Good For Gone

As Far Away as You Can

I threw the car in drive and we sped away, Peter staring behind us until we rounded the corner.

We sat in silence as I drove dangerously fast around the twists and turns. Glancing to my side I saw him, pale and grimacing, eyes locked on the road ahead.

"There's blood on your car." He said blankly.

I nodded, not wanting to think about the dead dog that now laid in the woods.

"Was that him?"

"Yeah, that was Master." I thought he was going to be on the verge of tears until I glanced back over and saw the stoic nature of his face, "He's seen you. You're not going to be safe."

"I'll be fine," I insisted, "Don't worry about me."

"No, Bowen, you need to worry. You don't know what he could do."

"I'm not scared, I'm just worried about you. But we'll be fine, we just need to get far away."

"No, no, no, no," he murmured into his hands, "You don't know."

"Just breathe Peter. We're going to deal with this a step at a time."

"What about your dad?"

"He's staying with a friend. I'll call him later and, I don't know, tell him something to convince him that he shouldn't go back."

Peter sat there for a while, breathing loud and fast.

I let him do it. I let him panic quietly until the panting began to taper off and he calmed down.

We pulled into a gas station as soon as I was comfortable stopping. The lack of food was causing my brain to lose some of its dexterity.

"Do you want anything?" I asked when I saw that he had no intention of getting out.

"No, just hurry." He said, leaning his head against the window.

I ran inside, buying energy drinks, candy and jerky. I figured that would tide him over when he gave in and ate.

After using the bathroom I went back out to the car where I saw Peter, eyes closed.

I smacked on the window, causing him to jump.

"No sleeping," I yelled through the glass. The last thing we needed right now was for him to go full on rogue while I was trying to drive.

"Please don't do that." He said as I got back into the car.

"You know you can't sleep."

"I wasn't, I was just resting my eyes."

"Well, you can't do that either," I said, opening a can of energy drink, "Take this."

He grabbed it from my hands, obviously a little grumpy, then we pulled back onto the state road.

After an hour I took a random turn and continued, just in case they tried to follow us.

"Bo," he said, after hours of silence, I turned down the radio, "I'm starting to get really tired."

The sun was going down, and I realized I didn't have anywhere to put him. We couldn't legally rent a motel room, and even if we were anywhere near my family or Callie I wouldn't feel comfortable having him in the same house as them.

"Yeah, we need to figure out what we're going to do," I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

I pulled into a Walmart, figuring we could find just about anything in there.

"Do you think we could survive a night in the car?" I asked, trying to gauge his response.

"You'd have to tie me down." He said.

We sat in silence for a minute, "Well we don't have a lot of options."

We both got out of the car and walked in. It felt like everyone could smell the tired sadness wafting off of us.

We grabbed rope, duct tape, sanitation masks, and oven mitts. Ignoring the curious eye of the checkout girl, we paid for everything and quickly got back to the car.

"Were lucky I'm good at saving money, you're expensive." I tried to joke. He smiled but seemed to wary to let out a laugh.

I could tell already, it was going to be a long night.