Page 18 of Hunted By Fae

Forgot. Oops.

The corners of my mouth dig into my cheeks.

I have a really fucked up idea. “Is it grand theft auto if the owner is dead?”

“This is his truck,” Bee agrees, tracking my thoughts. Her hand smacks down on the hood. “He probably has the keys on him.”

“But how…” Louise swerves her frown between us both, but the creases start to fade as she slowly realises. Still, she asks that fucked up question, “How can we drive out of here? There are bodies everywhere.”

“Dead ones,” I say, soft.

Silence sweeps us.

Everyone stills, goes quiet—because everyone turns to listen for any sound of life. The moans have stopped, the whimpers.

Everyone gives themselves that moment to sit with it, the offer of getting out of here quickly, but it comes at the cost of driving over bodies and bones.

Ruby is the first to decide. “No.” She shakes her head, violently. “No, we’re not doing that. That’s fucking crazy.”

Ramona has no opinion.

Actually she does, she just doesn’t want to voice it. So she stares down at the dirt instead, too afraid to admit she prefers my idea to walking the hour out in the open, under the sweltering heat of the sun.

“Alright, so… we move the bodies?” Louise suggests, weak, lame, and even her face is twisted unsurely by her own idea. “Create a path to drive the truck out—”

“Move the bodies?” Ruby shouts, her voice hitching too high, and I cringe against it. “Are you out of your mind? We can’t touch the bodies, and we shouldn’t be stealing someone’s truck just because he’s dead! Have you all literally lost your minds or what? We need to stay here—and wait for help to come… or we walk.”

The quiet that settles over us is thin.

The faint rustle of jeans, the scuff of a boot over dirt, Louise picking at her nails, it all intrudes on the silence.

Then, without a look at anyone, I nod. “Ok. Let’s walk then.”

Ruby mirrors me, echoes my nod, but with pure relief relaxing her breathy reply, “Let’s walk.”

No one else seems overly thrilled about it.

But no one argues it.

Because, yeah, Ruby’s right. That was a really fucked up idea.

Still, no shame touches my cheeks. Not as Bee comes around the side of the hood and steals my hand in hers.

She gives me a reassuring squeeze.

Louise starts, “Alright, we should find some water before we go. Enough to drink—and get some of this shit off us.”

That’s what they do.

Ruby, Louise and Ramona douse themselves in water, wipe off as much of the waste as they can with cloths from the food trucks, then rinse over themselves again with bourbon, then water again.

Spirits are a nice touch. It’s got that kill-bacteria effect someone might need after being covered in human faeces. Not sure it will work, or do much of anything, but it’s better to do it than to not.

I know I feel better around them after they’ve had bourbon showers.

And while they do that, Bee and I splinter off to gather bottled waters and packets of peanuts, stealing whatever we can fit into our flimsy bags.

Then we tackle a gruelling walk under the unfiltered sun. Not once do we hear sirens, not even as we pass through the town, which is apparently where everybody went who fled the dance.