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Chapter Eleven

Nick had stopped for a couple minutes and tried to sleep but that haunted feeling had just kept waking him and bothering him and he'd eventually given up an gone back to driving. The headlights pierced the darkness of the highway like knives. Bree slept on in the passanger side, her face gentle and deep in a state of rest, eyes wobbling with dreams.

The stereo played his iPod's shuffle quietly as the car sailed along; Journey was a comforting, familiar sound. His thoughts were spinning about, each one floating through his mind like someone had thrown confetti memories into the air. He thought about pulling over and getting out and going to smell Bree's bag again, like he had when she first arrived. He felt homesick for Brian, something he hadn't felt in a long time, but the overwhelming sense of his absence had taken a hold of Nick at the edge of the Canyon.

The Canyon, he realized, was very much the way his heart felt now that Brian was gone. A gaping hole, stretched widely apart and utterly impossible to refill. He imagined that the crack in his heart was visible from space.

Nick's mind fully preoccupied, he wasn't doing a very good job keeping his mind on the road.

Suddenly, an object Nick couldn't quite make out was in the dark road ahead of them, and he slammed the car's brakes on in an effort to avoid it, but the car thump-thumped over it. With a pop and a wheezing shuddering couple rolls, the car came to a stop a couple yards away from whatever it was. Nick's heart was racing, his breathing coming out in quick pants. Bree had sat up and was looking around wildly.

"What was that?!" she cried.

Nick looked in the rearview mirror. "I think I busted the tire." He swung the door open, "Shit," he cussed, frustrated with himself. He glanced back at her, "Stay in the car, aiight?" All he could picture was some other preoccupied driver coming along and flattening Bree like a pancake. And with that, he climbed out.

Bree felt panicked the way you do when you're woken from a sound sleep the way she had been. She clutched the blanket she'd pulled over herself at some point and looked around at the highway. She wondered how long Nick had been driving. She hadn't even felt him leave the rest area. She'd been dreaming about the canyon, about Brian, about eagles. She wasn't sure what the plot of the dream had been - only that it'd been lovely and she hadn't wanted to awaken from it. Not without remembering it. But the sudden jolt had yanked her from it, leaving behind her memories, safely cocooned in a world deep in her subconscious.

She looked around outside the car and could only just barely see Nick. She reached for the car door. Her nerves frayed, she didn't want to be alone. She pulled the blanket around herself like a cape and crawled out of the car, leaving the door wide open as she walked to the back bumper.

Bits of tire were all over the highway. The front driver's side tire was mangled, the car all but resting on the rim. Nick was a few yards back, inspecting something in the road. Bree stayed by the car. "What's that?" she called, pointing at the mass on the street.

Nick looked up, "Some car part that fell off another car," he muttered. He kicked it and the thing made a terrible scraping sound as he moved it toward the edge of the highway. "You were supposed to stay in the car," he reprimanded her.

"I didn't want to be alone," she argued.

Nick didn't reply - honestly, he didn't either. The tire explosion had given them both a scare, and NIck had been nervous about getting out to see what he'd hit, imagining something terrible laying in the road. He was spooked just enough in a spent-the-night-telling-ghost-stories way to imagine Jason coming out of the woods with his mask and machine gun whirring.

Once he'd gotten the piece of metal off the road, he turned back to the car, bending to pick up pieces of his shredded tire as he walked. He sighed, staring at the rim. Bree walked around the car to his side and stared at it, too. Nick glanced around the empty highway. "Well then," he muttered.

Bree raised an eyebrow. "Now what?" she asked.

Nick leaned against the car and pulled out his cellphone. "Now we change the tire."

"What're you doing?" she asked.

"Googling Walmart."

"What?"

"I don't have a spare tire."

Bree leaned against the car, too, hugging the blanket to her chest. She stared at the woods opposite the street. "Do you think there's wild animals in there?" she asked.

Nick glanced at the trees, then down at Bree. "Nawh," he answered.

Bree looked up at him. "What good is googling Walmart going to do?" she asked, "We can't drive there on the rim, can we?"

