Jarred tapped the steering wheel in time to the drumbeat, as his black Ford Mustang cruised down the desert road, blaring heavy metal. Dust trailed him, clouding the view in his mirror. The song’s rhythm wasn’t doing much to cut his boredom. It wasn’t a particularly good one. It was however, the only track on the CD, given to him by a friend who’d told him he needed some decent road music. Sometimes he really hated Tristan’s sense of humour.

His eyes scanned the horizon, running over the border between desert and sky blankly until they alit on something curious.

It grew as he drove nearer, slowly morphing from a curious, small, black speck into an even more curious, tall, black girl.

She had loose, knee-high boots, once black but now scuffed and sun-bleached. Her skirt was short and checked in red and black, matching the striking colours of the long, loose braids kept just back from her face. She carried a blue duffel bag and a dusty guitar case was strapped to her back.

Jarred raised his eyebrows, easing off the petrol till he matched her speed. He leaned across the passenger seat and wound down the window. She looked over briefly, casting a scathing eye over his peeling paintwork, before fixing her gaze on the road ahead.

She didn’t even spare a glance for the driver’s charming smile.

Jarred blinked, surprised. She continued to ignore him.

Who ignores the only other person in like, a 5 million k radius? He thought to himself. Especially when that person has the only working vehicle in a 5 million k radius?

Maybe I should just leave her. Teach people to snub my car.

He was on the point of speeding away and showering her with his dust, but something stilled his foot before it touched the accelerator. Might as well give it one more shot, just to please Karma or something.

“Hey, do I have to spell it out for you? I’m offering you a lift here!”

“You don’t know where I’m going.”

She replied without turning, in an accent as curious as the rest of her.

Jarred cast a cursory glance at the distant horizon.

“Let me guess… straight on for about, oh… the next two days or so?”

She turned her head, quirking an eyebrow at him, but said nothing.

Jarred began having serious second thoughts about his offer. Then the CD stopped, and clicked the song over to the beginning again for the thousandth time.

“Come on, it’ll take you at least two days to walk to the nearest anything.”

“I can’t go with you.”

“And why is that?”

She shifted the guitar case more securely onto her shoulder and answered, “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

Jarred raised his eyebrows and flicked his gaze to the horizon once more. “You look to me like you’re heading south.”

“I’m not.”

Jarred’s patience was reaching snapping point and he was on the verge of putting up with his music solo, but he still didn’t drive away.

“Look, I don’t want it on my conscience leaving you out here to die. You can get in the car, really; I’m not an axe murderer or anything.”

“That’s good to know.” She kept walking.

Jarred sighed, but kept following.

The shadows of the stunted trees lengthened as the sun sank. He frowned, stuck out a finger to poke the CD player into silence, and tried again, this time with urgency in his voice. This wasn’t the time or the place for this kind of argument. They should have been driving already.

“Listen, you really don’t want to be out in here in the dark.”

“That’s exactly what I want.”

Jarred rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I’m serious, it’s dangerous.”

“So am I.”

He faltered; did she just tell me that she’s dangerous? No, wait, don’t be an asshole, no one says that outside of bad horror movies.

“So what is it exactly that you wanna do out in the cold dark desert all on your lonesome?” he asked aloud.

“I’m not alone.”

“You will be if you keep pissing me off like this,” he growled at her, misunderstanding.

The girl turned, flashing red fire at him for an instant. Jarred’s foot slid off the gas completely and he stalled. Red eyes? Then he noticed that the sun was lower in the sky than he’d thought, and the Mustang’s windows reflected it, turning everything crimson.

Fuck, I’m losing it. This freaking CD’s fried my brain.

He started the engine again and caught up with the girl, calling “Hey! You didn’t answer my question!”

“What question?”

“What the hell you wanna do in the desert.”

She didn’t answer for a long time, staring away into the distance. She seemed to be wrestling with something. Jarred decided that this was one fight he did not want to be in the middle of and didn’t interrupt.

Finally the girl murmured, “I’m hunting.”

