All Roads Lead to Ruin

Seth grimaced, taking a cigarette from his pack and lighting it in the cabin. "What do you do?"

"Dad was a cop. I can shoot really well if I have a gun. Probably have better aim than you." She smiled back proudly.

He tilted his head back and forth slightly, as if weighing her statement in his head. "Guns come in handy but you'd be amazed how little bullets do against some of the things out there." He said, matter of factly. "And, besides. You can't stay. You're a cops daughter? You'll be looked for. I can't be tied to the murders, but, fuck, you basically made me kidnap you. That's not okay." He said, looking away for a moment. "I dropped my knife in your house when I carried you out. You know how fucked I am if they find you with me? They have my prints. And I seriously doubt its the first instance of that..."

She shook her head opening her backpack, "I told them it was dads and they gave it to me." She handed him the knife back, covered in soot, "And no one will look. They never do."

He took the knife, looking it over as she spoke. "Look. Kid. You can go to college or something. This is a really shitty, dangerous existence." He said, blowing a cloud of smoke in her face. "You know why I smoke? Its for the cancer. I don't want to get old and weak, because there's awful shit out there, and it'll come, and I'll be feeble and wheezing and shit my wheelchair as something sucks my brains through my eyes. But if I get cancer? Thirty, fourty, I'm donezo. Nothing scary, nothing damning, something I could fight but wouldn't because it's a real nice excuse to bug out of this hellhole of a world before shit really hits the fan. Do you really wanna live in that world?" He said, tapping his head. "If you're good with a gun, and want to see shit that haunts you, join the army. You'll make a bigger difference than me."

"They're not gonna look for me because they already think I'm dead." She frowned, "I had a draft of a suicide note on my bed at the hotel before I left. I was gonna get my answer then get out of here. That's still the plan. If one of them takes me out, then maybe I'll look like less of a little bitch. You have your damned cigarettes, this is me. I have nothing left in this world. No family, no friends, no possessions even. Hell, lately I wonder if I even have my mind. I can't eat, I can't sleep. I don't know if this is real yet. But if it is, I don't want to be. And I'm gonna go insane not knowing. Either you're gonna help me with that, or I keep walking till I find it on my own."

Seth sighed, shaking his head. "Kid, you gotta be kidding me..." He said with a bit of a complaining groan. "You fucked up, girl. You coulda bounced back." He replied. "Insanity is a lot more common than you'd think... or if its not, its at least more well deserved. Look... say you come along and all. Honestly? I've had enough bad shit happen to, or around me. I don't want to be the death of a 17 year old girl because I didn't kick her ass out at the Motel 6 all duct taped up." He said. He sounded somewhat sincere, his voice getting as close to pleading as his asshole demeanor allowed. "I'll take you as far as Cambry- there's a hippie commune outside of there, I've stayed there. They're nice folk. Weird, but not like teeth in your forehead weird. Just like... weird. They'll take care of you. They send the people that give a damn to school. Trust me. Its better."

She looked down at her hands, picking at the nails, "Sometimes I wonder if I really just died a while ago. With all the arguing and screaming and fighting and hitting... Maybe back there is where I really died. You don't seem to know my name or anything. Maybe I'm a ghost. I haven't felt anything but pain for a while. Dead, numb pain. All that thing did was remove my doubt."

Seth raised his eyebrows slightly. "If you were a ghost you probably wouldn't be able to form that coherent of a train of thought. I considered that though; saw you in the camper here and I thought for sure you were haunting me."

"Smartass..." She muttered, still deadpan. "It doesn't sound like you're gonna help me though. So regardless of where you take me I'm gonna figure it out. Like I said, I don't care if it kills me."

He shook his head. "No, like. That's real ghost trivia. Most ghosts aren't very good at thinking. They follow patterns." He replied to her, puffing on his cigarette as she sat stubbornly in his camper.

"Are we getting out of the mud or not?" She muttered.

He sighed, slumping down to the floor as he looked at her with a frown, smoke billowing from his mouth. "When the rain's done." He said, staring at her silently for a few moments. "You're not riding shotgun." He said, sighing out the smoke before tossing the pack into her lap.

She nodded silently, looking somber as she held her bag.

Flecks of hardened mud cracked and were flung off of the truck as the tires spun, pulling it off of the dirt road and onto the familiar traction of asphalt. Seth had made Layla sit in the rear seats, the ones you had to fold the driver or passenger seat forward to get to, and his eyes flickered back to her every now and then in the rearview. For the past three hours they had ridden in silence, a classic rock radio station pumping loudly to drown out any attempt at conversation. After about five minutes of Layla noticing Seth's stare on her in the mirror, he finally reached up to the radio and turned it down to a reasonable level. "Do you still have that fang? Whats up with your freckles? Do they burn?"

She fidgeted with her pocket and tossed it back up to him, "Yeah, but no. They don't bother me anymore."

"Weird. But, good." He said, eyeing it for a few moments before tossing it out the window. "Have you always had them?"

She nodded, "There used to be a picture above the fireplace of when I was little my mom connected them in a moon shape with some paint. She used to think it was cute." she spoke simply, dry, her words without feeling or sensation.

"Hmph." Huffed Seth as he listened to her, as if the idea made him think. The clouds had passed, and the sun was shining now, sending a fresh layer of steam rising off of the road. "You got a smartphone? Tell me what town's up ahead."

She nodded, "Looks like, uhhhh.... Springfield." she shrugged, "Decent sized city."

"City?" He asked, looking back at her with a questioning glance. "It doesn't sound like a city..." He mused under his breath, mostly to himself.

"It's also three am and we're in one of the offshoot towns." she spoke dryly, leaning her head against the glass and sighing out the window.

He grunted, frowning. "That's not what I... nevermind." He said, sighing. "I don't do cities. Cities have a lot of problems. They have people to fix them. I stay rural." He said, turning on a bypass that would take them out of the city's direction.

"Then the nearest town," she explained looking at her phone, "Would be Harrodsburg, about half an hour south."

The bypass he just took, as conveniently noted by her phone's GPS, lead them South, towards the town she mentioned.

Harrodsburg was a moderately small town, that seemed to be all pawn shops, motels, and diners, surrounding by fields and hills on just about all sides. Strangely enough, there seemed to be large number of jewelry shops for such a remote town, probably owing to a mine somewhere nearby. Seth pulled into the chain-fenced in back of what looked to be a pretty abandoned building, likely a pawnshop put out of business by one of its many rivals. Seth cut off his truck, then turned around in his seat, to look at the girl. "What's your name, anyway?"