The Restoration Project

2.07 - Lovely

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Kyle said.

Lovely trudged along the shoulder of a cracked asphalt road. She had Olaf's map tucked beneath her right arm, but focused on the intersection ahead. It helped to ignore Kyle as he kept pace beside her.

"He wanted you to. It was tough, but you did the right thing," Kyle said again, trying to console her.

Pulling the trigger wasn't what bothered her. Thinking about what she would do if she were in Punchin' Bag's situation did. She switched tactics and pulled the map out from under her arm as a distraction. She ran her finger from the X that Olaf had marked down to the intersection she was currently standing at.

"You really think you'll find her there?" Kyle challenged.

"Stop it," Lovely scolded. As nice as it was to hear his voice, to feel his comforting presence, he was getting annoying.

"Hey! You're talkin' to me," Kyle replied.

Lovely shook her head. And that was when she noticed something wrong with the intersection. The road was thick with abandoned cars leading up to it, some pushed aside into the big ditches lining the road, others left in place to block travel. The intersection itself held only two cars: a sedan with its nose buried beneath the rear end of a pickup truck. Except there was no shattered glass or twisted bits of metal on the road. It was staged.

"Well who're you talkin' to, pretty lady?" A voice said from behind her, confirming her fears.

She whipped around to see a man smiling at her, his mouth missing all its teeth. He must have crawled up out of the ditch, a fact supported by the droplets of water hitting the pavement at his feet.

"I don't think that's any of your business," Lovely said, studying the man. He wore a pair of overalls, soaked to the knees and splattered with either grease or blood, and an old trucker cap. Tufts of wispy brown hair curled out from underneath, but didn't match the black stubble growing on his cheeks. His face was a dull red, like he had been drinking for days with no end in sight. His stench confirmed that was probably true.

She felt vulnerable without a weapon at the ready—her pistol was tucked into the back of her pants and Holy Holly was slung over her back. She would have been content with her machete, but even it was sheathed across her hip. Her actions over the next few moments would dictate her future—and she didn't feel like provoking a fight, at least not yet. There was a good chance he was not alone.

Toothless Man shambled forward. "Don't you know how dangerous it is for a lady to be out here in the middle of the day?"

"Yeah, you could get yourself hurt and nobody'd be around to help ya," another voice chimed in. This one came from her left, where a man rose from the bed of the truck in the intersection.

"I think I can manage quite well myself, boys," Lovely replied.

She didn't like her situation. The men had her sandwiched on the road, so she backpedaled toward the opposite ditch. Toothless Man snickered, enjoying her predicament, as the man in the truck bed stood up. He had awfully skinny arms—nearly beanpoles—sleeved in tattoos. A grey beard grew down to his chest and his deep eye sockets suggested he often craved that which they did not have.

She had stumbled across a couple Junkies.

"It's not really a question of whether you can manage or not, lady. It's a question of safety, which we can afford to you and your future, erm, offspring. For a toll," Toothless Man offered.

"There's always a toll," Lovely replied, more to herself than to them.

Her back hit the passenger side of a sedan. It was sitting on the shoulder, the driver's side door hanging open over the ditch. When she shimmied toward the back of the car, Toothless Man matched her movement, keeping her in place.