Page 1 of Between Two Thorns

Day Zero

M other Nature’s wrath erected the undead, and as usual, her timing really screwed a gal over.

Rose Woods just didn’t know how screwed she was, yet.

All she wanted was one night of rebellion, a little vacation from her family’s Dead Wood Ranch. Away from the stalls that needed to be mucked and the guests with attitudes that stank worse than the manure.

Horses were divas; tourists were worse.

Constant questions, more complaints disguised as questions, wondering why they had to do authentic horse ranch work when that was exactly what they had signed up for on the website.

Yes, you have to milk the cows, muck the stalls–and yes dammit, this pale redhead was about to tell you what to do in the Arizona desert.

See the freckles? She could handle it.

Rose stared at the constellation of sun marks across her face as she tried to do her makeup in the truck’s mirror. They were trendy, but they belonged to a lady much younger than nineteen. Still, she hadn’t wanted to cake on the foundation today. Not when she hoped to be sweating some of her make-up off.

Carefully, Rose brought the brown eyeliner right up to her green eye—just as the truck hit an invisible rut in the dirt road and both riders rattled around like a concussed brain in a skull.

“Sorry.” Fred muttered from the bench seat next to her, giving her a side eye that the redhead thought was distinctly un-sorry. Like her brunet buddy had sniffed a cowpie.

“No worries.” She forced a polite tone into her voice. “Thanks so much for driving the getaway car.” Rose gripped her elbow, stabilizing her hand to finish her wing.

Fred was a creep, but right now he was a creep doing her a favor. She could deal with the side eyes that lingered not quite at her face.

Even when they were trundling down a road that had no lights, was completely barren, and with barely a sign to be seen.

That was how roads were out here. Miles and miles of nothing, until you got to something, and that was everything.

Dead Wood Ranch was in the middle of nowhere, along with the town closest to them—a dusty little place on the map with ambitions to turn into a real tourist trap. Store fronts were being recovered with butterscotch-colored stucco and the wide wooden porches from old west movies. Walker Woods loved it, but then again, he was one of those old-timers that like to capture the past and put it up on a shelf; like ships in a bottle.

Rose shook her head to clear the thought and focused on the mirror. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about home tonight. Not the Ranch, not her father or her brother or even her beloved bees. Just the Bone they only lasted for a week, anyway.

Treating himself better would only mildly increase his date-ablity if he stopped treating women like they owed him.

He should hear it. He deserved to hear it from her. Rose should put Fred in the hole he’d dug for himself—

And face the immediate possibility of being dumped in the middle of the desert with the sun gone way down and the temperatures soon to follow. Rose would be walking around in a tank top when she could see her breath—if she could see at all. Her phone was fully charged on the seat next to her, but could she even get a signal?

What if Fred waited until she was at the bar to abandon her, after a drink or two, surrounded by strangers?

Or she could kick the ‘confront Friendzone Fred on his bullshit’ can down the road.

***

Rose seized the first distraction her green eyes caught out the window. “Hey look, it’s a sign.” She forced a chuckle to sell it, then turned promptly to face her passenger window and end the elongated silence with Fred.

The neon sign flickered dimly, but in the middle of nowhere it might as well be a signal fire. ‘Bone she gets what she gets,” And she heard the snap of his gritted teeth as he spoke.

Her hand dropped from his arm at once, hiding the face of confusion that quickly turned to revulsion.

Rose’s eyes followed the woman as the truck eclipsed her and continued on—because she didn’t want to look at Fred as much as she wanted some sort of confirmation that the stranger was alright. She stumbled into the sign’s post as Rose watched, and something in the nineteen-year-old’s gut clenched.

But, a familiar feeling of helplessness sat heavy in her stomach as she watched until the woman’s silhouette disappeared. Her determination to tell the jerk she’d been saddled with off was renewed—after she found a new ride home.

The woman was gone from sight, and neither Rose or Fred could see her stumble back from the collision with the post. Or her attempt to ram into it again.

On the third futile attempt, the woman’s arm dropped from her body…and began to crawl its way up towards the flashing neon sign.