"What the hell ya mean ya aren't leaven today?!"
Julia looked up slowly from the bowl of stale Kix, a small drop of milk sliding down her chin, and she slurped up the bite, talking around it with her chin jutted out. "I ain't finished."
Jeb glared from the open door of the gas station. "What ain't finished? Ya said everything was finished last night."
Julia wiped her chin and swallowed, setting her bowl down on the checkout counter. "There were a few things I had to check out first, I can't just go riding around with some things unfixed Dad."
Jeb hesitated when she said his name, not Jeb, but Dad. He rubbed the back of his neck and then set his jaw. "Ya can't stay another day, ya hafta go."
She glared at him. "Why? You don't want me around?"
He stuttered for a moment then waved his hands. "N-No, Jules it ain't –"
"No fuck this," she slid from the stool and zipped up her jumpsuit. "I'm goin for a walk."
She pushed past him rougher than she usually would have, but he just pissed her off to the max. She left him stuttering as she stomped out into the desert, fiddling with her cigarette pack in her anger.
He didn't want her around? Fine, after this walk she would be going the fuck home. She regretted calling him Dad. Julia looked over her shoulder, at the old gas station, and then grit her teeth, beginning her stomping manner again. She knew it was childish to act this way, but dammit she just wanted to stay one more day. She had this feeling that he was hiding something from her, but what could he be hiding? She was the only skeleton in his closet she knew of, and it wasn't like he was a super secretive guy, except to total strangers and that was totally reasonable of course.
Julia paused in the shadow of a tall red clay pillar, lighting her cigarette and then stuffing the Zippo and pack back into her left pocket of her jumpsuit. She pulled the cigarette from her lips and looked around at the landscape for a moment, wandering why she hadn't seen any wildlife yet. It was the desert, there should be something running around her? A lizard, a coyote, a fucking jack rabbit? Her brow furrowed and she leaned back against the pillar, cigarette balanced gently between her fingers so to not squish the tobacco around too much.
To be honest…Julia didn't want to leave because she wanted to find the source of that voice she had heard on the radio the other day. Sure she was a little bothered by the fact that someone was watching her, a man most of all, but she was mostly curious as to why. If they were solid creepers wouldn't they have just continued to watch her, or come at her directly when she was defenseless and in her towel? Yeah, so who the hell were they? Of course she would get weird calls through a radio out in the middle of nowhere. Now to who the calls were coming from…that was a juicy little adventure for her. She hadn't been out here in the desert since she was a little girl, and she barely remembered those days. Everything had grown and expanded, it all looked even bigger than it did then, and Julia loved exploring. You could say she was still a little kid at heart.
"Name?"
Julia screamed and pushed away from the rock, running a few feet before she turned around and noticed whoever had just spoken to her was now lying face first in the dirt, groaning around red sand. Julia dropped her cigarette and lifted a shaky hand to hold over her chest, her breathing rapid, and she swallowed heavily. She reached down for the bowler hat that had rolled to her feet and held it close to her chest.
"Y-You were the one through the radio the other day…" she muttered, crouching down beside their head.
He had stopped moving, and if Julia didn't know any better she would have thought he was dead. He didn't look up to her words, just laid there, and after a moment Julia reached down and began poking the side of his head. If there was one thing Julia was good at, it was annoying people. True, she shouldn't be annoying a stranger that had talked to her through the radio and had now been following her, but she figured what the hell, she had come to find him and here he was.
"Hello? Are you alive?"
His left hand darted up and snatched away the bowler hat. Julia screamed and fell back onto her rump, scrambling back as he jumped to his feet and pressed the bowler hat down on his head. There was a bandana tied around his face, leaving only his eyes to be seen out of his facial features. They were strange looking, the darkest eyes Julia had ever seen, but something was off about him. He stared at her a moment longer before he scrambled back up the rocks, disappearing over the slope.
Julia grit her teeth and jumped to her feet, following up behind him.
"Like hell I'm gonna just let you get away!"
She slipped and scraped her way behind him. He moved so easily around the rocks, Julia was slightly amazed, but more than anything she was angry. First her father tells her to leave, and then this bastard is gonna catch her interest and disappear? Oh hell no. But then again, was this what her father was worried about? He finding this mysterious person? Maybe she should stop, think a few moves ahead and decided if this was a good idea or not. Maybe she should wander why there was just some random man in the desert, moving so agile against the crumbling rocks, why he had known she was beside that radio, why he had contacted her through it. But of course she doesn't, Julia has never thought ahead of any plans she had made, and like hell that was going to start now.
And then she went tumbling down.
Julia screamed and scrambled, her fingers digging into the crumbling ground as her boot slipped and gravity tried to take her down the now thirty foot drop. A tear came from the corner of her eyes and she almost closed them, but she didn't, and kept scrabbling for a hold. Anything, to stop her from falling. Bad idea, it was all a bad idea, and now she was gonna die.
Or not.
Julia paused in her whimpering enough to notice she wasn't falling anymore, and that someone was holding onto her wrist. She looked up, jaw slightly slack, and watched the bandana slip away from a set jaw. Her large eyes widened impossibly further, and Julia now understood why he had run from her.