“Do I really have to take everything off?”
“Yes, you really do,” I said for the second time, clutching a backpack full of clothes I had bought for her less than an hour ago.  What was her problem?  Never changed clothing out in the wilderness behind a tree?
“I don’t feel comfortable.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”  She leaned out from the other side of the tree to look at me.
“No you’re not.”
“No, I’m not.  You have two more minutes.”  Sarah grumbled and leaned back so I couldn’t see her again.  I heard something unzip and saw her jeans flying into a ditch that was about five feet from the tree.  Then came her pink checkered flannel shirt.  I caught a flash of her arm this time.  I patiently waited until I saw her bra and her underwear land into the ditch.
“Okay, I’m undressed.”
“No, you’re not.  You have a bobby pin in your hair.”  She let out a frustrating noise as she tossed the small metal object into the ditch.
“Happy?”
“Now take the towel and drench it in the rubbing alcohol and clean yourself.  Make sure you scrub under your fingernails and your hair.”
“It’s cold.”
“You have one minute and thirty seconds.”  She let out that noise again.  I heard her squeezing out a towel into the Tupperware bowl I gave her.  Silence.  Squeeze.  Silence.
“Okay.”
“Throw the towel and the bowl into the ditch.”  They flew from behind the tree and landed on top of her clothes.  I threw the backpack that I was holding so that it landed right next to the tree.  Her hands opened the bag and dug out a set of clothes.  The hands and clothes disappeared behind the tree.
“Curtis?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know what size I wear?”
“I notice things.”
“Creepy.”
“You’re welcome.”  I lit a match and threw it into the ditch, instantly catching everything in it on fire.  There was a popping noise followed by a series of crackling sounds.  The flames burnt strong, and I sat down close to it to feel its warmth.  Sarah stepped out from behind the tree and sat next to me.  She was now dressed in a striped blue and white polo shirt with black jeans and a brown belt.  Her long wavy light brown hair fell to her shoulders, complimenting her bright blue eyes.  She was a tall slender figure, with curves in all the right places.  Except for the small bruise on her right jaw, her face was flawless, with a tint of pink around her cheeks.  So what was a girl like Sarah doing here?  Just unlucky, I guess.

My name is Curtis and I am a Marksman.  Continental Marksmen, also known as CM, is a – hard to find the right word – business.  It is an underground operation owned by a few of the wealthiest people of our times.  To be concise, it helps people … disappear.  There are now about thirty thousand people working for or with CM.
It started out in the year 2031 when domestic violence rates started to grow at an abnormally fast rate.  By 2033, four out of every five homes in the world experienced frequent and violent domestic abuses.  Whether nobody knew or nobody cared, the government didn’t try to do anything to stop it and neither did the local police departments.  No lobbyists in the Congress, no protest groups, nothing.  The world just didn’t care anymore.  Long story short: a whole bunch of people got together to put a stop to this.  Over the years, the club became bigger and bigger and eventually built secret headquarters in every state in America.
I am a Marksman, but within the agency, people like me are usually referred to as Erasers.  Erasers are the agents who actually meet our clients and act as guides to help them move from checkpoint to checkpoint, making sure they stay out of trouble.  The job is simple: keep the clients alive and hidden long enough to make them disappear.
                This time around was surprisingly easy.  One of our town spies found out about Sarah, so he bugged the house and gathered enough evidence to forward to the agency about her boyfriend abusing her.  I was one of the few who were not on vacation, so they called me in to help her out.  I had to guide her from Colorado to Illinois, and we didn’t encounter any major obstacles on the way, so it was simple.

