Page 52 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin's Duet

“Thanks.”

“You should have no problems heading down to Rowanville. I’ll follow you to the main road to make sure you’re off safe,” he said.

Make sure I don’t turn around and come back, you mean.

“I thought we’d be going up to where you’re staying,” Lorrie said quietly.

Absalom shook his head. “It ain’t safe for you with Hiram and the others millin’ about. I wish—”

Lorrie frowned. “Do you smell that?”

Absalom jammed down the clutch. “Yeah. Shit— could be the radiator.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Climb out and get a stone for me, will ya?”

Lorrie climbed out as Absalom pulled up the E-brake. “The hood’s smoking, Abi.”

“Yeah, I know,” came the terse reply. “Definitely that radiator.”

Lorrie found a big piece of quartz and jammed it under the back wheel. Something under the truckbed caught her attention.

“Abi,” she shouted. “What’s all those wires for?”

He leaned out the window. “What?”

“The wires. Under there.”

Then everything started happening at once. Absalom leapt out of the vehicle and started shouting at her. Lorrie didn’t understand. He kept bellowing, BOMB, BOMB, BOMB. Absalom rarely ever raised his voice and the sound of it had her bolting like a rabbit for the trees, Absalom not far behind. By a miracle they didn’t twist their ankles among the knobby roots and pitted ground of the forest floor. They halted yards away, waiting, panting, wide-eyed.

Nothing happened.

“Stay here,” Absalom told her after the most tense two minutes of their lives. Against Lorrie’s protests he walked back to the truck and gingerly peered under the bed. Quickly he straightened up and beat a hasty retreat back to her.

He was white as a haint; she saw all the whites of his blue eyes. Without saying a word he hauled Lorrie into his arms. She heard his heart knocking hard and fast against his ribs. The sounds of the forest swirled around them: birds, bees, things moving in the undergrowth, all oblivious to the instrument of death parked in their mist. She heard somebody’s rough, uneven breathing. Her own? Fear response. Absalom was shaking like a leaf. The strangest thing was that Lorrie felt utterly, absolutely calm.

“Is it–”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He stepped away from her and put both hands behind his head.

“We’re okay, Abi. I’m okay.”

“Christ!” he choked.

Lorrie felt sick herself. “Who could have done it?”

“Anybody. D’you have your keys?”

“No. They’re in your truck,” Lorrie stammered. “With my bags and everything. They can stay there. We’ll just walk back to the road.”

“And do what? Call an Uber?”

“We can hitchhike, maybe?” She suggested.

Absalom snapped into fearless-leader mode and said decisively, “No.”

“Well,what?”

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