The Volkswagen wouldn't even start the next morning, and they both awoke with massive cricks from sleeping in chairs. Jack’s knee was bruised to hell and slightly swollen and hurt like the dickens, leaving her limping worse than the night before.
All in all, so much for ‘tomorrow being better’, Jack thought.
Still, it was better in the imminent danger department, and that morning the sky was painting-perfect blue, the type you found in the midst of summer. Jack was growing an express appreciation for daylight in general, and while Rarity and she munched on their Pop-Tarts in silence, her eyes were on the sky the entire time.
“I suppose another vehicle is in order,” Rarity said after breakfast. “And a shower, mayhaps,” she added under her breath.
“Or we could pour the rest of the Vodka inta this one—see if the fumes are enough ta start it up,” Jack said wryly. She felt lighter; cheery, somehow. It was probably the survival of their close call. “I can't believe you drank that shit,” she chuckled at Rarity.
The predictable sniff was her answer, and Jack guffawed, putting her hands into her pockets and trailing after Rarity as the woman went to the trunk to retrieve fresh clothes for the both of them.
It wasn't too hard, really, Jack decided. The things only operated in the night. It was a clear line in the sand, a simple rule. They could make a schedule out of that; keep an eye on the sun and make sure to be holed up an hour or two before sunset.
She silently swore to herself that nothing like the night before would happen again. They wouldn't be caught with their proverbial pants down, again.
“Still up for target practice?” Jack asked. Rarity straightened and handed her clean clothes.
“Car and shower first, and then perhaps.” She paused. “Although my pistol seemed to do very little last night.”
Jack frowned, humming. “Guess that's what we get, arming you with a nine mil,” she muttered. She threw her clothes over her shoulder and put her hands back into her pockets. The morning was crisp. “I’d really like to get a rifle on ya, honestly. It would ease my mind.”
Rarity closed the trunk and wrapped her clothes around her forearms, crossing them in front of her chest. “It would ease my mind not to be attacked by monsters nightly.”
Jack barked out a laugh. “Yeah, ya know, that’d be great, too.”
They wandered a while in search of the residential district and found a handsome postcard-like downtown, with the shops and restaurants lining a thin one-way street.
There were cars sticking out of shop fronts, some smashed into each other and resembling crushed soda cans. As they neared, the smell of leaked gasoline made Jack's nose scrunch.
So, not quite postcard-like.
“You know, I've always seen myself living in a place like this,” Rarity mentioned.
Jack glanced at her. “Really?” She chuckled and looked around. “Suburbia?”
Rarity hummed. “Indeed. Though my dreams have always taken me to the suburbs of Manhattan or Philadelphia or Baltimore—not the capital, so much.”
“What's wrong with Mansfield?” Jack questioned, and then almost facepalmed herself—it had been a knee-jerk reaction to someone insinuating things about her home.
Mansfield was a quiet, backwater hamlet, she thought. That was what was wrong with Mansfield. No place to build a fashion empire.
“Absolutely nothing,” Rarity said easily, then paused. “Except for a town school district, which I would like for my children to have. And the commute.”
“Mansfield has a school,” Jack argued.
“Yes. One. An elementary school.” Rarity’s tone left the ‘and that's the point’ insinuated. “Wouldn't you have rather gone to a smaller school than we did? Full of kids that were from Mansfield instead of five other towns?” She paused and her voice softened. “I know you had a hard time at Daemarrel.”
Jack winced, then shrugged it off. “I wouldn't have met all a ya’ll, then.” She rubbed a hand across her mouth because damn, now she was thinking of stupid Daemarrel High again. Those thoughts hadn't plagued her in years. “I see yer point, I guess,” she finally said to Rarity.
The fifth house that they tried was open. Glendale was a very neat suburban community, unlike the suburbs they had shopped at the day before. All of the lawns were manicured, all the houses in neat rows, and all of the roads wide and unblemished. If it wasn’t for the wrecked cars, the smell of burning, and the occasional frantic bark or cry of an animal, it’d be almost painfully serene and welcoming.
The house they entered was a clone of all the others on the block, though with slightly different coloration. And inside it looked to have not been lived in at all, everything so neatly in its place that it gave off an almost sterile impression, like a hospital room with no patient.
Jack pressed onward, clearing the rooms within the home until she opened a door just past the master bedroom; a room void of any form of expression or style, just as much as the rest of the home. She briefly took to the thought that the house might have been one that was up for sale with furniture included, rather than her first thought of it being a home that was simply kept in-check by a borderline zealous housekeeper.
“Found the bathroom. Yer welcome ta it first, if need be,” she called out to Rarity, well aware that this was a decent way to curb an entire day’s complaints.
