and made sure the van was between him and Xanthe, so she had plenty of options for escape and hopefully wouldn't feel threatened.

Johnny was wearing an almost stereotypical get-up for a Texan. Blue jeans and roper-style cowboy boots (boots that looked like they were for riding, but comfortable to walk in), a brown belt with a big, but plain, silver buckle, a red-plaid shirt with about a third of the buttons undone (no undershirt, though, just hairy chest underneath), and a tan cattleman's hat with a little loop of leather that looked like a belt wrapped around it. Johnny tipped his hat before waving to Xanthe.

"Howdy," Johnny said with a Texas drawl, which dripped into every word he spoke, "Y'all lookin' fer gas? Or are you and yer sleepy friend lost?"

Johnny was smiling as he asked his questions, speaking sweetly and softly. Hopefully, hopefully, he wouldn't spook her into blasting the "Deliverance-looking hillybilly" at point-blank with her pea-shooter. He didn't want a hole in his shirt, and he hated coming up with lame excuses for why the bullets never broke his skin.

Johnny only realized that he might have given himself away after he spoke. Normal people wouldn't be able to see the various forms of light that living bodies gave off through tinted windows on a dark night. Let alone know in their bones that the body inside the van was sleeping. Hell, someone that didn't have Johnny's eyes probably would have had trouble seeing Xanthe as more than just a face peeking from shadows under the dim light of the little fire she'd lit for her coffee. Still, Xanthe didn't reach for her gun, and she didn't pull out a radio from some back pocket to report an Oddity and call for back-up. So she probably, probably, wasn't a Fed or a UNI. Even if she was eerily pretty in an ethereal fashion.

"My name's Johnny," he tipped his hat at Xanthe, "Pleasure ta meet you."

No last name from him. Even if Xanthe wasn't a government agent, if Johnny slipped up and had to book at full speed, he didn't want to add to his existing record. He was already wanted in six states for using his powers, one of them being Tennessee thanks to a bar brawl in Nashville.

"So ya with the bank or the government? Cause last I checked, Stapleton was closed to the public after the fire. And haunted besides."

Johnny had a feeling that when Xanthe said "sometimes" she could get help from local officials, she didn't mean this time. Which was probably for the best, since Stapleton's "fire" had been in the coal mine, rendering the veins and parts of the Cumberland Plateau underneath were unstable due to the coal all burning up inside. Sinkholes were bad, but sinkholes that led directly to a piece of Hell on Earth were even worse. And that wasn't even touching on the asylum. Rumors had been swirling around the place for almost a century, ever since it first opened. Many patients were believed to have died due to neglect or purposeful torture, and the nuns that had once run the place supposedly had devoted themselves to a non-existent saint while doing awful and licentious things. Whether those awful things were relatively bland lesbian relationships in isolation or debauched murder-orgies depended on who you asked, though more conservative residents of Bledsoe saw those thing as equally evil. Then, of course, there were the rumors that the nuns had worshiped something that was not God and was far worse and older than the Devil beneath the asylum. The list went on.

Even in the modern day, decades after the place was finally, quietly, shut down... there were stories. Ghosts of insane patients, or ghosts of people turned insane by conditions in the asylum, kids that went exploring and wound up dead with stab wounds, and lately... lights, a shaking of the earth near the asylum, and all sorts awful noises that echoed out over the whole of Bledsoe County. Who knew what was going on up there?

As Johnny took Xanthe's card, he resolved that he was going to try to keep her out of trouble from the wings. He didn't think he'd just ask to tag along, but...

"Ah, documentary folks. Well, good luck to ya, I s'pose. I just finished ma night shift, so I'm gonna rest fer a moment before I finish ma walk home."

He'd wait until Xanthe and Derek left, or leave and double back to get his stuff, and follow behind her. Then he could hopefully keep an eye on her from some distance and make sure she didn't get killed by a falling brick or that the van didn't get swallowed by collapsing earth and baked in flaming caves.

