The highway hums beneath my tires, a low, steady growl that’s the only thing keeping me grounded after the past forty-eight hours. I haven’t slept properly in two days. My head’s pounding. My eyes feel like someone scrubbed them with sandpaper, but I can’t stop now. Not when I’m this close.
Getting out of Winnipeg was a fucking nightmare. Most everyone seems to have lost their minds. Panic shopping, angry crowds, riots. The power flickered off and on, traffic lights went dark, and people started doing whatever they could to claw their way out of the city. Some guy in a cube van drove straight through a coffee shop window just to get through an intersection. A woman on a horse, an actual horse, galloped down Main Street, wielding a sword. That was a new level to this insanity.
And then there were the powers. Not as common, but enough to make things even more chaotic. A teenage boy with silver eyes screamed at a roadblock, and the concrete barrier crumbled like dry bread. Another guy literally melted through achain-link fence with glowing hands. I kept my head down, kept my truck running, and got the hell out as fast as I could.
Last night, I pulled off the highway onto a dirt access road and parked behind a row of trees. I slept in the cab with the driver’s seat kicked back and my hoodie bunched up under my head. The cracked moon watched me all night like some silent, jagged sentinel, its broken pieces still orbiting like new glowing scars in the sky. I woke up more tired than when I went to sleep after having nightmares of Luna screaming my name in terror.
Now I’ve made it around Regina, thank God for the ring road that kept me from having to deal with another city’s chaos. Five more hours and I’ll be back in Prairie Gap. Five hours and I’ll see Luna again. Hold her and make sure she’s safe. And then I’m going to tell her. I’ll tell her how she makes my heart speed up whenever she enters a room. Tell her how her smile makes my chest tighten in happiness. Tell her I want more than friendship with her. I’m going to do it. I’m going to tell her that I’ve been in love with her for years and I want her to be mine. And then I’ll pray she chooses me.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel at the thought of her and the distance between us. With my mind focused on her, the line of stopped cars catches me off guard. I have to slow quickly to avoid rear-ending a minivan and pull sharply off to the side, and kill the engine. A few people are standing around, looking frustrated and confused.
"What’s going on?" I call out to a woman standing near the minivan.
She glances at me, tired and wary. "The road’s cracked ahead. It’s a big one. Right through the highway with no way past it. We're trying to figure out if we should chance going off-road with our cars or back track and find a detour."
I thank her and get out. I'm stopped anyway, so might as well have a stretch and go see for myself what the problem is, seeif I can come up with a plan. The ground opens in a wide, uneven gash, jagged edges of asphalt that almost look melted, crumbling into a chasm that swallows two mangled sedans. I curse under my breath and trace the line of the crack with my eyes. In one direction, it seems to go on to the horizon, but in the other direction, it looks like it ends in an open field. Based on the tire tracks that flattened the grass, at least a few vehicles drove that way to get around it. It looks dry enough. I nod to myself, that’s doable. My truck can handle a rough ride.
Decision made, I turn to walk back to my truck and that’s when I spot it. A rusted, piece-of-shit Cavalier high-centered on a berm. I freeze as anger triggers through me. I know that car. I parked next to that dented, oil-burning relic for three straight years when Mars and I lived together. I memorized every scratch and dent.
"Son of a bitch," I mutter and stomp toward it.
The car is empty and it's locked. There’s no sign of him, but I already know exactly where he went. That bastard is headed home, back to her. Just like I am. I always knew he’d be back, I just didn’t know when. That fucking coward ditched her, ditched us, at the worst moment of our lives. What is he thinking? We've spent the last two years recovering, helping Luna. Standing beside her. Does he honestly think that he can stroll back in to our lives, to her life, because of this mess and play fucking hero? Fuck him. That’s not fucking happening.
My jaw clenches as I spin on my heel and march back to the truck. Anger pulses through me as I throw it into gear, bounce off the shoulder and down into the ditch. The truck rattles hard, the suspension groaning, then evens out as I gun it through the grass. The field’s dry and mostly flat as I steer wide around the gash and ease back onto the highway a few hundred meters later. Success. I’m back on track.
I force myself to drive a little slower now after seeing that break in the highway. Who knows what I might come up against and I don't think that roadside assistance is an option I can count on right now.
Fucking Mars.
It's been a quiet couple of hours, and I've made some decent progress when I see him. It could be anyone walking down the side of the road. But somehow, I know. That stride is familiar and I just know it’s him.
I keep my eyes locked forward. My fingers tighten around the wheel until my knuckles ache and my heart pounds. For a split second, I consider swerving and taking him out. Fucking Mars. He left. Left Luna. Left all of us. But I’m not that guy, so I pass him in silence. I’ll leave him just like he left us.
I drive twenty feet. Thirty. A hundred. And then I groan and slam on the brakes. The truck skids slightly before stopping.
"Goddammit," I growl, banging a clenched fist on the wheel. I don’t want to see him, but I can’t bring myself to leave him, either. I’m fucking better than that.
Not when Luna’s waiting. Not when we might need every one of us for what’s happening, what might be coming. To keep her safe. I throw the truck into reverse.
Chapter 57 - Reid
I wake to the sound of birds. Not chirping. Talking.
One of them is bitching about a raccoon stealing food. Another is complaining about the lack of worms. And I swear to God, a blue jay just told me to go fuck myself. I sit up so fast my head spins. The round canvas walls of the yurt rustle around me and morning light spills through the canvas roof. Julian is still snoring next to me on the cot, his arm slung over his face. I rub at my eyes, groaning as more voices fill my head.
"This is not normal. This is not fucking normal."
Yesterday, I thought maybe I was losing it and had finally cracked. We’d just passed through a canyon and a couple of deer were standing by the roadside. We were moving along pretty quickly when we passed them and I swear one of them told me to slow the hell down and called me a dickhead. I almost dumped the bike. Julian thought it was something in the road, and I didn’t correct him. Too embarrassed by fucking wildlife heckling me to admit it. These powers that people are developing are mind-boggling but I’m not really sure what the fuck the point isof me being able to hear animals yammering in my head. What the hell good is a power like that? Well, I guess the whale didn't eat me. So, there's that.
There's no denying the truth now. I can hear them, all of them. And if I don’t figure out how to shut them out soon, I’m going to end up in a padded room with a thousand squirrels arguing in my brain. I hum a song I’ve been working on under my breath to try and drown out the noise as I pull my phone from my jacket pocket and check it for the thousandth time. Still no signal. Still no texts from the others or my sister, Kara. Still nothing from Luna.
My thumb hovers over her name and I hit call again, fully expecting the same result as the last twenty times I've tried, so I almost scream when it starts to ring. My heart leaps into my throat and tears spring to my eyes at finally, finally being able to hear her voice, to know that she’s alright, but then it clicks to dead air.
"Fuck."
Julian stirs, groans, then stretches with a curse when I throw the damn thing across the yurt and it bounces off the canvas wall and lands on his cot. "Please tell me that can of cold brew I saw last night wasn’t a hallucination."
"It’s not. We’ve got one left. Dibs!"
