STRANGER DANGER - PART 2

His bones were starting to ache now, too. That gnawing, irritating pain settling across his body as harbingers of fever.

Was it the drug? It very well could be. Or the water…

Nick didn't want to think about. What he needed to think about was how to get out of the handcuffs. All the ways he could remember included a bobby pin or a piece of metal or anything he could pick the locks with. He had nothing like that on him. Maybe he should get his hands on any handcuffs key someplace in a police station and carry it around for such occasions. It made him nauseous even more to just think about any of it ever repeating itself, but apparently anything was possible, and ways of predicting shit were running low.

He stared down at the bracelet for a long while, listening to his irregular pulse beating in his temples, brushing his thumb absentmindedly against the metal teeth of the lock, letting his thoughts roam around freely in futile hopes of hitting something important. He made a few mental inventories of what he had on him, but no good idea came. His mind kept stumbling over the razorblade hidden in his boot, but he couldn't quite think of how it was of any use, unless he actually decided to go with Gerald's Game recipe. Which would drop him in a world of agonizing infection and no way of dealing with all the shit at once, and he had a few new problems already.

Nick took a couple of swigs of water, screwed the cap back slowly, then stopped, studying the bottle with new eyes. There was something in the depths of his jumbled mind, something that he had to find asap. He thought of the razorblade and the bottle in his hand, put them in the same image on his inner screen and looked at it, waiting. As though there would be a note coming up to tell him what to do.

There was barely enough for two gulps left in the bottle, and he unscrewed the cap and finished it. He studied the bottle, turning it in his hands, groping for that elusive idea that teased from around the corner. His fingers flexed, the plastic made crackling sounds. It was rather thin.

Thin…

Squinting, he slowly put the bottle down and pulled his left foot to him, undid the laces and fished out the blade. She didn't check – and if she did, she never thought to look under the insole. He unwrapped a piece of duct tape securing the cutting edge and took the bottle again, cutting into the middle of it after a momentary hesitation. He worked with more vigor as his anxiety started to grow. She could come back any moment.

Finally, he had an uneven, narrow strap of plastic. He forced himself to be patient and wrapped the blade back in the duct tape, hid it away where it was. Then he shifted against the pipe to benefit from the last candle's light and some daylight stretching from the doorway as he carefully placed the strap over the metal teeth and started to push the plastic into the lock. It was thicker than a tool like that should be, but he had no fucking choice in the matter. Sweating and barely breathing, his pulse galloping in his throat, Nick kept pushing, gently at first, harder later.

It wouldn't budge. One side of the strap bunched up; he used another, more careful this time. He could feel seconds floating away, flocking together into minutes, which grew to hours and days. After eternity and a day, the plastic slipped in, the tip of his thumb nail hitting the metal painfully as it jerked into the lock.

Nick gasped, unbelieving, and inspected it gingerly. It definitely seemed to be in.

Releasing a ragged breath, he pushed a bit more. Reluctantly, it went deeper. He took a few uneven breaths, bracing for possible failure. The potential threatened to devastate him after all the efforts. Alicia's panicked voice kept playing in his ears, adding to anxiety and pains developing throughout his body.

He swallowed, remembered the church, and emitted a nervous chuckle, feeling like an idiot. Ofelia's face came to mind, her eyes full of tears and hope staring up at a makeshift Mexican altar, her hands under her chin with a rosary he gave her dangling from her interlaced fingers as she prayed.

"Please," he heard himself whisper as if it was someone else. "For Alicia… Help me. Help us…"

He sucked in a breath, held it, and pulled at the bracelet gingerly.

Martha killed the engine and pushed the door open, stepping out. She looked around, took a deep breath of the morning desert air. Dry and dead. The way she liked it.

She took Nick's radio from the dashboard and clicked it on. It crackled. After a moment, the other boy's voice came through, wary: "Nick? Is that you? Nick, where are you? Nick?"

"Nick, please, tell us where you are," the girl put in. "Nick, goddammit, please, Nick, say something!"

She grinned, silent, waited a bit longer as they continued begging for any word from her prisoner. Then she made a strained sound that could a dying or a suffocating person emit, and turned off the switch.

She laughed, then slipped back in the car and started the engine.

