REWRITTEN 7/31/15
Hitch Hiking
We meandered down the highway, our thumbs thrust at the sky. I kicked at stones, my big boots sending them flying into the air. Onyx punted at a rock, trying to send it farther than mine, but it fell just short. I grinned in amusement, earning myself a glare.
"Shut up," she griped. "I'm sure you're cheating with your Earth powers."
I crossed my heart earnestly.
A small, red compact car slowed down beside us. A middle aged man rolled down the window and poked his head out. "You kids need a ride?" he asked. He looked well-dressed, like a teacher almost. His brown hair was starting to bald on top, but his eyes held a casual intelligence. A woman sat in the seat next to him, looking nervous.
"Yes please," I said gratefully, glancing at my friends. They nodded in agreement. At least the first people to offer us a ride didn't seem like the serial killer types.
"Hop in."
Minka opened the door, and we crowded into the car. Minka went first, then Onyx, and me last. We spelled MOE! I had to wedge myself into the seat, my knees pressed firmly against the chair in front of me. I was far too tall for this tiny ass car, and my legs were too damn long.
The driver started the car and pulled back onto the road. Soon the winter scenery was flashing by outside the windows. "So where are y'all heading?"
"Iowa City," I answered, shifting to relieve the pressure on my kneecaps.
He twisted around in his seat to stare at us in disbelief. Onyx gripped my thigh tightly, shooting me a nervous look. I returned it with a twitch of my head. Hopefully, we wouldn't jump off the road. In the mirror, the woman's eyes went wide, though I couldn't tell if it was caused by her husband's driving or my answer.
"Haven't you heard of all the crazy shit that's been going on there?"
"Greg," his wife chided. "Language."
I swallowed a giggle. That was such a silly thing to reprimand someone about.
"No.," I lied innocently. "What kind of trouble?"
"That's the thing," Greg said, finally looking back at the road. He almost sounded excited. "No one actually knows. There are rumors, but those damn government folk are doing a pretty good job coverin' it all up. Told the press it was some kind of freak disease, but there's all sorts of other theories on the Internet." Greg lowered his voice conspiratorially, though a note of embarrassment crept into his words. "They're saying it's zombies. Sounds crazy, huh?"
I snuck looks at Minka and Onyx, making a subtle face at them. Onyx smiled, but kept her mouth shut. They were kindly letting me take the lead. Dicks. "Yeah," I forced an awkward laugh. It sounded like a dying mouse. Minka and Onyx both gave strained giggles. "Crazy."
Greg's wife leaned across the center console and whispered in his ear. My elven hearing easily picked out the words. It was like plucking grapes out of a bag. "Greg, honey, are you sure this is a good idea? We don't know anything about these girls. Something just seems…off about them."
She was one of those rare humans who could sense magic, but she didn't trust it.
Greg waved off her concerns with one hand, ignoring the road again. I watched it for him, peering around his wife's seat, and I saw the threat an instant before we hit it.
The car slammed into a tall shape, flinging it onto the hood and over the roof. It was gone before I could get a good look at it, leaving behind a putrid yellow smear on the windshield.
Greg yelled with surprise and hit the brakes as hard as he could. My nose hit the headrest in front of me, and my kneecaps practically punched through the back of the seat. His hand wrapped around the door handle, and he was halfway out of the car before I regained my wits.
"Stop!" I shrieked, reaching out a hand, and he froze. "Don't get out of the fucking car. Just keep driving."
Greg didn't move. One leg rested on the tarmac, and the other still sat on its chair. He held onto both the steering wheel and the door handle. I glanced frantically out the back window. The corpse we had struck was staggering slowly to its feet. "Move your balding ass!" I yelled in his ear. I winced at my rudeness, but I was tense, and my filter had disappeared.
Shocked, Greg pulled himself back into the car, and his foot hit the gas as if of its own volition. The vehicle lurched forward, and the back of my head earned a bruise to match the one on my nose.
Minka leaned over Onyx and nudged me. "You can't just leave it."
She was right. She was generally right.
I gripped Greg's shoulder briefly. "Sorry, could you actually stop for a second and raise the sun roof?"
He was confused enough to slow to a stop, swerving slightly into the center of the road. I climbed onto Onyx's lap, ignoring her annoyed grumbles, and poked the upper half of my body out of the car. The muncher was lurching towards us. I cocked my finger into a gun and squeezed one eye shut as I took aim. "Pow," I mouthed and pushed my thumb down, releasing a small bullet of flame from the end of my pointer finger.
The muncher's head exploded in a black and red shower when it hit the road.
I patted Onyx on the cheek when I slid back into the car and took my seat. She punched me in the stomach in reply. "Okay, you can go now," I told Greg, wheezing.
He glanced at me nervously as he restarted the car, pulling back into the proper lane.
"What did you say your names were?" he asked, watching us in the rearview mirror.
"We didn't," Onyx said simply.
"You know what," Greg's wife snapped suddenly, steel lacing her voice. "Stop the car. We're not going anywhere until you answer some questions." She glared at me. "Children."
Greg obediently stepped on the brakes. His wife spun around in her seat to pierce each of us with an icy blue stare. I met that gaze, unblinking.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to give her that information. I was feeling unusually suspicious. I glanced over at Minka and Onyx for their opinions. Onyx shrugged one shoulder.
"Just drive, lady," Minka snarled, voice low. Her glare sliced through the windshield behind Greg's wife.
She didn't back down. There was iron in her spine, coursing through her blood. Literally. All blood had iron in it. I really needed to work on my analogies.
I had to admit that I actually was starting to like this woman.
"My name is Enia Silverson," I answered slowly, the words lumbering uncertainly from my mouth. "These are my friends: Onyx Aurora and Minka…Farfetch'D."
