Max woke up as the sound of the truck idled down from its steady roar. She looked around.
They were at a gas station. It was much hotter now than it had been during the night. She looked down to see that there had been a men's jacket over her legs.
John glanced over at her as he pulled out his wallet. He selected a credit card. Max telescoped in on the credit card. The name said John Quagmire. "Morning," John said.
"Morning?" Max asked, disbelieving that she had slept so long. It was already 0800. The demon must have taken a bigger toll on her than she had believed. She carefully folded the jacket and set it in the middle seat.
John got out of the truck and started the pump after swiping John Quagmire's card. As it filled, he came back to the window and looked in. "Are you hungry?"
Max nodded a little. "Are there bathrooms around here?"
"Yeah, in the store somewhere," John said, taking out some cash. "Why don't you go to the bathroom and pick us out something to eat."
Max nodded, taking the twenty. She looked out her window, casually checking the building out. There were windows all along the front like most gas stations. There was only one security camera that she could spot inside and two on the outside.
She pulled her shirt down in the front and up in the back to help hide her barcode at the back of her neck. Barcodes had been Manticore's way of identifying them. She was X5-332960073452, or X5-452 for short. She couldn't wait till her hair was long enough to hide her barcode. She was sure that Manticore was using the tattoos to hunt down her siblings.
She walked into the gas station. The cashier gave her a cursory glance, but he had obviously seen her come from John's truck and wasn't too worried.
She looked around and spotted the bathrooms.
After she was done, she came back out into the store and looked around.
John was pretty fit, but did that mean he liked healthy food or exercised enough hunting things that he didn't need to worry?
It was hard to decide. In the end, Max selected a box of plain donuts, milk, and two apples. John seemed pleased with the selection as she handed him the change.
He ate a donut in two bites and washed it down with some milk.
Max ate her donut as she wondered about the credit card.
Obviously, ammunition, gas, food, and the motel room she had woken up to after the demon attack would cost money. But…was the credit card fake, or was there a John Quagmire out there somewhere footing the bill. Did that mean that he didn't get paid to hunt the supernatural? Was it illegal? She already knew from how he had approached the subject that it was secret. But the government funded lots of secret things, for example, the transgenics. Did that mean the government didn't know about the supernatural?
Max couldn't ask without blowing her cover.
She did indicate his general wallet area once they were on the road and ask, "Quagmire?"
John was confused.
"The credit card?" she asked.
"Oh," John said, understanding. "Right, I didn't steal it. I just applied for it. It's a fake name."
Max nodded a little relieved. She had been taught a little bit about economics at Manticore, maybe for those who would go into espionage and infiltration of the government to make it more efficient, and she had always felt that the system was faulted. Credit card companies made plenty of interest off of people. It didn't bother her a bit to see them footing the bill of people saving lives.
After that she was pretty relaxed.
Nothing was said until about six hours later when they stopped for lunch and gas.
John paid for the gas with a credit card, this one with the name of Bert Harkley, while Max went inside and bought food with cash. Max vaguely wondered why he did it that way, but mostly figured it was out of convenience.
After going to the bathroom, Max picked out some decent looking sandwiches, a bottle of juice, a bottle of milk, and two bags of chips. She figured he had liked the balance between healthy and unhealthy just fine earlier, so that was what she got.
She headed back outside to the truck, picking up the end of a phone conversation with someone named Bobby.
John saw her approach and wrapped the call up. "Yeah, we'll be there in probably two hours or so…alright, see you then, Bobby."
Max divvied up the food amongst the two of them.
"Hold tight for a sec," John said, putting his food in the driver's seat. "I'm gonna go hit the head before we take off."
Max nodded as she bit into her turkey sandwich.
She watched him go in the store, wondering if he was tired. He didn't seem drowsy.
She looked over to the seat where John's phone was. She took a sip of her milk. She looked back at the gas station and didn't see him through the window.
