Everyone Dies in the End #66

Susan

It had been twelve hours since she had cried, almost fourteen since she had left Todd and Arty. Beneath her the black Indian thrummed steadily, beneath it flowed the concrete of the Pennsylvania turnpike. A green sign whipped by, “Philadelphia 35” stenciled in white letters on the faded metal.

None of it was right. Not Arty. Arty who would never have touched a gun in the world they used to know. Not Todd, a courageous and good man in spite of himself, and not this desolate, piece of shit, world. She felt the moisture well in her eyes. NO! No more. Somewhere they knew. Somewhere Todd and Arty still lived, and they knew how she grieved. She didn’t need tears to show them. They knew how she had collapsed. An hour out from Henry she had pulled the bike to the side of the road, cut off the engine, and cried. If the cannibals, the friends of the sick mother and her equally sick daughter, had been hot on her trail they would have found her, and she didn’t care. She wanted them to find her, kill her, eat her, stop her pain.

But the cannibals hadn’t followed, and the grief had subsided. Not entirely, mind you. That grief would be with her the rest of her life, as would the hate, as would the vow to never be hurt again. She had remounted the Indian and rode. At first she rode north, away, just away, the cool night air clearing her thoughts, without destination. Slowly, however, those cleared thoughts had coalesced into purpose. Todd and Arty had wanted to go to Philadelphia. She would go in their stead. What she would do when she arrived, she didn’t know, but go she would.

A couple of hours later the adrenaline wore off and exhaustion arrived. Her eyes fluttered and the bike wobbled, the motion jerking her awake. If she wanted to make Philly, she would need to rest. The good news was that there was no shortage of abandoned trucks, vans, and rest stops. She pulled into a rest stop, found a vending machine with water, candy, and chips, blew out the glass with the .38, ate, and slept. She had slept hard, waking to a low sun, and she had been on the road ever since.

The roads were dangerous. At one moment clear asphalt would stretch to the horizon, and Susan would give the powerful motorcycle its head. The next instant she would round a bend to find shattered automobiles and overturned tractor-trailers—the refuse of civilization. Traffic had been sparse, a red jeep—a mother and daughter it appeared—had passed her on Interstate 81, just south of the Pennsylvania border. East of York, four hoodlums, their garb an unwashed mix of ghetto chic and redneck cowboy, had pulled alongside as she slowed to thread through shattered crates of boom boxes, spilled from a flipped flatbed.

“Hey baby, where you going?” the bearded, filthy driver asked.

Without taking her eyes of the road, she had pulled the .38 from the holster and aimed it square at the dirt-streaked face. “To hell. You want a ride?”

They dropped back.  Way back, eventually disappearing in the road clutter. Whether gone for good, or just gone for a while, Susan didn’t care. She would have just as soon as pulled the trigger as spoken another word. She didn’t care if four more rednecks lived or died. Hell, she didn’t care if she lived or died.

            Immediately after her mind processed that thought, she hit the roadblock.