Bounty

Chapter 12
On the road again

The constant and rhythmic creak and sway of the car in this particular freight train both relaxed the woman inside and nearly drove her to insanity. Her thoughts ran rapid in her mind while she ran from every thing else. She was sure she would run from her thoughts too if there were else anywhere to go. Part of her couldn’t believe she was doing this again, and the other part was not surprised that she had. Running, like that smirk and her odd freelance style of fighting, had become her trademark. In a fight she was the lion, never willing to back down from a battle that needed winning, but in this, when it came to real life, she was a coward. Whenever there was hardship she ran. When she had found out she was adopted she ran. The first time she had ever killed another human being she ran. And now here she was running again. It was getting old. When the tough gets going, Alex gets out. She found no room in her busy schedule of every day living to live with any more change than the everyday one of her underwear.
She found she’d been on this train before, though she had never even set foot on this side of Mexico before in her life time. All her getaway vehicles began to look the same after a while. They were all cold and dark, relatively solitude, but that’s how she liked her transportation, dark and lonely. Here there were no nosey tourists asking personal questions, no one giving her side glances and talking under their breath to their little friends never knowing that at any time the woman they were chattering on about could make them spontaneously combust with a wave of her hand. Even the light of day couldn’t get in on the joke here. She always moved in the cover of night as to blend in with her surroundings. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it would work to well, but she always found her way out of whatever she was running from only to be sucked back into it a few years later. Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water… Jaws comes up out of nowhere and eats your children. It’s a shame really. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it would happen again. History always repeated itself in her case, which is why she never dwelt on the past; she figured she would just sit back and watch the rerun.
Alex pretty much had this running thing down to a science, an art if you will. It was getting a little bit too easy to just disappear. She wondered if she should stay hidden. Just lay low and act like nothing was going on. Then she remembered those pesky abilities of hers. If they weren’t exercised regularly they would short out like an old computer and she would lose control over them. God only knew what would happen then. She didn’t want to think about it, but when you’re all alone in a freight train there really isn’t much else to do.
Next her wandering mind took her somewhere else. It took her to the thought of a masked leather-clad woman using her abilities to help the helpless, and avenge the mistreated. She audibly laughed at that idea. No matter how hard things got she just wouldn’t be able to place herself as a, dare she say it, vigilante. She shivered at just the word. No, being the next caped crusader was not in her near, or hopefully far, future. She sighed and rested the back of her head against the back wall of the tin freight car. There would be work. A bounty hunter with her skills would always be needed in… wherever she would go. She would cross that bloody bridge when she got to it, but for now rest was definitely in her near future. Problem was, she doubted if it was in her far future as well.
“Ah the star- studded life of a runaway.” She mumbled to herself before sliding off into her slumber