Troy finished in the restroom before Alicia did, and was waiting outside when she emerged. She looked better, more put together but extremely irritable.

"You need all the energy you can get," he said, slipping what remained of last night's candy collection into her jeans pocket. She didn't flinch away from the invasion and nor did she reach to open and eat it.

"I want my radio."

He unclipped his walkie-talkie with more battery power and handed it over. She snatched it out of his hand without a thank you, walking ahead of him, speaking into it again as if her conversation hadn't been one sided all night. All Troy could think was that she was losing it. If Nick hadn't answered by now, and he still hadn't answered, wasn't it likely that there was no more Nick?

He shuddered at the thought, at where that would leave the two of them and how quickly this setting would fall.

"I'm going to do another walkthrough town and revisit the stores from last night."

Alicia looked up and spared him the curtsey of an acknowledging nod. "See if there's a generator anywhere."

"What for?"

She gave the device she was holding a shake and protectively hugged it to her chest like a child.

"I'll see what I can do."

"I'll look around the houses. You should check the liquor store first."

He nodded lightly, backing away from her, turning to make his way in the opposite direction he'd headed the night before and for the main street.

He hadn't gotten very far when a cry erupted in the air, a screech so loud that his blood turned cold and his insides to jelly. Troy whipped around and saw her running toward him, pale and frightened and like she'd seen a ghost.

"He answered me! He spoke!"

"What?" he asked dumbfounded. Troy hadn't heard anything. He unclipped the remaining device from his waistband, checked the power and found that the red light that had been there before was now black. It had died. He guessed he'd made a mistake in his estimation on how much time was left. "Are you sure? What did he say?"

She blanked and he could see what he assumed was a hint of irrational guilt sweep across her face. "I couldn't make it out."

"What do you mean you couldn't make it out?"

"He wasn't really using words."

Now Troy was confused. "Then what was he using? Klingon?"

Alicia scowled, shaking off the sarcasm, and then reached out to grip his shirt as if somehow the physical contact would be enough to transfer what she'd heard and make him understand it. Troy gripped her radio-holding hand, closing his fingers over her own, and brought the device to his mouth, using her finger to press the talk button. She didn't appear to mind as she didn't want to let go.

"Nick, that you, man? Nick?"

He relaxed his hand, releasing the button so that Nick could sling a return, and then attempted it again. There wasn't even a click or any indication that anyone else was on the channel but them two.

She yanked her hand free. "I know what I heard, Troy, he's hurt. He's—" she hesitated, unable to finish her thought, swallowing hard as though she might be sick. "We need to find him."

"That's the idea," he stated, taking a step back, not liking that she could be losing her mind or that he'd missed an opportunity to hear what was going on himself. Was it her lack of sleep playing with her mind or his last call?

He headed into the liquor store and gave her a look as she followed him inside. Obviously, plans had changed and she was determined as ever to check every hole she assumed he'd chosen to hide in.

But why would he be hiding at all?

"Anything?" Troy asked as she stepped into the spirits aisle.

She had white-knuckled the radio pressed against the side of her face and sought his gaze. She shook her head, confirming what he'd told her the night before and what she'd refused to believe after her spooky call. Troy headed into the back storeroom, noting that there wasn't much noise or banging around like there had been in the clothing place and that the business had been abandoned and untouched. There were a few bottles missing here and there and a lot of dirt that caked the door handles and freezers, but overall that was just a reflection of time.

Nick stared down at the open bracelet in his hand in wonder, breathless for three beats, then swallowed and let it drop on the floor with a clang.

He quickly scooped all plastic pieces and the mutilated bottle and scrambled to his feet, searching around the dark kitchen where to dump it all. He didn't need her to return and find out how he unlocked the handcuffs. If she caught him on his way out, he needed a chance to pull it again. Knowledge was power, however fucked up a world was. That never changed.

After dashing around a little on his unsteady legs and finding no secure place to conceal his trick, he dropped on his knees between the counters and squeezed the remaining bottle flat, pushing it into a thin gap between the counter and the floor. If she thought to look in there, she was the devil himself, and Nick didn't believe it.

Once every single piece of the bottle was stuffed under the counter, he visited the kitchen bathroom, quickly did his business, and tried the taps. A trickle so thin it was almost a thread. He cupped his hands under it, then rinsed his face, enjoying the cool touch to his now feverish skin.