Rarity trailed in after her, leisurely looking around. “Do you think it will still have hot water?”
Jack shrugged. “If that trailer did, house like this probably will.”
Rarity wrapped her clothes tighter around her arms and went inside the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Jack threw her clothes down onto the large four poster bed and looked around with pursed lips.
If the house really was just on display, there was a high chance that she wouldn’t find anything useful within it, but since the only other option was to sit and listen to Rarity quietly humming while she showered, Jack started poking around the bedroom.
Looks could be deceiving, apparently. Despite her thoughts that the place might have been a simple show floor model for the neighborhood or a pre-furnished home, there were a few small, subtle nods to there being someone here, originally. An alarm clock, off and dead to the world without power, a book; Jack rolled her eyes when she saw it was Fifty Shades of Gray, with a bookmark peeking out from midway through; and, after opening and closing a set of drawers, a collection of women's underwear. Her practical side took over, and she eyeballed the measurements on the undergarments. Too small for her, but she made a mental note to tell Rarity when the shower had ended. She walked back to the kitchen, looking over what non-perishables she could find in the fridge and cabinets.
Crackers in the cupboard, and a pitcher of water and deli ham in the fridge. Sniffing over the ham, she deemed it okay for now, and set it onto the table, intending to make an early lunch of the discovery since the Pop-tarts hadn't exactly sated her.
She considered sitting down at the table and waiting on the prima donna, but changed her mind and headed towards a door that connected the kitchen with the garage.
If the actual home proper was immaculate and pristine, then the garage was its antithesis.
From the light that filtered through the heavy garage door window, Jack could easily make out a workbench sitting to the side, cluttered with tools. Past that, beside the garage door sat a heavy set of overalls, caked in grease and oil. Jack once again measured it with her eyes and deemed the set of clothes to be out of her size as well, lending itself far more to Mac’s giant frame.
The tools, the overalls, even the shelf that seemed to house more than its fair share of supplies, all paled in comparison to the object dead center, however.
It was a Jeep Wrangler, albeit one that had seen better days. A few sparse dings and pits marred the frame, but it clearly had received a lot of care. A set of new tires, new upholstery on the seats, and a vanity plate. Weyeld1, it read.
She wouldn’t say the plate helped tie everything together, but right now, the wheels looked more tempting than any of the other shit in the room.
Curious, she tried the door. It opened without a hitch. To make it seem almost too good to be true, the keys sat in the ignition.
“Looks like you were ‘wild’ enough ta leave yer doors unlocked, at the very least,” Jack said, then rolled her eyes, realizing she was talking to herself. Putting that to the side, she walked back into the home and had a seat at the kitchen table, waiting now on Rarity to finish up.
Rarity came in, barefooted and with her towel-covered hand weaving through her wet, wavy hair. She looked strangely at home, Jack thought to herself.
“Shower’s open, dear.”
“Alright.” She stood and tapped at the table. “Got some ham. An’ maybe some drawers in the bedroom that could work fer ya.”
“Why, could you not open them?” Rarity asked, standing up on her tiptoes and looking inside the cupboard above the fridge. Jack saw a more-than-respectable wine collection.
Jack tilted her head, not quite processing Rarity’s remark for a time. “Eh? Ain’t ‘bout openin’ ‘em, I’m talkin’ wearin’ ‘em. Stuff’s way too small fer me.”
Rarity reached into the cupboard and pushed around some of the bottles, considering them before one caught her eye.
“Chateau-D’yquem. An early two thousand vintage. Marvelous,” she remarked, taking the bottle and bringing it down to her level.
“An’ half those words mean, what, exactly?” Jack questioned.
“They mean that our lady of the house has excellent taste in wine, darling. Do go take the shower now,” she dismissed, waving a hand, her gaze on the bottle label. “You’ll feel a million times better.”
Jack snorted. “Best not get totally shitfaced, I wanna make some ground ‘fore we have ta hunker down again.” She stood and walked around the table.
“No promises, darling.”
Rarity did take her suggestion, and was peering down at the underwear drawer when Jack walked out of the shower, feeling lighter and refreshed.
The bottle was in Rarity’s hand, though, so perhaps she didn’t take all of Jack’s suggestions, but it was a start.
“Think these people’s washing machine still works?” Jack asked, bundling her dirty clothes in a ball between her hands. She lightly felt at the back of her head with her hand—the wound she had received during yesterday’s fight had flared like a sonofabitch when the hot water hit it, and had made washing her hair a more careful and laborious process than usual. She'd forgotten all about the damn thing.
“Probably. And I have aquired bread for us, and made sandwiches in the kitchen,” Rarity hummed. She closed the underwear drawer and turned to Jack. “You were right—her undergarments would not fit you.”