Her tone was soft and low, but for Jarred the wrongness of hearing that phrase out of her mouth amplified the words as though they had been screamed. His skin crawled; the irony of hearing that here, now, as darkness descended was absolute. If he hadn’t been so damn sure she was serious, he’d have laughed. The girl walked on impassively. Jarred looked at her. “Wait… hunting with a guitar?”

The girl shifted the case strap before replying. “It’s just for show.”

Jarred rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s believable, lug a guitar across the desert for show.”

She paused for a heartbeat, flicking him a glance, her eyes locked on his. “It’s so well-intentioned young men don’t get suspicious.”

Jarred swallowed audibly. Damn, the chick really does speak bad-horror-movie. Why exactly am I trying to get her in the car again?

She shot him another quick glance, this time with something unreadable in her eyes, and asked him softly, “Are you scared of me?”

Jarred didn’t answer at once. Instead he fixed his eyes firmly on the road ahead. After a while he muttered, “I don’t believe in vampires.”

The girl stopped walking. Then she threw back her head and burst into a rolling laugh. The ringing peals bounced off the ground and echoed among the stunted trees.

Jarred wasn’t the only one to wince at their loudness.

The girl caught her breath and grinned sardonically down at him. “What makes you think I’m a vampire?”

Somewhere, a little distance from the road, there was a small hiss and puff of dust as something shook the protective layer of dirt from its body.

Jarred gawped up at her. “Umm… well… it’s just…”

“Too many horror movies rot the brain.”

The sun dipped ponderously below the line of the distant mountains. Something blinked in the twilight, shook itself, and scrabbled across the desert floor.

In the car, Jarred coloured, scowling at her mocking smile.

Out in the desert, something darted from rock to tree-shadow, to rock, drawing ever nearer to the road.

The young man in the black Mustang drew breath for a sharp and witty response, then froze, listening.

The twilight had deepened. Dark fell quickly here. The girl stood silent, listening too.

Jarred was sure he’d heard… yes, there it was again: soft scraping on the parched ground, slowly picking up speed and coming closer. Then the sound stopped. Silence, a tiny scrape, then “SHIT!” Jarred yelled, reacting instantly and lunging across the seat. He grabbed the door handle and heaved the door open as hard as he could, smacking into the creature that had sprung from the darkness towards the girl.

The metal connected with a solid crack and the creature darted away, growling and clicking in pain. Jarred breathed again.

“Thing about horror movies,” he told her in a low, steady voice, “is that they teach you some things. For example, the macho badass who insists on taking stupid risks always goes first. Now will you stop being hardcore and get in the fucking car?”

The girl didn’t reply.

He looked up at her. She was standing stock still, frozen in place exactly as she had been before the attack, save one thing: now she was grinning.

Things scraped and wailed from the thickening darkness.

“Are you even listening to me?” Jarred demanded, “I just saved your life here!”

She ignored him, but slowly began to swing the guitar case off her shoulder. Something inside it thudded ominously.

Great, thought Jarred, so she’s in shock, just what this situation needs to make it just fucking peachy. Aloud, he said, “Okay, let me help. Here, give me that.” He reached up and grabbed the neck of the guitar case.

She turned to look at him then, with such fire in her eyes that if Jarred had been any other well-intentioned young man, he would’ve dropped the case like a hot potato.

“Let go,” she murmured in a low, dangerous voice.

“No dice.” Jarred retained his grip and began tugging slightly. She curled her fingers around one of the straps, answering pressure with pressure. Things scuffed and scraped, louder and closer.

“Just stop being stupid and get in the car, now!” Jarred punctuated his last word with a massive heave on the case. This was too much for the ageing catches and they gave with a snap, letting the case open and launching Jarred backwards. Heavy thuds resounded.

“Ow, not fair,” moaned Jarred, and then after a moment, “What the hell is that smell?”. He glanced across at the open case and froze, his eyes widening. There was a torso in his passenger footwell.

Its pallor, the slight scaling and the stickiness of the yellow blood still oozing from it betrayed its non-human origins. Under the shattered ribcage lay a shovel, its handle protruding behind the snapped vertebrae, where a head ought to have been.

