Felix shoved the shovel into the middle of a six-foot pile of sand on the back of his truck and closed the back of it with a shove.

A three-foot ditch leftover by the arduous dig remained. The local authorities had informed him that if he was going to drive onto the beach residential areas and start digging for treasure that it would be better if he did it higher up in the mountains because sand trickled down. The ditch would be refilled.

Felix didn't know why they didn't just arrest him.

He had just dug a hole illegally in the middle of Santa Monica pier.

Three life-guards had come and warned him not to do it or rather to stop doing it. Felix just figured it was hard to stop a man with a shovel and a metal detector. Half his body had been in the hole when the police officer came with a frown on his face and told him to go up the mountains for his craziness. What he had actually said had the words, "-uck, better, out, of, here, get, the" though the order was slightly less adjusted. The word "u" didn't even come up but it was implied.

His blue Ford pick-up was parked slanted up the hill.

It was getting darker, so he was in a hurry to leave, when his cell phone went off, ringing incessantly. He had a Sprint Kitana, one of those five-inch wide cell phones where names appear on the window display.

It was Lauren.

He opened the phone and ended the call immediately without answering. He put it in his back pocket.

He waited a second and looked down at the ditch shaking his head.

He debated with himself about getting his phone back out of his pocket. Felix was sometimes indecisive about important things. He wanted to talk to someone because it was getting lonely where he was and he couldn't exactly leave. Where would he go if he did?

As if reading his thoughts, his phone rang again. It was the sound of the companies ring tone. He didn't much care for original ring tones. Lauren's ring had been an actual song but Lauren had put it on his phone herself. If anything was original on his phone, it was definitely not of his doing.

He looked at the display with some interest.

It was Brian.

He thought about hanging up but this was important. "Kresmit! What the

hell are you doing?"

"Don't call me Kresmit. I'm in college now," said Felix.

"Did you get it?"

"I been digging for hours now."

"Is the metal detector working?"

"No, just off the pier I thought I hit a large stone and some metal may have been chipped off; we'll have to put most of the sand inside that contraption that Leroy built."

"Well, get the truck out of the mountains quickly. It's getting late."

"Yeah-yeah, don't rush me. You know I like to move slow."

"Well, you better get your bear-like ass over here before the sun goes down!"
"I'm on my way now."

He put the phone away again. He hoped it wouldn't ring again, while he was driving.

He drove uphill for a while before making a left onto the main road. It was called the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway). As he was pulling away, he noticed that across the mountains was a great view of the horizon. The setting sun illuminated the ocean's blue, changing the color of the sky from yellow to red to purple.

He kept coming across street lights that halted progress. He was at least an hour from the 10 freeway. He put his phone on speaker and called Brian back. Brian pretended to be deaf from the other side, "Brian, I'm not going to make it before dark."

Brian was quiet but then a huge sigh broke his silence. "Are you going to make it?"

"Well, I'm going to stop at a gas station to put a tarp on the sand."

"You should have done that in the mountains two hours ago, Kresmit!"

"Don't worry, it's not dark yet and stop calling me Kresmit, Brainiac."
Felix pulled up at an Arco station. He put his ATM card on a machine that claimed to take ten percent off his next purchase if he bought more than twenty dollars in gas. He decided to fill the tank. "Lost?" A strange voice asked, addressing him.

A blonde woman and her boyfriend had pulled up on the other side of the pump beside him and were about to get off to enter the Arco store. "Oh, no, just stopped to get some gas, actually."

The boyfriend ignored them both and went to pay for gas by himself.

It wasn't until he realized he was wearing a black T-shirt with the word "Lost" inscribed on the front that Felix got the meaning of what the girl had asked. "Sorry," he corrected himself, shaking his head.

"Haha, it's okay," she said, "We came across some people with signs like sixteen miles back. Do you know what that's about?"

"You found people here out this late?" Felix asked, surprised.

"Big guys in black coats and dark red collars, you know like a vampire cult or something and they were holding signs."
"Yes," Felix said, "You might want to stay away from them. It's good you're at least sixteen minutes from where you last saw them."

"Oh, they're a drag, huh?"
"Only at night," Felix said, smiling at them. He was almost done covering the sand with his tarp. He had tied the tarp from more than four corners. It lay flat and sturdy above the sand. He was tying the last strap when he noticed he had put more than twenty in his tank.

The girl laughed and so did her boyfriend. The young man in his blue suit came out of the store and said, "Shoot, Krissy, let this chub-tub get on. We going to be late."

"Shh! Sorry about that; it's my brother. We're heading to a party if you want to come along."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I can't," Felix said, opening the door of his truck, "Believe it or not, I'm at work at the moment."

"Work late?"

"Yeah."

"Rare in these times," she said.

"So is a party," he said.

Felix drove away toward the sixteen-minute-away vampire cult. They were probably closer. It was semi-dark already.

The jeep followed him out, though.

Felix called Brian, "Wzup?"

"Hey, I got a follower."

"Already?"

"Not a vampire, just some girl and her brother."

"And they're following you? Shit, they're agents."

"Yeah, right. Are you sure?"

"Remember, Mark said to beware of people that claim potentials as their siblings."

Felix adjusted his rearview mirror. Felix took a deep breath and said, "You're right, I see them taking out guns. The girl has an oozy, typical agent stuff."

"You ready, Big guy?" Brian asked, changing to expert mode.

"Yeah, yeah," Felix said.

A spray of bullets illuminated the area.

Felix laid low but otherwise ignored the shooting. Bullets hit the back window but it was more than bullet proof by then. The bullet's ricochet and one hit his side-view mirror, shattering it. Brian was still on the line.

"Keep me posted, Felix, don't go quiet on me, Krismet."

"Just getting my key, so I can unlock my glove compartment."

"Ammo?"