Jack chuckled. “Figured they were more your size, yeah.”
“She has excellent taste, though. You know, I feel very close to this woman, whoever she was. She has impressed me.” Rarity nodded, as if to reassure herself of the fact.
Jack rolled her eyes. “Guess you didn’t take my suggestion about the wine, huh?”
“It’s very good wine,” Rarity announced matter-of-factly.
Bringing a hand up, Jack rubbed at her brow and sighed. “Okay. Okay, let’s eat, ya lush. Maybe the bread’ll get ya on even ground again.”
“I’m not drunk, Jack Apple,” Rarity said primly, following her as Jack led them back to the kitchen. “And I’m not a lush.”
Jack raised a hand above her shoulder, brushing off the words. “Yeah, yeah.”
Back in the kitchen, Jack chewed thoughtfully on her sandwich, tapping at the table as she did so. Swallowing, she pushed forward with a thought she had.
“The garage had a Jeep ready ta go, an’ a decent amount of tools. Unless ya were gonna admire this girl’s unmentionables fer a little longer, I think we can gear up an’ go after the meal.”
Rarity hummed in agreement. “Wouldn’t take whoever lived here to be a Jeep owner.” She scrunched her nose lightly, as if owning a Jeep was uncouth.
“Probably belongs to the husband,” Jack drawled. “He seemed like a reasonable sort.” A memory came to her and she snorted and amended: “Shit, license plate aside.”
“License plate?”
Jack grinned. “You’ll see.”
They finished their meal, including the rest of the wine. Jack thought to protest that, but figured it wasn’t worth the argument. She felt good, worry for family notwithstanding. Small things, and little moments, she told herself. Hope. Like this house and the fact that it had everything that they really needed. She was prepared to work with what they had, but it wasn’t like they were desperately scrounging for food. Hell, if they could nail down the whole ‘get inside before sunset’ thing, they’d be golden, and the trip would be… well, not a pleasure, really, but not a toll, either.
Upon seeing the license plate, Rarity snorted in a very unladylike way and muttered, “Wow.”
“Key’s in the ignition, though. Fire the baby up and check the gas,” Jack told her. “I’mma look around for anything else in the garage worth taking.”
The Jeep started up with no complaint, a nice powerful rumble that made Jack grin and miss her truck with a little pang. She looked more closely at the tools on the workbench. Carpentry things mostly. Her foot hit a crate underneath the workbench that she hadn’t seen, and she ducked down. A roll of duct tape and some odds and ends stuff. Bike parts. She took the tape and twirled it around her fingers, moving on to a truly massive tool cabinet as tall as her. She opened drawers, and found—big surprise—tools of every kind, including yard work tools, all immaculately organized. One in particular, a machete, caught her eye and she pocketed it, taking the sheath and strapping it at her back.
“Darling? I found a map in the glove compartment,” Rarity called out from the Jeep.
“Yeah?” Jack came around to the passenger side. Sure enough, a crisp, neatly folded map laid on the seat. It was thick, and when unfolded revealed itself to be not just a county, but a state map. “Damn,” Jack said, smiling. “We are in business.”
She located Glendale easily enough, surprised to see just how much ground they had covered. They were almost out of Arkansas. She took her time tracing the roads and highways. She knew where she was going, generally—she’d taken the trip to Appaloosa several times, and knew to follow I-40, merge onto 35, and then I-70 through the mountains. The trip took a good twenty hours by car. It was no joke by any means, and the roads further west in the mountains were treacherous in the best of times. The faintest chill in the air told her that winter would be here soon, and with it, even worse conditions in said mountains.
She flicked a finger at the map. “I say fuck the interstate an’ hop offa Chesapeake, hit up Ventura Highway, take it ta Highway 101, an’ see where we go from there.”
Hearing no response from Rarity, Jack glanced up and found confused blue eyes studying her. She rolled her eyes and folded the map.
“Look, I know where I’m goin’, okay?”
“If you say so, dear.”
Jack pushed away from the Jeep and moved to the garage doors. With the electricity out, she knew she couldn’t rely on the door to operate, so she squatted down to the shutter and got her fingers underneath, lifting.
There came a pop from the chains as she pulled the garage door up and hoisted it over. Glancing towards the Jeep once more, she couldn’t help herself.
“Guess our chariot awaits, princess.”
Chesapeake Road was a small two-laner with heavy woods on both sides, the trees standing bare and grey and still as soldiers in formation. It was slightly claustrophobic, but would have probably been pleasant in the summer or fall, with all the pretty leaves bleeding color along the road’s edges and exploding with life.
But it wasn’t the summer, and the ridiculously soaring temperatures made odd bedfellows with the naked trees and mountains of dead leaves.
