“So what’s the count, D?”
“Count?”
“What’s your number?”
“Oh.” He smiled. “That’s kind of a personal question.”
“Get over yourself.”
Donaldson glanced at her, and then back at the double yellow lines glowing under the headlights.
“Hundred and thirty.”
“Bull. Shit.”
“I been doing this a long time, little girl. Long enough to know we gotta ditch this car, pronto.”
“Every cop in the county is at the hospital right now. We got a few minutes.”
“The staties will be looking for us.”
“We’re on a goddamn deserted highway in the middle of nowhere, Donaldson. You see any staties?”
“You’re a little bit reckless, aren’t you?”
The night raced by at 55 mph.
Sagebrush, pinion, hills, darkness.
Winding road and blinking stars.
“Let me ask you something, D. Serious.”
“What?”
“You ever meet another one of us?”
Donaldson nodded, his double chin jiggling. “Yeah.”
“I met two once,” she said. “But that was years ago. You’re the first I’ve come across in a long time. Or at least, got to really talk to. There was this one guy I crossed paths with a couple years back. He picked me up outside of Death Valley. I suspected he was one of us, but I was jonesing pretty bad so I cut the conversation short. All the bullshit aside, I’m glad I met you. I mean that. It’s a lonely road out here.”
“You think getting all friendly with me is gonna stop me from killing you?”
Lucy turned her head, looking out the window at the dark trees rushing past. “No, but…lying in bed these last few days, I started thinking. It’s rare in this life to meet another person like yourself.” She glanced back at Donaldson. “You know what I’m saying?”
“Want me to go wake up the preacher, reserve the wedding chapel?”
For thirty seconds, the car was dead quiet.
No sound but the pavement humming under the tires.
Then Lucy released a quiet sob.
Donaldson glanced over, saw Lucy’s shoulders slumped and shaking.
“I’ve never met anyone like you in my entire life, Donaldson. I wanted to kill you. Shit. Most of me still does. You fucked up my legs so bad, no one’s ever going to want to pick me up again. But don’t you ever wish you had someone?”
“Someone? You mean like a wife?”
“No. I mean like…”
“Like? Spit it out already.”
“Someone to hunt with.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
Donaldson glanced over at Lucy. He took his hand off the wheel, touched her cheek.
“Holy shit. You’re really crying.”
Lucy shrugged off his hand. “Ever since I woke up in the hospital bed, these five words have been rattling around in my head, and I can’t make them go away.”
“If this is some kind of trick, I’m going to pull this car over, drag your crippled ass into the woods, grab the biggest stick I can find…”
Donaldson checked the review mirror, noticed a set of headlights half a mile back.
“Don’t you want to know what those five words are?”
“What?”
“The five words I’ve been thinking about.”
Donaldson sighed. “Fine. Sure.”
“Kill together or die alone.”
The road stretched on, black and empty.
The gas gauge dipped below the E.
“When I was a kid, my mom left,” Donaldson said. “Dad wasn’t so good at raising me. Tried to buy me pets to keep me out of trouble. But I’ve had these particular…ah… tastes…since I was young. None of my pets lasted too long. But there was one pet I didn’t kill on my own. When I was seven, my father bought me a pair of hermit crabs.”
“What were their names?” Lucy asked, sniffling.
“Names? Fuck if I remember. Doesn’t matter. Point I want to make is, one day, I wake up to look at the crabs, and one is pulling off the other one’s legs. And eating them. Fucking eating them. Turns out hermit crabs are cannibals. Put two of them in the same tank, they’ll kill and devour each other.”