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"You don't know where your own mother's from?"
The conversation draws to a close after Ethan's bemused statement.
Dylan stares into the dark field below them as Ethan continues to cook the pheasant from their hunt earlier that day.
Hands pushed deep into his pockets, hunched forward slightly, Dylan thinks about all the stories Norma has told him about her childhood and adolescence. And he realises that's all they were: just stories.
He doesn't know anything about Norma — not really — because she doesn't want him to. She hides herself behind false smiles and artificial optimism.
Dylan wonders how he managed to turn out so normal, considering his origins.
There's a sharp snap close to his ear and Ethan's moving back into his seat. "I said, food's ready. Go grab us some plates."
Ethan's frown is a mix of worry and fear, as if he is starting to consider the possibility that he committed a potentially dangerous error by vouching for a complete stranger. This job isn't just a quick way to bank a large sum of money. This job requires trust; an entire town's livelihood is dependent on the security of this marijuana field. It's existence has to be a mythical non-interest to Outsiders. Yet, Ethan brought Dylan into his inner circle without hesitation. Even during their pursuit of the pheasant, Ethan had followed Dylan unquestionably.
Now, seeing the doubts forming in Ethan's eyes, Dylan is beginning to think he might not have been fortunate enough to entirely escape Norma's influence.
He nods numbly and gets up to find the plates.
Ethan knows more about him than all of Dylan's previous colleagues combined.
Dylan thinks they have a weird relationship because most of his previous employers and colleagues like him, but none of them know him.
It's easy to talk to Ethan, secrets slipping out of him like leaves falling in autumn, drifting slowly and only partially revealing Dylan's true nature. Maybe the dark of the forest and the thick fields below will keep his secrets padded from the world.
Dylan doesn't expect the stories he tells Ethan to bleed out into his personal life, (as minimal as it is). He doesn't expect they will stain his world an ever darkening shade of red.
"I didn't learn to ride a bike until after I'd brought my motorcycle."
He doesn't realise he's doing what Norma does until it's:
"I figured my bike wouldn't take me as far as I wanted to go, so I thought I'd trade it in for something with an engine."
"I thought you never owned a bicycle? Didn't you say you learned how to ride while you were bouncing in Colorado?" Ethan gives him a sceptical look, one eyebrow raised while the rest of his face is a mask of blank boredom.
Dylan finds the intricate particles of their dirt path absolutely fascinating and decides to focus his attention on that instead.
The silence stretches until Dylan decides he would probably appreciate the ground more if he was shorter. He looks over at the miles of marijuana beside them.
"What happens when it snows? Do we have to cover everything with a giant tarp or something?"
Ethan huffs out an amused sigh, which sounds more like an aborted laugh, adjusts the rifle in his hands, and picks up the pace so they can finish their perimeter check and hand off to the next team on watch.
Neither question is answered that day. The incident get brushed to the side among Dylan's growing piles of conflicting tales. Ethan has already managed to gather a few seeds of facts from all the information Dylan shares, which is more than anyone has ever come close to doing. But he will have to re-organize everything he thinks he knows about his co-worker as Dylan re-writes his own history.
Could you call someone a friend when most of what you know about them is a lie?
He's waiting for it. Waiting for the storm that will come to wash away everything he has built in this new town. It's only a matter of time.
There's only so long after you've stopped running for the inevitable to happen.
Dylan lies in a bed in the otherwise vacant motel and lets the darkness strangle his paranoid thoughts.
"Sometimes I doubt you even know how to use your weapon for anything other than hunting."
Their trekking up the hill, a pheasant wrapped in large leaves slung limp over Ethan's shoulder. He has a thumb hooked through his belt loop and one hand pressing down their dinner.
Dylan shakes his head; this has been a regular comment from Ethan since Dylan shared the story of how he learned to shoot. He shifts the rifle cradled in his arms and shrugs.
"It's all hunting when it comes down to it."
"What a morbid point of view. And yet... So, you'll only kill someone if you need to? And I guess you'll only shoot someone if it's absolutely called for?"