As they made their way out of Glendale, mangy, bruised clouds overtook the sun, leaving the sky threatening rain. Jack scowled at the clouds, trying to keep their speed down as the sun—their timepiece—disappeared entirely. It was about quarter ‘till three, Rarity had told her mere minutes ago, but the sun was sticking around for shorter and shorter. By about five thirty or six it would be gone altogether. Jack tried not to let it make her nervous.
The nervousness broke through anyway, along with a good deal of cursing, when they found the small, two lane road that they traveled on completely blocked.
Jack groaned and slammed on the brakes. “Are you fuckin’ serious?”
Before them, a truck carrying grain had tipped over onto its side, knocking into a fence and blocking both lanes with its bulk, all but stopping any possible route through. Jack slapped the wheel in frustration, but soon let her arm drop down to her lap as she looked closer at the one-vehicle wreck.
There was an arm protruding from beneath the truck’s driver side window, white on the asphalt road. The blood surrounding it told Jack it was severed, at best. Still somewhat attached at worst.
“Aw, Jesus,” she muttered, glancing over to Rarity. “Be best if ya didn’t look.”
“I’ve already seen,” Rarity said. Her voice was high. “But the thought is appreciated.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“I suppose this was a… a previous wreck. Before everything. Seeing as there is a body.”
“Probably,” Jack sighed. She tried her absolute damndest not to look at the arm, and instead cast her eyes about for any opening large enough to fit their Jeep through. There was space on the right side of the wreckage and Jack inched the Jeep closer to it, eyeing the space.
A black SUV, it’s front smashed into the guardrail, stood in their way.
“Right,” Jack huffed. “I guess we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Can we not pull it out?”
Jack glanced to Rarity, then to the smashed-up vehicle ahead of them. “Darlin’, it’s a fuckin’ SUV that probably has a busted axle. If we were luggin’ a tow truck around, maybe, but…”
“Well, do you think we could maybe drive it out of the way?”
Jack gave her a flat stare. “No, Rare.” She was edgy, and when she was edgy, she tended to snap.
“Oh. Well excuse me for not being knowledgeable about vehicles, Jack,” Rarity dryly huffed out.
They sat in silence, tense, with the Jeep rumbling patiently beneath them.
Full tank of gas, too, Jack thought wistfully. Son of a bitch.
She turned off the car and unbuckled.
“C’mon,” she said to Rarity, and climbed out. She went to the trunk and opened it, taking their bags from the inside.
“Are we going back to town?” Rarity joined her, and stared down at the bags on the asphalt. “We could just drive back into it.”
“We’re not going back to town,” Jack grunted. She slung on a bookbag and gathered a bag into each hand. “Next town’s about ten miles from here. We can make it by foot.”
“By foot!?” she cried out, looking at Jack with pure shock. “I never, Jack Apple, we are perfectly able to get a tow truck and return here.”
Jack shook her head, offering a humorless laugh. “It’d be the same sorta timeframe. We can at least make some ground this way.”
“Provided we do not run into obstacles, or hurt ourselves, or any number of inconveniences! Be reasonable!”
“I’m reasonably sure we can walk a few hours without breakin’ our damn fool necks, Rare. Throw me a fuckin’ bone here.”
God, and it was about to rain, too, the voice inside her head whined in a perfect semblance of Alice's teenage moaning.
“I have thrown you enough bones to keep a dog content for years!” Rarity replied, lifting her arms dramatically in the air. “We are not walking, and that is final!”
“Oh yeah?” Jack snapped back, rolling her shoulders and stepping away. “Jus’ watch me.” With that, she began to head towards the SUV and squeezed past the wreck, leaving Rarity standing by the car.
Rarity watched her leave and waited one minute, two minutes, anticipating Jack to return after throwing her fit. When that didn’t happen, Rarity, in an uncharastic manner, kicked the Jeep’s tire and swore under her breath.
“Damn mule,” she muttered, adjusting the pack on her shoulder and following after Jack.
Jack stood just past the SUV and on the cusp of returning like a dog with her tail between her legs, when she heard the telltale noise of grunts and subtle curses as Rarity made her way through the wreckage. Waiting until the woman had fully passed through, Jack finally snorted.
“What kept ya?”
Rarity glared daggers at the woman and pointed a stern finger, her manicured nails still holding up somewhat well despite the brutal regime they currently experienced.
“So help me, Jack…” she spat out, not finishing the threat.
