His Own

Just outside of Fort Drum; in Jefferson County New York, on the old Jeffery's farm; buried under four feet of loose earth in a freshly dug grave. Joe Miller suddenly awoke, and began to claw his way out towards the surface. He no longer needed to breathe, he realized, as he clawed at the loose earth to free himself, and he really didn't seem to care.

In a long tunnel, under the city of Watertown New York, hemmed in by large military trucks, Frank Morgan wondered over the luck he'd had at getting himself into the Army facility.
He had flashed his press pass, half afraid they would open fire or something, and instead the young guard at the booth had just waved him in.
He could not have known that just that day an open, though somewhat restricted, invitation had been given to a reporter who was on good terms with the new facility's commander.
The plan, cooked up by the reporter and the base commander, was to write a carefully worded article about the storage facilities, to dispel the rumors that were circulating.
The young guard had simply waved Frank through at the entrance, when he had seen the press pass, not knowing he had allowed the wrong man into the tunnel. They had only told him to expect a reporter. If he had looked at Franks pass closely, he would have noticed that he was not from the Watertown paper, and he would not have allowed him to enter.

Willie LeFray sat slumped against a wall in an alley off Beechwood Avenue, in Seattle's red light district. He had been dead for over six hours. The money he had stolen, had allowed him to indulge in his habit for over forty six hours with no sleep. The last injection had killed him.
The Cocaine he had purchased had been cut with rat poison, among other things, so that the hype who had sold it to him could stretch it a little further.
The constant hours of indulging in his habit would have killed him anyway, but the addition of the rat poison was all his overworked heart could stand, and it had simply stopped beating in protest.
Willie's eyelids flickered, and his hand shot up to bat at a fly that had been examining his nose.
Twenty feet away on Beechwood Avenue, the prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, and the descending darkness hid the white trails that sped across the sky.

Ira paused, and slowly set the checker that had been in his hand, to one side.
"It's time, ain't it," he stated.
"Yes, I'm afraid it is," the older man replied, getting up from the small table.
"Come on then," the older man continued, "we have a lot to accomplish."
Ira blinked...