~~
The next morning we said our goodbyes to Maximus. It seemed we had many goodbyes over that weekend but this time we knew it would stick. For now, at least. He seemed adamant that he would be visiting the Pacific Northwest soon.
The drive back to the airport was a long one. Thankfully, the air conditioner was working again and blasted away the thick, muggy air that swooped down on the plains with the incoming clouds. There was a constant threat of rain that never came. It suited our moods.
As Dex drove, I flipped through all the stuff we captured on our cameras and found that the majority of the stuff was fairly useable. We didn’t capture anything conclusive, not that I thought otherwise, but if Dex could do his editing magic, I think we had a damn good story.
We talked more about the show, what we should do next and what our plans were. We knew we were extremely amateurish. If we were going to be taken seriously at all, we would need to invest in fancy gadgets like EPGs, motion detectors, heat detectors and all that sort of stuff the pros on TV all had. Once we had equipment like that, it would help us out immensely in providing some sort of proof that people needed, instead of just some low-budget version of Cloverfield or The Blair Witch Project.
I also thought we needed to come up with some sort of plan with regards to the victims. If we were going to go around messing up people’s lives and filming them, whether we were invited or not, we needed a way to fix things after we left. It was a tricky subject. Who would we call? There are no Ghostbusters to capture them into a neat little box. There were priests, but not everyone was religious. I don’t even know what Dex believed in.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he told me. “One thing at a time.”
We were almost to Albuquerque when we had to stop and fill the rental SUV up with gas.
He started pumping and I walked around the car, stretching my legs and arms. I walked over to a fence post that bordered on the desert. Here the sun was peeking out, giving hope to the doom and gloom we had driven through. I hoped this was a sign of leaving that past behind.
I sighed and took in a deep breath. I still couldn’t really think about what happened. Dex and I didn’t talk much about it in the car, other than in business terms. To keep having our lives at stake…that was something to think about, too. I mean, did I need special health insurance or something? What if I had died last night? What would have happened?
Of course, I couldn’t get insurance without a job anyway. And that’s what was waiting back at home for me. After all of this, I was going home to the same old situation. It wasn’t as terrifying as before. Nothing would ever be as terrifying after this weekend. But it was still something I couldn’t run from, no matter how hard I tried.
And I couldn’t run from my feelings for Dex either. I turned around and watched him top up the tank. I wished the mere sight of him didn’t set my insides ablaze.
He was going back to Jenn. Did that kiss mean anything? Was it one of those, ‘I’m going to die so why not,’ kind of things? Or did it mean more? And now that he survived a weekend without drugs, did it mean he didn’t need them in the first place? Maybe there was nothing wrong with him in the end.
Too many questions. I thought I’d get answers to something this weekend but all it did was raise new ones. I had a feeling this was going to happen every time I was with him.
I kicked a stone with my boot and started sauntering back to the Jeep. Our flight was departing in a few hours and we needed to get going.
Dex was waiting for the receipt to come out of the gas pump when I heard a SWOOSH from above me and saw a shadow cross the ground.
I looked up.
A huge hawk passed by my head, with inches to spare, and swooped towards the back of Dex’s head, claws outstretched.
“Dex!” I screamed and started running towards him.
Dex turned in time to see the hawk coming at him. He ducked, grabbed the gas pump from its holder and swung it at the bird.
He missed but the hawk veered off, crying loudly.
I ran up to Dex, heart in my throat, and we watched it fly into the sky.
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” a woman cried out from behind us.
We both turned and looked at her. The plump, thirty-something woman held onto her dazed, ice cream eating son and made her way to her car, shaking her head in disbelief.
Dex smiled at her. “We’ve seen crazier.”
The woman looked perplexed, but continued on her way. The little boy locked eyes with me in all childlike awe.
Dex walked around and got into his side of the car.
I neatly placed the gas nozzle back, got in my side, and we drove off down the road, towards civilization and the way home.
I kept my eye on the door side mirror to see if the hawk would appear, flying behind us, but it never did. Until next time, maybe.