She put down her food and reached over to grab the phone. The last number, Bobby, was a South Dakota number. That was the person he was taking her to stay with. Did that also mean that he hadn't really planned to take her on any hunts on the way? He must have just said that to make her feel like less of a bother. That said a lot about him if he was able to read that from her since she had been trained at Manticore to hide most of her inner thoughts and emotions.
Max glanced back out the window, looking for John. He still wasn't there.
She decided to scroll through a bit farther. She wasn't completely familiar with phones, but she had played around enough on Mrs. Barrett's to know the general location of most things. She went to his contacts list.
There was over 100 contacts in his phone, and none of them stood out more than any others. Bobby's number was under an alias, Hilljack Joe, so she assumed that most, if not all of them would be under aliases, too. Or at least his closest contacts would be, in case his phone got in the wrong hands. It was what Max would do.
There were a few missed calls from a person named ACDC. She wondered if that was an acronym for something. She memorized the number since it was in the log so many times.
There was one call from a Standford, but that was a very old log. She didn't bother with it.
The faint sound of a bell went off behind her. She almost panicked, recognizing the sound as the bell on the door of the gas station, but she knew that would be more obvious than anything. She leaned over the seat as John came around the front of the truck. She pretended to not notice him as she dropped the phone back where it was just as the door opened.
He stared at her for a moment as she held two bags of chips.
Max gave a shrug as she smiled. "I like Doritos better."
She dropped the Lays in his pile as she leaned back upright into her seat.
John just shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'm used to it."
Max raised an eyebrow and gave him a questioning look as she popped open the bag.
John started the truck and buckled in. "My sons," he said. "The older one would buy variety so that everyone could choose, but they both usually would eat their favorite anyway, so I would get the leftovers."
Max smiled.
"How old are your sons?" she asked.
John smiled. "One is 22, the other is 18."
"18, huh?" Max asked. "Do they go to college, or do they do what you do?"
"The younger one, Sam," John said with a smile. "He goes to Stanford."
Max heard the pride in that statement.
"The older one, Dean, hunts." John gave a chuckle. "And he's damn good at it, too."
Max smiled. Already, she had figured out that Sam was the "Stanford" from John's cell. She wondered why they didn't call more often if he was so proud of him. For that matter, why didn't he call Dean more often? What if he needed backup like she had witnessed John needing? Was it possible that Dean was ACDC?
Max finished her food deep in thought, and the last few hours seemed to fly by.
Pretty soon, they were pulling onto a gravel road in the town of Sioux Falls. That answered Max's question about going on a hunt with John.
John pulled up to a house that was on a junkyard. A big, lazy dog on the front porch of the house glanced up at them, but didn't do much else. John pulled onto a dirt road that went around the house to the back and parked next to a dusty van that was missing its hood.
"We're here," he said shortly as he got out. Max hopped out to follow him up the back steps of the house as he knocked on the door.
Max could hear movement inside as someone moved around. John either didn't hear this or didn't acknowledge it because he knocked again.
"I'm coming, I'm coming, jeez. Hold your horses. It's like it's the damn apocalypse," said a man's voice who Maxed assumed was Bobby.
The back door was flung open. There stood a man in a ball cap, jeans, and a vest. His beard was a reddish color.
In a way, he reminded her a bit of Jack, but he didn't smell like alcohol and, despite his gruff beard, he seemed to take good care of himself.
He didn't make a move to shake John's hand, though he did give a nod.
"John," he said. Then he looked at Max. "You must be Max. I'm Bobby."
Max was unsure of what to do. She didn't want to befriend Bobby if John didn't like him. But then why did he bring her here? She didn't want to alienate the person she was supposed to be staying with either.
Finally, she just settled on smiling at him, and, before she could do anything else, John was putting his hand on her shoulder and talking to her as he looked at Bobby. "Why don't you go outside and explore a little bit while I talk to Bobby."
Max nodded her head and turned around.
