For the Dead Travel Fast
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The next six hours were a grind.
She had the Nebraska state map against her thigh and a finger on the highway approximately close to their location, and she checked and double-checked against rural route markers and town signs.
Castle was in the backseat, sprawled on his face in a tortured sleep. He'd passed out not long after they'd gotten on the road, and he'd thrashed one too many times—she'd made him crawl in back where he couldn't accidentally jostle the steering wheel (or hit her either, though she wasn't about to tell him he'd bruised her last time). Once he'd gotten there, he'd collapsed into sleep.
There were moans. Low growls. He sounded like he was claiming and possessing in his dreams. Or being claimed and possessed in nightmares. She wasn't sure which.
The day was stretching later and later. She was hungry—both in her stomach and in the pit of her heart where perhaps the blood-yearning was—but she was afraid to stop.
She was afraid.
She had gotten off the interstate as soon as he'd shifted into phase. She just didn't think the higher volume of traffic was a good idea, plus like this, she could roll the windows down and get some fresh air for them both. He smelled delicious and she didn't want to give way to those urges. (Not again. Sex next to the soybean field was one thing, but in phase? With her own dark need? She wasn't sure either of them would survive.)
She tried not to think, tried only to chart her progress on the map and ignore the loop and loop of her thoughts tightening into knots of anxiety.
(How was Great Salt Lake supposed to be better? A place apparently known for newly-transitioned vampires, known for being a refuge against the overwhelming scent of fresh meat.) She couldn't, could not dwell on that right now.
She kept an eye on road signs, tried to calculate how many miles to the next larger town, how big was the population here, would there be a higher chance of deranged vampires in the rural areas. She estimated survival rates if they stopped at that McDonalds and went inside versus waiting in the drive-thru; she reconfigured her estimate for that sandwich shop that looked abandoned. She thought about locking him in the car and going in herself. She thought about waking him and telling him the plan to go in alone. She thought about sitting in that line with the car running and some escaping scent wafting out of their exhaust pipe and becoming a beacon—like Terro ant bait, calling the whole colony forward to swarm the sticky-sweet poison.
She didn't stop in that town. She didn't stop at the next. She didn't stop again at the crossroads. She didn't stop. She didn't stop. She just couldn't stop.
There were fruit and grain bars under the passenger seat. She spent a handful of minutes straining, before she managed to catch her fingers on the edge of the bag and drag it towards her. A couple of the bars spilled out, and she snagged one, tore it open with her teeth. She shoved it into her mouth, chewing fast, hungrier than she'd realized.
This was going to be their trip, wasn't it? The next twelve hours. Battling her anxiety over indefensible rest stops and crowded fast food lines only to speed off because she couldn't risk it. Risk him.
She'd done this to him and she had forced him out of the 'safety' of the doctor's lair, and so she had to save him.
Kate shook her head at herself, rubbed her thumb against her temple. She couldn't go on like this—she would wind up damaging herself or him without meaning to, unable to rest, unable to trust. Yes, there were vampires out there who would attack them—but as Castle had pointed out, the attacking vampires were deranged. They were already broken. And broken vampires who went around attacking fresh meat—well, she had her gun.
She had her weapon; she could do this.
Better with a lot of people, she was beginning to think. A well-attended place, though not crowded. Line of sight to the car. A drive-thru would be too easy to get trapped.
God, her hands were shaking on the wheel.
"After this, we're going on a vacation," she muttered to herself. "Hawaii. Far away and warm. Always warm."
The very next city limits sign she saw, she made a promise to herself to pull over and grab food. Sit in the parking lot to eat it. Wake her husband and see if he'd eat something too. She could do this. It wasn't hard.
Oh.
They were in Colorado.
How had she missed the sign?
Kate craned her neck to check the next interstate marker, and sure enough, it was trying to point her westward to Denver. She was on Highway 6 heading into some town called Holyoke, and she was seeing signs for the Holyoke Municipal Airport, which was maybe a bit larger than she'd have liked for her first trial by fire.
She was going to stop at a McDonald's. Or Arby's. Or something.