Johnny pocketed the business card and moved to lean against the wall of what was once a body shop attached to the gas station. While he did so, he asked...

"I s'pose you ain't someone that believes in stuff like ghosts an' ghouls, huh?"

Johnny didn't know if Derek was going to wake up before Xanthe left, and he had no plans to wake the man up himself. He wanted the pair in their van and on their way so he could watch over them as quickly as possible. But... he couldn't say that outright. That would be suspicious, wouldn't it? 'No worries, I'll just follow your van on foot with my super speed in case you get into trouble. I'm also bulletproof, so no worries.' In a world without Oddities, those claims were insane. In a world with Oddities, saying that put a huge target on your back and alerted every cop in the county.

"I ain't quite local. I'm actually from Texas, originally... I'm just sorta lingering before I pass on through to the lowlands for barley harvests in June. Of course, I have been told all about Stapleton by everyone in the county that's heard something and likes liquor, and that's a lotta people here."

Johnny gave a little rumbling chuckle that was as warm as a campfire, before looking off and away from Xanthe.

"Of course, there's been some extra strange stuff happenin' out there the past few months. I've personally seen lights, and heard rumbling and voices around the place. New lights, bright ones that look like they could light up a stadium, and the rumbling came from the plateau under Stapleton. I dunno where, exactly, but everywhere near there shakes. Don't know if a vein of coal finished burnin' and set everythin' tumblin', or if there's somethin' down there. But I don't know if I wanna find out."

He trailed off after that. Inevitably, his eyes were drawn up to the Cumberland Plateau, in the direction that he knew held the town of Stapleton, and the woods nearby where the asylum was hidden. What was going on there?

Xanthe Wingard

Johnny flashed another smile and tipped his hat when Xanthe got ready to go.

"Best'f luck to ya."

He waved when she got into the van and kept waving while she backed out of the abandoned gas station, and drove off. Johnny felt the familiar call of his bedroll... but he ignored it. Instead, he went inside and grabbed a protein bar out of the package that he'd bought a few days earlier. Then he did the bare minimum to get himself freshened up. Fresh clothes, a bit of water and soap on his face, hands, feet, pits, and groin, and a good toothbrushing. If he wasn't going to sleep or go bathe in the nearby river, he was at least going to feel a bit like a person before he went running into Hell on Earth after some fools in a van.

Besides, he had to give Xanthe and Derek a head-start, he didn't want them seeing him in the rear-view mirror. Once he was sure he'd given them enough of a lead, Johnny stretched his legs and arms... and then went for a run. Johnny could move fast if he wanted to, faster than trains or sports-cars without breaking a sweat... But if he went that fast, he'd be kicking up a dirt trail and catching attention for miles around, plus he could hit a critter that might get into his way. So he ran at a comfortable forty miles an hour down the backroads... past farmsteads that were just waking up, around fields of corn and other crops, and into the woods. He came to a path up to to the Cumberland plateau there, as he rushed past pines and birch and oak, and made his way up. A quick right turn took him past the trendy houses built by somewhat-rich people that wished they were country folk, but didn't want to live with the poor ones in the valley, and towards one of the few paved roads in the county outside the old highway and Pikeville. The paving gave way to dirt, though.

And the houses gave way to forest again, and signs began to pop up warning of danger and sinkholes and that the town was off-limits. Trespassers wouldn't be shot, but they would be prosecuted and the government was no longer liable for their safety once they cross the fence that wrapped around the supposed limits of the coal that was currently on fire. The same fence that seemed to have been removed, at least in part, so that it no longer covered the road.

That made Johnny stop for a moment.

"Hold on a minute... Ain't no way that lil' lady did this in the fifteen minutes I let her get ahead..."'