He gingerly approached the counter and looked around the diner. It was empty, only dusty tables and chairs, some overturned, some still standing upright waiting for clients to have a snack. The huge windows displayed a reddish desert outside, an empty road and no walkers. It was both good and bad. He found nothing to use as weapons, but supposed it could be fixed outside.

The door squealed opening, and Nick froze momentarily, then pushed it further and stepped out. The air was getting hotter, dryer, but it was better than the stale dust he had to breathe all night. A huge truck was parked behind the diner at the gas station, and no one around. About a dozen dead walkers scattered around. No sign of the woman. He felt so shitty and sleepy that it started to seem like one big hallucination.

Maybe there was no black woman. Maybe I was dead, or too high and well on my way.

He shook the thought off and discarded the truck idea. There were no keys, and driving this big-ass thing was out of question – he could barely walk straight. His stomach was having an orgy of torment that had spread its tentacles every which way.

He smashed one of the windows in the station, picked a glass shard and lowered on his knees next to one of the bodies, more or less usable. Hesitating a moment and bracing himself, he ripped a strand of its shirt, wrapped it around his hand and took the glass. He cut into the corpse's stomach, holding his breath for as long as he could while soaking the worn denim jacket he pulled off another one in stinky soup of blood and rotting intestines. When he couldn't keep from breathing, anymore, he turned away and threw up some water and bile. When there was nothing left, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and shifted away from the mutilated body, pulling the jacket on. He smeared some blood on his face, still holding his breath until it was bearable and didn't make him dry heave.

He walked to the back of the station and away into the desert, tempted to look back but refraining. There was not much left from his ability to multitask, so he put his focus into moving one foot in front of another at a bearably good speed.

Martha made another stop a couple miles short of the town the trio had picked last night and tried the radio again.

They were still pleading with it, and she listened with her eyes closed as if it were a Mozart concert.

A bit later, she made her call and breathed into the receiver.

Their voices got panicked and begging again. She grinned, laughing silently, then drew it closer to her mouth and whispered, making sure it was hard to estimate who the voice might belong to:

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? When the stars threw down their spears, and water'd heaven with their tears, did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee?"

She switched her channel off and put the radio on the dashboard, listening to their distressed voices as she drove back.

They had checked the remaining stores as if they were running a marathon, found the body Troy had taken care of the night before and confirmed that it was, in fact, a woman. Both of them were relieved.

Alicia continued to speak into the radio, begging for another scrape, unconcerned that the noise might bring skin munchers as they combed the main street. As if to give her a reprieve from her obsession and to add proof to her earlier claim, the line crackled and a voice echoed across the line, reciting disjointed poetry.

At least that was what it sounded like.

Had they crossed channels with someone else?

"Who is this?" Alicia asked, finger fixed on the talk trigger. "Nick?"

No, it definitely wasn't Nick. Or maybe it could be? They'd been speaking so softly it had been hard to make out anything and whomever it was seemed to have disappeared.

"Hello?! HELLO?!" Alicia said, clicking the trigger on and off, on and off, barely giving anyone else on the line time to intrude. "We need help! I'm looking for my brother! Please! Hello?!"

The line was dead again.

"Can anyone hear me?!" she asked, tears in her eyes, her cheeks flushed. "Please. Anyone—I'm—"

Troy yanked the device from her hand.

"Give it up. It's just some asshole getting a kick out of your anxiety."

She'd already killed one of the walkie-talkies, and if she didn't cool it she'd do it again and leave them with no way to contact him at all. If it was him, to begin with. Troy was skeptical; not because he wasn't hopeful but because he didn't trust it.

"You don't know that."

"Then why haven't they responded?"

"Maybe the lines got crossed?"

"Get real, Alicia, you've been at and on this thing all night and haven't heard a peep. Whoever is out there isn't looking to be helpful."

"You don't know that," she repeated slowly and with revitalized ire.

"I don't, but I do know is that you're killing the last means we have to contact Nick if he is still out there."

She dropped the basket and launched herself at him. She hit his arms, his face, anything that looked exposed and defenseless. He let her – maybe because he'd fucked up in reassuring her the night before and maybe because, in part, he felt he earned it for not being able to do so again – at least for a couple seconds.