Just keep looking.
Hospital. School bus depot. Dollar Store. Jake's Feed. The Cobblestone Inn. Zion Lutheran Church. She had to be in the town proper by now, and sure enough she spotted a street sign on the next crossroads which read East Denver Street. She had just passed the Phillips County Historical Museum when she realized she was about to pass out of Holyoke entirely.
A block from the wide stretch of nothing that would be the resumption of Highway 6, she saw a permanently-parked taco truck shoved to one side of an abandoned gas station parking lot. There were picnic benches with snow drifts set up to keep lunch-goers out of the wind, and there were already a handful of those tables claimed.
She parked to the far side and read the sign: Taqueria Hernandez. There was a smiling pepper with a mustache, which left her discomfited, but the two teenaged servers seemed to be part of the Hernandez family, taking it in stride. They carried baskets back and forth to the side of the taco truck, but there was a line at the sliding door. She wondered if they truly were here in winter or if they opened only for the summer season.
Okay, enough stalling. Time to go.
She grabbed some cash from the duffle, checked on Castle, and then carefully opened her door.
The air had a nip to it, but the sun was pleasant on the top of her head. She slid to the pavement and stood cautiously, shutting the door behind her. The key fob in her fist made the doors lock automatically once she was far enough away, and the sound gave her a reassuring nudge forward.
She took her first deep cleansing breath and wound her way towards the line. Even for a late afternoon in a sleepy town, the taco truck was doing a brisk business. She stood behind a couple of teenagers who were nose-deep in their phones, and she attempted to crack the code on their language: they never seemed to talk to each other, but they were sharing grunts and laughs, reacting to online content. Once they all had the same video replaying on their screens, though Kate couldn't see the appeal, nor how they'd gotten to it at the same time in that app.
She kept her own eyes moving, scanning the line, the truck, the tables, the parking lot. Her SUV was separate enough that she could spot any kind of movement towards or from, but no one headed that direction.
Upon closer examination, the servers looked to be somewhere close to thirteen. Long dark hair, both the girl and the boy, with dark eyes and long lashes. The girl taking money at the front of the line was an older sister to at least one of them—their facial features were echoes—but she didn't spot any adults.
Kate finally got to the front of the line and ordered a tray of fish tacos and pork nachos to go, then stepped to one side where others were waiting for their order fulfillments. Kate saw one of the servers, the girl in her preteens, glance back at Kate with a look, but it could have been because of how intently Kate was inspecting the place. She didn't avert her eyes, only offered a slight smile, and the girl kept moving, taking a basket of tightly-rolled taquitos to a group of older gentlemen.
A woman at a far table stood up with a loud exclamation, startling Kate. She waited until the woman sat down again, brushing off a bee, it seemed, or a wasp, and when Kate returned her eyes to the taco truck, one of the kitchen workers was leaning out with a bag and calling her number.
Kate froze. She had the teenagers on their phones ahead of her still waiting to one side, plus the couple ahead of them. Not to mention the huddle of people she'd joined when she stepped aside. She didn't know if she should take the food.
The worker, an older boy of perhaps seventeen, shook the bag and called her number again—and then crooked his finger at her as if he knew exactly her hesitance—and her reason for being in his town.
Kate's heart thumped in her ears as she approached—but why, he was a child really—and she reached out to take the brown bag.
He didn't let go. "Ute Mountain Reservation," he said. "Ask for Wahkara."
Kate froze.
The boy shook the bag between them. "Hey, you listening? Ute Mountain Reservation—"
"Ask for Wahkara," she croaked. Stared at the kid. "Who are you?"
The seventeen year old flashed a set of crooked incisors and tossed his hair back. "I'm Team Edward."
"Oh my God," she muttered, shaking her head.
"Whatever," he scoffed. "So are you."
Kate grabbed her food and started to walk away, not sure if she was appalled or amused.
Or terrified they were so damn easy to sniff out
"Hey, don't forget!" the kid called after her. "If you miss Wahkara, you'll never get in at Great Salt."
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