Title: And Tomorrow, You and Me
Author: Sarken (sarken@gmail.com)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing herein is mine, except for everything that is.
Author's note: It's only taken slightly less than a year. It started with a short snippet written in a tiny notebook, and turned into a slightly longer snippet in Word. The title is sort of from Stephen King's novel, 'Salem's Lot.
Thanks: Tammy read it and told me that it was ready to go out into the big bad world.
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They never leave the city, but tonight they're going, going, gone on the southbound side of the interstate. He has a fast car, a shiny blue bullet, but it won't be fast enough.
He takes his eyes off the road (they're good as dead; so what if he kills them) and looks over at his companion, his partner in crime; no, just his partner. She hadn't known until he woke her from a dead sleep with a phone call, his hands leaving bloody fingerprints on the receiver. He looks at her with her closed eyes and the shadows and lights slipping over her features. He wants to die with her, but not just yet.
Before her eyes open, she licks her lips and yawns. She squints as they pass beneath a streetlight, the new kind that lets the cities see the stars. "Are we there yet?" she asks around a mouthful of dryness. She wishes she had coffee.
His eyes are back on the road and he takes a hand away from the wheel, needing to touch her as he reminds her. "There is no there," he says. He isn't sure where he's touching her, but she hasn't slapped him yet, so he gently rubs his thumb back and forth as he calmly repeats the words he had urgently woken her with. "We need to go away, Faith. I don't know where -- just away. And we'll go home when it's safe."
It will never be safe, but he doesn't want to wake her with so much.
She tries to understand, but it's late or early or whatever four A.M. passes for these days. Her eyes are nearly shut again as she asks, "How will we know it's safe, Bos?" The last letter is soft; it's not the name she calls him. It's just her falling asleep as she uses everyone's name for him.
"Don't worry about that. Don't worry about anything. I'll make sure..." He stops, not knowing what to say next: he'll make sure she dies quickly; he'll make sure they don't hurt her too much; he'll make sure they stay alive as long as possible. "I'll find us somewhere to stay tonight. It's late."
He finds a Motel 6 two exits later, and the sign's light is burnt out. He slides some money under the bulletproof glass and the kid behind the desk gives him the keys. It's the last room they have, all the way at the far end. It smells like mildew and recycled air, but it has a bed. They pull down the ratty bedspread and collapse onto the sheets, curled together because there will be no Fred to face in the morning.
When morning comes, there are packages of strong motel coffee and little bottles of shampoo that smells like Creamsicles. She showers while he pours coffee into clear plastic cups. Later, they have breakfast at a McDonald's, and he tells her what happened as he eats a McMuffin.
"I found him, I killed him, and I realized his mob would come after us, not just me." It's a short story because he doesn't want her to know more than she needs to know. Even with the details, it wouldn't be much longer. "We can't go back, and we can't stay anywhere for long, not without looking over our shoulders."
"So we keep going like this, every day until our luck runs out," she says. She makes it sound like an idea, like an adventure, not like something they have to do to survive. She wants to do it. "We don't have anything anymore. No mothers, brothers, husbands, kids." Plurals hurt less.
"We got us. You and me and motels and fast food joints." He gets up and violently tosses the remains of their breakfast into the trash. "Some life."She shrugs. "It's more than we had before."
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