Addendum to the disclaimer: Soooo, there's this site up called WeirdUS (http://http://www.weirdnj.com/__weirdus/index.html). Its got all these weird and wacky supernatural-esque stories up there from all over the country. Being a creepy tale buff, I check this site out all the time. Lizard Man is on that site.
Addendum to the Author's Note: I took a glance back at WeirdNJ.com, the site that was the most major inspiration for this tale, and realized where my title came from. It's also a section header for the WNJ folks. Just an interesting little tidbit into the land of subconcious connections.
Summary: A quick detour on the way to Florida. What happens when one sis slays and the other doesn't?
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 2: Lizard Man
Part One
Dawn was half asleep on the novel that she'd picked up on the way out of DC for Wood's correspondence English course. A print out of notes to help her get into the story lay on her feet in the passenger seat well, but even with the dim glow of the Itty-Bitty Book Light, she was having a hard time focusing on the words. As a transposed Californian, Faulkner's prose meant nothing to her, even if she and Xander WERE likely to be traveling through the south. She finally gave up on the book (only on chapter two, how could Wood expect her to have read through chapter five by tomorrow? She'd been working on it the whole trip down 95, well, when she wasn't staring blearily out the window at the passing trees. There was little else, it seemed, along side interstate 95 other than trees.
The highlight of the drive so far had occurred only about an hour before, when they'd stopped under a giant, brightly lit sombrero for dinner. South of the Border had been fun to rummage through, and they'd found lot's of great post-cards and goofy presents to send back to the gang in Cleveland, but then it had been back to the old grind of more and more road passing beneath the sedan's front tires. She lay her head back against her seat, sent her notes flying as she propped her feet up on the dashboard, and was lightly snoring when Xander suddenly jerked the car to the right and sped up, swerving onto an off ramp.
"What?" She shot upright in her seat, and blinked over at him. "What's wrong, do you need a really, really sudden bathroom break?"
Xander stared straight ahead, his forehead creasing. "Up for a bit of stalking?"
"Huh?" Dawn glanced around. She didn't think she'd been asleep for that long. "We're not in Florida yet, are we?"
"Not even close." Xander swerved around a green mini-van with faded Bush/Quayle bumper stickers, then slowed as they careened around the swiftly curving ramp. Dawn saw a sign flash by, advertising route 20.
"So, um, where are we going?"
"We're following that car." Xander pointed ahead of them at a white convertible LeBaron, which was speeding even more recklessly than they were as they merged with the light, route 20 traffic.
"Okay, why?"
Xander smiled, then tapped his left temple. "'Cause it's got a slayer in it."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Obviously," Xander leaned his head on his arms, which were crossed over the top of the steering wheel. "I'll never be able to land a job in the pursuit business."
Dawn, who was more than happy to have a reason to put "Light in August" to rest for an unidentifiable length of time (if slayer tracking wasn't an excuse for late homework, she didn't know what was), was jotting down the details of the vehicle, which had lost them on the swampy back roads only moments before. "We'll get Willow to run the license plate numbers. We'll find her."
"Unless our slayer has a thing for grand theft auto, that is," Xander glanced around at the darkened landscape. "And has contacts at an autoshop in the middle of the swamp . . . ."
Dawn looked over at him, noting the blue bags under his eyes. "Hey, if the tire hadn't blown out, you'd be good. You kept up with her all that way down 20."
"Ah, yes, the tire." Xander stretched, then reached for the glove compartment. He pulled out two stakes, a bottle of holy water, and a cross. "Call Willow with the info. I'll go do the manly thing and get eaten by swamp-vampires."
He straightened as much as he could in the seat, stowing his equipment in his back pockets. Dawn handed him the morning star from the back seat.
"How about doing the manly thing and beating the swamp-vampires off before jumping into the car to make a swift getaway?"
"Ah, the famous Summers woman's ability to complicate a simple plan. I like it." Xander took the proffered weapon then warily got out of the car. He glanced quickly at the two tires on his side, then walked purposefully around to the other without taking his eyes off of the wilderness at the edges of the darkened asphalt. It was the rear right tire that had blown. He pulled the jack, tire iron, and spare out of the trunk, and set to work.
It would have to be a cranking jack, wouldn't it, not the nice hydraulic one he had ALMOST been able to talk Giles into thinking of as a safety expense. That would teach him not to have the former owner of a Citroen to do the car shopping.
He was replacing the final bolt when he heard a crunching sound, somewhere about ten feet behind him. He glanced up at Dawn, who was peering intently out the driver's side window, hands at a determined 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, then glanced over his shoulder. He couldn't see anything, but he gripped the tire iron with renewed determination, and cranked the car back down to the road as fast as he possibly could.
