Chapter 17: Gunmetal, Leather, and an Engine

He shrugged his coat on over his broad shoulders, trying to ignore the guffaws that followed him out of the building, and hefted his duffel bag onto his back. The early autumn sun had set nearly two hours earlier, the gravel parking lot only lit by a few outdoor lights. Walking past a log truck parked awkwardly near the porch, he noted it was most likely Ludlow's and considered committing an act of vandalism when he heard the light clink of metal against metal. Someone grunted softly nearby and he realized it was coming from beneath the truck. Walking around to the other side of the vehicle, he saw a pair of feminine legs sticking out from beneath the hood and coughed politely to catch her attention. The young woman froze at the sound and quickly slid out from beneath the truck, jumping up to wipe her dirty hands on his shirt.

"Hey-mmph!" he tried to protest, but she had her hand over his mouth, silencing him as she shoved him up against the vehicle.

"I'm sorry about your shirt, but this way you can't tell the police without being accused of helping me," she whispered. "Now what do you want, and how did you do that?"

She released him and stepped back as he caught his breath, looking her over. She was probably in her early twenties, her thin long-sleeve tee barely hiding the outline of her well-muscled form and her black ponytail tucked through the hole in her trucker cap with piercing blue eyes below. He had to admit she was right about the shirt: if he told anyone a young woman had been messing with Ludlow's truck, it was likely he would be seen as her accomplice with all the black grease on him.

"Do what?" he asked, referring to her question and she shrugged.

"You were whispering in there, less than whispering, and I could hear you clearly. Are you a ventriloquist?"

He shook his head, crouching down to look under the truck where he had found her. "Not exactly. I have pretty good hearing though, and I'm guessing you do too if you could hear me through all that noise."

The young woman nodded in reply as she got down beneath the truck again and pulled a dark silver spike of some sort out from where it hung beneath her shirt. Untying the leather thong it was attached to from around her neck, she wedged the sharp end of it into a screw head and continued working, ignoring the ex-busboy's surprised look.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked, pointing at the spike. She bit her bottom lip and continued to work at the screw before replying, "My mother gave it to me. She said it was mine."

"Can I see it?"

The young woman gave him a sidelong look and grunted as the screw finally popped out, falling into the gravel beside her shoulder. Scooting out from underneath the vehicle, she reluctantly handed the spike up to him and he observed carefully, holding it up so it caught the light from the pub, shining with a dull glint. After a moment he fingered a shoestring tied around his neck and pulled a similar spike out from beneath his shirt, comparing the two. She stood up beside him, both looking in awe at the nearly identical shards.

"I don't think I caught your name, sir," she spoke up after a moment.

"Clark," he answered, shaking her hand and noted that she had a strong grip. She gave him a hesitant smile. "...Darcie. A pleasure to meet you."

He smiled back and handed her her spike, watching as she replaced it around her neck.

"So… do you know what it is?" he asked. Darcie shrugged, pulling some bent hairpins out of her pocket and climbing up to turn her attention to the truck door.

"Only that my mom gave it to me, it's mine, and that it's composed of an atypical alloy with unidentifiable component elements. Do you know?"

The question made him pause, wondering how she would react to the answer. She didn't seem to notice his hesitance, concentrating on picking the lock on the door and Clark rubbed the back of his neck, trying to figure out how he, a complete stranger to this young woman, could explain its origins without her thinking he was a lunatic. But if a drunk trucker hellbent on giving her crap didn't faze her, what he had to say wouldn't scare her too bad. He hoped.

"Well," he began, "I don't really know how to explain this, but these things aren't from Earth."

Darcie nodded without looking away from what she was doing. "Meteorite. That makes sense. But how were they passed on to us?"

"Um, they're not from a meteorite either." Clark said slowly, "These sticks weren't made on this planet. And we aren't from here either."

Her skilled fingers froze over the keyhole and something clicked inside the door as she looked down at him. "Have you been drinking?"

He shook his head no and she shrugged, opening the door she'd just unlocked and rolled back the filthy carpeting.

"I know it's a lot to take in, but it's true. You may have felt it sometimes, like when you can lift things you shouldn't be able to and zoom in on something far away just by thinking about it. You can also hear better than most people and quite a few other things I'm still discovering myself." he explained. "I'm not drunk, it's-"

"I apologize for interrupting, but I know you're not drunk. And you can stop talking now, I believe you."

He looked up at her in surprise, having expected a completely different reaction.

"What do you mean?" he asked and Darcie rocked back on her heels, balanced on the doorframe with her hands on her knees as she looked down at him. "It makes sense, that's what I mean. And if what you're saying is true, than we're both-"

She stopped suddenly and gripped the spike around her neck, twisting around to look over the hood of the log truck at the lit-up pub.

"Shit." she murmured.

"What's wrong?" he asked as she ducked down under the steering wheel, shaking her head as she yanked some wires up from beneath the driver's bench, stripping the ends with her teeth and twisting the two together. "Can you drive?"

"Yeah, why?"

