Edward got in the driver’s side, ignoring the way the guy screamed at him from the ditch, and pulled a tight u-turn so he was headed back east on the highway. This time he ignored the way the truck creaked and groaned with every crack and hole in the road. He didn’t have time to worry about making sure the truck survived. Horton would be on his way, and in all likelihood he would be coming up this very stretch of road. If Edward had known anything about the local terrain he might have tried to find a way around that wouldn’t possibly result in a confrontation, but Edward couldn’t risk getting lost or stranded so close to Laramie. His time here had been brief, but he’d already worn out his welcome.
He could see something coming toward him from over a mile away, but he couldn’t see exactly what yet. Whatever the vehicle, Edward had to assume it was Horton and he wasn’t going to just let Edward go by easily. He briefly hoped for a moment that Horton would think he was the other guy coming to meet him, but Horton seemed to have told him to wait at the van, and Horton didn’t seem like the kind of guy that many people chose to disobey. Also, Edward realized, the guy back at the van had still had his phone on him. He’d probably already told Horton exactly what had happened, complete with lurid tales of Edward kissing a zombie. No, Edward realized, this was about to get very ugly.
He could see now that the other vehicle had started out its life as a truck, but it didn’t look much like one anymore. A cowcatcher had been mounted to the front, and it had been jacked up and given larger wheels. The whole thing still looked rusty and decrepit, but there was no mistaking that this thing had been built to not let anything in the road stop it. It was moving straight down the middle of the highway, and as soon as the two vehicles were close enough to see each other it moved over so it was heading directly at Edward on the right side.
It had to be Horton, but he didn’t look like he had any intention of playing nice. He was going to catch Edward in a game of chicken, yet Horton had no reason to be the first to back down. In a head-on collision, Edward would obviously be the one to lose.
Suddenly Edward was painfully aware that neither he nor Liddie were wearing their seat belts.
Chapter Thirty Four
She heard and saw everything that happened around her, but comprehended very little of it. Only when the form with her, the one that always tried to stay so close to her side, talked or touched her did she feel like she could understand the unfamiliar world around her just a bit better. When he spoke, things came to her, things that she could no longer recognize enough to call memories, and she nearly felt something beyond just physical sensations. The sweet honey scent he gave off, which was so much more overpowering than any other odor, made her feel more grounded and calm. Even now, when this other form was obviously quite agitated, she felt slightly more lucid. Not lucid enough, however, to understand why the truck she was in suddenly tipped at a wild angle.
Everything was a blur. Suddenly the world was sideways, and she would have been scared if she was still capable of such an emotion. The one next to her immediately grabbed hold of her, covering her body as glass rained all around them and they were thrown around in the cab of the truck. There were horrible crunching, screeching noises all around her as the truck continued to move across pavement, and then the world turned again as the truck tipped over the rest of the way and came to a rest upside down.
“Aw, fuck me sideways,” the other one said. He let go of her and patted her up and down, then did the same to himself. She let him, not knowing or caring what it meant. She could smell blood in the air, most of it coming from the other one, and something about his shape didn’t look correct. There was a sound from somewhere outside the truck, and then voices. She didn’t understand a thing any of them said, but she could smell their owners. They were something other than her and this other one, something living. She had to get to them, to attack, to rip, to eat, but as she tried to stand up she had incredible difficulty. She had no clue why.
“Damn it, Liddie, stop squirming around for a second so I can help you. You can’t stand up when you’re upside down.”
Those words had more meaning than anything the other voices said, and although they still sounded like gibberish to her she still had a small sense of their meaning. It helped that the sweet scent coming off of him ebbed and flowed with each word. She let him pull her into a lying down position on the ceiling of the truck. He looked like he was about to help her through the now smashed front windshield, but he stopped. She waited.
“Okay, look. Just stay put, you got that? Don’t try to move. Whatever you see out there, whatever you hear…and yeah, whatever you smell, don’t try to get out? Do you understand?”
She didn’t say or do anything. On some level some of the words had made sense, but she had great difficulty turning them into any concept she could grasp. Still, the orders she got through the scent where unmistakable. Wait.
He crawled out through the window, and she waited. Or she tried to. At first it was easy. The scent stayed strong in the cab, and there was no mistaking what it wanted her to do. But something felt strange. She’d felt this odd sensation several times already, although she hadn’t been able to articulate it to the other one and it had faded quickly enough that she hadn’t been able to act on it. The urge to stay by him was strong, and that honey smell in the air was dissipating enough that it couldn’t compete with this other urge. She had brief flashes in her head—thoughts of seeing the other one for the first time, recollections of her skin against his, fractured pieces of memory where she had held his hand. If her heart had still been able to beat faster at these thoughts it would have.
Suddenly she needed to get closer to him again, even if she still didn’t understand. It simply felt important now.
She reached out into the shattered glass on the blacktop, ignoring the way it sliced up her hands, and pulled herself out inch by slow inch. There was a loud noise from very close by, a sound like a small explosion that echoed out over the wide open country. A dim part of her brain could focus enough to see that the truck was at a diagonal across the road with the back end pointed in the direction they had come. The other one (and wasn’t there something else she should have been calling him? There was a word or a name there, but she just couldn’t quite grasp it yet) was at the back end, peering around the side with some weapon in his hand.
“Horton, all we want to do is leave,” he said. “There doesn’t have to be any issue between us.”
Another voice said something, although that almost-understanding she had with the other one didn’t come to her for this voice. It meant nothing, but Edward’s did. She just wanted to…
Edward.
The name came out of nowhere. She still couldn’t understand any of the other confusing sights and sounds that had happened within the last couple minutes, but she understood that this one by the back of the truck was called Edward. She could remember that much, just as she could understand that he would be happy with this revelation.
She stood up at the front of the truck, getting ready to shamble over to him and try to let him know somehow, but she never even took her first step. There was a shot, and the bullet passing through her brain took that name away from her forever.