He took a small bag out of
the back, shut the trunk, and walked around to Shan. Through the
crack of the hood I saw Dex hand him a flashlight from a black bag
that he put on the ground.
Then I saw Dex grab a
wrench out of the bag. He held it in the air, and before I knew
what was going on, he brought it down behind the hood. I saw the
light from the flashlight scatter and felt something hit the car
with a THUNK.
I gasped, unbuckled my
seatbelt, and jumped out of the car without thinking. I ran to the
front, the wind whipping my hair back, and saw Shan lying on the
ground in front of the open hood. Dex stood above him with the
wrench in hand, breathing heavily.
OK. I didn’t see this one
coming. My first thought was that if Shan wasn’t a skinwalker, we
were going to be in some deep shit. My second thought was that Dex
certainly had some sort of crazy fighter (or clubber) instinct in
him. My third thought was a guilty sort of relief.
“
Dex,” I squeaked out,
glancing between the lifeless Shan and him. “Is he
dead?”
Dex shook his head, staring
at the body curiously. “No, I don’t think so.”
No, I don’t
think
so? The way he said
it so casually rattled me. He might have killed a person. Or he
might have saved our lives.
He dropped the wrench on
the ground beside him. It clanked loudly causing Shan to stir
slightly. Now that we knew he was alive, I was suddenly very
afraid.
He looked up at me, biting
his lower lip hard. He looked worried, sad, frightened and lost,
all in one. I suppose I looked the same.
“
What now?” I asked, my
voice straining to be heard in the coming wind. I put one hand
against the car for balance.
He looked around him,
thinking. The approaching darkness made it hard to see. What could
we do? The car didn’t work. We were far from town, from anything.
And Shan was unconscious in front of us.
I did have my phone though.
I reached for it and held it up so Dex could see.
“
We can’t tell Will with
Sarah there,” he cautioned.
“
We’ll make something up. We
have car troubles. That’s not a lie.”
“
Why is Shan unconscious
then?” he said. “We need another car.”
I almost laughed. “From
where? A storm is coming and we are in the middle of the fucking
desert.”
“
We were only driving for
five minutes. Look, you can see the lights from the
ranch.”
He pointed behind us. There
were flickering lights in the distance but I couldn’t be sure who
they belonged to.
I looked at Shan, who still
looked eerily dangerous and powerful, even when he was in an
unconscious heap. “We can’t leave him here like this. And we can’t
leave our stuff in the car.”
“
I’ll lock the
doors.”
I threw my hands up and
almost fell over. “Oh come on.”
“
We’ll take the most
expensive equipment with us. We go back to the ranch. We get
Miguel’s car. We drive to town, where there are people and we get a
hold of the sheriff from there.”
“
It’s still going to be the
same problem,” I said.
“
But we won’t be here,
alone.”
He had a point. I sighed
and tried to steady my heart and my body.
Dex leaned over and picked
up Shan underneath the shoulders and looked up at me. “Get the
door.”
I walked over to his side
and opened the back door. We put Shan in the backseat lying down. I
felt immensely dirty, like I was hiding a dead body. It was almost
the same.
I quickly grabbed my purse
from the front while Dex brought one camera and his laptop out of
the trunk.
He aimed the key at the car
but I put my hand on his and lowered it.
“
You can’t
lock someone
in
a
car.”
We looked down the road
towards the house. He was right. We had only been traveling for
five minutes or so. We were much closer to the Lancaster’s than to
any other property around here.
“
Do we take the road?” I
asked.
“
I don’t think we should.
That would be too easy.”
“
Of course,” I nodded. It
figured he would chose to slog through the rocks and cacti while I
wasn’t exactly in the most agile state.
He handed me the flashlight
and hoisted the camera on his shoulder and turned on the camera’s
light so we had extra illumination. Then he grabbed my hand and led
me off the road and onto the rocky desert floor. I wished all this
hand-holding could have happened in happier times.
“
I think we should hurry,”
he added. “If he wakes up anytime soon…”
He didn’t need to finish
the sentence. We both picked up a trot simultaneously and headed
across the dusty grounds in the direction of the Lancaster’s
lights.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
We didn’t say much to each
other as we scampered through the darkness, across the empty,
undulating desert. The lights in the distance bobbed up and down
from our uneven footfalls, Dex’s hand on mine kept me stable and
focused most of the time. The dizziness seemed to come and go. It
didn’t matter in the end how I felt, all I knew is that we had to
keep moving and as quickly as we could.
It was silent except for
our heavy breathing and the sound of rocks and sand sliding out
from under our feet. We didn’t dare speak to each other; what was
there to say? We ran for about ten minutes straight before I felt
my lungs start to collapse and seize.
I slowed and then stopped,
hands on my thighs and spit on the ground. Dex made a move to put a
hand on my back but I waved him away. I couldn’t deal with people
touching me when I was out of breath and sweaty.
After a minute of regaining
my breath, I straightened up and looked around us. Other than the
light from his camera and my flashlight, we were engulfed in
complete blackness. It added to the suffocating feeling.
“
Are you filming this?” I
said between breaths.
He nodded, the camera light
flinching. “Yes.”
Stupid question.
It didn’t matter, though.
Nothing really seemed to matter anymore except our own survival.
Also, I knew we could probably edit out those bits of me spitting
up from sheer lack of fitness. What did it even matter if we ended
up dead anyway? The whole concept of filming and having our stupid
web show seemed so illogical and frivolous. Maximus was right. It
wasn’t worth it.