Finally, Jack shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But we ain’t gettin’ shit done if we don’t get ta moseyin’ pronto. Mac an’ my sis are out there. An’ I ain’t gonna stop fer nothin’ until we get to ‘em.” She looked further down the road, with the grey sky hanging low over it and the grey trees rising up from it, and then looked back at Rarity. “Look, let’s make a pact, alright?” she said. Rarity tilted up her chin, looking Jack in the eyes. “We make progress. Everyday—a town a day, okay? There’s plenty of small little hamlets along these roads. We pace ourselves, and we get to a town a day, even if it’s five or three miles away.”
Rarity was silent for a long, lingering moment, looking down at Jack’s outstretched hand. Finally, just as Jack was heating herself up for another argument, she placed her hand against Jack’s and they shook, twice.
“Very well. A town a day.”
Jack smiled, relaxing. “Right.” She dropped the bookbag from her shoulder and opened the front pocket, getting out the map and laying it spread on the asphalt, kneeling in front of it. Rarity crouched down with her and peered over it. The next town was Fort Keld, a good large city right on the edge of the state line between Arkansas and Oklahoma, about ten or fifteen miles away, if one followed the I-40. Jack had plotted a course up and around Fort Keld, if only because she didn't want to deal with clearing the agglomeration of cars on the I-40.
“We could simply drive back into town and go another way, Jack.” The quality of Rarity's voice was gentle and patient, and made Jack eye the woman suspiciously. “It would maybe add another twenty minutes to our trip. That's not a large price to pay to keep a car under us.”
Jack glared for a long moment, sighed, and folded the map. She felt like arguing more, and in favor of walking, but Rarity had a way about her, in how she spoke, that always made her sound like she knew exactly what she was talking about. She believed every word that came out of her own mouth, and that kind of certainty was infectious and hard to argue against without ending up looking like a stubborn dumbass.
Plus, Jack had enough sense to know her own heart and realize that she was being pointlessly obstinate about a ludicrous and dangerous idea. But she couldn't help it; everything within her was straining to go go go, and to find Mac and Alice. Her urgency and worry was a blinding and mind-numbing weight at the front of her brain.
But Rarity had a point.
Jack threw up her arms in consent. “Fuckin’—fine. Fine.”
Well, she didn't have to like being wrong, at any rate.
Rarity said nothing and didn't send her a triumphant smirk like Jack was expecting her to. So there was that, at least.
They climbed over the wreckage and back into the Jeep. When they spun it around, the sky behind them was no better, still menacing and gloomy. There seemed to be no end to the cloud cover.
Jack drove them back into Glendale, then pointed them north for a bit, onto US 71.
The highway stretched long before them. Two lanes, asphalt bleached and cracked from countless sunny days. There were cars that they had to clear, all of them long out of gas by now, but it wasn't too terribly many. They kept to the middle of the highway, riding the yellow line and easing around the wrecks that would allow them space. To one side of the highway the ground leveled off, fields of dead grass sweeping away from them and toward the miniature summer cottages that dotted the horizon. On the other side, the curb ran down at a lazy incline. A long grassy stretch, then the jagged outline of the forest, tame and unthreatening at a distance, low and still beneath the blackout tangle of branches where it huddled prematurely in wait. The smell of peat and sulfur cut insidious beneath the smell of coming rain and rotting dead leaves.
The storm finally struck. Fat, smacking drops at first, then sheets of it—gushing torrents of rain that struck the ground and the windshield with the sharp ring of metal on stone. The Jeep's wipers could just barely keep up, affording millisecond glimpses of what was ahead before becoming blurry and distorted by the rain again. Lightning strikes spat down, angry artillery fire that slammed against the cannon roar of thunder.
It was taking too long. Jack couldn't help but be nervous, gripping the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles went white, pushing the Jeep forward aggressively when she saw an opening large enough to fit it through, clipping several cars in the process. By the time they got through the worst of the buildup, the Jeep was dented and grooved.
When they hit a clear stretch of road, Jack gunned it.
“Slow down,” Rarity almost instantly chastised her.
“We don't got a lotta daylight ta burn, sugar,” Jack replied through her teeth, wrenching the steering wheel between her hands until the rubber squeaked.
“So we should use that daylight to get into a traffic accident?”
Jack sneered at her. “Better than getting chewed up by the—”
She felt the car lose traction beneath her and swore, heart jumping into her throat. Rarity screamed, shouting a barking “Jack!” as the vehicle lost control, hydroplaning right, heading towards a long-dead car. Jack turned, twisted the wheel and managed to avoid the obstacle, but overcorrected, fishtailing. She gave it one more shot, twisting the wheel again to try and bring them back to the center, but it was too late. They collided with the guardrail, emitting an agonizing screech of metal on metal as the railing first impacted the bumper, then crumpled under the weight of the vehicle, grinding under the car’s hood. The breaks finally found a bit of traction as Jack crushed her foot into the pedal and the car mercifully stopped, a tire hanging precariously off of the shoulder of the road.