He shoved her away. They were both thoroughly pissed off.

"We can't keep fighting amongst ourselves," he snapped, speaking around the end of the shirt he'd bunched together and used to dab at the cut on his lip. Her nails were short but she'd managed damage.

"Do you even care about him?"

"Of course I fucking care about him! He's my friend, my—"

Troy left the sentence unfinished, silence momentarily descending between them like a blanket. Unlike when he'd confessed to Madison that he saw Nick as a brother, as family, Troy couldn't bring himself to do that now. The consequences of that weak admission were too great.

"Then act like it!" she hissed, barely having picked up on the disruption.

"And how am I supposed to do that? By losing my fucking mind? You're doing that enough for both of us!"

Alicia's hand swung out with the purpose of hitting him again, movement he'd read the second time and prevented easily. He grabbed her wrist and twisted, enjoying her cry of pain as her back hit the wall.

"Get off me, you prick!"

"Stop hitting me. We're on the same fucking team!"

He shook her once and felt her nails bite into the flesh of his forearm.

"Let me go!" she cried.

Everything in him screamed to silence her, to punch her, to discipline her for thinking that she could talk down to him, to take her frustrations out on him as if Troy were some walking talking piñata. He let her go with a jerk, putting a quick distance between them, watching as she straightened up and tensed like a snake readying to strike or waiting on another attack. Her fists were clenched, her eyes glued to him like two steel pins.

"Don't hit me again," he stated coolly, retrieving the remaining bottle of vodka that had survived their fight.

She relaxed as he moved away, letting the wall catch her and then slowly began to trail after him again.

Fighting the multiplying discomforts and aches pulsating from everywhere around his body, Nick tried his best to not lose his sense of direction, however abysmal. Keeping the road to his right, he didn't dare come closer to it. Even if the truck didn't belong to the woman, she had to bring him to that diner by some means, aka a vehicle. Hardly she dragged him through dirt all the way from that small town. He didn't even remember its name, nor was sure he looked when they had rolled in and started cleaning their way to the church. The scariest part now, as he dragged his feet through the sand and shrubs, was that he had no clue whether he was getting closer to or farther from the said town. There was no certain way to pick, just pure hope for luck. Given how his night went, luck was something he had to pray for extra.

The sun was blazing and barely crawling across the sky where the clouds were so thin they didn't provide any reprieve at all. He could only wonder how much time had passed, but the diner had already disappeared behind a hill he had passed by.

It all brought him back to his long walks among the dead. A part of him suddenly wished to go back in time for it. There were no worries, no anxiety, no danger hovering over those he held dear. It was just him and the dead, a strange and surreal sense of tranquility befitting a former junkie. You can take the drugs out of the addict, but not anything of what they planted in him. It all stayed, like reminders akin to old pictures on the walls telling a story of a long and fruitful relationship. They never left, like old ghosts lingering in the crumbled walls of a castle. And all it took to make the pictures move again was one shot. One pill. One glass. Sometimes one smoke.

Having none of the stimulants at hand, the brain still tried to recreate the effects when it felt slipping into grey areas. The doses he had in him during the recent hours carried his mind into its space as smoothly as a sleigh ride down a snowy slope. Fever was the oil on the sleigh's skids. The desert was wavering around him like a painted veil, and he was starting to lose the idea of where the road was and where he was supposed to go.

A sound of engine yanked him from his feverish haze, and he ducked quickly behind a semi-tall cactus – more like fell in the shrubs at its base, peeking over them carefully.

Sunlight glared, reflecting from the car's windows, but it seemed to be a police cruiser. It drove in the direction of the diner and disappeared behind the hill he was walking from.

He lay down on the ground, eyes closed against the blinding light, and tried to get his heartbeat to calm down a little. It didn't. He felt more nauseous instead and couldn't stop himself from a dry heave as he was getting up like an old man of ninety. Every step was a whole new horizon of achievement, and his mental focus was beginning to trip over itself in the primitive scheme of the walking process. He lost count of how many times he was almost down in the dust, catching balance by pure luck.

