Does it take a rocket scientist to figure out that she might be a little on edge, and that you boys might not be helping things by coming in here and rehashing everything where she can hear it?"
The men at the booth suddenly found something intensely interesting on the surface of the table top, though one-by-one each mumbled a "no," in response to the cook's persistent glare.
The cook then turned without another word and disappeared into the bowels of the cafe. When he emerged again, he was carrying a coffee pot and a platter of biscuits and gravy.
Kevin hoovered his meal and, as the previous kerfuffle had pretty well scuttled all talk of the monster, decided to pay his bill and move on in search of more information.
When he emerged into from the cafe door into the late afternoon sun, his ears were arrested by the sounds of sniffling and muffled sobs.
Kevin followed the sounds to a small bench under a shade tree between the cafe's back door and its dumpster. There, smoking a cigarette in shaky hands sat Rachel.
When she saw him coming she snuffed it out quickly and hastily began to make her way back into work.
"I'm sorry," Kevin began. "I didn't mean to disrupt you. I just wanted to see if you were okay."
This caused her to pause and turn back toward him. "I don't know. Honestly mister, I don't know if I'm ever going to be okay again."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"With some random stranger I don't know in the back lot near a dumpster?! What do you think's going to happen here?" Rachel asked with an air of suspicion.
"Nothing at all, ma'am. I'm sorry to have bothered you." Kevin said backing off. Great, Kev...your first chance to hear from someone close to the case and you spook her. Kevin turned sharply and began walking back across the street towards the motel.
"Umm...wait, Mr. If you...if you really want to know about it, I'm just upset about my brother. He was one of the kids who's gone missing. You may have heard about it."
"First, please call me Kevin. Second, yeah...I've heard about the abductions. I'm very sorry for your family's grief."
"Thanks for not saying, 'loss'" Rachel replied between sniffles. "Every time someone calls it that, I just want to scream at them...It's like they're already giving up on finding Jason, my brother" (she said by way of explanation).
Kevin paused a moment to measure his words very carefully so as to no undercut Rachel's hope...but not to make false promises to her that he knew he couldn't keep either. "He's blessed to have people who love him so much. I'm sure that's a source of strength for him...wherever he is."
The girl clasped her hands together, took a deep staccato inhalation and stared into the sky. "I just wish mom and dad never would've let him go out that night in the first place."
"He went into the woods?" Kevin asked.
"No...at least, I mean...we don't think so. We live in town...and Jason just wanted to walk down to his friend, Walt's house to see this new video game or something. It was only a block away...we figured everything would be fine. But then...when they found his cap and backpack out by the creek...I just..." With this, Rachel again broke down crying and leaned into Kevin, who put an arm around her.
Though not really the "comforting type" Kev's heart did go out to Rachel, and he tried to comfort in his own way...by saying as little as possible, awkwardly patting her shoulder...and just being there.
that evening
After a late dinner with Rachel and her parents, Kevin meandered back to The Spruce View, and commenced preparations for his evening's primary activities.
From what I could gather from Rachel and her parents, law enforcement has been focusing its search in the woods because that's where the children's belongings have been found; but so far no one has confirmed seeing any of these kids in the woods prior to their abductions. What if the woods are nothing but a distraction?
Kevin slid back a panel on his suit's gauntlet and pressed a button, activating the Racerunner suit's stealth mode. Then, he headed for the Addison's (Rachel's family) street and began patrolling the town in an ever widening grid pattern. Thanks to the disappearances (and consequent monster rumors) the streets were essentially empty. This made listening for anything out the ordinary all the easier. Additionally, the Racerunner helmet was scanning for any variations in the electromagnetic spectrum. If there was a monster in Ketter's Gap, Kevin would uncover it.
About twenty minutes later, things started to perk up. Near the terminus of a dead end street, the visor's infrared scanning started to go wild. The center of the activity was in the edge of the woods that backed up against a small ramshackle house.
Kevin tried to move in stealthily around the perimeter of the woods. Hopefully--if there was any real danger, he could position himself between it and the homes. As it turned out, however, a blood-curdling scream coming from the back of the little house cut those hopes short. He was going in full-speed now.
As Kevin rounded to the back of the house the saw in the shadows a...well, he didn't really know how to describe it. There before him was an amoeba-like silhouette, dark--almost pitch black--on the inside, with a "glowing gray" (if you can believe it) outline. The thing had a extended what appeared to be a tentacle into the house--as in, through the worn siding--without creating any obvious hole.
An instant later, the tentacle emerged through the wall with a small girl screaming for help. The amoeba-monster was pulling her towards an expanding aperture on its body. It looked like it meant to "eat" the child or something.
At this point, Kevin decided he had no more time to investigate or question. He had to try to free the girl from the creature...or at least distract it enough so that it wouldn't consume her. A brief mental command over the suit's cybernetic network and an extensible metallic whip shot out of the right hand gauntlet, crackling to life with electricity.
Kev ran toward the creature as he swung the whip around his head in a giant arc to generate force. He launched it at the beast, meaning to send a mild shock through the creature, but was perplexed when the Racerunner's signature weapon simply passed through the creature's body as easily as its own tentacle had earlier passed through the walls of the house.
Even as the whip struck the breaker box on the side of the house and fried the electrical system, the amoeba writhed and undulating like and enraged beast as a second tentacle emerged and shot straight towards Kevin.