Another crunch, and now a low, hissing sound behind him and to his left. He shoved the jack violently out from under the car, grabbed the morning star, and bolted for the passenger side door. Dawn, hearing the scraping of metal on asphalt if not the hissing of the whatever, had the door unlocked for him as his hand touched the handle.
He slammed into the seat and pulled the door closed behind him just as something very tall and very green leaped out of the swamps at the vehicle. Dawn screamed and Xander jumped back from the window. The engine revved.
"FLOOR IT!"
"I am!" Dawn shoved her right foot all the way to the floor, then blinked, and moved her left foot off the clutch. The car jerked forward about two feet, then stalled.
"Dawn!" Xander stared as the green thing backed up several feet, then jumped upwards. It had scales, and its toes, as they flashed by the window, were webbed. "What's wrong!"
"BLOODY STICK SHIFT!" Dawn bashed her hand on the steering wheel as she turned the car back on, and slightly slower, shifted her feet in the practiced rhythm. She slammed into second gear, and let the acceleration take them up past fifty miles per hour. "You couldn't have bought an automatic?"
"Stick shifts are cheaper and more manly." Xander flopped back in the passenger seat as he heard the creature thump off the roof, bounce on the trunk, and hit the road behind them. "Despite their vaguely phallic nature."
Dawn grinned as much with relief as any real humor. Most of her manual driving experience was in highway form, and she and Xander had this argument, at much lower decibels every time she got behind the wheel. She felt she was getting the hang of it.
A sudden explosion and a loud thunk echoed from the back of the car, and she nearly steered off the road. She passed a cross street, the wheel vibrating erratically under her hands, then let the car slow to a stop. "What the hell was that?"
Xander closed his eyes, and let his head fall to the dashboard. "That was our back tire." He slammed his hand into the window. "And I didn't have time to rescue our jack running away from the lizard guy, back there."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
They called Buffy, in hopes of some translocated car parts if not the actual slayer, but no one picked up. Willow had, apparently, been in full babble mode when Dawn had called earlier, a sure sign that the gang was already off fighting off some sort of apocalypse in Cleveland, without them. Xander cracked a joke about how lost they must be without Language Girl and He Who Sees, but he knew it came out rather flat. They were in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina, with a twice blown tire and no more spares, and no equipment should one miraculously appear. Dawn was shivering, and he knew he wasn't much better.
They were debating the wisdom of calling AAA and dragging one of their innocent agents out onto a road with a known monster on it, when a familiar Chrysler LeBaron pulled around the corner ahead of them, a faint silver glow circling the passenger seat and sending a wave of shock up Xander's back. How the hell . . . ?
"Oh my god." Dawn stared at the other car. "Is that her?"
"Yeah."
They watched in silence as the LeBaron stopped several feet away from them, and twin teenagers climbed out.
They were tall, nearly six feet in fact, which startled Xander, as he was beginning to think that the slayer essence was reserved for short girls. They had identical auburn bobs cutting off at their jaw lines, and cheerful smiles on their faces. If it weren't for the fact that one was wearing a khaki raincoat, and the other had the silver slayer aura circling her frame, Xander would have assumed he was seeing double.
Khaki sauntered up to Dawn's window, and made the international gesture for "roll down the window". Dawn complied, staring wide eyed at the girl. Khaki grinned.
"A little car trouble?"
Dawn nodded. Xander kept staring at the slayer, who was standing warily in the middle of the road, her hand tucked into the side of her denim jacket. He recognized a modified defensive stance to her form. Could she already know?
"Anything we can help ya with?" Khaki raised an eyebrow, and Xander tore his gaze from her sister.
"Blown tire." He was half expecting to see the glimmer erupt up around Khaki. Somehow, he had never considered the possibility of one twin getting the slayer juice, without the other. "No spare, and we lost our jack, too."
Khaki straightened back up, and called something in a half formed gibberish to her sister. The slayer responded in kind. Both were looking at the roof of Xander's sedan. After a quick, unintelligible conversation, Khaki leaned back down.
"Come on," She waved her hand in the direction of the LeBaron. "We'll give you a lift somewhere, and you can get your car fixed up in the morning." She smiled lazily. "It's not exactly safe around here after dark.
Dawn barely kept a "no shit, Sherlock" to herself, and nodded gratefully. "Thanks. That's really nice of you guys."
"Nah, it's nothin'." Khaki stepped back to give Dawn room to maneuver. "Leyna seems to think it's her duty to help out the hopeless."
