During his layover in Philly, ‘Tzal had the majority of his very limited time stripped away by too many delays.

Momentarily, at the Aero Terminal, he had held out home that Amra’s men had dealt with the “Stranger,” the dwarf, and the giant nurse. But, alas, according to what he had been able to glean from a female police officer near the blood-soaked scene, those incompetent fools had run down, confronted, and been taken apart brutally, beautifully, by an off duty soldier of some kind who had been returning from his vacation.

Did they still call that a “furlow”...? He idly wondered as he drove the rental slowly south. Tzal wasn’t certain. It had been at least a century since his last stint in the military. Many of the Long-Lived tended to start off a new assumed identity by joining any of a number of human organizations that would allow much in the way of travel, and very little in the way of questions. It helped to cement the new identity with a government, provided training in the most modern technologies, and gave the Long-Lived a much needed fresh start.

Tzal’s thoughts about his last term of service were becoming clouded. The longer former gods lived, it seemed, the less one could recall for…some reason his grandfather had tried to explain to him centuries ago. Well, he couldn’t quite recall what army he had last served in, but thought it might have been for the country of Peru. Or maybe Chile. It would not have been the Independent Citystate of Brazil; as that had formed only 50 years ago, after Suriname, Paraguay, and Bolivia had seized most of the western half of the former country of Brazil. Most of what they had seized were now deserts, anyway. Not much of value, Tzal had judged at the time.

A shame, really. Those lands had always before been so verdant. A veritable cradle of life… gone now. Not even ants and beetles lived in those wastes now.

Tzal watched as the kilometer markers passed him by on the road as his little rental car hummed along the interstate as he headed South. If he allowed himself to do it, Tzal’s thoughts would often spiral in upon themselves, until he found himself, emotionally, in a deep, dark place. It was a flaw in his character that his mother and siblings, all lost to history now, would try to keep an eye on him, and help him climb out from back when he was young. Before the Europeans came to the Empire of Four Parts.

These strange days, mostly Tzal worked to keep himself from facing too much internal reflection and avoided self discovery for all he was worth.

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Death gods, even those who no longer have regular worshippers, should never spend too much time in their own heads, Tzal thought as the miles slowly sacrificed themselves to the treads of his little rental car. I know humans put a lot of stock in seeing counselors, and doctors for their emotions, and mental well being, but we do not have that luxury. Would they ask me how eating flesh makes me feel? Would they ask me about consuming the souls and power of inumeral humans? Would they try to get me to stop?

He shook his head at the thought, and started to chuckle.

His brief sense of mirth was interrupted by clunking and banging noises from the small trunk space behind him. “Ah, Officer Headlin must have woken up.” Tzal mused, letting the large green signs advised him that now was the time to exit onto I-695 for the Rossville Sports Arena, and Baltimore.

He hadn’t planned to take the transit cop for a road snack, but the tall. Blonde man with the watery blue eyes and sallow, pocked skin had tried to play the tyrant with him as he had been about to leave the Philadelphia area. THe man must have been very angry at not actually being a real Peace Officer of the city, with how he had approached Tzal with the boarish behavior of a bully.

Rather than dawdle, Tzal had simply overpowered the belligerent fool, thrown his weapons and communication gear down into a sewer opening near the curb, and tossed the flaccid body into the cramped little trunk space at the back of the vehicle.

A quick shaking of the wheel back and forth slewed the little car, making the back end fishtail back and forth. He heard more thumps and bangs from the trunk, then silence.

A friend had once advised him that just south of Washington proper, there was a small city where many of “Our Kind” lived now. And if he felt like he had enough time, Tzal vowed to himself that he would pull off in “Dale City” to visit with some former colleagues.

It was feeling like he didn’t have that extra time, though. So it might just be a matter of shifting whatever remains he had left and doing a body dump in one of the many bad neighborhoods and dying, lawless drug infested towns along the I-95 corridor south of DC, like Dumries, or the set of shallow sewage evaporation ponds that used to be the town of Chantilly.

Sundown was near.

Tzal hated driving after dark. Especially on the slow moving American Interstate system. He knew where, roughly, his prey were headed. Ultimately headed, at least. He knew they were going to beat him to the city.

He would just have to arrange to take the prize from Stark when the little monster wasn’t paying attention.

He shivered at the thought of having to face Stark if he made a mistake.

And on he drove, pushing the little rental just above the 65 kilometer per hour mandatory maximum speed.