Dylan hums so he doesn't have to answer, because he doesn't want to seem weak. Ethan has it exactly right: shooting an animal for food and shooting a human for fun are two different things. One of them he has done several times, and the other is something he doesn't want to do unless his life depends on it. He is already discovering an increasingly disturbing amount of similarity between himself and Norma, he doesn't want to add to that list.
Rustling sounds emit from their left, rapidly retreating from the marijuana fields. Both he and Ethan stop, heads cocked slightly towards the diminishing sound and eyes scanning the vicinity.
Ethan releases the pheasant, and is already pulling out his gun before the bird slides down his back and plops onto the ground. Dylan, too, is readying his rifle.
They both stay silent as they move swiftly down the hill at an angle, aiming their bodies towards the retreating sounds.
Dylan sees the two males attempting to slink off around the same time Ethan does. The strangers have backpacks slung over their shoulders. Each bag has a handful of haphazardly stuffed leaves of marijuana poking out from the partially closed zips.
Two shots ring out in the forest. One of the thieves drops instantly — one second he's running low, the next he's gone. The other staggers forward as if he's being roughly shoved forward. His hands shoot out in front of him, trying and failing to prevent himself from falling over.
A hush descends upon the surrounding nature. Almost as one, Dylan and Ethan move towards the spot where they saw the first man disappear and the second one go down.
The man Ethan shot is dead, a small dark stain blooming through the back of his pale blond hair. Not stopping, Ethan wretches the backpack off the limp form and walks a few paces to the man Dylan shot.
He's groaning on the ground, his leg torn at the knee. Dylan can see shards of clean white bone protruding from the bloodied skin, and he wonders how those parts managed to stay so pristine. They look like spikes in a picket fence with the way the curve slightly around their former shape.
"I thought you killed people if you needed to." It's not presented as a question, Ethan's tone serves more as a reminder.
Dylan waves his rifle vaguely in the direction of the writing man. The man has turned partially onto his side. There is sweat forming on the man's forehead, his teeth gritted tight into a snarl, and his eyes are squeezed shut. With every huff of breath from between his clenched teeth, spittle sprays out. Sometimes in a fine mist, other times in large, white globs.
"He's not dead."
"Yeah, but he should be." With that, Ethan raises his gun and shoots the man directly in the heart. "Nobody steals from us and lives to brag about it."
Dylan is looking at Ethan in awe. He's never seen anything, yet alone anyone being shot from such a close range. He looks at the second thief again. He is slumped backwards, twisted at the waist in an odd angle, his hands resting limply near his torn knee. There's a lot less blood coming from his chest than Dylan would have originally thought possible. In the movies, at this close range, they'd both be splattered with the dead man's blood.
Dylan wonders if his feeling of disappointment at the lack of cinematic effects is a normal one. This line of thinking makes him idly curious about Sam: how Norma killed him; if the blood raced against his fading heartbeat to escape his body.
He realises what he's doing and wretches his mind from that train of thought before it can latch on firmly enough to upset him.
When he looks around, Ethan has walked a few paces away and is on his phone explaining what occurred to Gil.
Dylan switches the hand his rifle is dangling from and tries to focus on the situation at hand. They have bodies to get rid of.
He lets the wind from the speed and engine of his bike drown out all noises and thoughts. He focuses on the slightly alternating pressure of his goggles against his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. With the wind as his mantra, Dylan doesn't have to worry about the perturbing thoughts that sneak into his mind even during his waking hours.
When he gets back into the truck, there is blood on his neck, cheek, ear, and hair. The droplets itch as they dry, and Dylan absently scratches at his ear. The hand that drops back to the steering wheel has dark lines of Ethan's blood collected under the nails.
But Dylan isn't paying attention to any of that. His attention is on the people that pass by his windshield. He is focusing on picking out the random tweaker who shot the closest thing he had to a best friend out of the steady stream of unfamiliar faces.
That his actions are similar to Norma's — waiting patiently to catch the person who wronged him when he has dropped his guard — is the farthest thought from his mind. He has a task to carry out and he can't let something like the fear of turning into his mother stop him.