Minka gave me an astonished look, and I returned an awkward smile. It was the first thing that had popped into my head; we didn't actually know Minka's real last name. But I thought my creation sounded good.
The lady didn't need to know that Farfetch'D was a Pokémon.
"Those are obviously fake names. What do you think I am? Stupid?"
I searched the surrounding countryside for threats, halfway hoping that one would appear so that Greg would be forced to start driving.
"They aren't," Onyx promised. "It's not our fault our parents had weird taste in baby names."
The next question came jumping spider fast. "Why are you heading towards Iowa City when everyone else is heading away from it?"
I thought about lying, but I didn't have a suitable story up my sleeve. The trees were too pretty and distracting. "We live there," I said. "We were there when it happened."
"How did you get all the way out here?"
It was like the damn Spanish Inquisition. I was pretty sure that was the correct analogy.
Onyx shook her head slightly at me. She didn't think the truth would work here. We'd end up booted out of the car. How long would it take to walk a three hour car ride? Long enough that everyone would be dead already when we arrived.
"We just got in a car and fled," Minka lied, coming to my rescue. I mouthed a soft thank you at her. "There wasn't much gas in the car, and it ran out when we got here. Enia's mother called her, saying her brother was injured and that she needed to come back."
The woman shifted her gaze to me. "Can I see your phone? I'd like to talk to your mom myself."
"I dropped it when we were attacked in the city," I replied. "We had to run before I could pick it up."
"Attacked?" Greg asked, coming out of his shell finally.
"The rumors on the Internet are correct," I said, hoping they would believe me. "There really are zombies. That was what you hit back there."
They turned white at the word zombies. Ghosts sat in the car with us. I watched the forest again, waiting for them to come to their senses by themselves. It would be best not to interfere.
"Shit," I gasped suddenly, comically slapping my hand to my mouth in surprise.
A group of munchers staggered out of the trees, silhouetted by the setting sun.
I fell out of the car and rolled a little before coming back to my feet. I wiggled my fingers in anticipation as Onyx tumbled out beside me. Inside the car, Minka kicked up her feet, making sure Greg and his wife didn't leave us behind.
I stuck my hand out to the side, and fire curled from my palm, forming into a long, flickering sword. The heat lapped gently against my curled fist. Onyx and I strode forward dramatically, and she transformed mid-step.
I felt like such a badass with my leather jacket, my flaming sword, and the humongous, terrifying horse striding beside me.
The munchers honed in on us, and their moans grated on my ears. It was time to shut them up.
I ducked around the first muncher, swinging my sword behind my head. It sliced through the undead skull, and the scent of fried flesh filled the air. I kicked a second corpse away as Onyx's hooves crushed two skulls at once. I smacked my hand against the head of a muncher that got to close and reduced the entire thing to ash, stabbing the sword through the nose of another. The body fell off of the fire blade without me having to do a thing.
That left five.
Strike that, three.
As the count rolled through my head, Onyx trampled another pair of munchers.
"Onyx, get back! I'm going to blow these motherfuckers!"
She galloped behind me, wiping the muck from her hooves on the snow.
I cocked my middle finger back and pointed it at the three remaining zombies. I flicked the finger, and the world erupted.
It started as a tiny blip in the air. The oxygen inside the circle made by the three munchers popped gently, almost like a burp. The blip expanded violently, spilling forth into reality all at once. The world exploded. It shattered. It broke. It rent itself into a thousand different pieces. It caught fire. Reds, yellows, and oranges leapt from the blip to consume all the oxygen in the air around the munchers. A fireball blossomed, larger and hotter than a nuclear blast, and I was forced to squeeze my eyes shut and turn away.
I was a bit of a pyromaniac.
Though using the Finger Flick on three munchers may have been overkill.
When the fire died, only milliseconds after it began, there was nothing left of the undead, and a massive, charred crater marred the Wisconsin countryside.
"Sweet," Onyx drawled as she transformed back into a human. I held up my hands, and she slapped both of them as hard as she could. I cringed as I pulled my hands back, the flesh stinging and red.
We spun on our heels in unison and sauntered back towards the car. I linked my arm through Onyx's. The adults' white faces stared out of the window in shock, eyes wide as bugs, mouths bigger than bowhead whale.
Greg's face disappeared, and the next instant, Minka was climbing sulkily out of the car. She started walking towards us, hands stuff deep into her pockets. The vehicle squealed away, leaving behind a pair of long black streaks on the road as the only evidence that it had ever been there.
Onyx and I met up with Minka a few feet away from the highway. "They kicked me out," she explained. "Said we were freaks."
"Well, we kind of are," I pointed out, shrugging.
"But that shouldn't matter!" Minka ground out vehemently. "It shouldn't matter that we're different."
"You're right," I agreed. "It shouldn't. But it does. And I don't know about you, but I kind of like being a freak."
Minka nodded her head slightly, consenting to my point.
I clapped my hands together decisively. "How about this? We'll get human weapons. That way we won't attract attention, and people will actually appreciate it when we save their sorry asses."
"I want a new machete," Onyx announced. She was still pissed about losing her original to the government. They took enough from us in taxes, but they had to have her machete too.
"Fuck shit hell," I gasped suddenly, staring over Minka's shoulder back towards Madison, Wisconsin. My friends twisted around to find the source of my shock.
Stumbling from the trees and down the road, a horde of munchers paraded towards us, their stench rolling before them like a fleet of tanks.
Above them, thumping against the clouds, a formation of black helicopters flew, their bellies filled with men and women of the U.S. government.
A broad grin cracked my face.
This was going to be fun.
Enia: I am on a roll! Three rewritten chapters in about four days! Guess who rocks. This girl does! Please leave a review.