The girl heaved a sigh of annoyance and casually lifted the torso with toe of a boot. She dropped and unzipped the duffel bag, pulling from it a steel axe, burnished to a dull sheen. She blew across the blade edge, dislodging tiny flecks of dried yellow blood. Then she nodded to herself, reached down and grasped the body by the remains of a shoulder. With a hiss of effort, she lifted and whirled it through the night air and away. A moment of listening was rewarded with the soft squelch of something landing. For an instant there was silence, then the growling and keening resumed, rising to a frenzy and filtering away in the direction of the meat.

The girl paused, cocked a happy smile, and loped away towards the bait, the axe held low and ready.

“Holy shit,” breathed Jarred.

He sat in stunned silence as the desert around him faded into shadow. Sounds filtered in from the darkness, wet and heavy, with the occasional metallic thud.

He shuddered, turning his head from the dark outside. The torso had leaked fluid onto the carpet of the passenger footwell. Jarred wrinkled his nose at it. The axe-girl would so be paying for valet.

Something slammed out of the darkness onto the bonnet, keening with rage and scrabbling at the windscreen. Quick as thought, and with a fluid precision to his movements, Jarred was crouched on the passenger seat with the car door firmly closed. The thing floundered on the smooth metal, struggling for a claw hold. Then it froze in sudden panic, and fell off the car. Jarred removed his hand from the horn.

The creature scraped and scuttled into the night, soon lost in the melee of hunting sounds. He smiled once, and reached down to pick up the shovel, ears tracking every noise.

There was a sharp rap on the door. Jarred jumped, spun around and came face to face with the girl. She was leaning casually against the car. Her braids, now broken free from their makeshift binding, shadowed her face, but not enough to hide the wry smile as she smirked at him through the open window. He stifled another yelp.

“Smooth going, Mr Security,” she drawled. She was about to say more but paused, listening instead to the sound of something racing across the desert floor towards her. She shifted her weight, cocked her head and addressed him without taking her eyes off the night. “If you’re trying to keep them away from you…” The scuttling grew louder, and she jumped, landing heavily on both feet. The scuttling ended in a squelching snap. She blew a braid from her face and concluded, “Try turning on the headlights.”

Jarred blinked a moment. “I was about to do that,” he muttered, even though the girl had already vanished again.

Frowning to himself, he rolled up the window and dragged the engine into life. Sounds continued to well up from the darkness; snaps and growls interspersed with throaty laughter.

Flicking through, in rapid order, indicators, emergency flashers and windscreen wipers, Jarred eventually found the lights. The space just in front of the bonnet was flooded with a yellow glow. His eyes widened. The creatures seethed and writhed, a teeming knee-high horde, packed solidly around the car. Those caught in the lamps’ glare scrambled away in a rush, raking and gouging the bodies around them in desperation to escape the painful beams. Chunks of flesh flew and the windscreen was dappled with a rain of yellow blood.

“Eeeeew.” Jarred made a face, and turned on the windscreen washers.

He wondered whether he should do something about the horde outside. Probably they wouldn’t appreciate his crap Metal. It might even be enough to make them leave.

A low rasp, different from what he’d heard before, caught his attention. It sounded like it was coming from the front grill. He peered through his now spotless windscreen. A scaly claw hooked itself over the bonnet, coming up in the space between the headlights, where the beams couldn’t reach. Obviously this one was smarter than usual. He thought about hitting the horn again but decided against it.

“Sneaky little shit,” Jarred hissed. Then he took stock of the chips in his windscreen and wondered how much they’d be able to stand before they cracked.

The first claw was joined by a second and then a third.

He decided this was probably not the best time to find out. “Oh no you fucking don’t,” he yelled at the claws, grabbing the shovel and launching himself out of the car, kicking the door shut behind him.

The ponderous progress of the claws was abruptly halted. The fifth time the blood-encrusted shovel blade bit down it broke all the way through to sand.

Jarred stood, stark in the pool of light, breathing heavily. With an expression of extreme distaste, he flipped the oozing carcass under the chassis. Then he stood a moment, leaning on his shovel and letting his heart catch up with itself. He’d never liked the hands-on approach.