Jack sat behind the wheel, her hands clamped in death grips upon the wheel and her breaths coming out in a low whistle through clenched teeth even as the Jeep had came to a dead stop. Rarity leaned back in her seat, dazed. Even then, she managed to speak first.
“Are you alright?”
Jack didn’t respond for a second as she stared straight ahead. Finally, as if time had returned to her, she brought a hand down hard on the wheel, slamming it with the base of her palm.
“Goddamnit!” she bellowed, slamming the wheel again. She put the car into park habitually, there was little doubt in her mind that the thing wasn't going to ride again without serious repairs, and stepped out into the rain to look over the damage. Rarity sat for a moment after Jack slammed the door shut, then got out herself to examine what befell them.
She was soaked almost instantly to the bone, and hugged herself against the chill as she walked around the back of the Jeep and to where Jack was squatted near the front left wheel.
The guardrail was a mess of warped metal underneath the vehicle from where they impacted, torn and bent at sharp angles. These very angles had clearly struck against the car’s vulnerable underbelly, liquids had already begun to pool on the ground like blood from a shot man. The wheel they were standing next to was also not in good shape, bits of metal deeply penetrating the rubber. Jack sighed and seemed to accept her initial diagnosis, standing to her full height and resting her forearms on the hood of the vehicle. She dropped her head into her hands and closed her eyes.
“Son of a bitch,” she said quietly, aware of her trembling hands and weak knees, of her heart still galloping wildly in her chest, and the cold drops of rainwater sliding down her back. She let herself have just a moment before urgency broke through her overwhelmed senses and she ducked back into the vehicle, reaching for her pack in the backseat. Feeling the front, she pulled out the folded map and sprawled it out across the driver's seat and center console.
“Sun’s goin’ down an’ we’re in the middle of bum fuck nowhere,” Jack mumbled to herself, running a finger over their plotted course.
“We’re too far from Glendale? Can we not turn back?” Rarity offered, squeezing up next to her in the space of the ajar driver's door, the car making patient protests about it being open.
“Even if I’m generous an’ we jog, I don’t think we’d get there ‘til twilight. An’ considerin’ last time it was twilight an’ we were outside, we jus’ about got…” She didn’t finish.
Rarity did not respond for a long moment, staring down at the map and worrying her bottom lip. Finally, she looked up from it and towards the northwest.
“That forest.”
Jack glanced behind her, looking towards where Rarity pointed, and at the dense woods in the distance. She held back a comment, instead waiting for Rarity to finish.
“We could take them. They cut through towards the next town, according to the map. It would be closer. Less risk, provided we start walking now.”
Jack wrestled with herself for a minute, instinctively wanting to shoot the suggestion down. Walking, in this rain, with the sunset getting so close?
Except they made a pact to make progress, and Jack's actions had admittedly just fucked them up hard.
“I… think that’s our best bet,” she finally agreed as she finished looking over the map. “Though fuck do I not want ta be in the woods when those things come around. Get the feelin’ pitchin’ a tent an’ hidin’ in it wouldn’t do no good.” She laughed a little nervously and rubbed the tickling water from the back of her neck. “Call it a hunch.”
“Well, it’s a hunch we won’t need to learn about if we hurry.” Rarity took her words as an example, stepping around to the back of the Jeep and grabbing their luggage. She put her pack onto her back and stepped over the ruined guardrail to hand Jack hers. Their hands brushed against the straps as Jack took it from her. Rarity smiled up at her, a little, for a second, standing there in the pouring rain, and then began a slow descent down the hillside. “Come along now, Jacqueline.”
They hiked for a solid hour in silence.
The forest was gloomy and thick. Bare branches suspended from every tree, and a range of flowers, which grew dispersed and sparingly in the oncoming cold, caught attention in the otherwise brown forest grounds. Fat drops made muted plops as they fell from branches, and though the rain had given up the ghost almost half an hour ago, the sky was still bruised and dark.
It left Jack feeling uneasy. The forest was so still and quiet that their footsteps were the only sound in the entire world, it seemed. No breeze blowed through, but the temperature had started a steady decline when the clouds had rolled in, and it didn’t seem to be letting up. Rarity had dug out a coat; long and woollen, in a jarring, I’m-not-a-deer red.
And all the while the sky seemed to debate with itself whether it wanted to drop more of it's load or not.
“Gonna be a farmer's rain,” Jack said. The silence gave her chills, and she wanted to break it. Rarity made an inquisitive noise from behind her. “A good soaker—kind that pours for a half-hour, leaves the crops happy, but doesn't stop work for too long.”
