Another tremor rocked the building. Plaster dust rained down from a crack that appeared in the ceiling. The meat puppet fell off of her. Gasping to pull air into her lungs, Georgia rolled away, came up on her knees, and levelled the shotgun at its head.
It didn’t bother getting up off the floor. It turned its filmy eyes to her and snarled, “Like a ragdoll.”
Georgia pulled the trigger. With a loud bang that rang in her ears, the shotgun jerked against her shoulder and the corpse’s head turned into a wet red stain on the floor.
She spun around. The other meat puppet, the fry cook, stood by the counter. It pulled a steak knife out from beneath the broken plates and turned to her. Georgia pumped the shotgun, sending the hot shell clattering to the floor.
The meat puppet paused. It was outmatched, too far away for the knife to be of any use. “You want to know where I am?” it said. “I am closer than you think.”
“Whatever,” Georgia said, lifting the shotgun. “I’ll find you. I always do.” A crooked smile creased the dead man’s face. “Or perhaps, child,” the Dragon said, “I will find you.” Georgia pulled the trigger. The meat puppet’s head exploded in a shower of blood and bone that spattered against the glass of the rotating dessert rack.
The building trembled again and the floor started to sink. She needed to get out of there before the whole place came down on top of her. She quickly scooped up the shotgun shells from the floor and put them in her pocket, just as her father had taught her. Then, stepping over body parts and pools of blood, she walked to where the cash register sat on the counter by the door. She scanned the buttons until she found the No Sale. She hit it, the register dinged and the drawer slid open. She scooped up the bills inside and did a quick count: two hundred and forty dollars. She fished her wallet out of her pocket, opened it.
A small photo in one of the plastic sleeves greeted her. A man with short dark hair and a strawberry-blonde woman, arms around each other’s shoulders and smiling in front of a house. A brown spot intersected the edge of the man’s forehead where a drop of blood had dried long ago. George and Tanya Quincey, her parents. She stuffed the wad of bills into her wallet, pocketed it, and slid the register drawer closed again.
It shamed her, stealing from the dead like that, but she didn’t have a choice. She had no home anymore, no job, but she still needed money for food, for gas and shells and a bed for the night. She hoped the dead understood.
When she left the diner, the sun was a hazy orange ball hovering at the horizon and the desert heat was starting to dissipate. She stopped in the middle of the parking lot and closed her eyes, letting the cool air wash over her. She almost couldn’t feel the weight of the shotgun in her hand anymore. There was only silence and a sweet breeze off the flatlands. A moment of calm, of stillness, to let her tense nerves and muscles unwind, that was all she wanted. Blanket peace, she called it. A feeling she remembered from when she was a little girl wrapped in her favourite blanket, the worn, powder blue one with Snoopy peeling off his stitchwork. The same feeling she’d had when her father would pick her up and carry her, her nose nuzzled against his neck with the scent of tobacco and aftershave wrapping around her.
A loud groaning sound broke through the calm. She opened her eyes.
Behind her, wood snapped, metal girders creaked, and the diner’s roof sagged inward. The building shifted, part of it sinking halfway into the earth as more deep cracks broke the asphalt of the parking lot. The leaning signpost finally completed its fall, dropping into the trees beyond the lot with a loud crash. Sighing, she walked to her car.
The driver’s side door hung open. Georgia was sure she’d closed it. She gripped the shotgun with both hands, looked around for movement, but there was nothing. Inside the car, someone had rummaged through her belongings. Another meat puppet, no doubt, or maybe the same one that had sneaked up behind her in the diner. But why would the Dragon bother with her car? What was she looking for? In the backseat, Georgia’s suitcase was open and her clothes were scattered. Her purse had fallen out of the car, its spilled contents fanned out on the pavement. Georgia’s heart sped with a sudden panic. She scanned the ground, searching desperately. She knelt and scooped up objects as quickly as she could. A makeup compact, a tampon, a half-empty pack of gum, she shovelled everything back into her purse, but the one thing she needed wasn’t there.
“Shit, shit, shit!” She couldn’t lose it. She
couldn’t
.
