She didn’t answer, but she didn’t attempt to get out of the car, either.
As we pulled out into the street, I checked the coordinates and the map. Twenty-five hours. I did some quick conversions in my head. Less than two complete solar days.
Amelia settled back in her seat but kept her arms crossed defensively in front of her.
Over a full Earth day until we could reach my team using this miserably slow Earth transportation.
With any luck, nothing else would go wrong between now and then.
Chapter Nine
Amelia
I fell asleep as we left the city.
Despite being anxious about the Alveron Hordeships possibly swooping down, firing at us, and blowing us off the road entirely, the motion of the car and the slow darkening of the sky as the sun began to set soothed me. The crash that came after the surge of adrenaline meant that I slept deeply.
Part of me even admitted as I drifted off that despite Zont’s initial issues driving, I felt safer with him at the wheel than I had at any other point during the last three days.
I jerked awake what felt like a long time later, uncertain what dark dream had pushed me out of my sleep.
Almost certainly something having to do with the Bride Lottery.
I wanted to ask Zont what his role in coming to capture me had been. Was he a soldier on a mission? The way he talked about saving his team certainly suggested that. At any rate, he was different from the other three who had accosted me in the bus station. They had seemed less capable, less…
I tried to think of the word that fit. Protective, definitely.
Capable. That would fit, too.
Attractive was a given.
I glanced over at Zont behind the wheel, taking in the planes of his face as he concentrated on the road.
Then I frowned. Beads of sweat popped up along his hairline. In fact, if I looked carefully, I could see stress lines around his mouth, and his arms shook a little as he gripped the steering wheel.
Seeing his strain brought my attention to my own body.
“I need to stop somewhere,” I announced.
He frowned and shot a confused glance in my direction.
“I have to, you know…pee,” she said.
He said something in Khanavai, but since I didn’t understand it, I ignored him.
Seeing a sign on the side of the interstate advertising several fast-food places, I pointed. “Take the next exit, please. There’s a place we can stop for a few minutes.”
Zont whipped the car onto the service road at what felt like full speed, leaving my stomach behind us somewhere on the highway as I gasped and clutched the handle above the door.
Otherwise, though, he got us to McDonald’s just fine with my directions. On the way, we passed a standard array of roadside conveniences—the fast-food places, two chain motels, and a recharging station for cars.
I reached into my increasingly grimy pharmaceutical-rep-provided bag and pulled the baseball cap out of it as Zont found the darkest corner of the parking lot and pulled to a stop.
“If you need to…” I gestured vaguely toward him, “relieve yourself, there are facilities inside.” I paused and looked him up and down critically. “Of course, you’re bound to get noticed. Unless you want to end up all over the news again, you might want to, I don’t know, go over there.” I pointed to a dark patch behind the parking lot where a light had burned out or been broken.
I finished tucking my hair up under the cap and slung my bag over my shoulder, not bothering to wait for a response.
Inside, after I’d used the restroom, I decided to grab something to eat and drink.
I considered just walking out the door on the other side of the building and taking off, getting away from Zont and his mission to save his team.
But something told me those three Khanavai creeps who had assaulted me in Chicago were still out there looking for me. The last thing I wanted to do was end up having to deal with them on my own, while Zont was in Nevada.
So I stayed and placed my order. No one inside the restaurant even blinked at me when I ordered food. I bought three times as much for Zont as for myself under the assumption that someone that big and that muscular burned through a lot of calories in a day.
Especially a day like the one we’d had.
When I got back to the car, Zont was sitting in the driver seat. I didn’t know if he’d ever gotten out. His eyes were closed, and his breathing sounded off—a little too shallow, a little too fast.
I placed the bag of food in the floorboard of my side as I climbed in. “What’s wrong with you?”
Zont shook his head, but I wasn’t sure what he meant—and I wasn’t sure I would believe anything he told me, unless it was that he was very ill.
“Let me see that wound again.” When he didn’t answer I poked him in the shoulder, hard, with two fingers. “Hey. I’m a doctor. Let me see that wound.” He sighed and shifted in the seat, holding up his arm for me to take a look at it.
He had seemed to be doing well enough earlier, but now the wound was red and puffy. I probed the skin around it with my fingers, and it was hard—another sign of infection.
It’s a sign of infection in humans, I reminded myself. That didn’t mean Khanavai healed the same way.
I almost remembered reading something in med school about Khanavai physiology being exceptionally susceptible to some human germs. Supposedly that had been brought under control by the Khanavai medical community.
Then again, the Khanavai medical community might not have fully considered the possibility of an open wound created in a public bathroom in a Chicago bus station.
For the first time ever, I wished I had concentrated more on xenobiology when I had the chance back in
