The roads seemed endless, and the car bucked and jerked under her whenever she pressed the gas and took it over 85. It was the first time Lola had really been alone in ages, and she had been alone for weeks now, and the silence that had been a blessing at the beginning had begun to weight heavy in her bones. Her fingers fumbled with the radio while her other wrist draped lazily over the steering wheel, guiding the jeep around all manner of road hazard. The white noise crackled and hissed and she bobbed her head like it was her favorite song. She hadn’t been able to sleep much since the Vicar told her about Mojave- no, honestly she hadn’t been able to sleep much since the vitae project. Now it felt impossible, with her mind eternally turning through the details, wondering about the screaming.
Have you ever seen someone burnt alive?
She wished she had asked the Raven’s. They would know, they would have been able to answer.
I heard once that the fire doesn’t even kill you, the smoke inhalation does, is they true? How can anyone survive fire?
She stared at the road and her head nodded, her stomach growled and she fumbled for a candy bar, tearing the wrapper open with her teeth and they taking a few hungry bites.
Laughter. They were sitting in a stolen truck, four bodies crowded onto a bench seat while Lola drove their way down the coast. Prado and Trip and four other rogue youths sat in the bed while Hunter sat in the middle, straddling the stick shift and Duardo sat by the window with Alexis in his lap. They were laughing, laughing so hard, and Lola was so focused on the road but she smiled anyway.
“- And then,” Duardo was talking to Alexis but loud enough for all to hear, “I fucking took the dye pack out of the bag and I threw it at the guy and ya know I had that PCP edge so I fucking HURLED it and his nose broke, fucking blood everywhere.”
“You’re so bad Cholo.” Alexis purred to him and she rested her head on his shoulder. Alexis was made of warm and the softness of her velour track pants. She held a joint in one well manicured hand and lit it with a bic that was bedazzled with stick on gems. Hunter didn’t speak at first, he just took the joint and held the inhale deep in his lungs, and then he elbowed Lola.
“Lo’?” Lola glanced over and reached for the joint, thinking that was all he wanted. He passed it on and she took two greedy puffs and then passed it back to Alexis. Their hands were different, feminine, both soft, but Lola’s fingertips were decorated with cheap chipped black nail polish and a fist full of jelly bracelets pinched from the dollar store. Alexis had all the glamour, the long acrylic, the gold and silver.
“What do you want?” Hunter asked and Lola furrowed her eyebrows,
“Ah, What do you mean?” She didn’t understand, and maybe it was the pot or the three fat lines or the cheap 40s they’d been drinking an hour earlier.
“I mean what do you want?”
The road dipped suddenly and Lola had to jerk the wheel to keep the damn jeep on the road. Her heart fluttered a bit, the road came back into focus. Had she drifted off? She bit her lip and this time she fumbled for a cigarette, needing the burn the sticky sweet candy taste from her tongue. Their ghosts haunted her more and more frequently now that there were no distractions. In the wasteland nothing was certain anymore. Did the children burn? Did they scream? Did they scream for her? She pulled onto the shoulder and put her hazards on, then smirked at the habit. She just sat in the seat for a moment, smoked her cigarette, lit another off the end of the first.
“Lola?” She looked up and saw Hunter in the passenger seat where he belonged, smiling with his green eyes dilated and his hair all messy from riding with the windows down.
“Yea?” And here was the ghost, haunting her.
“What do you want?” He asks and he reaches for the cigarette and she holds it out. Their hands don’t touch - can’t touch -
“….But…Hunter, you’re dead.” And the spell is broken, and the cigarette is burning a hole in the empty seat beside her while Lola sat staring at the place he’d only just been. The noise she heard next was ugly, and awful, and it took Lola a moment to realize it was her own ragged breath. A sob came next, and frantic, panicked crying while her hands pressed against her mouth and nose and then covered her eyes, as if she could somehow push the tears back and swallow down the words that had banished the ghost.
The sun was getting lower and lower when she finally found the gas pedal again. She drove all night despite the danger, lights off, racing through the ether. She cranked the radio up high, and kept reassuring herself that it wasn’t Trip’s laugh she heard hidden behind the static.
