Page 75 of Chained

"Okay then. I prefer to think things happen for a reason too. Maybe you can return the favour and save my life some time."

"If the opportunity ever arises then I promise I will," I said. The likelihood of him ever needing to be saved by me seemed rather slim.

"I'll hold you to that." He smiled and it sounded like he meant it.

I held my fist out to him with my pinky finger extended.

"What's that for?" he asked, looking blankly at my hand.

"Pinky swear. A promise means nothing if it's not a pinky swear." He still looked confused so I caught hold of his hand and linked his little finger with mine. "Now it's official."

Coal looked baffled and then started laughing as he took his hand back.

"So do you feel like telling us why we didn't stay at your house last night?" I asked casually.

"Us?" He glanced at Laurie who was asleep again.

"Well you can tell me and I'll fill her in later," I offered.

"It's nothing really I just didn't exactly leave town under the best of circumstances last time I was there. I might have pissed off a few people and I couldn't be bothered to deal with it for the sake of one night." He glanced back out of his window.

"Did you piss off anyone in particular?" I asked.

"Maybe. Probably not. I doubt she's holding a grudge really."

I bit my tongue against the questions which his answer raised and racked my brain for a different topic of conversation.

"Any chance this farm has hot water?" I asked.

"Yeah, we have a power generating turbine at all of our secured buildings. There's a network of them up and down the country."

"Well that's something then."

We lapsed back into silence and the minutes dragged on. I drummed my hands against my legs again and again and was eventually rewarded by Alicia swerving the car hard enough to make me hit my head against the glass.

"Ow!" I rubbed at my forehead and glanced back at Kaloo but she hadn't even woken up at the movement.

A few moments later we turned off of the road onto a dirt track. The wheels kicked up a spray of mud and Alicia slowed us down. Hunter's trucks sped past us and disappeared ahead, splattering my window with mud as they went.

"It's about a mile down this track. I don't fancy having a rock fling up and damage this baby so they can go ahead and ruin their own trucks," Alicia called over her shoulder.

"Isn't it getting a bit dark? Do we have to worry about cougars out here?" I asked.

"No," Coal replied. "Not cougars."

"What then?"

"Hopefully nothing, but predatory creatures are more active at night so it's always a little riskier to be out and about which is why we prefer to be indoors."

I ignored his vagueness and looked out at the gloom.

The trees weren't thick around the track. They had moved back to create a barrier further out. We were surrounded by long grass with husks on their tips and it changed the landscape drastically. It made it easier to see the sky and I watched as stars blinked into view.

"Is this corn?" I asked.

"Yes. It never used to grow as tall as this apparently but now it's over twenty five feet at full height. It produces at least four times as much corn per husk as the original plant too," Coal said.

"I suppose this is what they were aiming for originally," I mused.