Nick shrugged.

"We're not walking, are we?"

Nick shrugged again.

Bree thought she heard something move in the trees and looked back at them, a new wave of panic settling over her. She inched closer to Nick and grabbed onto his arm. Nick wrapped it around her, tucking her against his side, as he continued working on the phone. After a couple moments, he turned and looked off beyond the car at the trees behind them. "According to this," he said, "There's a Walmart like five miles from here."

"Five miles?" Bree asked. She wasn't much of an athletic person and she couldn't really imagine walking five miles all at once. She glanced at Nick. She could tell by his stance what he was thinking. "I'm going with you," she argued before he could even start to say otherwise.

Nick sighed, resigned to the finality in her voice that he wasn't going to be able to stop her - after all, she seemed very headstrong, he couldn't even get her to stay in the car for five minutes. If he left her here and started walking there was nothing stopping her from waiting for a couple minutes then tailing after him and he'd never know it until she caught up and he imagined worse things happening if he had no clue she was there than at least being aware and being able to protect her as best he could. "Might wanna leave the blanket here at least," he suggested. He reached into the car and got his wallet.

Bree stuffed her blanket into the car.

They set off, their sneakers slap-slapping the cement as they walked. It sort of amazed Nick that they hadn't seen any other vehicles travelling the road since the tire had exploded, but then again it was some time after two in the morning. He made sure Bree walked on the inside and he on the out - the first of the two that would be struck by a careening vehicle should that occur, and he had to restrain himself from the desire to hold her hand to keep her right there like he had when his sisters were growing up.

Bree kept one eye on the trees lining the street, half expecting to see a fox or a bear come running out, fangs bared, ready to eat them. She felt a bit like Dorothy walking through the forrest just before the Cowardly Lion comes out. Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

It was a long walk, but it was flat land other than the exit ramp, and Walmart itself was right off the highway. It didn't really feel like five miles, even though it did, indeed, take them well over an hour to round a corner and find the glowing neon blue and yellow sign. "I've never frickin' been happy to see this place before in my life," Nick muttered.

Bree laughed. "You don't like Walmart?" she asked as they wallked across the wide span of the parking lot. The lot alone was probably a mile, Bree thought.

Nick shook his head, "I hate it."

"Why?"

"There's always noise. And not like normal noise either. I mean it's not even the fact that there's always a kid screaming and people arguing and moms yelling and TVs blaring and music playing and employees throwing shit. It's not even that stuff. But there's like this humming sound that just drones under it all and it's that squeaky ree-ra-reeet-ra-reeet sound the cart wheels make because all their carts make that sound."

Bree's laughter continued, "Wow, you paint a lovely image of Walmart's audio track."

"And that's without getting me started on their alarm system."

"The alarm system?"

"Yeah. It flashes these horrible blue lights and makes this sound that you feel in your head more than you actually hear it. It's like an instant migraine."

They were about halfway across the lot when the rain started. Bree let out a shriek and bolted for the front doors. Nick laughed as she ran, her arms flailing about, trying to wave the rain away from her head. He trotted, shoving his hands into his pockets, not worried about the rain so much as about keeping up with Bree. The drops came down progressively faster and by the time Nick had ducked through the front doors, it was a downpour and he shook his hair out the way a dog would, shuddering off the rain.

"I'm soaked," Bree complained loudly, her voice echoing in the cavernous entryway.

Nick laughed, "It's just water."

"Why is it raining anyways, we're in the freaking desert!"

Nick smiled, "Haven't you figured out that's how my luck goes? At least you don't have to figure out how to put a damn car tire on in it."

Bree stared at Nick for a long moment. "You don't know how to change a tire?"

Nick shrugged, "I've never really had to before," he admitted.

"Oh lawwwd," Bree cried out, her tone sounding distinctly southern - in a Georgia way, not a Kentucky way; it still reminded Nick of Brian's accent, though, and he couldn't help but allow a wide smile to cross his face, as Bree threw her hands up in the air and danced into the Walmart. "It's gonna be a long night, Carter!"