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It’s a quarter past three in the morning when Oz notices the girl’s started breathing again, audible over the jolt and rattle of his station wagon. They’re deep, slow breaths, so regular she has to be counting them. Even the staccato bursts of static from the radio as they lose signal don’t distract her.
“Wanna eat? Saw a sign for a burger place earlier, should be just up ahead.”
“I hate you,” Florence says, with a deeply magnanimous air. She tips her chin up like she thinks she’s nobility. Funny little thing.
“So I’ve heard. Well, we’ll get you something to eat at the next stop then.”
She stirs restlessly in the passenger seat. It’s been bad luck the past few days, long dry stretches with no sight of another car for hours on hours, punctuated by towns where anyone you could take will be sorely, violently missed.
“…I’m really hungry.”
“Growing girl.”
“Shut up,” Florence says, all wobbly. Ah, well. Always fifty-fifty whether that kind of joke manages to get under her skin. She’s somehow always fragile when Oz is least expecting it. Sometimes he wants to do what his sire did, starting by breaking her wrists, one and then the other, again and again until her eyes don’t even glisten when she’s hurt. Of course, she had already finished the work of killing her family and her friends and her neighbours when he found her, so he wouldn’t be able to offer much of a finale to her education in this unlife even if he wanted to.
On either side of them, evergreen trees flash past, caught ragged in the headlights. Florence starts breathing again. Irritating as it is, Oz gets it. He got lucky, never learning what it feels like to be full in this state. Poor girl’s never going to forget what gorging herself was like, and she’ll never have a chance to feast like that again with Oz here to scruff her.
“You know where the jerky is,” Oz prompts.
Florence whines, high and animal and desperate.
“Glovebox, Florence.”
He won’t lay a hand on her. Right now, uncommunicative as she is, he needs her wordless signals more than he needs her quiet. Anyone gives the two of them trouble, he gets to eat them, which is a messier life than he prefers but it’s nice to feel justified for once. Even if he didn’t need to eat, the girl does.
If they do this right, it won’t catch up to them until they’re already gone, all the way past of the edge of the world. Florence rips open the bag of beef jerky from the glovebox and shovels the last few pieces into her mouth. Pretending to check the side mirrors more often than he needs to, Oz watches her chew in brief bursts, her shoulders stiff, her body angled mournfully as she tries and fails to catch her drool with the plastic packaging.
The old man has his vices. She wishes he wouldn’t keep stopping at all-night roadside diners just to buy coffee he won’t drink and chat with the sallow-faced waitstaff, but he usually lets her have a snack first, at least, and anyway, he always gets her the jerky she picks out at the gas station even when there’s a cheaper option. Florence lingers in the bathroom in the back, hoping to hide here from all those infuriating human smells out in the diner proper as long as she can, and figures fair’s fair.
More than fair, maybe. He didn’t abandon her, after all. The opposite. Picked her up out of the wreckage of her family home and made her lick the blood from herself before wiping away what her tongue couldn’t reach with a wet rag. He wasn’t gentle but she was sleepy and more alive than she’s ever been since, so she remembers it gently anyway. The whole world smelled like a feast.
And he said he’ll come down to Hell with her. She always told her parents she didn’t believe in any of that, didn’t care about it, but it’s still a relief. He promised.
Well, I figure we’ve committed the same crimes, Oz explained, tapping a finger to his lower lip, the other hand lazily resting on the wheel, and I’ve had longer to not stop doing them. So wherever you’re doomed to, I am too, right? We’ll go together.
Florence steps back into the main dining area and the young man who worked here, whose lips had twitched when Oz asked whether he lived in the area, is nowhere in sight. She trots over to the booth Oz claimed and finds him drained.
Complaint rises to her lips first: “But you told me we couldn’t have more from here—”
“Aw, who gives a shit,” Oz mutters sourly. “We’ll be long gone before anyone comes looking.”
Florence had been hoping for a real bed today. Long accustomed to being made to share with her sister or one of her brothers, an entire motel bed just for her still shines in her mind’s eye like a luxury.
The dead man lies there, looking asleep. Oz must be in one of his grim moods, to have changed plans so abruptly. Florence still hasn’t figured out what it is that makes him chase small-talk like a hunting dog goes after ducks, when he keeps turning out this miserable afterwards. She swallows. The metallic wash of fresh blood in the air is so…
“Was he— Was he rude to you?”
Oz raises an eyebrow at her. Florence doesn’t have enough blood to flush with, she hopes, but her skin still prickles like it wants to.
“Yeah, he was a real asshole,” Oz says dryly. He sighs and lurches out of the booth. “Not much left, but I know it won’t stop you. Go ahead, have a bite.”
The roads cut through wetlands, implacable asphalt an infinite altar on which turtles and blackbirds and frogs are sacrificed. They’ve pulled over because Oz has been meaning to take a look at the car’s bumper and maybe check the headlights and he may as well do it somewhere no one is going to ask what a worn old gangly guy like him did to be able to bend metal with his bare hands.
“Oz?” Florence calls, her voice small and thin in the cool, breeze-blown night. “Where did you get this from?”
Oz looks up and the damn girl’s holding his gun. She’s got it in an awkward grip, gingerly keeping her fingers well away from the trigger.
“Gun store,” Oz says, getting up. Yeah, what was he thinking, leaving her with unsupervised access to the trunk? “I dunno, Florence, where does anyone get a gun from? Buddy of mine gave it to me, probably. One of them’s a collector. Maybe he was feeling generous.”
She lifts it and points it at him.
“Look,” Oz sighs. “The kick on that thing is probably going to be worse than you’re expecting. Don’t hurt yourself trying something that won’t even kill me.” She flinches and he realizes he lifted his thumb to tap against his mouth without thinking. “Give it over, come on. I doubt it’s even loaded. Why would I keep a loaded gun in there, huh?”
“We could find out,” Florence says, her expression unreadable.
“If you really want,” Oz says. This’ll hurt like a bitch if it is loaded. But the girl’s breathing deep and slow again, and if the satisfaction of cracking him open will tide her over until the next stop, fine.
Florence scowls at him, eyes shining. That muzzle’s still pointed at Oz, but there’s a lot less steel in her voice when she mumbles, “I don’t even think I’m holding it properly.”
Oz gets in close enough to put his hands on hers, the gun between them. “Like this.”
Sometimes, when Florence wakes up in the back of the station wagon with Oz under her like a terrible bony mattress, she gets confused. That’s why. She always tells herself that’s why. She’s crying before she knows it, howling like she did when Oz first found her. Invariably, Oz grunts awake and puts his arms around her.
“I don’t regret it,” Florence snarls, gulping for unneeded air. She lets herself be moved so Oz can sit up, so she’s tucked against his chest. “I don’t, I don’t— “
“I know,” Oz says, swaying slightly. Florence feels dizzy, caught between the self that knows all she’ll get is ash in her mouth and the self that wants to burrow in close, to be held, to find a vein and— “You’re glad you did it. You were so happy to see them all dead.”
“Ecstatic,” Florence corrects.
“Mm. That one. I know. Shhh. I know.”