                 The last bit of the fire died out and I got back up, kicking some dirt over the soot and smoke just enough to cover the ashes.  I took a small paper package filled with garden weeds from my pocket and tore it open over the ditch, spreading the seeds around.  Give it one or two days, and these genetically enhanced seeds will grow to make the freshly dug up earth look as if it hadn’t been touched for years.  I kicked the rest of the dirt in and picked up the backpack.  I checked to see if there was anything left and hurled it as far away from us as possible.  The police can have fun pretending that’s valuable evidence.
                “Time to move.”  I led her down the mountain, through a manmade tunnel that led to a cave.  We hopped a few stones in the cave and were back to daylight again.  We stood at the mouth of the cave that overlooked most of the city.
                “Sarah, this is where we say goodbye.  When you get to that city down there, go to the public library and request for two copies of Paradise Lost to one of the staff members there.  Then go to the nonfiction biography section, pull out a book on Abraham Lincoln, put it on the ground, and stand up.  
                “At this point, Jack will talk to you and give you further directions.  If Jack does not come to you, or you feel something suspicious is going on, come out of the library with your hairclip on the other side of your hair.  I will find you then.”
                “So you’re staying here?” she asked.  I took out my binoculars and sat down on the highest rock I could find.  She got the message.  “Listen, Curtis.  Thanks a lot for helping me out.  You have no idea how horrible it was having to put up with him.”
                “Continental Marksmen wishes you good luck with your new life.”  There was a pause, and she turned and started to walk down the hill.  When she disappeared out of my sight, I put the binoculars away and jumped down from the rock.  Cities mean police and police mean possible ambush points everywhere.  For the safety of both the agents and our clients, we have to follow our clients to their next checkpoint without them knowing.
                Sarah finally reached the library and walked in.  I bought a newspaper from a stand and found a bench near the library entrance.  I was reading about a murder when Sarah came out of the library with her hairclip in a different place.  I folded the newspaper and walked over to her.  She looked startled, as if she expected me to be still sitting on that rock.
                “What’s the problem?”
                “I did everything you said.  Jack never showed up.”  I handed her the newspaper and pointed to the bench.
                “Sit there and start reading this.  I’ll be back.”  I left her sitting on the bench and went straight to a pay phone.  I dialed the thirty-eight-digit code to get to the CM Headquarters.
                “Twelve-thirty.  ID please,” the answering machine picked up.  I punched in twelve more numbers and was led directly to an operator.
                “Hi Curtis.  What’s the problem?”
                “Look up Jack.”
                “What’s his title?”
                “Charon.”
                “Hold on a sec.”  There was a humming noise for a few seconds, followed by rapid typing on a keyboard.  Just like me, Jack is a Marksman, but his title is Charon.  He is the last guide who will escort our client to a bank vault where they will be given new papers for their new identities, along with some cash and a place to live.  “It says here that he’s Illinois on an assignment at the moment.”
                “Where?”
                “I bounced his tracer to yours.  You’re about a kilometer away from him.”
                “Pinpoint.”
                “Let’s see … a thousand and fourteen point two meters twenty-nine degrees to the north.  Three and a half meters above.”
                “Okay.”  I hung up and entered the coordinates into my tracer.  When we first join the agency, part of the initiation process is them surgically placing a chip inside us that acts as a global position locator.  Every agent is also given a handheld device that takes the information from the chips and locates a specific agent in case of emergencies.  
                A green arrow appeared on the screen, telling me where to go.  I walked back to Sarah, who was nervously glancing at passing cars over her newspaper.  I went past Sarah without looking at her and said, “Follow me at a distance.”  I kept on walking, trusting her to do as I said.  According to the tracer, Jack was on the second floor of some sort of a building.  It turns out that building was some cheap motel.  The name was Joe’s Inn.
                I followed the tracer’s direction and went up a flight of cement stairs that was near-crumbling.  I didn’t look back, but I heard Sarah following me from a good twenty-foot distance.  Pretty soon, Sarah and I were standing in front of room 28.  The curtains were closed, so I couldn’t look into the window and there was no sound coming from the other side of the door.  I tapped the door a couple of times.
                “Jack, Curtis.  Open up.”
                No reply.  The tracer was now flashing red, which meant that the target in question was within a three-meter radius.  I started pounding on the door.
                “Open up, Jack.”
                No answer.  Sarah tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the what’s-going-on look.  I shrugged and took out my picklock set.  I fumbled with the lock for a few seconds and heard it click, so I swung the door inwards and walked in cautiously.  Sarah followed closely behind this time.  There was one bed, one bathroom, and an armchair next to a nightstand, but nobody in the room.  After about five paces in, a lot of things happened at once.
                The door slammed shut, which caused us to spin around, only to see two men charging at us with impact batons.  I reached for my pistol, but didn’t have enough time to shoot so both Sarah and I fell to the ground after being jabbed in the stomach.  After that I passed out.

                When I came to, Sarah and I were both tied to metal chairs that were placed about a foot away from a table in the middle of some dark room.  A man who was wearing a cloak and a hood over his head was sitting across from us, pointing a gun at us in one gloved hand.  There were six men in a rough circle around us who all looked as if they could punch through concrete walls.  Boy, oh boy, we were so screwed.

To be continued …