The logging truck's grimy headlights lit up and Darcie hopped out beside him, wiping perspiration from her forehead despite the chill night air. "Great, get in the truck. We need to go."

Guessing he wasn't going to get an answer out of her until they'd stolen the vehicle, he reluctantly got in and put it into gear as Darcie slid onto the bench beside him.

"Where to?" he questioned, turning to exit the parking lot.

"It doesn't matter as long as it's not south. Just keep driving and don't stop!"

She stuck her head out the open window, looking back at the raucous pub and he got the sense that she expected to be followed. Getting out of the small town and onto the highway was simple enough, but she didn't relax yet, leaning out the window to check behind them every few minutes. Only when he'd been driving for nearly twenty minutes did she finally roll the window back up. The cabin was silent for a while, quiet except for the rumble of the tires on asphalt and the hum of a broken heater.

"My apologies for getting you dragged into this," she said after a while, "There's probably going to be people looking for you now that we've been seen together."

Clark frowned. "Police officers, more like. And where the hell did you learn to hotwire a truck?!"

She cowered back at his raised voice and shrank into the corner of the seat. "No, no police officers. Just… someone's looking for me."

He grunted in response and Darcie hugged her arms over his chest, staying quiet in hopes that he wouldn't hit her.

A light rain began to fall and collected on the windscreen only to be wiped away again as they took the highway west, away from the bigger cities. Clark glanced at her occasionally, wondering how this young woman who had broken a trucker's hand only an hour before could be hugging herself out of fear in a stolen logging truck. He considered turning her in at the nearest police station, but the fact that she had a shard just like his gave them a connection he needed to figure out and curiosity over her cryptic words about being hunted was beginning to get the better of him.

It was a little past nine, around the usual time that he would have taken a break to eat dinner, but tonight was a bit unusual. Chrissy had been the one serving her at the pub, but Clark remembered hearing Darcie only order a Coke. And if she was anything like him, she'd be ravenous.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, keeping his voice soft so he wouldn't scare her again. She shook her head no, but stopped clenching her fists, so that was a start.

The heater turned out to be not so broken after all and the windows began to fog up from the heat warming the small space. Though neither of them really felt the rising temperature, it wasn't long before Clark removed his heavy winter coat. Darcie wasn't wearing one, but instead simply rolled up her sleeves and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of heavily scarred arms before she quickly covered them again. The cuts had seemed too random to be self-harm and a few looked like they went quite deep. Someone else had done this to her. Someone she was running from.

Clark suddenly felt very protective of his passenger, despite her 'kidnapping' him. In a way, she had been protecting him when she could have simply run, now that he thought about it. By the way she was acting, simply talking to her for an extended period of time was enough to put him on her stalker's map.

"You never answered my question about where you learned to hotwire a car," he said in a friendly manner, trying to start a conversation. She gave him an odd look, probably having expected another rebuke for having pulled him into her escape, but answered all the same. "Delaware. It was part of a course I took on automobile engineering. I thought it'd be pretty useless at the time, but it's a good thing I was paying attention."

He saw her rubbing her arms self-consciously and racked his brains for something nice to say about the state. He'd never been there, but he remembered Ms. Rampling from fourth grade saying something about peaches.

"So did you grow up there? Eat a lot of peaches?" he asked. Darcie nodded, pulling her knees up to her chest again. "Yeah, I grew up near the coast. I'd eat them occasionally but never could manage to make a decent pie or a cobbler. They were always one of my favorite fruits because they were so soft and fuzzy and had a nice color-"

She stopped, realizing how much she'd revealed about herself, and tried to steer the conversation towards him. "And you? You have a Southern-Midwestern accent, are you from Missouri? Iowa?"

"Close," he smiled, "I grew up in Kansas."

"I hear there is a lot of corn there," she commented innocently and Clark laughed out loud at the simple statement.

"You heard right. My house was surrounded by acres of corn, as far as the eye could see, until I was nine and could see all the way to Kansas City. But it was always a pretty sight. I'd get up before the sun rose to go milk the cows and by the time I finished it'd just be peeking over the horizon, painting all the bright green stalks a rosy pink and orange and when they're grown the tassels would whisper in the breeze. My Mom said they were repeating what their ears could hear, so I always said nice things around them."

He could see it all again, him and his dog running through washing as it dried on the line, a blanket tied around his shoulders like a cape as a little Clark in his bare feet jumped over an overturned wheelbarrow while his Dad worked on the old pickup, so different from this hardened wanderer he'd become.

"Why did you leave?" she asked, Darcie's voice bringing him back to the cold logging truck on the midnight highway, raindrops pelting the windshield as he drove and the childhood dream faded.

"I… I don't know," He answered after a moment's hesitation, "I guess I'm just trying to find where I belong."

She nodded understandingly. "I think that's what I'm trying to do too."