He looked around. No people, or at least none that were warm and thinking. But it looked like something that was heavy and wide had been over the dirt roads during a recent rain, leaving a perfect indent in now-dry dirt of tires that probably belonged to a semi-truck. Johnny nodded, looked around... then held back onto his hat and started running again. This time at a little over 40 mph. He would stop when he caught sight of the van that Xanthe and Derek had been driving in.

Johnny wasn't surprised by the dirt road into Stapleton being covered in potholes. It was a dirt road that hadn't been re-graded, paved, or in any way maintained for over forty years. However, the shape of the ruts and the sheer amount of holes, as well as the way the road was squished and pocked at the edges, was a bit suspicious. It looked like a tank had been driving up and down the road. And regularly. That or construction equipment with heavy loads, caterpillar treads, and thick tires. And that wasn't sounding so ridiculous as Johnny thought about it, especially considering the giant hole in the fence. The fence that was supposed to be keeping people out.

And then Johnny heard voices. Not in his ears, but in his head. They were dim and distant, and seemed to be scrambled about... but he could pick out a few words...

'Someone-... coming.'

'...-foot?'

'No- ... -van. A-... -and a little lady-...'

'Network or...?'

'I'd guess Inter- ... indie film. The van says-... side. Never-... those guys.'

'Alright-... call the sheriff and have him-.... You boys let them through. We'll see-... we get rid of them.'

Johnny wasn't quite sure if he was going crazy, or if someone was speaking on a radio. Didn't feel like a big broadcasting tower, though, those gave him a headache. Walkie-talkies? Maybe... But what else were they saying? He strained to listen for more, but all he got was a few words and the bits of wave sent by the machines after people finished talking. Right as Johnny rounded a turn, he came up on Xanthe's van.

He had a moment of panic before running into the trees so fast he probably looked like a blur of blue-jeans and flannel. Had Xanthe seen him in the rear-view mirror? Maybe... but only for a moment. Maybe she would just chalk up seeing him running after her as a hallucination... Or she'd think he was a ghost. Or, and this was still a possibility, Xanthe might have seen him and might piece together he was an Oddity, though she probably wouldn't be able to get the full gist of his mutation. Very few people did. People tended to think Johnny was just fast, or just strong, or just bulletproof, depending on the conditions when they realized he had powers. Nobody ever seemed to think someone could be all three, and more besides.

No matter what, Johnny followed at a slower pace, and kept himself hidden behind the trees and the undergrowth. He could see the heat of the van's engine, and he knew how to keep pace... Well, until they reached Stapleton proper, that is.

That was when Johnny's "heat-vision" got overwhelmed by a series of sinkholes and a crack down main-street that burned brighter than bonfires. He had to blink a few times and try to ignore the infra-red "colors", focusing on what was in the "visible spectrum". He saw the van pull to a stop at a place that seemed less likely to collapse in than others. He saw a line of businesses whose roofs had caved in, most made of brick. A few had sinkholes inside of them, more burning pits. Others still had their wood floors intact, but not a single one had a window that wasn't broken or busted up. And, down mainstreet, and up into some hills further along the plateau, Johnny saw the Asylum. Driving towards it would be stupid and suicidal. The van was probably heavy enough to open up a fresh sinkhole where the dirt was thin, and expecting it to climb uphill on roads as bad as the ones leading into Stapleton might have been too much.

Either way, he was waiting in the trees until something happened. If men with guns and radios burst out of the buildings, he'd get in the way of the bullets. If a sinkhole opened, Johnny would save Xanthe, Derek, and maybe the van. If ghosts appeared... well, Johnny remembered his prayers and had to hope his waning faith would be enough to keep them at bay.

And if Xanthe and Derek just recorded a leisurely walk up to the Stapleton Asylum?

Then Johnny would follow, and try to keep out of sight.

