The Unknown - Chapter 10d - by nova

Chapter 10d

I woke up due to a combination of things the foremost being pain and the other voices, one of which I recognized. The pain was from beating the hell out of the dashboard, my left hand hurt, and I was going to be seriously pissed if I had broken anything in it. The voice was Ty's who was telling someone, "Hell no. I'm not waking him up. You do it."

I snapped my head around to see him and Kat staring at me from six paces away. Ty looked ready to run and Kat actually looked concerned. I took a deep breath, looked up, blew it out, and told them, "I'm fine. Just a bad dream."

"No shit man." Ty said.

"Yeah, no shit." I told him tiredly. "We ready to go?"

"Yeah Gardener, we're ready. Give me the key Ty.

We pulled out, I looked back to see who else was watching and saw no one, Ty had gone back inside.

"You okay?"

"Yeah Kat, I'm fine."

"I get bad nightmares too. Lots of the older people do too."

I grinned, I knew I was one of the "older people" but I didn't say anything. She didn't correct it or tell me I wasn't one of the "older people" either.

She watched me for a minute or two out of the corner of her eye and realized I didn't have anything more to say on the subject so she dropped it. That made her smarter then 95% of the population I routinely dealt with.

We rolled on a bit and I watched as the false dawn put a little more light on the landscape.

"Beautiful country" I said out of nowhere and then mentally kicked myself. I hated people who made inane remarks just to fill airspace and what I just said sure as hell qualified as one. She just smiled, reached over and rested her hand on my thigh, and said "That was really impressive what you did back there."

"Carve up horse meat?"

She looked at me like I was nuts. "No. Not that." Then she reached a little higher up on my thigh and and squeezed.

"Oh yeah. That."

She was smiling, the truck was slowing down, her hand hadn't moved when she touched the brake and shifted into park.

She turned a little bit in the seat so she could look at me directly, the smile deepened, and she told me, "I want your baby."

I didn't argue.