>Day:10:2111
>rabbit
She lay dead at his feet and seeing her crumpled body limp on the cobblestones under the night sky, arms and legs at disturbing angles, sent a rush of sorrow through the core of his chest. Discordant church bells echoing through the manmade canyon between the old brick buildings in the narrow alley seemed apropos to the sadness that choked him. Yet something was wrong.
It was her hair he decided as he tilted his head studying her, ignoring the growing awareness of pain in his left shoulder. Her hair wasn't supposed to be that long nor that colour. She was supposed to have shorter black hair, not long and brunette. Although a flash of her as a blonde scampered across his memory and was gone as quickly as it appeared.
And she wasn't supposed to be dead. It was impossible that she was dead, and a small helpless sound vibrated his throat as he remembered that he loved her. He couldn't remember her name, but he knew that he loved her.
The pain in his shoulder was getting worse and was now matched by its twin in his left hip.
What was her name?
He grimaced as his the pain in his hip lanced across his lower back, the arhythmic tolling of the bells annoying him now as he searched his memory for her.
The last thing he remembered was the dream; running across a grassy meadow in the moonlight, chasing a playful rabbit.
Rabbit. Was her name Rabbit?
He shook his head; that was wrong.
In the dream Rabbit could talk.
"Hurry." Rabbit had said, "Hurry or we'll have to jump."
And he ran as fast as he could as Rabbit pulled him along by his jacket cuff, her long legs sleek and sure in the darkness, her feet light on the grass. His own feet clumsy and heavy as he ran, his legs stiff and weakening quickly. He was about to beg her to slow down when she fell.
They both fell.
"Who are you?" he whispered to the dead girl, lowering himself painfully to one knee his hip screaming in shattering agony, his hand trembling as he reached out to touch her.
There was blood on the back of his hand. It was scraped, a bruise forming, purples emerging through the seeping blood. Behind him the church bells were growing louder, drowning out the shush of traffic passing on the streets at either end of the alley. This was becoming surreal, like a bad European student art film.
The skin of her cheek was pale, as soft as silk and still warm.
"Who are you?" he asked again, pleading, "I can't remember." and he felt tears begin to well in his eyes, blurring his vision of her. How could he not remember her name?
"Run." said Rabbit in a barely audible whisper that caused him to pull his hand back, startled.
The girl's lips, slightly parted, hadn't moved but the voice had come from her. Then he realized that lips didn't have to move to form that word – it was all in the tongue and the breath.
"Run!" Rabbit hissed louder and he felt a cold rush trill up his spine and over his scalp.
Those weren't church bells
He turned to see two men clamouring down the old fire escape on the building behind him, their pounding feet setting the metal rungs to sing like badly pitched bells. One of the men clutched a pistol with a comically fat extended barrel.
Not a barrel – a silencer.
They were coming to kill him.
Or worse
He looked down at the girl, his chest hitching at the thought of leaving her that way, but he was alive and needed to stay that way.
"I'm sorry." he whimpered, and ignoring the pain in his left hip he rose and ran down the alley away from the men, zig-zagging to make a poorer target. He heard the throaty 'chunk' from behind and saw the limestone dust kick up from a cobblestone in front of him where the bullet skipped.
They were definitely trying to kill him.
When he reached the end of the alley he didn't slow, just changed direction and shot past the edge of the last building onto a broad sidewalk. At the end of the block he saw the intersection was wide, and knew there were four lanes for each crossing street, both one way; one northbound, the one he was on westbound.
>Day:10:2119
>tradecraft
How did he know the direction the streets in front of him before seeing traffic or a sign? How did he know that out of sight across the street he was running toward there was a hotel half a block south with a lobby open to both that street and the one a block to the east? And how did he know that a block east of that was a bar that was always crowded and had a rear exit that wasn't alarmed?
He had no time to wonder why he knew those things. He just ran, and running wondered why the word –
tradecraft
– had arisen in his mind.
And so on. The 'Day' number is how many days remain before the terrorist attack that has the potential to trigger World War III, and the time is standard military time of that day. The dilemma in the story is that the only person who knows the details of the attack is the guy in the alley standing over the dead girl. During his capture and torture by enemy agents he induced his own amnesia by packaging his memories, encrypting them and burying them deep in his subconscious with an obscure password that only the dead girl would know.
It's a good story, and I promise that once it's published you won't be able to put it down, and as a bonus, it's got a pretty sweet and steamy love story to boot.
But there's that 60,000 word barrier.
I did some research and discovered that the following novels all came in around 50,000 words or fewer;
- Animal Farm
- Of Mice and Men
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- Speak
- The Outsiders
- The Great Gatsby