Rarity didn't respond with anything verbal, and they hiked for another fifteen minutes before the land started a slow decline into something like a valley, the trees thinning around them.
Deeper they went into the woods, the only sound as they pressed on came from them. Their footsteps, Rarity’s occasionally labored breathing, not used to the hike and movement, Jack’s grunts as she took the shortest paths possible, climbing over logs and stones and ignoring the snag of branches and briars as they tugged and tore into her clothing and skin.
The realization came on gradually. It started out as a cold, wet trickle down her spine, the hairs on the back of her neck rising and shooting a tremor through her. Then the hair on her arms stood on end, and she slowed her steps until she stopped altogether. And she listened.
Truly, really listened.
The forest was too quiet; quiet in a way that forests just didn't get.
No shuffle from other animals. No song from the birds. No occasional cicada cry through the air or chirp of a cricket. Dead silent.
The realization hit her like a slap, and Jack hunched low, dropping to a squat immediately and fumbling up for Rarity's hand, lacing their fingers together and tugging incessantly.
“What on ear—” Rarity began, only to be cut off by a shhh from Jack, her finger to her lips. Rarity seemed ready to retort, but kept silent. And, after a moment, she mirrored Jack’s motion, dropping down to a knee and taking stock of the woods.
A dead, hollowed out tree, bent over and broken in half, stood ten feet to their right. Jack squeezed Rarity's hand, nodded towards it, and they half-crawled, half-scrambled behind it's thick trunk. Jack slammed her back against the bark, heart in her throat, the fingers laced with Rarity’s breaking out in sweat despite the cool temperature.
They both heard the faint sizzle of leaves being bothered—not trampled on, but almost… weaved through. It was a subtle sound, almost calming to the ear. Jack reached down, her movements slow and deliberate as her hand crept for the reassuring weight of her shotgun. She counted out a beat in her head, and inch by slow inch, rolled her head to peek out from behind their semi-exposed cover.
It came from their left, slow and patient, looking all the world as though it was taking a stroll through the woods instead of stalking them.
The creature was what Jack could best describe as a failed children’s clay model. It had a form, misshapen and oddly proportioned, of a hunched over man caught between an ape’s unnatural two-legged gait, and a human’s more correct posture. Atop its back was a small tree—Jack wanted to call it a bonzi or something like that, but couldn’t be sure—and amid its garish, lumpy body were strange sacks of some sort of fluid, which dripped down its body, dense with greenery and vines. A few flowers even littered it's frame, looking oddly gay on such an abomination. It had a pair of massive webbed eyes like a fly, and a snout resembling an alligator’s. The thing was massive—over eight feet tall, easy, but it glided across the forest floor with barely a sound, it's root-like feet propelling it forward through the earth as though it was water.
Jack kept a bead on it with the shotgun as it stopped in its tracks and scanned the forest, and then inhaled one great breath through the mouth, like it was tasting the air. It looked towards them for a moment, and Jack sucked in her breath, focusing the sights of her shotgun for real—but then it looked past them and away from their hiding spot.
“J-Jack,” Rarity whispered, trembling.
Jack reached back and held onto Rarity’s hand with her own, wordlessly comforting the woman as the creature slowly began to glide past their tree, grunting to itself in dissatisfaction at the missed opportunity.
Waiting one moment, then two, Jack finally exhaled the sigh she held and squeezed at Rarity’s hand so hard she left red marks upon the other woman’s porcelain skin.
“I don’t think it can see us if we stay completely still,” she breathed. Rarity nodded, pale as a ghost. They sat huddled beneath the tree for almost a full minute, not daring to move even a muscle.
Eventually, Jack sucked in another breath and rolled her shoulder slowly into the trunk of the tree, shotgun in a death-grip, and looked past the weathered bark at their back.
It was gone—seemingly vanished into thin air. Jack stared hard for one long moment, tracing every detail within her field of vision, and then crouched back down to face Rarity.
“There’s somethin’ goin’ on here,” she said to Rarity in a harsh whisper. “Thing up an’ ran off.”
“Ran off? Do you hear yourself? That thing can run no more than I can sprint a marathon.”
“Well it’s not there anymore. Maybe it’s hidin’ in the trees or somethin’. Let’s keep goin’. Slowlike.”
“Keep going?” Rarity hissed incredulously. “While it's stalking us?”
“Well the other option is to sit on our asses ‘till nightfall in fear of the thing,” Jack pointed out. “I’d rather take one o’ these than a whole pack of the smaller, faster ones. C’mon.”
Rarity nodded begrudgingly and got up, shuffling reluctantly after Jack as the farmer pressed forward.