Once again all seemed quiet, but they could both hear far beyond the reaches of the cabin into the dark trees that lined the highway. Darcie looked out the window at the black night, listening and wincing occasionally. The look in her stormy blue eyes reflecting off the glass was one of courage under duress, but he could see it was only hiding the lost and lonely feeling beneath. He knew it all too well because he felt exactly the same. Clark kept his hands firmly on the wheel, resisting the urge to reach out and hold her hand while swallowing back the hunger gnawing in his gut. She must have sensed his discomfort and spoke up. "We need to get rid of the truck before finding a place to eat and sleep."

"So we're together now?" he asked teasingly and her eyes widened at the thought.

"No, not at all. I just thought it'd be advantageous for both of us if we traveled in conjunction..."

Darcie trailed off, obviously embarrassed.

"I apologize for assuming, that was wrong of me," she said after a few moments and he smiled. "No, it was a good assumption. We're traveling together."

His confirmation put her somewhat at ease and she busied herself with digging through the crumpled collection of old roadmaps while he kept an eye out for any helpful road signs in the drizzle. A few minutes later they found one indicating a gas station and motel at the next exit. Soon the passing shower lifted as they got off the highway to enter the little town. But instead of heading right through it, Darcie gave him directions to go around and follow an overgrown dirt road through the backwoods until she decided they were far enough.

"I can take the wheel now," she told him, folding up the stained map to slip it back in the door pocket. Guessing by the tone of her voice that the statement was more of an order than an offer, he reluctantly stopped the truck and hopped out. She slid into the driver's seat and was about to close the door to shut him out, but he stopped her.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to crash it," she answered simply, unfazed by the fact that it could easily kill her, "I've done it before, I'll be fine-"

He shook his head and glanced at the back of the huge log truck, "I have a better idea."

She got out and watched as the cables that held the trunks onto the load bed snapped when he yanked on them, causing the pile to tumble down over the road. Clark easily hefted one of the dead trees above his head despite it being almost a half-a-meter in diameter and drove it like a spear into the cabin of the truck, a shower of sparks and broken glass exploding under the impact while Darcie watched wide-eyed. He grabbed another one and ran it through the vehicle as well, impaling it as if it were a freshly caught trout when he remembered she was there.

"You want to try?" he asked, already picking up the next log. She slowly came over and put her hand on the other end of it, reaching under to pick it up as he did and lifted it above her head. For a brief moment, a surprised smile crossed her face, but the doubt crept in and it all came crashing down. He managed to roll the log out of the way so it wouldn't hit her and vaulted over the pile to see Darcie standing there hugging her chest with a blank expression.

"Are you okay?" he questioned urgently, looking her over in the beam of the rig's remaining headlight. Clark touched her shoulder and the contact seemed to draw her back to reality as her blue eyes flickered and she inhaled sharply before looking up at him guiltily.

"I-I am sorry. I have failed," she said softly, falling to her knees on the muddy road. "I submit to my punishment."

"What?"

Darcie hung her head resignedly, not meeting his questioning gaze and repeated herself. "I have failed. I deserve punishment."

He remembered the scars covering her arms and would bet his boots she had just as many in other places. Someone was out there hunting for her, bent on bringing her back where doubtless she would be beaten again, harder than ever before. It was at that moment that he knew that they would be traveling together because come hell or high water, there was no way he was going to let her abuser find her.

"Darcie, I'm not going to beat you," he reassured her, bending down so they were level, "What you did was amazing. You did something 'most no one else can. I know you're scared, but it's really a gift and one day you'll be able to do much more than just lift logs. We both will, we just have to grow into these… these powers a little bit."

She looked up at him stone-faced, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "I'm not afraid. I never said I was."

He couldn't help but smile at her innocent bravery and helped her back onto her feet. It was late, and autumn in the wilds of Canada was nothing to laugh at, especially at night in the middle of nowhere without a car. Darcie didn't look cold, but he removed his coat anyway and placed it over her shoulders so he could return to wrecking the trailer. She watched silently as he lifted log after log and stabbed them through the mangled hunk of metal and burning rubber, venting his restrained wrath. He was furious, furious at Ludlow for being a dick, at Darcie's abuser for hurting her so badly, at himself for scaring her earlier, at her for almost kidnapping him, at his dad for… No, not at his dad.

Clark heard the screech of tearing steel as another log was driven into the rig, but it wasn't him causing the noise. He looked over to see Darcie hefting another enormous trunk onto her shoulder, his coat tied around her waist as she ran it through the mutilated remains of the truck.

She returned his gaze with a triumphant look and he smiled.

"Are you hungry yet?"

"Maybe a little," she admitted, picking her way through the debris that a few minutes ago had been the rig to a clear spot in the rough dirt road. He glanced back at the wreckage and after a short search pulled out a useable flashlight. Joining her, they set out on the lonely track through the dark woods only lit by the flashlight and slivers of dim moonlight peeking through the clouds.

"Why did you ask me to drive?" he asked after a while, readjusting the strap of his duffel over his back and she shrugged. "Honestly, Clark, if we got pulled over, what officer in their right mind would believe that piece of crap belonged to someone like me?"

He smiled teasingly. "I think you could have pulled it off."

She blushed, picking distractedly at the hem of his coat to hide her embarrassment and he chuckled.

"C'mon, let's go find something to eat."