It’s getting dark now, but we need to keep driving. I am running a knife’s edge after just breaking out of jail, with a passed-out girl in the back seat, and a dead man in the boot. The more county lines we cross, the less we stand a chance of some smart-ass cop taking an interest.
It’s a good car, something a respectable family would drive, and shouldn’t attract too much attention. Just keep driving. That’s all we gotta do.
My luck never lasts, and as the gas light on the car blinks on, I curse the day I entered this world.
“Fuck,” I bang my hands against the steering wheel. I reach round into the back seat and fumble until I find Ava’s handbag. I hope she has some cash as I find her purse and open it.
“Shit,” I hiss as I open her purse to find five dollars. Then it hits me that I have another passenger in this car.
They say hope is a thing with feathers.
It seems my hope is a dead man in the trunk of the car.
I find a place to stop not long down the road, pulling off the road and into the densely wooded surrounding area. The temperature has dropped, but the air is fresh and clean. No one around– just how I like it. I make my way around the car and open the trunk.
“Christ,” I grumble as the smell hits me. A smell like that will attract or repel everything for miles. Depends on the beast. I flick over his jacket and reach inside, pulling out his wallet. It feels fat, a good sign.
I open it to find it stuffed with dollar bills. We’ve hit the jackpot, Ava baby. I put the wallet in my jacket pocket and get back into the car.
Ava groans in the back seat.
“It’s okay, baby, we’ll get a nice hotel, and you can get a hot bath,” I tell her.
But first, we gotta find a gas station before we run out of gas. I pull out into the road, and after a few minutes, I can see lights in the distance. Maybe I’m not as unlucky as I thought I was.
I pull into the gas station, a run-down place with a small shack of a grocery store and a man looking out the window who seems to be taking a great deal of interest in us. I fill up the car and make my way into the store.
“Evening,” the clerk says.
“Evening,” I reply, hoping he doesn’t ask me.
“Where ya headed?”
Of course, I wouldn’t be so lucky.
“Well, that’s the thing, I seem to have gotten us lost,” I say with a sheepish smile, trying my best to be convincing. “My wife is asleep in the back seat. She isn’t gonna be too happy when she wakes up and finds out. Was hopin’ you could help me out, maybe recommend somewhere nearby to stay? Bonus points if it’s easy on the wallet,” I add with a wink.
The clerk’s eyes roam my face even as he gives me a passably understanding smile. It feels like we’re both playing pretend, and it’s just a waiting game to see who’s gonna break first.
“All depends where you wanna get to,” he says noncommittally, and I take care not to visibly grind my teeth.
“The nearest city?”
“You’ll be heading to Grand Rapids in that case. If you keep heading straight about ten miles or so, you’ll start to see the signs. If you’d have gotten lost going the other way, you’d have found yourself in the middle of nowhere. Your luck must not have run out yet,” he chuckles.
Minnesota. Makes sense for the Supermax, but why the hell has Ava been in Minnesota?
“Thank you,” I say, a smile coming easier as I hand him the money for the gas. Just a suspicious small-towner, not a threat.
At least, I hope not. I glance out of the window of the gas station again, but no one else has joined us, and there’s no movement from inside the car.
“Anytime, no one wants to find themselves in the middle of nowhere, especially in these times,” he says, handing me my change.
Seems a good guy, I think as I head back to the car. It’s good I didn’t have to kill him for a tank full of gas in the end.
I glance quickly into the backseat, where Ava still hasn’t moved.
“Just a little while longer, baby. Then we’ll be somewhere I can check you out,” I murmur to her. I start up the engine and pull the car back out onto the road, feeling more hopeful now that I have my bearings.
“Grand Rapids, here we come,” I say. I don’t sense the blow coming until pain flares through my skull, sending both me and the car into a spin.