The desert, cactuses and shrubs and sands stretched out endlessly like an ocean of red doom, and the hope of discovering any shelter was dissolving like a mirage.

"Shit," Martha hissed, eyeballing the empty chain and handcuffs with one open bracelet. "Shit, that little shit."

She stabbed her stick against the floor once, twice, again, then stilled, her eyes closed as she took deep breaths, in and out, in and out. After a few, she was ready for a fresh view.

A small smile started in the corners of her mouth, growing, tugging at them more persistently until she was cackling.

"Good. It's good," she cooed, walking across the diner and outside. She found one of the dead she had cleaned out before, gutted, and laughed hard. The boy was something special, after all. She registered a slight surprise. Surprise was the rarest beast to catch nowadays.

He was worth pursuing.

She smiled, pulling at the police cruiser's door, and slipped behind the wheel again, turned on the radio.

"Tiger, tiger," she murmured into it, starting the engine.

They circled the main street and every one of its stores and headed back to the church. When they reached it, Alicia braced herself against the side of the car and closed her eyes to catch her breath.

"You need to eat."

She hadn't touched the chocolate Troy had given her. She removed it from her pocket and threw it at him, still pissed at the fact that he'd commandeered the radio. It bounced off his stomach and landed on the ground.

He made a point of stepping on it, of grinding it into the dirt, and headed inside.

He collected the rest of his stuff from the night before, slipped the vodka into the bag along with the candy, soda and chips and made one last use of the restroom before heading back outside.

He tossed the bag into the backseat of the car through the already open window, being careful with the vodka as they no longer had a spare. He climbed into the driver's seat, twisted on the ignition and checked the gauge on the fuel. The red needle hit just below the E. Thankfully they had two extra cherry cans in the trunk and it wouldn't take much to navigate the residential areas.

They'd do most of it on foot, anyway.

As soon as Alicia got into the passenger seat, Troy slipped the gears into first and steadily applied pressure to the accelerator.

They drove the short distance in silence.

He slowed to a crawl, pulled over onto the side of the road outside one of the houses, and got out. Single story with a porch, meagre flowerbeds all dead, and scattered gardening tools left to rust on the only thing living – the grass – but even that was beginning to fade in edges.

"Take the car and do a slow crawl. Don't go far."

Alicia's didn't bother getting out of the car, climbing over the gear shift into the driver's seat.

"Got it," she said, speaking at last. She glanced at his waist, at the radios attached at each side, hopeful he'd give her one or at least let her hold onto the only one that worked.

He stepped to the side and reached into the back for his pipe.

"Meet me back here in fifteen and if anything is to happen – back at the church."

He saw her eyes widen, and for a moment he let himself imagine that she was concerned for his safety. An illusion that he carried with him until he reached the porch steps to the house and crept around it to make sure there was no dead loitering around. There had been a few on the road last night, bodies they'd taken care of immediately, and they were still there, but who knew how many fresh skin munchers had found their way here overnight?

He rounded the side of the house and approached the backdoor when a voice came through the radio again, a voice he was slowly beginning to become familiar with but now knew wasn't Nick's. Troy eyed the backdoor, scanning the windows to see if there was anyone there, anyone living and slowly backed away, letting his back rest against the fence to protect it. He removed the working radio and pressed the talk. "Who is this?"

"Not who you hoped it would be," Martha said. "It's all you need to know."

She steered along the road again, slower this time to watch out for the escaped pet. He couldn't be far. It was impossible in his condition. The very fact that he got away was a wonder, but she felt it was still within her capacity to fix it. She would find him before his friends ever caught a whiff of where to look.

The nonchalant response proved Troy's prior assumption right. They'd hogged the line and Alicia—in all her madness—had broadcasted and entertained whoever this woman was.

"We're looking for our friend. Don't suppose you've seen him?" he asked, remaining crouched, tapping at the talk button again. He didn't believe it possible but some internal hope coaxed him to at least try.

She'd reached out to him, anyway, why not cover every base?

"Oh I have," she cackled. "We've seen a lot of each other lately. The question is, how much do you want to see him again? There's not much time left for that wish to come true."

Troy straightened up as if he'd been slapped. She couldn't have said what he thought she said, and yet every part of his body had tensed as she laughed, while his mind reeled from the admission. What did that even mean and was it as threatening as it sounded? "Where is he? Where have you seen him? What did you do?"