And then she spotted it, hidden where it fell behind the front wheel — a brown leather pack, rolled up tight and bound with a leather strap. She snatched it up and sighed with relief.
Georgia climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door, shutting out the world, if only for a moment. She hugged the leather pack to her chest and leaned her head against the steering wheel. It took a moment to fight off the sobs building in her chest, and then she started the car.
Georgia kept her car on the same road that led from the diner, heading west. All around her, there was nothing but flatland as far as the eye could see. Brown earth stubbled with dry desert shrubs. In the distance, the southern tip of the Rockies jutted up against the seemingly endless sky. The setting sun nestled red and hazy behind the peaks, and as it sank away the sky dimmed to a dark purple. It was only when daylight faded to dusk and she switched on the headlights that she realized hers was the only car on the road. An unexpected loneliness rose inside her. She felt like the last woman on Earth, and suddenly she wanted — no, she
needed
— to see people. Needed to touch another living human being to wipe the memory of dead meat puppet skin from her fingers.
Fifteen miles from the diner, she finally saw signs of civilization, and her vice-like grip on the steering wheel eased. She hadn’t realized she’d been squeezing so hard, and now, feeling foolish, she shook the tension out of her hands and slowed the car. The road took her past what appeared to be an abandoned industrial area comprised of boarded-up warehouses and empty lofts. The streets and sidewalks were empty, but she knew whatever dusty little New Mexico town claimed the warehouses as its own couldn’t be much farther.
And then, signs of life. Modest single and bi-level homes appeared alongside the road on patches of dry, brown grass. Cars passed her on the street, children played in yards until their parents called them in for dinner, streetlamps and door-side lanterns switched on as twilight turned to night, and Georgia felt like crying. She felt like throwing open the car door, hugging the nearest person and shouting, “You’re alive!”
I’ve gone mad
, she thought,
completely off my rocker
, but she couldn’t help grinning at the idea of scaring some bewildered townie with a random display of affection.
The residential neighbourhood eventually gave way to a small downtown area with a movie theatre and little specialty shops lining the sidewalks. A tiny post office stood across from the theatre, the sign over its doors proudly proclaiming the town’s name to be Buckshot Hill. It struck her as an odd choice, considering it was built on some of the flattest land she’d ever seen, but she couldn’t deny the name had a certain Wild West charm to it.
Downtown Buckshot Hill was teeming with life. She drove slowly, watching people navigate the sidewalks and get in and out of their cars. Locals out for a carefree night of going to the movies, of pie and coffee, and then it would be home and early to bed, kiss the kids and turn off the light. They didn’t know how close the Dragon had come to their little town. How close they’d been to death. How could they? Most of them probably wouldn’t hear about the massacre at the diner until tomorrow morning’s news, and even then they wouldn’t know the truth behind the headline.
The Dragon was her burden and hers alone. She couldn’t tell anyone. They’d gape at her like she’d put a cat on her head and proclaimed herself Queen Elizabeth. She’d seen the look before. It had been all over Drew’s face the day he walked out on her.
She tried to push Drew from her thoughts, but the scenery wasn’t helping. Young couples were everywhere, holding hands while they dashed across the street in front of her, sitting close together at umbrella-topped tables outside the ice cream parlour. Girls looked adoringly into the faces of their high school sweethearts, tossed their freshly brushed and styled hair while their boyfriends pulled colourful varsity jackets around their broad shoulders. Georgia frowned, bit her lip. Drew had owned a similar varsity jacket when they met in college. He told her it belonged to his brother, a high school football star, and that he himself only wore it with a sense of irony, so he’d always remember football stars made more money than philosophy majors. He said it would keep him humble when he eventually won the Nobel. She’d laughed at that, and looking back, she was pretty sure that was the moment she’d stupidly fallen in love with a dorky philosophy major from Topeka with a girlfriend waiting for him back home.
But she’d been nineteen, full of wisdom and certain she knew everything there was to know. She thought she could hang out with him all semester and keep her feelings at bay. But the night they went together to see an excruciating Drama Department production of
Guys and Dolls
, everything changed. It felt like a lifetime ago . . .
