“Now, I don’t know what’s happening with your hand right now, and I don’t know how you were able to break in and break all of this stuff, but I can see when someone’s desperate, so I tell you again. Either kill me or be gone since I will gladly leave you out here to freeze to death until the next maintenance worker comes to warm the place up.”
It was more than Walter had spoken to anyone in a long time. Rebecca squinted her eyes and looked him up and down. She retracted her hand, and the blade disappeared.
“Yeah, you’ll do,” she said, walking around him.
“I’ll do what?” he said. “Where are you going?”
“To use the bathroom.”
Walter put his head in his hands. Something odd was going on, but a part of him told him to keep on at it. He was in Wonderland or Narnia at the moment, and perhaps it would be best if he kept going along with it.
He didn’t know how she was able to do the things that she did, didn’t really care. She had destroyed his phone and walkie-talkie, and she would have destroyed more.
Why the radios? Walter thought, looking about.
Of everything he had seen someone do when they were in shock, destroying radios wasn’t one of them. She would probably destroy the radio in his car, which he would—
What am I even thinking? he thought. I’m not driving her to the border.
Beth might have called such an event an adventure, though Rodney would probably laugh at him. He could imagine Rodney, with his big blue eyes, telling the world how old man Walt went about and drove a girl with magic swords coming out of her hands to the Canadian border, the same girl who had come in and broken every radio except for his stupid cat one.
Not every radio.
Walter’s heart practically stopped. He wasn’t sure why, but Rebecca seemed very adamant in destroying radios. But what if there was another reason?
Rebeca walked out of the bathroom, carrying a backpack with an “I Heart NY” sticker on it.
“What?” she said.
“Not every radio,” Walter said.
She turned her head, and then her eyes grew wide.
“We have to—”
And then the rest stop exploded in red light.
****
Walter woke up covered in snow, shivering.
He got up and looked around. There was a strange ringing in his ears. Bright purple and red light flashed in front of him. Snow landed all around him.
He stood up and looked around.
The building that used to be Stop 17 was now completely gone. Blood dripped down the side of his face. He reached up to feel it and found it steaming in the dark, cold air.
Something flew in front of him. He ducked out of the way, but he didn’t need to. Another purple thing reached out and stopped it.
It was dark, and he could barely see, but it looked like Rebecca was fighting someone, only she looked different. Her veins seemed to be shining in the dark, half of her body shining bright white, the other half a bright purple.
The man she was fighting was shirtless. His veins were red and likewise shining as Rebecca’s were. The heat seemed to be emitting out of both of them. They clashed again, the man jumping ahead and Rebecca hitting him back.
Green lightning crackled above them.
In between each of the strikes, he could see a few forms up in the clouds above them. There were three of them, or perhaps three and a half. One looked to be a man with orange veins shining through his body. To his left appeared to be either a tall man or woman, Walter couldn’t tell from this distance. A green light radiated from their skin.
To her left, there was something else. It was either a child or a person without any arms or legs. It floated there in the light above them, along with the other two.
None of them seemed to be paying any attention to Walter.
He stood up and walked over to his truck. There were more explosions behind him, but he didn’t turn to look. Today had been full of enough action to satisfy him for the rest of his life, no matter how long that would be. He would drive home and pretend like none of this had ever happened. And perhaps none of it had, in truth. No one would believe anything he said on the matter. They would chalk it up to old Walt finally starting to lose his mind, and then that would be that, and he’d be off to the old person’s home, with nothing to do but look through AARP magazines and collect his social security.
He opened his car door and started his engine.
The headlights blared on, illuminating the two fighters. Both of them turned to look at the truck. Rebecca seemed to take advantage of her opponent’s distraction. She lunged forward, her body becoming a purple blur. She knocked into the woman with her shoulder. She went flying, bounded through the snow, and crashed into a road sign. Then she turned back to Walter, her body turning bright purple.
Got to go, he thought, pulling out of his slot.
But Rebecca was faster.
In an instant, she was holding onto the outside of the truck.
Before Walter could even blink, she ran her shoes through the window and was sitting next to him.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Rebecca said, her skin turning bright purple. “I don’t have any energy stored up right now. I’m going to move us about two hundred feet to the south. When we move, I’ll be unconscious for ten minutes or so. During that time, I need you to either bring us to another rest stop or another good place for shelter. Drive fast.”
Walter almost said, “What?”
However, before he could, the entire car was turning purple, and before he knew it, he was moving as fast as a