John and Bobby went inside the kitchen. They didn't shut the door. Instead, they just leaned back against the kitchen table and watched her. They didn't start speaking until she was about fifty feet away. Max put on a good show of throwing rocks since it was apparent they were going to talk about her, but every bit of her transgenic hearing was attuned into their conversation. And fifty feet was nothing to her, so it came in loud and clear.
Max bent down and picked up a decent-sized stone and threw it a distance similar to what she had seen other girls at the park when they threw.
"So what's her story? You didn't say much on the phone?"
"The family she was with was slaughtered. Demon."
"Okay, yeah, that sucks, but why did you decide to bring her to me? Does she not have any relatives?"
"No. Her parents died in a house fire when she was young. Sound familiar to you?"
Max threw another rock. Was that the thing she had said that had peaked John's interest? What was so important about her parents dying in a house fire?
"You think she's one of 'em?"
Max jerked, and the rock went directly through a window of an old, rusted truck. She winced, waiting for someone to yell, but they were completely invested in their conversation now.
"I don't know," John said. "Maybe, but the timing isn't right. I mean, she's only nine. Do you think it's possible he's started a new round of recruitments?"
"Could be," Bobby said. "So what, am I a babysitter now for all of these children?"
"No," John said. "She says her grandparents were hunters and that she was raised that way until they died about a year ago."
"I get the feeling you don't exactly buy that."
There was silence for a moment.
"I don't know. I didn't get much time to look her up, but she claims that she doesn't know what their last name is. She thinks hers if fake, and she doesn't have a birth certificate, so she hasn't been able to go to school."
"At all?"
"No, but she's smart. She loves to read."
Max picked up another rock and sent it sailing a little farther than the first.
"Okay, so you're scared that in the foster system, if she doesn't have a birth certificate, she could easily be abducted and nobody would know."
"Yeah, but also…" There was a long silence. "Bobby, I went in to face that demon and I went in half-assed-"
"As usual."
" – and I was pinned to the wall about to die. And this little nine year old girl barrels in and faces off with a demon she had just watched mutilate her sister."
"No kidding?" Bobby said slowly, in thought.
"I know. I'm still reeling from it myself. But that's not it. The demon possessed her, Bobby. It possessed her, and I hesitated to long to shoot. I thought it was the end again, but then she just kicked the demon out of her."
"What do you mean?" Bobby asked. "Like she spoke an exorcism?"
"No," he said. "I mean, I don't know. She didn't out loud."
Max bent down and picked up another rock.
After a moment, Bobby said, "That's not possible."
"I know."
Max threw the rock, but not nearly as far as the first two. These two were very suspicious of her abilities. She had to be careful around them.
Bobby spoke up, "Well, if she is one of those kids, then she's gonna be in for a world of trouble."
"Yeah, she is," John said eventually. "At this point, I don't think she has a choice in the matter, she's already involved. She needs training."
"I hear a 'but' in all of this."
"But," John said, "I can't train her myself."
Bobby must have glared at him because John went on to explain himself. "Bobby, you know what I'm hunting. It's too dangerous for a girl."
"It's too dangerous for you," Bobby muttered.
"I'm a full-grown adult. I can handle myself."
"You just said she saved your ass," Bobby growled back. "Look, I'm not sayin' you should take the girl with you, that'd just be stupid, but I'm sayin' you need someone there to back you up. You can't just keep chasin' after the mother of all demons on your own."
John just ignored what he said. "So you'll train her?"
Bobby let out a sigh. "Yes, I'll train her."
And just like that, Max was staying with Bobby.
DASDASDASDASDASDASDASDASDAS
"Max," John called out across the dusty lot of cars.
Max dropped the rock in mid-throw, as if she hadn't been eavesdropping, and headed for the house.
Halfway there, Max's telescopic vision picked up on the fact that John was trying to hand Bobby some cash.
Bobby waved it off. "Keep your money."
"She doesn't have any clothes," John warned, still holding out the money.
Bobby looked frustrated. "I can take care of the kid, okay?"
John just put the money back in his pocket and walked up to the backdoor to meet her. "C'mon Max, I have something for you in the truck."
