Harrisburg

In the beginning of this blog, I used to write fiction, too. Not just boring day by day shit. So in order to write more I decided to start a daily (Okay, that's probably wishful thinking) spur of the moment writing session. Maybe a scene, or a character will pop up to say hi. Who knows. In order to make it random, so I can just jump right in without really thinking, I'm going to start the practice session with a word from the main article on the front page of Wikipedia. I decided to count the words until I get to what day it is. Today is the 20th, and the 20th word on Wikipedia is Harrisburg. So here goes.

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"Harrisburg!" the captain shouted. "Run, Harrisburg! We've got to get out."

"Just gi'me a minute, a'right?" Harrisburg studied the bomb. The wires were like a tangle of veins in an anatomy textbook. He wished he'd paid more attention when they covered standard explosives. Like anybody thought Al-Qaeda would ever get their hands on a Soviet nuclear bomb. All the special tricks to disarming IED's, improvised explosive devices, didn't mean dick.

And that pussy Captain Stowbridge crying like a little girl with a frog in her drawers wasn't helping any. Yankees, he dismissed Stowbridge's pleas and concentrated on the wires, trying to ignore the display on the cell-phone wired into the bomb. A phone call at any moment would detonate the bomb.

Hard to ignore.

Sometimes I wish I never left Wal-mart, he thought. He used to complain about such stupid shit back then. Working nights, having to work with Harry, the guy who spent all night jacking off instead of stocking shelfs. God, I miss Harry, he thought.

The girls in the corner were crying, making it even harder to concentrate. How could anyone put a bomb in an orphanage? Just because the president and first lady were going to give a speech in the plaza out front. When the bomb was discovered everyone fled except two girls. One was badly burned, her left leg missing from the knee down. The other girl clutched her hand, whispering or chanting or something. Hard to tell when you don't know the language.

Concentrate, you dumbfuck.

The door flew open and a woman covered in a burka rushed to the girls, ignoring Harrisburg and the bomb. She hugged the girls, barely touching the burnt one but still oozing so much love and compassion even Harrisburg could feel it. She murmured a few words over and over, stroking the burned girls hair and smiling.

Harrisburg looked around and noticed Captain Stowbridge took his own advice and ran like Montezooma's Revenge.

"Hey, Lady, you speak English?" he snapped.

She turned, at least he supposed she did. The damn sheet she was wearing made it hard to tell.

"Yes," she replied, rising and walking toward him. "I speak it quite well," she continued, a British accent tickling his eardrums. "I went to medical school in Dublin."

So, not British, Irish. Maybe she was a leprechaun and was wearing that burka to hide her pointy ears. Apparently leprechauns were bulletproof because she walked right up and rested her hand on the side of the bomb.

"Well maybe you don't understand what's going on, Lady, but this bomb is going to go off any minute. You and those girls need to get the hell out of here."

"I know more than you think, Harrison. You're tired and hungry and just want to go home. I want to go home, too. " She moved closer and peered into the mass of wires and electronics the terrorists attached to the side of the bomb.

"Whoa, there, Lady." He gripped her wrist before she could touch what looked like the remains of a pocked calculator, or maybe a PDA, one of those Blackberries he'd heard so much about. Blackberries. Always makes his mouthwater when anybody mentions their Blackberry. His granny makes the best blackberry cobbler in the world. Won 2nd place in the state fair one year. The other lady just won because she put brandy all over the top and lit it on fire. That has to be cheating, but she won. Granny was madder than he'd ever seen her.

Fuck! Concentrate or you're going to find out what it feels like to be millions of individual atoms all glowing in the dark. She was right about being tired and hungry. He'd been searching for this bomb for the last 18 hours, searching everywhere within a block of the capital plaza where the president of Iraq and the US were going to announce a major shift in policy. Harrisburg had no idea what it was. Hell, he wasn't sure what the current policy was. Hate anyone different than yourself seemed to be the dominant theme.

"Let go of me and step aside, soldier. I forgot more about bombs than you'll never know." With her other hand she pulled off the burka, revealing an older woman with gray streaking through her short black hair. She took the wire clippers out of his hand and gently urged him back. "Well, well. What do we have here?" she muttered to herself. The girls huddled on the floor cried out.

Then the display on the cell phone lit up.