Xanthe Wingard

Johnny watched as Xanthe shouldered all of the food and water on a heavy backpack, and carried an extra camera... while Derek, as far as Johnny could tell, just took the camera he was holding. It seemed a tad un-gentlemanly to Johnny Hooker, but... maybe that assumption of what men were supposed to do and not do was, in some way, sexist or assumptive? Maybe Xanthe didn't trust Derek to hold all of that stuff and get a good shot of her at the same time, maybe she insisted on doing twice the work to get recognized for half the credit. Maybe it was just because the pair traded the load here and there.

After a brief moment of deciding whether or not to chide himself, Johnny decided not to this time, he followed the pair. He didn't follow in an obvious way, instead, Johnny moved between buildings and always stayed at least a few hundred feet away... Far enough that he wouldn't be seen, and had time to duck and cover behind a wall if Derek swung the camera his way.

Xanthe seemed rather confident as she spoke and made her way up the Stapleton Asylum. Despite all of the burned out buildings, openings to literal fires, and abandoned bits of people's lives scattered around... she was speaking without a stutter or a shake. She was truly in her element in a place that was giving Johnny, who seemed to be invulnerable as far as he knew, the heebie jeebies. Even when they walked up to the stone wall that surrounded the grounds of the Stapleton Asylum, mysteriously missing the customary wrought iron gate that people described as creaking in the wind when they visited, Xanthe and Derek showed no fear. Derek was just getting good shots of scenery, following Xanthe's hand directions whenever she made them, and good damn shots of Xanthe the rest of the time. All without jiggling or wiggling the camera, despite their lack of a steady-cam vest.

The Asylum was an odd building, something that looked like a combination of castle and the Addams Family mansion. There were a few tall towers that ended in conical, slate roofs, studded with windows and overgrown with ivy. There was what was once a neatly kept garden out front, now overrun by native weeds and young trees. The path here wasn't dirt, but instead paved with cobbled stones and mortar, though the mortar and stones were cracking from weeds and winter. And then there was the main face of the building. Bricks made of limestone, with broken windows that looked like dark eyes glaring down, and a grand front door made of hard wood that was once painted, lolling half open like a dog's tongue. It was as if the building was waiting to be entered, to eat those that came.

That was when the men in what might have been National Guard uniforms, or some sort of army-surplus stuff that had been modified, came out of the bushes and surrounded Derek and Xanthe, weapons drawn. Johnny cursed his luck, he'd been so focused on the building, he hadn't thought to sweep for heat or light or the little pulses that came from people when they thought. He was too far away to hear what the men were saying to Xanthe and Derek, but he wasn't too far away to miss the sneer on what appeared to be the lead man's face. He was a big man, who probably used to be very fit but was starting to go to seed. He patted his big ol' beer belly while he spoke, and then scratched at brown stubble streaked with bits of grey.

Johnny felt a cold piece of metal press to the back of his head while he watched. Another boneheaded mistake.

"Alright tough-guy, on yer feet."

Johnny could have just turned around and walloped the man into unconsciousness with a few quick blows, and he might have even been able to do it so fast that the guy behind him wouldn't have been able to fire his weapon. But... Johnny was bulletproof, and the man had given him the perfect excuse to get close to Xanthe and Derek without causing the men in uniform to fire at the far squishier folks that Johnny was trying to protect.

So Johnny put his hands up and rose slowly when he was commanded to. After a quick pat-down revealing nothing but a phone, which was confiscated, a wallet, also taken, and a red bandanna, which was left alone, Johnny was ushered by a man with a gun to the group inside the gate.

"Found another one, boss. This fella was creepin' on the couple."

The wallet and phone were tossed to the big man with the stubble. And Johnny took the opportunity to speak.

"I weren't creepin', I just wanted to make sure the Yankees didn't get themselves killed in a sinkhole or by a fallin' brick."

"You shaddap," one of the men commanded Johnny, adding a hit with the butt of his gun for emphasis, "and don't speak until spoken to!"

Johnny pretended that the blow had forced him to his knees, though people might get wise that he wasn't harmed in a few moments when his face didn't bruise.

Xanthe Wingard