Max followed him out, wondering what it was.
He opened his door and hit a button that made the hatch in the back pop open. He climbed up in the truck and rustled around in there. He would pick something up, examine it, and then shake his head and put it back. Finally, he pulled something out and made a positive noise. He turned around and hopped down from the truck. In his hands, he held a small caliper Smith & Wesson handgun.
Max eyed it, but didn't take it. "9mm?"
John smiled at her. "Sure is." When she made no movements to take it, he said, "It's for you, short-stop. Every hunter needs a weapon."
Max just shook her head no. She hadn't held a gun since Manticore. If she hadn't been willing to take a gun to save John's life, she definitely wouldn't be willing to take one to save her own. She didn't meet his eye.
He seemed to study her for a minute. "Okay, how about a knife?"
Normally, she would be okay with knives, especially since taking it would make John feel better about leaving her, but she seemed to have developed a phobia of those too now, as images of Lucy's mangled body flashed through her mind.
John took the knife back. "Okay, no knife." He pulled out a necklace. "Do you have a thing against jewelry?"
"No," Max said as she reached forward to grab the necklace. It was a silver coin with a star carved on the surface with symbols at each point of the star. The band was leather. She easily recognized the symbol from when she had been reading up on the supernatural in the library. It was a symbol of Solomon and believed to protect the wearer from attackers. "Thank you," she said softly, still running her thumb over the surface.
"Oh, and this," John said, pulling the money out that he had tried to hand to Bobby. "Save this money. You never know."
Max looked at him. "But, don't you need that money?"
John smirked and waved her off. "Nah, I'll get it back."
He kneeled down, rested one arm on his knee, and looked her in the eye. "Alright, I'm going to head out now. If you need anything at all, just let Bobby know. He'll take you to the store to get some new clothes."
Max nodded as she put the necklace on over her head.
John suddenly scratched the back of his neck and had a hard time meeting her eye. "Ah, I don't really answer my phone all that much. If there's an emergency, and Bobby can't help, you can call this number." He gave her a slip of paper with the number for ACDC on it. "He can be trusted. Memorize the number then burn it."
"Okay," Max said, though she already knew the number by heart. She felt a little sad. It felt like so long had passed since she had been living with Lucy. She nodded at him, feeling the strange impulse to hug him.
He stood up, ruffled her hair, climbed in the truck, and left.
Max stood out in the front yard, watching the road long after the dust had settled. She could feel Bobby watching her from the front porch.
Sucking up her courage, she turned around and approached the house.
Bobby watched her from the deck chair, not saying anything.
Max watched the dog carefully as she approached. A lot of dogs didn't like her. She figured she had too much feline DNA in her genetics. This dog watched her back, but didn't make any other move. Max sat down slowly and reached her hand out. The dog sniffed a little from where he lay, but didn't make any other movements. Taking that as a good sign, she reached her hand the rest of the way out until she was patting its head. The dog softly started thumping its tail as its eyes closed.
Max smiled.
"Rufus," Bobby said from his chair.
Max looked up at him.
"The dog's name is Rufus," Bobby clarified. "And you can just forget about playing fetch with him. He's a lazy SOB."
Max nodded and went back to petting him. She started to scratch behind his ears. The thumping got louder as Max's smile got bigger. She scratched harder.
The dog rolled over and showed her his belly. Max's grin about split her face. She moved up and started rubbing his belly.
Bobby grunted. "You'll spoil him treating him that way."
Max stopped and looked at him, calculating.
"By all means, you can pet him," Bobby said. "He doesn't get a whole lotta attention around here. Just don't come whinin' to me when he starts followin' ya all around the house and nudging you at dinner time."
"I won't," Max said, immediately going back to petting him.
"You hungry?" Bobby asked as he headed inside, leaving the front door open.
Max got up and followed Bobby in the house. She looked around. It didn't have a lot of the decorations that Lucy's house had. It was bare and dusty, until they passed the living room. It was overflowing with books. Max couldn't wait to get her hands on books and start studying the supernatural. She really wanted to help people.