She laughed.

"So many questions. So eager! But it only means you're weak. He makes you weak. You make him weak. I'll make him strong. You can be strong, too. You only need to choose to be."

Grinning, she drove on slowly, surveying the desert. She didn't imagine Nick went far from the road in the state he presumably was. He didn't look like a suicide mission in the making. He had them. And they made him weak.

That laugh, that condescending 'I know something you don't know' glee was grating the clearer it became and hit right at Troy's very core. He mentally vowed that if they were to run into one another face to face he'd choke it out of her. But first he'd beat it out of her. That wasn't the biggest problem though, it was her rambling, her statements about them being weak and making each other weak and every antidote in-between. What was he missing?

"I don't have time for your riddles, Lady, answer my fucking question: where did you see Nick?"

"Where I saw him you won't see him," she said. "You can find him when you're strong enough."

She put the radio on the dashboard and slowed down more, looking for any signs of movement in the desert.

He needed water. There wasn't much left in the bottle he had, and no more was to be found in the diner. He would have to search for more, or die. She didn't see him succumbing to death easily.

She started to smile. She knew where to look.

His eyes rolled and hard into the top of his skull, fist tightening on the radio as Troy begged the almighty in charge of this apocalypse to give him strength and patience.

The lady was out of her head.

"And where would that be?" he asked, trying to be polite, trying to keep the series of definitive curses of intolerance from the exchange.

When she didn't answer right away, he tried again in fear she'd go with radio silence.

"Hey. Lady? You still there? How, how do I get strong?"

She didn't answer, and for a time he wrestled with becoming an Alicia and begging her to tell him what she meant by 'I wouldn't find him until I got stronger'.

Did that mean there was time to find Nick? Why the games? What was she trying to achieve aside from feeding off Troy's misery – their misery? Alicia's head was going to explode when he told her.

Troy stepped away from the fencing that he'd used to protect his back, glancing behind him to see if maybe someone had been watching him, and then attached it to his waistband again. He checked to make sure the other was still there, too, and hadn't fallen off. He headed toward the back of the house, and without any of his former cautiousness, delivered a hard kick to the door. It banged open. The owner—now dead—revealed herself and shuffled to him at once, drawn by the invasive sound, ravenous as ever.

There was another upstairs, probably trapped in the bedroom.

After he delivered a quick succession of blows to her head, he stepped over her still body and found the kitchen.

He opened one drawer after the next in search of knives. He slipped one steak knife into his boot as security and the rest—the larger versions that he'd actually looked for—he wrapped in a dishtowel.

Troy didn't leave the house long after and pulled the door closed behind him.

Alicia wasn't outside when he made it to the front yard again and he suspected she'd decided to circle the whole block. He could only hope that she wouldn't be too spiteful and leave him out here too long.

She arrived ten minutes later.

"You find anything?" she asked, confused as to why he'd been waiting and wasn't still looking around.

"Nothing concrete," he stated, reaching in at the passenger side window to open the back door. He deposited the knives on the chair, closed the door and got in beside her.

"What are you doing?"

"He isn't here."

"How do you know that?"

He unclipped the radios and deposited the useless one in the back.

"I got a call."

Alicia's eyes widened and a sheen of tears immediately coated them. "Nick?"

"No," he supplied. "A crazy fucking bitch. I think it's the same person who sprouted that bullshit poetry earlier. She told me that she had him, or, well, that she'd seen him – that she'd seen a lot of him. I'm assuming she means last night and that I wouldn't find him. She kept going on and on about how I wouldn't find him until I was strong enough because he makes us weak. We make each other weak. And also this… thing about now finding him where he was. She made no sense, but uh… I think he's still alive."

Alicia expelled the breath she'd been holding and immediately made a grab for the radio. Troy jerked his hand back and groaned in discomfort as she practically climbed into his lap to get it.

"She's crazy, Alicia. You might—"

She had a vice grip on his hand, teeth sinking into his thumb, twisting the device free as soon as he was forced to let it go.

"Ugh, fuck!" He gave her a hard shove.

