The Reaches

[Near]

Gummed-up internal gears turned slowly, bringing the external scene back into focus to the soundtrack of Jude indulging a tantrum in the passenger seat. The window on that side was gone, bits of glass sparkling on the seat and in Jude’s hair. Near remembered: how the kid’s escalating agitation had been getting into his head before they left. Now he felt a tug inside of himself toward this fresh level of hysterics, the cursing and flailing.

He was not a stranger, exactly, to crises. He knew how to tamp his own panic to face down belligerence and breakdowns, anger and overdoses, whatever. This was ... different. He was in the middle of it. He was the cause of it. But surely some of those life skills were transferable.

“Shut.

“The fuck.

“Up.”

He started soft and ramped up by the end, not a match to Jude’s shrieking but a complement, imperative and heavy. Because sitting there screaming about killing people wasn’t going to help either of them, was it? His own door opened without too much trouble, a shove of the shoulder that would have been more satisfyingly aimed at Jude’s face. He hauled himself out to check the damage.

The car had managed a complete one-eighty, spun around and connected with a tree on the passenger side, shattered the glass and warped the chassis and maybe the kid was right. Maybe he really was the dumbest fucking person alive, because there was no sign of the dog in the back seat or in the immediate vicinity and that was what struck the loudest chord of dismay here, more than whatever the hell death and doom was on headed their way.

Also headed their way from down the road in the direction they had been going: headlights. Or. Maybe that was the death and doom.

“Your door’s not going to open,” he barked toward the car, in case Jude hadn’t figured that out yet.  “What do ‘they’ drive?”

[Jude]

Jude was too drunk to be bullied into submission. His eyes bugged out at the change in Near's tone, but they remained bloodshot, unfocused, and terrified. Jude had not truly considered the consequences of being apprehended until his apprehension was upon him; he did not really believe he could fail. He had not be so protected from pop culture that he had not internalized certain ideas about good and evil, and the triumph of the former over the latter. 'Good' was relative -- the Family believed itself to serve the greatest good of all --  but Jude was going off his own definition and what served it. The unspeakable agony of good being defeated by panicked driving shattered his brain. Also he was very drunk. Everything felt shattering.

Getting out of his seat was a battle. First he fought with his seatbelt (flailing) and then stretched out to climb across the cup holder and gearshift (the limbs of an ungainly octopus, uneven flexibility) to get to Near's side of the car. He cut his sleeve on something on the way over, some loose piece of glass, but there was no blood. Maybe there should be blood! Maybe he should slash his arm and lift up the car and drop it on Near's stupid head. Fuck! Fuck!

With total dismay, he looked down the road at the approaching headlights. "No!" he yelled, so loudly that there's a chance the car might hear. He looked back to their crashed car, which still contained his backpack in the backseat. He will not get anywhere without it -- not without money, not without directions.

"If it is them," he said sullenly, "Jump under the wheels." The suggestion was unnecessarily cruel, but at this point, Near was closer to an enemy than a friend.

[Near]

Near was obliged, at Jude’s reappearance, to make a grudging admission: it wasn’t an unimpressive feat, the kid managing, against all apparent odds, to wriggle out of the mangled vehicle without killing himself. Not unimpressive, but not great, either, since his accomplishment meant the ongoing shrieky hysterics were no longer contained.

“I swear to god,” was all he could muster in response to the suggestion that he commit vehicular suicide, a quiet gnarl directed more to the empty air in front of him than to the proposer. Because empty air was as -- was maybe more -- helpful in an emergency, and honestly why was Jude even still there shouting down the road instead of attempting a mad dash through the woods if he was so damn worried about what was on its way?

“What was on its way” proved, shortly, to be an old black pickup truck with a dented bumper, which Near guessed was either not Them or proof that They ran a lower-budget operation than what he had cooked up in his head. It trundled by, then slowed to a stop with a pained whine of brakes just beyond the wreckage. After a second, a voice, feminine, floated out the window:

“Anybody hurt?”

