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Five or six large, leafy trees are growing on a slight incline in the land, and the next such copse I can see isn’t for another five to ten miles at least.
“I had no idea we were this close to the road last night,” she adds as I continue driving towards the copse at a slow pace. “It’s possible this is where the headlights we saw were, right?”
The reason I’m driving so slowly is to also search the grass for any sign of a dirt road that leads closer to the ridge. I can’t see one.
“I don’t know,” I answer her truthfully. “I think the headlights were too large to have been here. See how small the trees look, compared to how huge they actually were. And they were pointed directly at us, which would mean the car had to have been sitting sideways across this road.”
There’s something else about the trees, something I can’t quite articulate. They don’t look natural. They look like someone planted them there for a purpose. Maybe as a windshield.
“Should we get out and investigate?” she asks.
“Rick or Darius is coming this way overland,” I say. “Let’s keep driving for now and complete our task.”
On a mission like this, it’s important that everyone sticks to their assigned tasks. Not that I’m fully convinced our tasks were handed out in the best possible way. But I’m willing to concede that Miriam and all of them know this land and what can happen on it much better than I do.
Plus, I’m not entirely convinced this was the copse of trees where we saw the headlights last night. We’ve been driving for awhile and covered more than twenty miles, and I’m not sure that we walked that far last night.
She sits back and shrugs and doesn’t say anything. I accelerate again.
“I just wish we could be out there, actually doing something,” she says after awhile. “Not sitting in this clunking car.”
“I just wish we didn’t have to be doing this at all,” I say, making her gasp and cover her mouth then look at me with wide eyes over her palm, for some reason.
“Me too, obviously,” she breathes. “Poor Tina.”
I didn’t mean it to chide her, but she’s not wrong.
“Let’s hope she did just decide to take a little break from it all,” I say and focus on the road. “The wild really got me while we walked yesterday. I felt like I could’ve stayed out there forever. Maybe the locals get that feeling from time to time too.”
The road is beginning to gently veer to the right and more and more trees are appearing amid the grass, growing in large clumps, pines and the leafy kind both.
Soon we reach some kind of sign post and checking in the rearview, the weathered, barely legible sign informs me that we’re no longer on the Shallow Creek Reservation. Lily is focusing on the surrounding countryside, even though there’s still nothing but grass and trees to see.
But less than five miles from the sign we get our first glimpse of human habitation. A grey-walled house by the side of the road, all its windows broken and its yard completely overgrown. One of the oaks that was growing in its front yard was ripped out and had taken most of the white picket fence that once encircled the yard with it. All that’s left of it now are a couple of poles, some more broken and twisted than others.
“No one’s been there in awhile,” I say as stop at the start of the driveway, which used to be gravel but is not almost as overgrown with grass as the fields around it
“But maybe we should check it out just in case,” Lily suggests. “What if Tina got into an accident and took refuge there.”
We’ve seen no sign of a car accident on the road, or even any skid marks from breaking hard. Chances are high Tina never travelled down this road. I also absolutely don’t want to go exploring some run down, abandoned building with Lily in tow. It’s probably not even safe to walk in, and it looks to me like part of the roof has already caved in. But I don’t say any of that, because I know Lily will have none of it.
“You’re right,” I say and turn into the driveway, even though I’m a hundred percent sure no car has driven down it for many years. I hope all the grass doesn’t get caught in the suspension and strand us in this place.
I park a few paces from the fence and the smell of decay hits me as soon as I open my door. It’s even worse once we’re standing outside.
“Is that the smell of rotting flesh?” Lily asks, sounding sure that I’d know a thing like that. And unfortunately she’s right.
One time, a man we were tracking with the Devils had hidden in a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere, a place a lot like this only with more hills. Fear of being found made him eat his own gun though, about two weeks before we found him. That was disgusting.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “This smells more like decaying wood and furniture and stuff.”
But I could be wrong. Though I am pretty certain it’s not Tina, since she’s only been missing for a three days. Bodies don’t start to reek that fast, I don’t think.
“I’ll go check it out,” I say and stride over to the broken fence. “You can stay with the car.”
I’m not surprised to hear her boots crunching on gravel behind me or the fact that she didn’t even bother to reply to my suggestion.
The smell of decay grows worse as we approach the house, carried on an almost unnatural kind of cold coming from the brick walls of the house. It looks like a family home more than a farm. There’s blackened furniture in the rooms and through one of the broken windows in the front I can see straight out of another at the back. A field of some sort was there once, though only weeds and grass and a couple of new trees cover it now.
