"I didn't even commit a crime! I didn't do anything wrong! I just intervened!"
Javier's hands briefly left the wheel. "Hey. Whoa. Do I look like a cop?" He glanced briefly in her direction. "Anyway. You don't have to explain anything. The less I know, the better. We'll find a rest stop, and you can ping your folks from there."
Amy smiled just thinking about it. "Thank you."
Javier shrugged. "I'll have to leave you there, though. We're fugitives, so your parents' tubes are probably being monitored. The moment you make that connection, I'm gone."
Amy hugged her knees. "OK." She nodded to herself. "Thank you. For taking the risk. If you ever come back down south again, you should come visit us." Her eyes widened. She snapped her fingers. "I'm going to need a bigger bed!"
"Excuse me?"
"Well, I'm just so much taller, now," Amy said, stretching her arms out. "The old one won't fit."
"Right." Javier fiddled with the rearview camera's settings. "Don't tell me you actually miss having a bedtime."
She laughed. "Nope."
"Probably past it now, right?"
She peered at the dash display. "Oh yeah. Way past it."
Javier grinned. He handed her his baby, and motioned at the pile of vN food on the dash. "Can you feed him? And hide that vN food – it's worse than a bunch of empty beer cans, when it comes to cops."
Amy looked in the back seat. "I wish we had a car seat…"
"Just hide him under the blanket." Javier handed Junior over to her, then scattered the vN food at her feet. Amy reached down and grabbed some before buckling her seatbelt and wrapping Junior in the extra folds of blanket. She tried making a little tent for him in there like she'd seen nursing mothers use.
"What if he chokes?" She broke off a square of food. It smelled vaguely like peanut butter.
Javier shook his head. "I keep forgetting you don't have kids…" He gestured. "It'll melt. You'll see."
Amy gently lowered the square into Junior's mouth. He watched her with his giant, calm eyes. She was reminded of a faithful dog, somehow. The food slowly liquefied; he sucked it down rather than chewing. "He did it!"
"Told you. Bend down and smell his mouth. It should smell bitter in there. That's how you know they're ready to eat. It's a compound in the saliva. Helps them predigest the food."
Amy sniffed. She recognized the smell instantly. Her mouth had tasted the same way, just before she'd eaten her grandmother. She shuddered, and tried changing the subject to something only slightly less bizarre. "That was really lucky back there. I can't believe that Rory herself wants to help, and is sending ex-dieters to look after me."
"Yeah. That's like, meeting Santa or something."
Amy frowned. "What do you mean? How is it like meeting Santa? Santa lives at the North Pole."
Mild panic wrote itself across Javier's features. He swallowed. "Uh… You're right! It's not like meeting him at all! Because Santa's totally real, and–" He shot a quick glance in her direction. By now, she was having a hard time restraining her giggles. "And you're totally fucking with me right now, aren't you?"
Amy laughed through her nose. Javier gave her the finger. She kept laughing. He kept driving. Every so often, he would look over at her and shake his head, and nudge the speed up. Soon Junior was asleep. Amy followed not long after, lulled by the squeak of wipers over the empty static Javier insisted on listening to.
She is standing over them, gun in hand. They kneel, hooded and placid as tame falcons. One by one, she pulls the hoods off. They blink slowly before focusing on the thing in the centre of the room. Now the chains rattle as they try to scramble backward. It's hard, with their hands up above their heads. The thing moans. It has long since given up. "I want you to know," she says, lifting a tire iron, "that this hurts me worse than you."
She brings down the iron. The chains sing, now. The thing is crumpling, bursting, its insides leaking and pooling. She's glad she positioned it over the drain in the floor. The women shriek. They plead. They beg. They try to hide and can't.
"G-G-Granny…"
Madness kindles in their eyes. Failures. All of them. She lifts the gun. The puke rounds smell a little dry, but still good.
The air fills with the hiss of melting flesh–
"Fuck!"
Amy started awake. The car swerved wildly. Javier let the wheel slip through his hands and struggled to avoid a group of women who had positioned themselves in the middle of the dark and winding road. Headlights illuminated their stiff and unyielding bodies: Amy recognized her aunts.
"You've got a real fucked-up family," Javier said. Baring his teeth, he floored the gas pedal and plowed directly into one of the aunts. She rolled calmly across the hood. Her lips kissed across the wet windshield.
Inside Amy, something hardened. "More," she said. "Javier, run them all over–"