A movement in the night air caught his eye and he turned, just in time to catch a glimpse of his own startled reflection in the steel axe as it flashed down a handspan from his left shoulder. The air whistled as the girl swung the blade heavily into the neck of another creature emerging from the shadows under the car towards Jarred’s ankles.

There was a muted shriek and a fountain of sticky, yellowish blood.

Dripping slightly, she straightened, fixing his wide-eyed, faintly ill face with an amused stare. “Stay in the light,” she instructed and stepped back into shadow.

“You did not just quote lines from cheap horror at me!” Jarred yelled.

The scales of the creatures were tough, already the fine edge of the shovel was dulling and more and more often Jarred ended up just clubbing things to a bloody mess. They were fighting back to back now, hacking away in the dubious safety of the headlights. Still the creatures massed and even though the ground around the pair was littered with bodies and pools of drying blood, the numbers didn’t seem to be thinning.

One of the girl’s loose braids kept smacking Jarred in the eye whenever she leaned forward to slice. He contemplated asking her to do something about it, but before he reached a decision, something lunged out of the dark towards him, heavy canines bared. Caught off guard, he tried to dodge, stepped in a blood slick and collapsed, arms windmilling.

The girl reacted without pause, spinning on her heel and springing into the air above Jarred in a long-legged leap. She met the creature mid-jump, the blade slicing in a clean arc, severing its neck. The head flew a few metres and was immediately torn to shreds by several of the others. The girl landed on the ground in a crouch, one foot on either side of Jarred’s stomach, her axe-blade biting into the ground for balance.

She stood up, turning smoothly to watch for attacks and check on Jarred. He was lying stock-still with his hands clasped firmly over his eyes and his cheeks flaming. She gave him a small smile.

“Relax.”

One eye peered at her from a gap between his fingers. He was still blushing.

“Nothing to get excited about,” she drawled, flipping up the hem of her skirt to reveal black lycra beneath. “I wear cycling shorts.”

***

“Gross dammit, this stuff is drying on me.” Jarred scrubbed a hand across his cheek, dislodging a flurry of congealing yellow flakes. She straightened from a heavy blow, grinning.

“Don’t even think about saying anything,” he growled at her.

Her grin became that much wider.

“Aaargh!” he yelped, nearly dropping his shovel as the jugular he’d accidentally ruptured sprayed him with a fresh coating of blood. From the dark beside him came the girl’s low, throaty chuckle.

“It’s not… phffft… fucking… phfft… funny,” he grated, spitting to clear his mouth. “This stuff is fucking disgusting!”

Looking up and out, Jarred’s heart sank. The creatures swarmed as thick as ever. The numbers seemed endless. “Right,” he said, more to himself than to her, “No more messing around.” He set his jaw and started towards the back of the car.

Hissing irritation through her teeth, the girl grabbed his arm and dragged him roughly back into the light. “And where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Jarred blinked at her in surprise. “I have to get something out of the boot.”

She opened her mouth to laugh and then realised he was serious. “You really are as fucking stupid as you look.”

“You don’t underst…”

“Nor do I care. You will shut up and start using that shovel now – ”

“But… ”

“- or I will gut you and use your corpse as a diversion so I can finally start making some headway.”

It was the longest sentence she’d said to him all night.

He opened his mouth once more.

“If you want to die that badly, keep talking.”

At this point Jarred was beginning to prefer the monosyllables.

The girl levelled her axe-blade between them and met his eyes over it, her gaze unflinching., “Dig?”

Jarred looked down at the axe-blade and up at her again. Then he sighed, surrendering. “Dig,” he agreed, hefting the shovel. The girl moved away, prowling the edges of the light looking for targets.

“If both of us survive the night,” Jarred muttered under his breath, “You are so going to be kicking yourself in the morning.” Then he turned, applied himself to the task at hand and resumed bludgeoning lizards.

