The desert at night when the moon is out is a place of shadows as much as it is of light. Night in the desert is when the predators awaken and slough off the heat of the day only to find it replaced by hunger. Some people never get comfortable moving at night in the land of shadows, be it forest or sand. I wasn't born to it but I took to it and made it my own.
We made it to the turn off and Ty was headed down the road. Road, was a word that meant one thing to people of my generation an another to Kats. I remembered well maintained 4 and 6 lanes of asphalt where you could drive at 80 mph and watch terrain that might as well be the moon pass by outside of your air conditioned bubble. Kat had never seen that and probably never would. Her mental picture of a "road" was closer to what we had just left. Something that had a black tar foundation in some places that was made of a long lost material the ancients had created. Over it were drifts of sand, washouts roughly patched and places were the only reminder that a road had even been there were signs for speed limits and places that only existed in the minds of those of us who still remembered what was.
"Find somewhere in the next few minutes to hide it, at least break the silhouette, if you get hung up -- leave it. Take Kat and move at least 100 yards from the vehicle once you stop."
"Where are you going?"
I grabbed her by the back of the head and pulled her face to me. It wasn't far but it took a couple beats for her lips to soften. To bad that was all the time I had. I popped the door and fell out. It wasn't pretty, even as slow as Ty was going, exiting a moving vehicle is awkward at best. Nothing ripped bodily or leather and I wasn't going to be picking gravel out of my palms. It was a winner as far as I was concerned.
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