[Jude]

His sullenness did not linger long, given how overwhelming his fear. At the lights came closer, Jude instead climbed back into the driver's seat, reaching back so that he could manually unlock the rear door. Inside was his backpack. This was barely retrieved, as the unlocking required several unbalanced attempts, and there is a moment of pause for a wave of nausea. He had just gathered his things into his arms when the truck stopped.

The voice was unfamiliar. It was a woman's voice, certainly, but it was not his sister's.

Overwhelmed with relief, Jude turned around and vomited alongside the car.

In the wake of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, was the clarity that always followed such an evacuation: the cold sweat of relief, a powerful awareness of one's body, a visceral feeling of apology for the mistakes that led to this.

Even drunk and surly, Jude had the presence of mind to let Near answer the question. His own thoughts turned to how he could get this person to take him to the gas station, or into town, whatever needed to be done. Near's cause was lost: the Family can find the house and find him, and Near will be in charge of saving his own skin. The affection carried over from Courtland had been exhausted. They were effectively strangers, or perhaps something worse: antagonistic step-siblings.

He stared at the truck and waited.

[Near]

The driver craned her head out of the truck’s window to scan the scene, taking in the state of the car with a look that could have been pity for the travelers’ plight or disgust at Near’s driving skills or anything in between. She had one of those vague, settled-in faces, a face whose features probably hovered around a similar expression of ambiguity more often than they rearranged to telegraph what was happening behind them.

She eyed the roadtrip wreckage, and Near took a moment to do the same. A smattering of crickets holed up somewhere behind the treeline inserted their commentary into the empty space that accompanied his quick internal recap of what he saw, what he knew: the (rental) car was trashed, somebody was (maybe?) after him, his (stolen) dog had run off, the world was (supposedly) in danger of imploding; and most of that might have been shrugoffable in the temporary and unhealthy avoidance kind of way that he was pretty damn good at if he did say so himself, but there was no way to avoid the fact that Jude still existed within his sphere of awareness. So, was anybody hurt?

“He might be,” he said finally, dryly, jutting an extended thumb toward the kid. Jude, to judge by his still being there and not screaming like a little girl anymore, had either decided that this person didn’t count as Them or that all hope was lost. Near smeared the seep of of blood across his chin with the back of his hand as he drew it back to his side.

“You hurt, Jude?” he called over, an echo sharpened to a cutting edge.

[Jude]

Was Jude physically hurt? No. But the emotional damage was rather severe. Vomiting was the endcap of an awful night, of being frantic and disbelieved and lost. He felt very much like someone should come in and clean up this mess, that someone else should wrap up the loose ends and ugly details. But there was no one. He had set out to do this thing on his own, and it was only starting. He made the solemn vow of many a drunk: to never drink again. On top of that he promised to not spend so much time trying to convince a skeptic. He had been overconfident in his abilities there. Humility stung.

"I'm fine," he croaked, the answer too raspy to carry to the truck. He cleared his throat and repeated, more loudly, "I'm fine." He straightened up a little more and peered more intently at the face of the driver. His trust in people fractured for the moment, he had to dig deep to ask his next question. "Are you headed toward town?"

She could be someone from the Family that Jude had never met. This could be a trap. But at this point he had to take his chances. Pride alone motivated Jude to avoid being caught by Juliet so early in the game. She would never believe that this was all Near's fault.

[Near]

Music was still trickling out from the wreck’s shattered windows, and the siren call lured Near’s gaze away from Jude. He’d had his share of fender benders but had never totaled a car -- not that it was something he’d been hoping to one day add to his never-have-I-ever game, but there you go. Experience. He really had no idea how it was supposed to proceed from here, especially since it was a rental car and not his own. Was it better? Worse? Did his insurance even cover this? (He’d had to give a copy to the rental people so ...)

“Which town?” the driver asked, and she didn’t sound confused, exactly; more like all the towns in the world might be an option.

