(Please read Theron 1 before moving on to this book)
A stranger washes ashore on a deserted beach.
With no memory of who or what he is, the only clue he has to his identity--the only thing he recalls from his past life--is a single, solitary name:...
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I smell the coldness in the air.
The way the trees are bending, sagging with the weight of the incoming snow. The lack of rodents and the sound of stillness... "Winter is coming," I mumble to the sky.
Bug snorts, "Okay, Jon Snow."
"That's not my name." Atleast, I don't think it is. It doesn't sound the slightest bit familiar to me... I am pretty fucking terrified that it is actually Brad.
She looks at me as if I have grown three heads. "I know that! It's just a--" Bug then sighs deeply, depleted, "oh, nevermind." She chews on her thumb nail before adding, "You wouldn't remember if it was your name, anyway."
Bug isn't anything if not blunt.
"I think if I hear it, I will know."
"Why do ya do that?"
"Do what?"
"You're always goin' on 'bout I will know... why?" She scrutinizes me, "How do you know you'll know?"
And that's the rub, isn't it?
I can't explain it...
So I don't.
The rickety old truck pulls to a stop at a decrepit gas station on the corner of this abandoned highway and Nofuckingwhere Road. The gas pumps are round and circular at the top, showing their age. They advertise an oil company that is no longer drilling for cash and hasn't been for some time. The roof is partially caved in, which helps add to the ambience the paint chipped wooden walls emit. A lone bird makes an escape through the broken glass window, its flapping wings oddly loud in such a large, open space.
Looking both ways down the road, it's obvious there isn't a soul for miles... just trees.
Lots of trees.
They line the highway on both sides, dark and looming and unintentionally creating the illusion of a tunnel. Just the kind of setting that causes unwarranted fear and anxiety.
And the pounding from the other side of the truck window indicates that this is our ditch point.
When Bug asked where we were headed and I responded with, "Where ever the wind takes us," I don't think she believed me but this is how my life has been ever since I found myself clueless on a deserted beach. It would be idiotic to think I could find one person named Lina in a world that holds over seven billion people... and I am not an idiot. With nothing else to go on but a first name, I had no other choice than to allow Fate to take me where it deemed necessary.
So now, we are here...
On Butt-Fuck Egypt Road in the boondock back country of Fuck All, Pennsylvania.
Fate is kind of a dick like that sometimes.
"My point is," I grunt as we jump out of the rusty old truck bed that squeaks and squeals under my weight, "its going to be getting colder. We can't keep hitchhiking in the back of these open air pickup trucks. We'll need to be on the lookout for semitrucks from here on out."