They walked out of the campus theatre trying to keep their laughter inside until they got far enough away, but it didn’t work. Drew broke first, laughing so hard Georgia thought he was going to cry, and then that made her laugh too. When they caught their breath, she reached out without even knowing why and touched his varsity jacket. She ran a hand over it like it was the finest silk, gripped the hem at his waist and gave it a playful tug. Drew turned, and the next thing she knew, her back was against the wall and Drew was kissing her.
“I hope that was okay,” he said, “because I’ve kind of been wanting to do that for a while. In fact, I kind of want to do it again. A lot. Is that weird?”
“I . . . what . . .” Georgia tried to focus her thoughts. “You have a girlfriend.”
Drew leaned close again, propping himself against the wall with one hand. “Not anymore. It wasn’t her I wanted to be with. It was you. Right from the start. There’s something different about you. I felt it the moment I met you. I don’t know what it is, but sometimes I see you across the quad or in class and it’s like you’re . . . glowing. You’re all I can think about, George.” George was his nickname for her. She didn’t particularly like it because George was also her father’s name, but suddenly it sounded kind of cute the way he said it. “I know this is weird and sudden and crazy, and I wouldn’t blame you at all if you never wanted to talk to me again after springing this on you.”
Drew’s face was right in front of hers, the tip of his nose touching her cheek, his breath warm across her lips. Their faces were so perfectly aligned that Georgia wasn’t sure exactly when they’d begun kissing again, or who’d started it this time, or if it even mattered. She thought it was the most perfect night ever created. A night that had come into being only so this kiss, too, could come into being.
Sitting in her car, watching the kids shout and roughhouse and make out on the sidewalks, Georgia remembered that kiss, remembered a passerby telling them to get a room, and they had, eventually deciding to live together the first year after graduation. But then her parents —
She swallowed hard, pushed away the image of what the Dragon had done to her mother and father.
After that, everything went to hell. Suddenly it was her turn to take up the hunt. The legacy of her forefathers. She had to quit her job at the graphic design firm. She couldn’t tell Drew why she’d quit, where she kept disappearing to, or why she would come back sometimes wide-eyed and shaking. He accused her of doing drugs, threatened to leave, and so she told him the truth. She thought he’d believe her the way her mother had believed her father, so she told him about the Dragon and about who she was and who her ancestors were, and he’d gaped at her like she was the cat-crowned Queen Elizabeth . . .
“You need help, Georgia,” he said. Georgia, not George. Drew shook his head. He looked sad, defeated.
“I can’t. This is something I have to do alone. It’s too dangerous for — ”
“No,” Drew interrupted. “I mean you need
help.” And he’d walked out. She never saw him again, only received a terse letter from Topeka telling her to box up his things because a moving company was coming for them.
Orphaned, jobless, alone — there’d been nothing left for her but the chase, and the vast, insurmountable loneliness of knowing she could never share her life with anyone. The Dragon had done that to her. Destroyed her life. Taken away everything that mattered.
Lost in her thoughts, Georgia almost missed the red light at the intersection in front of her. She slammed on the brakes. A young couple had just stepped out into the crosswalk, and when Georgia’s car screeched to a halt, the girl sneered at her and the boy flipped her the finger. Charming. A continuous parade of happy young couples passed in front of her, each seemingly happier than the last. Georgia turned away, annoyed, and spotted a man in stained, shabby clothes sitting on the sidewalk beside an ATM vestibule. His hair was long and stringy, a knotted beard drooped off his jaw, and he shook a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup whenever someone walked by. Most kept moving, but a few dropped change into the cup.
The hobo looked in his cup, counting his take. Then he stood up, scrawny in his oversized clothes, and started walking. Georgia recognized the way his body trembled and shook with each step. The junkie dance. She turned back to the steering wheel just in time to see another young couple staring at her from the curb. Above the crosswalk, the light had turned green.
“Hey, dipshit,” the boy called. “You forget how to drive?”