She fell back against the door, accidentally kicking the gearstick, unapologetic and practically foaming at the mouth. Troy could see that there was no point in trying to reason with her, that when it came to her brother, his safety, she'd do just about anything she could to save him – irrational or not – she couldn't think clearly. Troy had the distinct impression that if the roles were reversed with the siblings, he'd be dealing with the same issues with Nick. Troy gave the hand she'd bit a shake, trying to alleviate the fleeting pain, astounded she hadn't drawn blood, and listened while she abused the receiver.

"Where's my brother? Where. Is. He?! HELLO?! Is anyone there? Speak to me!"

Nick slumped at a huge boulder to catch his breath, his heart thrashing and jumping. He kept the boulder between himself and the road he still tried to monitor in case the car drove by again. His head was swimming, his tongue was a dead piece of sandpaper. His body felt like there was no water left, like it was a bag of bones and sand.

He tried to assess his options. Without water, he would die. There were no rivers to be expected around here as far as he could tell. A walk to Phoenix, even if taken from the town they had picked, would be a long one – too long for him now. He had no idea where he was, anymore, and the road was the only hope to find any abandoned car that could mean some supplies and shelter.

But she was also there, somewhere on that road. Probably in that police car. The fucking irony.

Protect and serve, my ass.

Had she been an officer before? Somehow, he doubted it.

Nick shook his head a little, straining to focus. His thoughts scattered in every direction like ants. He wasn't even sweating any longer, and he didn't think there was much left of the time he'd spend conscious. He had to make the most of it.

He could just lie down and die. Yes, that option was always there for him, especially tempting now that every bone and joint in his body aches and whined. It wouldn't come as soon as he'd hope, but it would come, eventually. Sooner than it would a day before – he felt pretty well on his way already.

But there was Alicia. Alicia who had no mother by her side. Who had no one else but Troy who she still despised. If they went into a heated argument, and he rubbed it into her face like he did with their mother, they would kill each other. Or there would be just one.

Of course, if Nick died, it wouldn't matter. But it still did. It mattered in the now. And what mattered most was that Nick could do his damned best to prevent it. Not that his best was much today, but while he drew breath, he could try and move his legs.

He scrambled to his feet, steadied himself against the rock, then let go and dragged himself on. The sun was blazing in his face, turning the desert into glaring glass and flickering visions. He watched his feet, willing them to move one ahead of another, again and again, to step over rocks and not trip over shrubs and bushes.

It wasn't the brightest idea to be moving by day. In that heat, he was going to collapse sooner. He needed a shelter, and there was none. He stopped, reluctantly let himself lower to his knees and just catch his breath a little while he glanced around, squinting. He could no longer tell where the road was. It was just the Arizona sea of cacti and red sand smoldering under a neverending sun. Finding a cave here would take him forever, and he'd die before coming close.

A bout of sickness rolled up to his throat from out of nowhere, stealing his breath for a long moment as he battled the urge to dry heave again. It was way too painful, his guts couldn't take any more of it. They barely held it together as it was.

His head swam dangerously, he tasted copper on his dried out tongue.

From somewhere in another universe, he heard his name. He looked around, barely seeing anything but light and blotches; he strained and blinked, searching for better focus.

Someone slowly approached from afar.

Martha let the girl yell into the radio over and over, not responding. Just listening and smiling as she drove along the road. She was looking for a specific place. She believed it would work. She knew it in her gut, same way she knew when a student didn't do his or her homework or what to say to a concerned parent to make the best out of it for all parties. Her skills never left her. They merely transformed into something she could use now.

"Alicia?" a new voice broke through the radio crackling. "Alicia, is that you? Are you okay? Alicia! Where are you? It's me! Tell me where you are! Alicia! What happened?"

Another voice, a male one, tried to interrupt. Martha stopped and killed the engine to hear better, she held the radio to her ear, eager, listening. Like a lurking tiger, her mouth twitching in a smile.

He called the female Madison. She didn't want to stop and kept calling for Alicia.

"Alicia! Please, baby, please, say something! What happened? Are you okay? Alicia? Are you okay? Where's Nick? What happened to you? Where are you, baby? Please, let me help! Please, Alicia! ALICIA!"

Alicia never responded.

When the transmissions died out, Martha started her car again. She was intrigued. It was getting better.