Chapter Text
Jack is halfway up to their wrists in gore when Flat finds them. They do not notice him at first. Maybe never would have, it he hadn’t gasped loud enough to drag them from their reverie. Hand still slipping through intestines, they jerk around to assess the threat.
The threat is a boy barely out of high school with bright blue eyes and corn blond hair.
Jack had been caught before. On those occasions, the witness fled and tried to contact the police. They always caught them and killed them before they could. It is easy. All Jack has to do is put on a friendly face, and they are all too eager to come within stabbing range.
Flat does not run. He walks forward with his hands cupped around his mouth and eyes wild. “You’re getting DNA all over her!” Tiny hands encircle their arms and rip them out of the body. “This is a public road you know? There’s not any cameras here, but someone’s gonna walk by any minute!”
Jack dsoe not have the heart to point out that someone already has , and he is trying to help them.
“There’s a public restroom really close, so we can get you cleaned up. Then we’ve gotta get as far away as possible.”
What the hell do you say to that?
“Okay,” apparently.
Flat does not ask questions, which only raises more. Jack lets him lead them to the nearest washroom and scold them for their carelessness for the novelty of it. They scrub at their skin until the only red is the raw rashes from repeated washing. Evidence erased, they turn their attention to the boy. He is humming his way through an outdated pop song, ostensively keeping watch. Why they’d trusted him to do so, they have no idea. “Who are you anyway?”
“Flat!”
“What.”
The boy’s brow wrinkles in confusion. He pouts. “Flat,” he says again, with only half the confidence.
“Your name is Flat.”
Flat rebounds. “Yeah! Flat Escardos. What’s yours?”
If it is a pseudonym, it is a horrible one. Jack finds themself looking about the room for any sign that might have prompted the improbable name. There is none. They sigh. “Why are you doing this? I’m a murderer. That wasn’t the first time I’ve killed, and it won’t be the last. You saw me.” They wipe their hands on their slacks. There are sirens in the distance. In mere minutes police will be swarming the area. They cannot stay for long. But Flat is standing between them and the doorway with a smile that is starting to make them uneasy.
“You’re not a bad person,” he says with such confidence that Jack feels ill.
“I murdered that woman,” they insist. “It wasn’t self-defense. I told her to come with me. I led her to a place I knew would be empty, and I killed her.” Flat is not moving. “I could kill you too,” they say. “Right here. Right now. I still have my knife.”
“But you won’t.” Still, Flat ducks out the door and into the night.
Jack’s heart sinks. They don’t know why. But then Flat’s head pops back in, and it brightens fast enough for them to know.
“You’re coming, right?”
And Jack does.
--
Night falls and Jack is still following Flat for no reason they can fathom. They walk for nearly three hours, further and further from the stretch of the city. Flat talks the whole time about absolutely nothing. He asks Jack about what TV shows they’ve seen, what games they play, and what brought them to this part of the world. Answers don’t come ready from a place of instability, but they try. Flat seems to appreciate it.
At the end of the three hours, they are in a forest preserve, standing in front of a tent. It is dirty, and a layer of leaves blanket the top. Flat unzips the door and ducks in. Jack follows. There are two sleeping bags inside. Flat grins wide. “We can hide out here tonight!”
“Is this your tent?”
“Yeah! It’s kinda like my secret base. Don’t worry! No one knows where it is except us.”
Jack sighs and slips inside. The nylon floor feels strange, but not unbearably so. They sit on the spare sleeping bag and slap it with their palm. “If we’re the only ones who know, whose is this?”
Several seconds pass while Flat stares like he’s looking for an answer. “Just in case?” He wears an absent-minded grin that tells Jack nothing and everything. It is no more confusing than anything else Flat has done so far. Jack files it under ‘things to keep an eye on’ and pushes it aside. If nothing else, they have a knife and Flat does not.
“I’ve got food too! Do you like granola bars?”
--
They stick to the side roads. The fewer people see them, the better. Whenever anyone asks, Flat tells them that they’re siblings on a trip to see their ailing mother. It is a horrible lie, but everyone seems to buy it. Some even offer them rides, which Flat declines.
“Why siblings?” Jack asks one evening while they help Flat set up the tent.
Flat looks like he’s thinking for a moment before he grins and digs around for their remaining provisions. “’Cause you remind me of my older brother?”
“You said you were an only child.”
They’ve established a routine for these little idiosyncrasies. Jack observes, and Flat looks surprised and then laughs them off. The more time they spend together, the clearer it is that Flat does not know much about his past.
Rather than push the issue, Jack starts gathering dry twigs for a fire. “What do you think your brother would look like?”