"Leyna" sent a glare in her sister's direction, then turned and smiled vaguely toward Xander. "Let's get going." She led the way back to the LeBaron, and waited for Xander and Dawn to get comfortable in the back seat before continuing. "When we get home, you can tell us why you followed us off the freeway."
end part one
Addendum to the Author's Note: I took a glance back at WeirdNJ.com, the site that was the most major inspiration for this tale, and realized where my title came from. It's also a section header for the WNJ folks. Just an interesting little tidbit into the land of subconcious connections.
Summary: A quick detour on the way to Florida. What happens when one sis slays and the other doesn't?
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 2: Lizard Man
Part One
Dawn was half asleep on the novel that she'd picked up on the way out of DC for Wood's correspondence English course. A print out of notes to help her get into the story lay on her feet in the passenger seat well, but even with the dim glow of the Itty-Bitty Book Light, she was having a hard time focusing on the words. As a transposed Californian, Faulkner's prose meant nothing to her, even if she and Xander WERE likely to be traveling through the south. She finally gave up on the book (only on chapter two, how could Wood expect her to have read through chapter five by tomorrow? She'd been working on it the whole trip down 95, well, when she wasn't staring blearily out the window at the passing trees. There was little else, it seemed, along side interstate 95 other than trees.
The highlight of the drive so far had occurred only about an hour before, when they'd stopped under a giant, brightly lit sombrero for dinner. South of the Border had been fun to rummage through, and they'd found lot's of great post-cards and goofy presents to send back to the gang in Cleveland, but then it had been back to the old grind of more and more road passing beneath the sedan's front tires. She lay her head back against her seat, sent her notes flying as she propped her feet up on the dashboard, and was lightly snoring when Xander suddenly jerked the car to the right and sped up, swerving onto an off ramp.
"What?" She shot upright in her seat, and blinked over at him. "What's wrong, do you need a really, really sudden bathroom break?"
Xander stared straight ahead, his forehead creasing. "Up for a bit of stalking?"
"Huh?" Dawn glanced around. She didn't think she'd been asleep for that long. "We're not in Florida yet, are we?"
"Not even close." Xander swerved around a green mini-van with faded Bush/Quayle bumper stickers, then slowed as they careened around the swiftly curving ramp. Dawn saw a sign flash by, advertising route 20.
"So, um, where are we going?"
"We're following that car." Xander pointed ahead of them at a white convertible LeBaron, which was speeding even more recklessly than they were as they merged with the light, route 20 traffic.
"Okay, why?"
Xander smiled, then tapped his left temple. "'Cause it's got a slayer in it."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Obviously," Xander leaned his head on his arms, which were crossed over the top of the steering wheel. "I'll never be able to land a job in the pursuit business."
Dawn, who was more than happy to have a reason to put "Light in August" to rest for an unidentifiable length of time (if slayer tracking wasn't an excuse for late homework, she didn't know what was), was jotting down the details of the vehicle, which had lost them on the swampy back roads only moments before. "We'll get Willow to run the license plate numbers. We'll find her."
"Unless our slayer has a thing for grand theft auto, that is," Xander glanced around at the darkened landscape. "And has contacts at an autoshop in the middle of the swamp . . . ."
Dawn looked over at him, noting the blue bags under his eyes. "Hey, if the tire hadn't blown out, you'd be good. You kept up with her all that way down 20."
"Ah, yes, the tire." Xander stretched, then reached for the glove compartment. He pulled out two stakes, a bottle of holy water, and a cross. "Call Willow with the info. I'll go do the manly thing and get eaten by swamp-vampires."
He straightened as much as he could in the seat, stowing his equipment in his back pockets. Dawn handed him the morning star from the back seat.
"How about doing the manly thing and beating the swamp-vampires off before jumping into the car to make a swift getaway?"
"Ah, the famous Summers woman's ability to complicate a simple plan. I like it." Xander took the proffered weapon then warily got out of the car. He glanced quickly at the two tires on his side, then walked purposefully around to the other without taking his eyes off of the wilderness at the edges of the darkened asphalt. It was the rear right tire that had blown. He pulled the jack, tire iron, and spare out of the trunk, and set to work.
It would have to be a cranking jack, wouldn't it, not the nice hydraulic one he had ALMOST been able to talk Giles into thinking of as a safety expense. That would teach him not to have the former owner of a Citroen to do the car shopping.
He was replacing the final bolt when he heard a crunching sound, somewhere about ten feet behind him. He glanced up at Dawn, who was peering intently out the driver's side window, hands at a determined 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, then glanced over his shoulder. He couldn't see anything, but he gripped the tire iron with renewed determination, and cranked the car back down to the road as fast as he possibly could.