"Typical stuff, couple of grenades, a gun for you-know-what, an ak-47 underneath the seat."

"Is that all?"

"Need an accurate list?"

"Yes, Felix," Brian said. He was being professional.

"Can't," Felix said, "Too little time for that."

Bullets continued to hit his truck, some went through the metal on the back, poking holes where the sand was put, causing sand to squirt from the holes as the truck moved.

Though Felix was looking for a key with his right hand and was speaking through the speaker on the phone, he was still driving toward the vampire cult, which might have been a lie from the agents.

Sand blasted the window shield of the jeep cracking it in some parts.

The jeep got on one side. The truck made no move to stop it coming alongside it.

Felix was still moving keys in a five-inch diameter key ring up and up.

The one he was looking for was marked with a yellow piece of tape.

"On key 331, 330, 328, don't worry, I think it's number 300."
"What's going on?"

"They shattered my side-view from the right bullet, I think, they're coming alongside. The young one in blue is aiming his 49 at me. 310. Here we go."

The Jeep came alongside Felix and a brown hand was pulling the trigger of a gun that almost exploded with noise.

Felix was half-ignoring, half-moving out of the way. He leaned over with a hand on the wheel to put the key in the glove compartment. Keys jingled as they slid down in a bunch by gravity.

The side-mirrors weren't bullet proof. Holes appeared on them out of thin air. Shards of glass that flew to the sides scraped at Felix but only a tiny piece scratched him on the forehead.

"Wow, sounds like heavy gunfire."

"Got the wrong key," Felix said, nonchalantly.

"What!?"
"Stay calm, Brian, it's standard mistake, as Mark calls it. When you really need it, you always get the wrong key. Oh, shit, holdonasec."

Brain had his phone on his lap but he had to put it on the dashboard, as the road curved in a wide S shape. His truck slowed down but the jeep sped up and now it was in front of him.

The cell phone was by the passenger side on the dash board. Bullets rained on him from the front now. The girl actually shot backwards at him as she maneuvered through the turns.

The one in blue was reloading a clip, bullet by bullet but he was going so fast, that he was back to shooting at Felix's truck in seconds.

"Voice, voice! Krismet, what the hell!"

The phone vibrated from the screams.

"Oh, found the key," Felix said and opened the glove compartment, a small grenade rolled onto his hand because it was over-flowed with items. A few knives fell out, a small silver revolver lay underneath a pile of green-looking weapons. Felix felt the grenade and removed the clip.

Just then, the turn ended and he had to adjust the truck or fly off a cliff into the ocean.

Ahead loomed the side of the beaches and the road always descended because he had come from the most elevated area of Santa Monica. He saw a few homes on the mountains themselves and some popular eatery's along the coast.

He turned the wheel to the other side without letting go of the top of the grenade. He got alongside them from the right just like they had done to him. They got in front of him, though and blocked him but his truck was faster, changed back to the left lane and drove past them from that side.

There was a flicker like when a fly gets zapped by a bug zapper.

In the jeep, it sounded like a small ball just landed on the floor.

It rolled and hit the driver-side door.

Felix stopped his truck a good distance ahead of them and turned to look at them.

The jeep slowed down to get behind the truck, except first part of the front of jeep exploded and caught fire. One of the girl's legs (from thigh to foot) actually flew over the young man's head and was lost in the ocean. Part of the other leg was half-singed and half-whole. The young man, at the sight of this, jumped out of the jeep and ran at the truck, shooting wildly in anger.

The blonde girl screamed loudly but her screams were drowned by a sudden cause of death as the rest of the jeep exploded, causing the young man in blue to hit the floor instinctively.

Felix was taking his time retrieving his phone from the passenger's side seat. "Brian?"

"I'm still here but I thought I heard an explosion."

"You won't have to worry about the girl, anymore, if that's what you mean."

"What happened, don't be brief?"

"Threw a grenade at the jeep as I drove passed it. Grenade rolled because they maneuvered their vehicle to my lane when I slowed down and parked on the curve. Girl's whole bottom half was caught in part of the explosion. One of her legs flew over the young's man head so high in the air that it went over the mountains and into the ocean. A small splash and probably a herd of sharks will take care of the rest. Jeep exploded not like thirty seconds later, making a blonde toast, boy managed to get out in time, partially because he was so angry at his girl's misfortune. The young boy is getting up as I speak, coming at me firing his weapon."

"Ha, amateurs," Brian said, laughing.

The gun was close to his eyes as the young man neared the truck, scared. The door opened and smashed the young man's head and part of his body backward. He hit the floor back first as Felix came out of his truck, slowly.

"Peace planner?" Felix asked.

The boy was shaking but not getting up. He wouldn't dare get up.

Felix walked slowly toward him. "Peace planner?" he repeated.

At first the boy was too stunned to respond and in a lot of pain from the looks of it. The gun had skidded off toward the mountain-side of the road. They were close to where the cliff met the ocean. "Wha-?" said the boy.

"You're an agent, right?"

The boy didn't say anything. He remained still.

"Typical agent bullshit," Felix said.

The boy crossed his arms.

Felix hit him over the head with his gun and he passed out.

"I'm bringing one in," Felix said to his phone.

"Yeah, Lucy will love that. Did you know she gave coffee to Dracula before me? What the hell is wrong with her!"

"Hey, let's deal with the stupid sand first. What am I supposed to do now? This stupid and his friend got holes all over my truck."

He picked the kid up from the road and carried him over one shoulder. He was muscled enough for the task.

Just then, he saw a flash of lights. They were torches from a group of men running in black cloaks fifty feet ahead of him. "Uh, gotta go, Brian. Big trouble, and all that."

"Vampires?"

"Leroy said to get the sand, I'm getting his freaking sand!"

"I knew I should have come along."