They should call the cops. That much was obvious. Step one. The cops would come and scatter flares and cones around and figure out a tow truck, whip out the breathalyzers and toss Near in jail, nail him with a DUI, which frankly wouldn’t be the most objectionable thing to happen to him this evening. He felt for the shape of his phone in his pocket and paused.

“Just a sec,” he called to the pickup woman, then glanced at Jude and said, more quietly, “Maybe we should burn it,” offhanded as if it were a joke or something as inconsequential as flicking the light off upon leaving the room -- he wasn't sure which himself, only that it felt, under the circumstances, like a totally rational thing to suggest.

[Jude]

Jude had never been in a car accident. More than that, he'd never been entrusted to someone so unreliable (and it was unclear if he thought this 'someone' was himself or Near.) He did not know a thing about car insurance. He did not know a thing about calling the police, other than he should not ever call the police, they attracted unnecessary attention to what was already a messy situation. Police recorded things, police were nosy. When in doubt, Jude was told to take the necessary steps to defend himself, and then call a member of the Family. They would never let anything happen to him.

Now quite a few somethings had happened to him. Now what?

"What?" he mumbled at Near reflexively, even though Jude had clearly heard him. Burn the car? Why burn the car? Because... evidence? Hazily he could guess the direction Near was going. He looked at his hands, both of them as clean and unhealed as if one of them had never been cut open with a piece of broken glass. Could he burn a car with these hands?

"Are you sure?" He defaulted to his old habit: letting someone else make the decisions for him. If Near thought they should burn the car, he would burn the car. Then, remembering the woman's question at the last minute, he raised his voice and said, "Olympia?" in the wavering tone of someone who was awful at negotiating. Just take him away from here, please.

[Near]

“No.”

Of course he wasn’t sure that setting fire to his rental car was the appropriate response to their present situation. It was just the concept had a very faint aura of rightness, this barely-there smell of “good move” like milk on the bleeding edge of going sour. They were being chased, so a burning car (complete with massive explosion?) would distract their pursuers, throw them off track, fool them into thinking that driver and passenger had both incinerated miserably inside. And no more car. Win/win, all problems resolved.

But Jude’s reaction wasn’t encouraging, and the semblance of brilliance sloughed off quick. Shock logic or concussion logic or Hollywood logic, maybe there was no difference. Near shook his head, more at himself than the kid, because brilliant or not he just kind of wanted to set fire to the car, whatever that would entail, like taking a bat to something fragile but on a more prison-worthy scale.

“Olympia?” The driver chewed on the word for a few seconds and then spat it, literally spat it, out onto the road. “I can drop you off in Burley, assuming you don’t want to call somebody about ... this.”

“Burley” might as well have been on the moon. Near fixed another look on Jude, who seemed to care where he was going more, and who had to be more familiar with the surrounding area than Near. (Thinking this, he realized how untrue the second part was.)

[Jude]

Burley could very well be on the moon, but, like the moon, it was decidedly not here. The fact of the matter was that Jude's location had been compromised, and he had to scramble to relocate, he had to hide. He would figure out where Burley was in relation to Olympia once he was in Burley. He knew where Olympia was in relation to Seattle, and he knew Seattle because there was an airport. Jude was familiar with airports, though he never enjoyed planes. He felt less and less like himself the further he got away from the ground.

"We'll call someone there," Jude said, the edges of his words blurring into each other. "Once we're there. In Burley." His anxiety at the approaching car had reversed, and now all he wanted to do was get into the car. Preferably he'd like to lay down in the backseat and wish himself into Burley.

He gave another look at the crashed car. Burning it would provide a distraction, but only a brief one. Without a body, the Family would not give up its pursuit. No, more than that -- wouldn't Juliet know, somehow, if he died? Could they exist without one another? If he didn't know where she was, Jude still knew she lived. Perhaps he would have considered killing himself, bringing this whole business to a prompt end, if he wasn't superstitious that it would kill her too. There had to be some other way.

Without waiting for Near, he started towards the truck. The backseat looked cramped, but it would do. He'd already thrown up. He couldn't throw up twice, could he?