Maximus….
I reached into my pocket
and pulled out my phone.
“
What ?” I heard Dex say. I
ignored him.
I dialed Maximus’s number.
He answered quickly.
“
Hello?”
“
Maximus, its
Perry.”
“
Perry, I’m so glad to hear
from you. What’s going on? Have you found Bird yet?” His voice
sounded warm and full of relief. Dex watched me closely, camera
still on me.
“
No, we haven’t.
We’re…having some problems.”
Dex made a grab for the
phone but I stepped out of the way and held the phone tighter to my
head.
“
What? What
problems?”
“
Is there any chance you
might be able to come out here. Or find someone to help
us?”
“
I’m already on my
way.”
“
You are? How?”
Silence on the line. Then,
“When I talked to Dex earlier, I knew I couldn’t just leave. I’m on
the road, about an hour away.”
So many good emotions
flooded through me. “Oh, thank God.”
“
Where are you?”
“
We’re going back to the
Lancasters. We were in the car with Shan when it died, we…Dex ended
up hitting him on the head. We thought he might be a
skinwalker.”
“
Is he OK?”
“
He’s fine, we think. He’s
alive. We put him in the trunk and left the car.”
“
What about everyone
else?”
“
I don’t know. Will, Sarah
and Miguel went to join the Sheriff at Rudy’s. That’s where we were
heading. We think Shan and Sarah are the skinwalkers.”
“
Hmmm.” While he pondered
that I looked at Dex. The camera was still on me but his attention
was on the horizon, in the direction we came from. He reminded me
of an animal with its ears pricked. He was listening, watching. It
chilled me.
“
Listen, we don’t have much
time. I think Shan is going to come back. We’ll be at the ranch
though, no matter what.”
“
Perry,” Maximus said
breathlessly.
“
Yes?”
“
Stay together. Hide
somewhere. If you’re right, you won’t stand a chance out there.
Let’s hope that Shan stays knocked out and that Will keeps Sarah
preoccupied. I’ll be there as soon as I can, OK?”
I swallowed hard.
“OK.”
I didn’t want to hang up
the phone but I had to. We said our goodbyes just in time. Dex gave
me a dark look. It was barely visible but it said enough. We had to
keep moving.
We didn’t speak, just ran,
faster than before. I could feel his urgency in each stride. It was
obvious that he had just seen something out there. I didn’t want to
think about it. I just kept moving, running as fast as my stocky
body would allow.
We ran and ran until I
could almost make out the windows in the Lancaster’s house. We were
so close, almost there.
But there was an uneasy
feeling behind me, as if something was coming for us and fast. I
turned and looked, careful not to trip. I couldn’t see anything but
the fathomless black.
Dex picked up on it
too.
“
You hear that?” he asked
as we continued to launch forward, blindly.
I strained my ears to hear
something else besides the crunch of our footsteps. I heard a
clackity rumbling off in the distance. It took me two seconds to
piece together that it was the sound of a horse
galloping.
Only in this scenario did
all animals need to be feared. We couldn’t assume that some random
horse was running wild in the distance. It was coming towards us
and fast.
I looked forward at the
house. We were only a few minutes away. The horse would reach us
before then.
Without breaking stride, I
yelled over at Dex who was a leg-length ahead of me.
“
What should we
do!?”
No point even contesting
what it was. We both knew. Our options were slim.
I couldn’t see anything but
the black smudge of his outline in the dark and his bobbing camera
light but I could tell he shrugged. It figured. We were going to
have to wait and see.
I’m not sure how much time
passed before it happened. Maybe it was a minute, maybe it was ten
seconds. But suddenly the hoof beats were loud enough to rattle
around inside my head and shake the ground beneath my feet with its
steady, building rhythm.
I moved closer to Dex and
looked behind me again, my flashlight flying around wildly at
whatever it could expose. What it showed was red eyes and steam
from wide nostrils.
I screamed and headed off
to the left, away from the beast. I collided with Dex slightly but
we both had the same idea.
The idea was useless. In a
matter of seconds the horse veered into us, hitting Dex in his back
with its head so that Dex went flying, his laptop bag spinning away
like a Frisbee. He landed in a heap on the rocks. I think I
screamed again. The camera clattered beside him, the light still
shining. The horse stopped a few yards away, close enough that I
could see its shady outline, its restless foreleg pawing at the
ground.
I threw myself on my knees
and tried to make sure Dex was OK. He stirred and let out a low
moan but was out of it. I heard an ominous snort and looked up. The
horse was pawing in our direction this time. I knew it was a matter
of seconds before it charged. I didn’t have much choice.
It took off towards us,
head down, wanting to make putty out of Dex’s limp body. I
would
not
let that
happen.
I threw my purse down and
started running towards the horse like I was a misguided
combination of a horse whisperer and a linebacker. I used to ride
all the time when I was little. Sometimes I was put on the most
wild school horses. I never had the privilege of breaking any
horses but I knew how horses thought, at least the horses I had
dealt with. And this, this wasn’t even an actual horse. This was
someone evil in a horse’s body. Someone human, deep down. They
wouldn’t expect it.
I continued to charge
towards the horse as it continued on its collision course. We were
playing chicken and I hoped I was the only one with the
plan.
At the last second, I
darted to the right, its noble neck, sneering muzzle and glowing
eyes passing within inches as it rumbled past me. I took whatever
strength I had and made a move for it. I crouched and sprang as
high as I could.