Farmwork? Kinda hard, kinda not. It sure wasn't much like Slaying.
Buffy thought she could have made it to the creamery and back even without Cara's help. Eventually. After all, it was a straight shot to Grandville, and there were road signs and everything. It was a good thing that Martha and Jonathan didn't really need any help hooking up and unhooking the milking thingies to the cows, 'cause Buffy had found that to be both complicated and gross, just from looking around at them doing the work. She wished she could be more help, but Clark's folks seemed to have everything under control, so she guessed it was fine.
One thing she actually had some experience at, even though it was fictional experience made up by monks, was baby-sitting. Cara was a helpful little kid, but she was still a little kid, and it was easy to see that keeping her out of Martha's hair while she ran the home-baking business and did the bookkeeping for the farm was a worthwhile service for real.
Xander's ideal of Buffy's Kansas Vacation might be kind of goofy, butshe sure was getting plenty of sleep. Buffy's contribution to the Lex-Dawn-Clark teleconference thing the night before had mainly been big silly-sounding yawns, and she'd been fast asleep at an hour when she'd typically just be locating the evening's first prey, back home. It was kind of cool.
She'd ended up napping when Cara did again, too, although that wasn't quite as much fun when it didn't involve waking up right next to Lex. She wished she hadn't been too out-of-it to enjoy that, Monday afternoon.
There was plenty of food; Mrs. Kent seemed to think Buffy needed feeding up. Mr. Kent hadn't balked at her helping him with the hay or the tractor. Plus, there was pie.
Everything seemed to be working out fine.
Of course, that usually meant trouble.
"You sure you know the route for these deliveries?" Jonathan asked, as he and Buffy hauled the last box of fresh organic vegetables into the truck bed. "I could come along; there are more stops today than there were yesterday when Clark showed you around."
"I've got the map, and I have Cara."
"Yay!" Cara interjected.
"Besides, you need to catch the cows and milk them again, don't you? I totally can't be much help with that. Honestly. I think we'll be fine. Right, Cara?" Buffy smiled at the little girl, who was wiping her hands on her cute little overalls, in imitation of her daddy.
"Right!"
"It must be around here somewhere."
"You've been saying that for the last hour," Mulder snipped. He spat another sunflower seed shell out the window.
"Hmm. More like thirty-forty minutes," Stonetree argued, eyes on the road.
"It's pitch-black out here. It's the middle of nowhere. The only way we'll find these caves is if we crash into them."
Stonetree could've pointed out that it was barely dark, but he stayed silent instead. He was starting to wonder whether the end of the human race was really such a bad thing.
Suddenly he heard something. Fox's head snapped around, too. "You hear that?"
"Screaming. Over thataway."
Stonetree spun the wheel and accelerated. "Let's go."
They weren't exactly lost. Cara said she knew which direction the farm was in, and how far away it was, and Buffy believed her. The problem was there was no road going that way, hadn't been for an hour or more, and now it was definitely getting dark.
They were approximately lost.
Buffy kept driving, hoping for a road that would head the direction Cara kept pointing.
"Buffy! It's that way!"
"I know!" Buffy took a deep breath. Do Not Snap at the Toddler. "We need to find a road that way, sweetie."
"Oh." Cara quit bouncing, but she kept pointing. Then she started bouncing again. "Are we gonna miss supper?"
"I'm sure your mom will save us something. Have you ever been on this street before?"
Cara shrugged. "Maybe."
They weren't surrounded by corn anymore. Buffy had no idea if they were even still in Kansas. Weren't all these Eastern states awfully small? The road entered a bunch of trees -- woodlot or forest or something -- old and dark and spooky and absolutely deserted.
Buffy started to get a bad feeling about this place, which was only made stronger when the truck's headlights revealed a fallen tree blocking the road. Huh. She stopped the truck and looked at Cara.
The little girl wasn't pointing anymore. She was all huddled together in her booster seat and looked cold.
"You okay?"
"Nuh uh." Cara shook her head.
There had been lightning bugs visible in the bushes and fields beside the road ever since it got dark, but now Buffy noticed there were a lot of them surrounding the fallen tree trunk.
They seemed bigger and greener than the ones at the Kents' place.
"Let's turn around," Buffy decided.
She carefully maneuvered the big truck around. The swarm of weird glowy bugs surged ominously around outside her windshield, making it a little hard to see. Almost immediately, Buffy got her rear wheels into the ditch. They spun uselessly.
"Bugger it!" she swore. Embarrassed, she looked at Cara. The little girl hadn't noticed Buffy's peculiar choice of bad language. She had her knees drawn up, and her arms wrapped around them, and she was starting to whimper.
"Ohhh. Don't worry. I'll just pull the truck out of the ditch, maybe turn it around by hand; we'll go back the way we came and find our way home like that." Buffy turned off the ignition and put the truck in Neutral. She might be a sucky driver, but she did have a fair amount of experience with pushing vehicles.
The second she opened her door, a bunch of the fireflies came flying in. She dratted and swatted at them, not too concerned ('They're just bugs' still reassuring her, even though these particular bugs seemed sort of extra odd) but then Cara started to scream.
The green flashing bugs converged on the terrified child. They seemed to become brighter and greener as they did. Cara screamed and screamed. Buffy instantly slammed the door shut to keep out the rest of the swarm, and started killing insects.
Cara's scream became thin and hopeless, and her flailing arms weak and ineffective. Her skin had gone all greenish and corrugated-looking.
The bugs were no match for the Slayer's lightning-quick hands. Even dead, though, they seemed to hurt the little girl. Buffy cleaned the bug goo off Cara's arms and hands -- fortunately, none had gotten squished on her face -- wiped her own hands clean, balled up the flannel shirt of Clark's she'd been using as a cleaning rag and threw into the far corner of the truck cab. Then she freed the sobbing toddler from her booster seat and gathered her into her lap.
Just bugs my ass, she thought.
There were still about a million glowing insects surging around outside the truck. No way she was opening the door again. Cara still looked sick and shaky, and Buffy couldn't get her to stop crying, but at least her skin looked like skin again.
Stupid demonic bugs.