She wondered if she could ever trust anyone enough to tell them her secret about being transgenic. Would they think she was some sort of supernatural monster that needed to be killed?
Bobby stopped in his tracks and went to turn around, "Hey, Ma—Oh, jeezus you scared the daylights outta me!" he said, staring at her. "You're too quiet."
"I'm sorry," Max said.
"Don't worry about it," Bobby said. "It'll be good on hunts. Just don't sneak up on me like that."
"Did you want something?" Max asked.
"Yeah, do you like roast?"
Max nodded.
"Good. That's what I've been eatin' on the past week," Bobby said, turning back around and heading to the kitchen. He pulled out a ceramic pot from a very empty refrigerator and set it on the counter. He fished some paper plates out of a cabinet and some silverware from a drawer. He plopped big scoops of potatoes, carrots, meat, and gravy onto three plates. "And let me tell you, it gets better every day."
Max wondered how many days of the year this man ate roast.
He glanced up at her as he shuffled two of the plates into the microwave. "Lots."
Max was confused.
Bobby grinned for the first time, and it made him seem much younger. "The answer to your question, 'How much do I eat roast?' The answer is lots."
Max vaguely wondered if he had the ability to read minds.
Bobby was pressing buttons on the microwave. "It's easy to cook. You just add water, meat, veggies, and let the crockpot do the work. If you're feeling fancy you add pepper, but mostly I just use salt. Lots of salt."
Max wasn't complaining. She already knew—despite her earlier concerns of a similar appearance to Jack—that Bobby was going to be nothing like Jack. He may have seemed gruff, but he was a good person. Besides, back at Manticore, they had only been allowed to eat what the transgenics liked to call 'slop.' It was a tasteless, lumpy mush that was infused with the vitamins that they needed.
And at Lucy's, her mother rarely was home to cook, so most of the time the girls ate what they could make. Max couldn't cook food to save her life—that wasn't something they had taught at Manticore, and Lucy was only a few years older than her, so the girls ate a lot of things from cans. Occasionally, Lucy would make grilled cheese, as long as Jack wasn't downstairs. He didn't like to hear any noise in the house other than his television.
So a home-cooked meal was A-okay with her.
While the microwave was going, Bobby buttered some pieces of bread. "Cups are in the cabinet next to the fridge, kiddo."
Max went to the cabinet. There weren't any regular cups, just a lot of coffee mugs. She got out two coffee mugs and went to the fridge to see what there was to drink.
There was a lot of Budweiser. Jack's drink of preference had been Busch.
Max was annoyed that she kept making stupid comparisons between the two. She shut the door to the fridge and went to the sink to fill the cups with water.
"Ah," Bobby said, stopping her. "You probably don't want to do that. Tell you what, we'll go to the store after we eat and pick up some things you like, but you'll probably want to go without a drink for dinner, otherwise, you're gonna be drinkin' water that tastes like rotten eggs."
"Sulfur?" Max asked.
"Yeah," Bobby said, apologetically. "It's the lines, not the best in the world, but it gets the job done."
Max put the cups back up as Bobby took the plates out of the microwave.
He sat one in front of her with a fork. Max took her seat.
Bobby sat the plate that hadn't been microwaved down on the floor. He whistled and called, "Rufus!"
Max watched the front door as the dog came absolutely barreling in. He could certainly move when he wanted to.
Bobby sat down for his own food, pointing his fork at Rufus who was engrossed in inhaling his dinner. "That is the only time that dog ever moves," he said taking a bite of roast. "That and when there are supernatural critters running around."
Max swallowed. "He hunts?"
Bobby looked offended. "Well yeah! He's a hunting dog."
"Yeah, but I read…um, thought that most dogs ran away from the supernatural."
"Not old Rufus," Bobby said. "He's gotta taste for their blood."
"Oh," Max said as she looked back at the dog, unsure of whether Bobby was being literal or not. She watched Rufus' big chops tear into a piece of meat with new contemplation.