Another crunch, and now a low, hissing sound behind him and to his left. He shoved the jack violently out from under the car, grabbed the morning star, and bolted for the passenger side door. Dawn, hearing the scraping of metal on asphalt if not the hissing of the whatever, had the door unlocked for him as his hand touched the handle.
He slammed into the seat and pulled the door closed behind him just as something very tall and very green leaped out of the swamps at the vehicle. Dawn screamed and Xander jumped back from the window. The engine revved.
"FLOOR IT!"
"I am!" Dawn shoved her right foot all the way to the floor, then blinked, and moved her left foot off the clutch. The car jerked forward about two feet, then stalled.
"Dawn!" Xander stared as the green thing backed up several feet, then jumped upwards. It had scales, and its toes, as they flashed by the window, were webbed. "What's wrong!"
"BLOODY STICK SHIFT!" Dawn bashed her hand on the steering wheel as she turned the car back on, and slightly slower, shifted her feet in the practiced rhythm. She slammed into second gear, and let the acceleration take them up past fifty miles per hour. "You couldn't have bought an automatic?"
"Stick shifts are cheaper and more manly." Xander flopped back in the passenger seat as he heard the creature thump off the roof, bounce on the trunk, and hit the road behind them. "Despite their vaguely phallic nature."
Dawn grinned as much with relief as any real humor. Most of her manual driving experience was in highway form, and she and Xander had this argument, at much lower decibels every time she got behind the wheel. She felt she was getting the hang of it.
A sudden explosion and a loud thunk echoed from the back of the car, and she nearly steered off the road. She passed a cross street, the wheel vibrating erratically under her hands, then let the car slow to a stop. "What the hell was that?"
Xander closed his eyes, and let his head fall to the dashboard. "That was our back tire." He slammed his hand into the window. "And I didn't have time to rescue our jack running away from the lizard guy, back there."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
They called Buffy, in hopes of some translocated car parts if not the actual slayer, but no one picked up. Willow had, apparently, been in full babble mode when Dawn had called earlier, a sure sign that the gang was already off fighting off some sort of apocalypse in Cleveland, without them. Xander cracked a joke about how lost they must be without Language Girl and He Who Sees, but he knew it came out rather flat. They were in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina, with a twice blown tire and no more spares, and no equipment should one miraculously appear. Dawn was shivering, and he knew he wasn't much better.
They were debating the wisdom of calling AAA and dragging one of their innocent agents out onto a road with a known monster on it, when a familiar Chrysler LeBaron pulled around the corner ahead of them, a faint silver glow circling the passenger seat and sending a wave of shock up Xander's back. How the hell . . . ?
"Oh my god." Dawn stared at the other car. "Is that her?"
"Yeah."
They watched in silence as the LeBaron stopped several feet away from them, and twin teenagers climbed out.
They were tall, nearly six feet in fact, which startled Xander, as he was beginning to think that the slayer essence was reserved for short girls. They had identical auburn bobs cutting off at their jaw lines, and cheerful smiles on their faces. If it weren't for the fact that one was wearing a khaki raincoat, and the other had the silver slayer aura circling her frame, Xander would have assumed he was seeing double.
Khaki sauntered up to Dawn's window, and made the international gesture for "roll down the window". Dawn complied, staring wide eyed at the girl. Khaki grinned.
"A little car trouble?"
Dawn nodded. Xander kept staring at the slayer, who was standing warily in the middle of the road, her hand tucked into the side of her denim jacket. He recognized a modified defensive stance to her form. Could she already know?
"Anything we can help ya with?" Khaki raised an eyebrow, and Xander tore his gaze from her sister.
"Blown tire." He was half expecting to see the glimmer erupt up around Khaki. Somehow, he had never considered the possibility of one twin getting the slayer juice, without the other. "No spare, and we lost our jack, too."
Khaki straightened back up, and called something in a half formed gibberish to her sister. The slayer responded in kind. Both were looking at the roof of Xander's sedan. After a quick, unintelligible conversation, Khaki leaned back down.
"Come on," She waved her hand in the direction of the LeBaron. "We'll give you a lift somewhere, and you can get your car fixed up in the morning." She smiled lazily. "It's not exactly safe around here after dark.
Dawn barely kept a "no shit, Sherlock" to herself, and nodded gratefully. "Thanks. That's really nice of you guys."
"Nah, it's nothin'." Khaki stepped back to give Dawn room to maneuver. "Leyna seems to think it's her duty to help out the hopeless."
"Leyna" sent a glare in her sister's direction, then turned and smiled vaguely toward Xander. "Let's get going." She led the way back to the LeBaron, and waited for Xander and Dawn to get comfortable in the back seat before continuing. "When we get home, you can tell us why you followed us off the freeway."
end part one