Their steps now came with dread, fear that wherever the creature was, it now was aware and actively hunting them. They practically tiptoed for ten minutes, making about a hundred feet of progress for all of their trouble, before a wrong step from Rarity brought the snap of a twig to life and made Jack whirl around, her gun at the level and pointed directly at Rarity.
Instantly she realized what she did and she lowered the weapon, alarm in her eyes.
“Fuck. Rare, I’m—”
Rarity screamed, the shrill exclamation after such a long period of careful silence making Jack’s every nerve stand rigidly at attention. The farmer whipped around reflexively, but not fast enough. Vines shot up from the blanket of leaves like they were alive, one wrapping itself in a death grip around Jack’s upper arm before she could utter a sound or make a move, and the other around her hips, squeezing so tightly that Jack felt shooting pains all down her legs. The gun tumbled from her hands and to the leaves below in shock.
The creature formed up from the ground, vines twisting up and making legs and then a torso almost too fast for the naked eye to keep up with. Within seconds it was to its full height before them, and the tree at it's back slowly rose up out of its body. It clamped its maw around Jack’s shoulder, and a pain unlike anything the farmer had experienced before slammed into her.
“Jack!”
She heard Rarity’s shout, and then a few fumbling seconds later the clean pop of her pistol discharging. The thing grunted around Jack’s shoulder as if the bullets did nothing more than disturb it; then, with a grace that should have been impossible for its size, it slinked its foot forward and one of its brown toe-roots shot out with the speed of a whip-crack, wrapping around Rarity’s neck and immediately choking her.
Rarity gagged, her hands clawing, scraping at the vines, trying to find some purchase, some form of relief against the attack, but failing, faltering. It lifted her from the ground, sending her legs kicking in the air, spots of darkness appearing in her vision.
Jack’s scream of fear and pain turned into a scream of anger as she fought through the pain and used her free hand to grope for her pistol, unloading round after round into the creature point-blank, firing wildly and randomly, each time making it stumble and loosen its grip on her a hair, but not enough for her to slip out.
“Why—don't—you—fucking—die?” Jack screamed, shooting in emphasize with each word. The bullets were doing almost nothing to it, puncturing little holes that disappeared and stitched themselves back together quickly. Regenerated.
We're going to die.
The thought sounded stark clear and simple in her head, like the drop of a pin in a silent classroom. The gun kicked back, empty and spent in Jack’s hand, and the creature’s jaw tightened around Jack’s shoulder, sending waves of agony through her body. She howled and dropped the pistol to the forest ground, going at the thing with her naked fist, desperate and blinded by pain. Twigs and brambles tore at her kickles with every punch, and she wasn't putting a dent in the thing—she wasn't putting a dent in the thing—she—
A powerful, echoing blast shook the forest floor and made Jack’s ears ring. The thing grunted, a bubbly, growling sound of rage, like the motor of the Jeep Wrangler. Its jaw finally slacked enough and Jack pulled her shoulder free, bloody and ruined and punctured, with pale gleam of bone showing, but blessedly attached. She dropped to the ground and rolled away from the thing as another earth-rattling blast sounded through the forest. Pieces of the creature, twigs and vines and even branches, rained on Jack’s prone form. The creature moved its attentions away from its prey, turning to face its challenger.
Rarity.
Jack whipped her head around in search of the tailor and saw the coat, the damn red coat, the body within it limp and dangling a good five feet in the air.
Another blast, another screech from the creature, and Jack took off at a dead sprint. She unsheathed the machete from her back and the sharp, well-kept blade sliced through the thick root holding Rarity up. Behind her, the creature gave another shriek of pain in response to another blast, and a gleeful “Woo!” was uttered by someone, echoing through the forest.
Rarity dropped like a stone into Jack's arms, and the sudden weight made her shoulder flare with agony again. She sunk to her knees on the cushioning leaves, practically dropping Rarity’s limp body down onto the ground. Delirious with pain, she hovered her cheek over the tailor’s mouth and nose.
And felt whisper-light breaths on her skin.
Not dead, not dead. Just unconscious. Thank God.
There was a loud groan and a shuffle of foliage slapping together, followed by a cocky, cheerful, “Aw yeah heh heh!”, and Jack looked up just in time to see the creature’s body dissolve back into the earth, the vines fleeing like snakes, and the great tree atop its back crashing to the ground.
The adrenaline tapered out, sucking her strength from her even as she watched the thing die. She could practically feel the aches present themselves, one by one in a strangely neat and orderly way. Her shoulder, and hips, and arm, and knuckles. Her vision folded in on itself, growing blurry and black at the edges, and she dropped down beside Rarity on the forest floor.
The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was a person-shaped silhouette against the dark, brooding sky that threatened a farmer’s rain.