Sunshine smiled so hard I thought his face was gonna break.
“That’s good. That’s really great. That’s good. So good.”
I sighed and turned to face Lu. “Go ahead. Say it.”
Lu grinned at me like she’d just eaten the last Twinkie in the apocalypse. “Calvin, did you say Silver’s ready for me now?”
“Silver?” he asked, looking away from Jo with some effort and slowly rising.
“That’s the name of my truck. I just named it. Silver. It’s the perfect name, isn’t it?”
I shook my head at the heavens and the gods who paid absolutely zero attention to losers like me.
Chapter Seventeen
Lu ran her fingers over the steering wheel and adjusted the mirror that didn’t need adjusting. She was always like this at the start of hitting Route 66 again. A little nervous, a little hopeful, a little resigned.
The road was two thousand four hundred forty-eight miles of twisting, lonely broken pavement. It had been our life for so many years now, there was a sort of desperate fear that we’d never know anything else. That we’d never see a different horizon.
“You don’t have to follow it,” I told her, like I did every time we returned to the Route we couldn’t seem to escape. “You could book a flight. Hawaii. Scotland. Go see the world. I’ll be here. I’ll wait for you. Forever.”
She turned her head, finding where I sat, slouched against the door, Lorde snugged up against my insubstantial leg. Lu’s duffel sat at my feet. Even if I hadn’t been Undead, there would have been plenty of room for her duffle, my feet, and at least another bag of gear in the spacious cab.
“You and me, Brogan Gauge. We are going to see this through to the end together.Together. Do you hear me?”
The fierceness of her, the fire that even all these long, sad years couldn’t put out, burned hot and clean and dangerous.
“Yes, Ma’am, Mrs. Gauge. I hear you. Together. Always.”
She rolled her shoulders, inhaled, exhaled, then started the truck.
It growled to life like a dream come true.
“There you go, Silver,” Lu said. “Listen to that heart of yours. You’re hungry for the road, aren’t you?”
The truck, not being alive, didn’t answer. But Lorde yawned and thumped her tail.
Lu put the truck in gear, then pulled out of the little stretch of pavement on the side of Fisher’s Auto. She flipped the turn signal, then eased out into the sunny day.
“I’m thinking food soon,” she said. “Maybe resupply in Lincoln or Springfield? I’m not stopping at a hotel tonight, so I’ll need a sleeping bag.”
“You can stop at a hotel. I can handle a hotel, Lu.”
“We both need some rest. Away from people. Living people. Or ghosts with agendas. What about the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive? I’ll get some sleep. You can see if any of Mother Jones’s boys are up to shoot the shit.”
“Works for me, love, though I still think you should get a room with a bed. You’re exhausted.”
She yawned, then cranked down the window just a crack to let a fresh breeze into the cab.
“I’ll buy a mattress,” she said. “And a pillow. I’d rather be in the graveyard with you than cooped up with all those beating hearts around me.”
Right. There were reasons Lu didn’t like hotels too.
“Why do I argue with her?” I asked Lorde. “She always wins.” Lorde just huffed in agreement.
“You know I always win,” Lu said with a quick glance over at Lorde. She stroked Lorde’s soft black fur. “Sweet girl. You should not have done that. We are going to work on ourstaycommands. No more running in front of hunters with guns. Jesus, you know what could have happened?” Her voice broke there at the end, and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.
That was my Lu. Cold as winter steel when shit was going down, and only allowing herself time to fall apart when the world rocked back to an even keel.