“Blonde I guess?” Flat pulls out two bottles of water they’d filled up at the last water fountain. Both are half empty. “And he’s gotta be taller than me because he’s older. He dresses really cool too. He used to go to all those Steam Punk conventions, so he’d wear some of the accessories around. He took me to one once and it was really fun!”
Jack has met someone similar, though not in that sort of outfit. They focus and let the shift ripple through them. When it’s done Flat is gaping like he’s just witnessed a miracle.
“What- Jack? What was that? That was so cool! Like magic! How’d you do that?” He’s walking tight circles around them, inspecting every angle.
Jack sticks their arm out to stop him dead. “It’s a secret. But this’ll make the lie more convincing, won’t it?”
Flat nods hard enough to strain his neck.
--
They head south for winter. As comfortable as Flat’s sleeping bags are, their padding is losing its puff with every night they spend sleeping on hard ground. The tent is also wracking up holes from ambitious bears (that Jack kills) and human error (that Flat apologizes for). They’re cuddled up for warmth more nights than not, and as sweet as it is in theory, Flat talks and flails in his sleep.
They are halfway to the next town when Flat goes still on the shoulder. His eyes are looking to the horizon, but they are not focused on anything. It is not the first time that Jack has seen him like this. It never becomes any less unnerving.
“Uh-oh.”
Jack has never heard Flat say that before.
There’s a hand on his wrist, yanking him off the road and into the grass. The uneven terrain is difficult to walk on. He stumbles, but Flat keeps urging him on. “C’mon, Jack! We’ve gotta hide!”
“Hide? Why?”
“They’re coming!”
There is nothing on the road that Jack can see, but they still strain their eyes for the barest sign of a cruiser. Flat keeps pulling.
Fields do not provide much cover, particularly in this time of year. The plants come up to their shins at best. Jack can see a farmhouse in the distance, but Flat is tugging him in the opposite direction. “They’re probably five or six kilometers away, but they’re moving fast.”
Jack pulls back. “So why don’t we hide,”
The next thing they know their face is in dirt. Flat is holding them down in the furrow between crops. He lies next to them, finger pressed in a hush over his lips. Jack complies. The dirt is just wet enough for discomfort and it takes all their willpower not to struggle.
Three minutes in, the sound of tires hums into hearing. The engines are quiet, but nothing can silence cars on a badly maintained road. There are at least three trucks by the sound of it. Flat keeps his palm firm on Jack’s head while they pass. Jack looks over. Flat’s face is pinched in concentration. This is the most serious they have ever seen him.
It scares them.
They stay down for several minutes after the sounds fade out. When Flat finally lets go, he lets out a sigh loud enough to hurt their ears. “That was close, Jack! Are you okay?”
They manage to stand, though they slip once or twice in the dirt. “I’m fine. Are you?” They do not know why they are asking, but it feels like the right thing to do.
Flat beams. “Yeah! But wow, that was really close! I thought we were goners!”
“Who was that?”
And then Flat gets that look again. His eyes unfocus and the omnipresent smile falls from his lips. “I don’t know,” he says, “But I know they’re bad.”
--
The black trucks come and go. Jack only sees them a handful of times, and only from a distance. Flat always seems to know when they are coming. Every time they approach, he reels Jack in and takes off running. Sometimes they huddle in their hiding place for hours before he gives the all-clear.
Jack still does not know who they are or what they want, but he knows that they are not the police. Even from thirty stories up, he could tell that those firearms aren’t the kind used by any officer or solider. The barrel is far too long and thin.
But they always leave, and Flat and Jack can resume their travel.
They have no real destination. It is more a constant departure than a journey. Countless roads pass under their feet. Sometimes Flat can talk their way into a motel room. Sometimes he can’t. Sometimes they scrounge together some money and grab a meal in a diner. Sometimes they go to bed hungry. Sometimes Jack gives in to their darker impulses.
Flat is always understanding when they do.
He helps them scrub off the blood by pointing out the stains they can’t see. Once, when Jack asks why, he tells them that it is probably just a part of who they are. The way he says that with a smile is just a little frightening.
But the moment passes like they all do.
They keep walking.
--
One night over a rare cache of s’mores, Flat looks up at the stars with that big grin of his. “This is really nice,” he says. “I wanna stay this way forever.”
‘This’ is nearly a mile off the nearest road, huddled as close as they can get to the fire to stay warm. They’ve abandoned their tent- now it’s a blanket tossed over a branch, but it’s soaked through from last night’s rain. Their dinner of condensed soup sloshes uneasily in their stomach.
Jack takes another bite of their s’more and looks up too. There’s a bright light arcing across the sky. It might be an airplane or a comet, but it does not matter.
“Yeah,” they say. “Me too.”