***

The sun fell lazy and golden across the rusting roofs of the tiny desert town. Clouds inched across a rosy sky in an annoyingly rainless way as the community began to emerge from slumber. The owner of the decrepit local garage, out in the yard to prep his pumps for the day, shaded his eyes against the already heavy heat haze. A car was coming along the dusty main road. The garage owner squinted harder, puzzled. The sole occupant appeared to be a tall, curious black girl, with dishevelled braids and hard eyes.

The garage owner shrugged, put out his ‘Self Service’ sign and headed back inside. If it came from the desert, you didn’t ask questions.

Her hands a little clumsy on the strange wheel, she navigated the Mustang smoothly through the dust and into a large pothole. The car shuddered with a sudden jolt and there was an outraged yelp from the back seat.

“Dammit woman, would you watch where you’re driving!”

She flicked a glance impassively over her shoulder to where Jarred lay, his leg propped on the guitar case and wrapped in his blood-stained jacket. He glared furiously at her.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t mean that,” he complained, “If you meant it you wouldn’t keep running into potholes every five minu… ow!”

“Sorry,” the girl repeated, “Bad road.”

From where he lay on the faded beige pleather, Jarred could feel her smirk.

She pulled up alongside the first pump and killed the engine. She was about to get out when Jarred piped up again.

“Where the bloody hell are we? Why’ve we stopped?”

“Petrol station,” she replied without inflection, “To get petrol.”

“Petrol station? Petrol station?!” Jarred boomed, “I thought you were taking me to a fucking clinic!”

“No.”

“Is something fucking wrong with you!? I’m going to bleed to death on my own fake leather upholstery if I don’t get to a doctor.”

“I’ll get you an aspirin and a Band-Aid inside.” She opened the door.

Jarred groaned. “Holy shit, there is something wrong with you. Look, then at least get me the first-aid kit from the boot. You’ll need the keys to unlock.”

Wordlessly she left the car. A few minutes later she returned, chucked the first-aid kit into his lap and vanished again. Muttering, Jarred pulled himself upright and began the sticky process of cleaning and dressing the large bite wound in his leg.

About half an hour later, when he was wrapping the whole mess in a violently blue waterproof bandage that he hoped would keep the sand out, the front passenger door opened and the girl dropped a couple of plastic packets onto the seat. The door closed. There was a pause. The boot opened and closed again. Then the girl got into the driver’s seat.

The engine sprang to life and they pulled away from the garage.

“So what’s in the bags?”

“Food.”

“Ah.”

The town slid by around the car as Jarred finished covering his wound. There was a short silence.

“Did you know there was a shotgun in the back of your car?”

Now it was Jarred’s turn to grin. “Yes actually. I put it there, along with the 5 kilos of ammo and the two boxes of magnesium flares. You’ll find those are particularly effective against those creatures.”

“You didn’t say.”

He grinned wider, gloating. “I didn’t want to die.”

There was another short silence.

“Point.”

They drove on.

“So are you going to stop in town a while or what?”

“No.”

“Ah. That explains the supplies.”

“Yes.”

The houses began to thin and the road stretched ahead, flat and wide and empty.

“We’re heading back out?”

The girl nodded.

Jarred smiled. “In that case, hook a left at that big rock up ahead, just where the trees start.”

“What’s left?”

Jarred stifled a yawn and settled back into the seat. “My place.”

The car’s shudder was the only thing that betrayed her surprise as she flicked a guarded glance at him.

He held up a hand, anticipating her question. “Because I need to sleep, you need a shower, that axe needs sharpening, and I’ve gotta fit the snipe stand to the roof of my car because I can’t do much else with this leg. Also, the hunting’s better in my neck of the woods.”

She flicked her eyes back to the road, deliberating. “Live alone?” she asked after a while.

“I do… now. Yes.”

Something looked like it might soften in her for a brief moment, then it was gone. Jarred didn’t notice.

“I don’t do dishes and I don’t cook.”

He grinned slightly. “I live off frozen meals anyway.”

She almost smiled. “So, you got a name, well-intentioned young man?”

“I’m Damien.” Said Jarred.

“ … Maggie.”

“Doesn’t suit you.”

“I know.”