Saviors – (Chapter: Climbing)

It turned out to be the brake and the pedal fought her as the ABS kicked in and the tires screamed in agony as they alternately skidded and rolled on the rough pavement. She hurriedly switched her foot to the accelerator and shifted to third to compensate for the sudden loss of speed. But when she looked back up she could feel her foot on the initial step and she knew that she wanted to climb more.
She got back to her apartment around two in the morning. The car slid easily into its designated spot and she hung the key on the peg. She then rode the lift up to the living level and turned toward her bed.
Now that she was back home the vodka pined for her in the fridge on the third level. She fought the urge and felt the silent support of the cars in the garage.
She often wondered why they had supported her all these years without dad. The early ones remembered her as a little girl and her father had passed his protection on to them. The Barracuda was her favorite and with the king of them asleep in his crate for years unending they let themselves be led by the black.
She had abused them. There was no doubt about that. Each one had been used and pushed to the limit time and again, but they endured it for her father and for the love that she showed them by patching their hurt and keeping them in perfect running condition.
It was on this wave of support that she threw off the call of the liquor cabinet and fell into bed. She felt their trepidation at the new girl in her life after the last one had shattered her so completely. But they trusted her and she trusted them and she finally fell asleep.
Morning came in the form of a text message at five in the morning from her sister.
Hey pick me up 4 school plz?
She rolled over and fired a message back. Sry picking up SC.
She then climbed out of bed and stumbled for the shower. Normally she awoke with either a headache or the tremors of fear and pain depending on the state she had gone to bed in. This time she had neither. She had only gotten three hours of sleep but she felt better than ten hours in a drunken stupor.
She showered and dressed quickly looking forward to seeing her angel again. The lift brought her smoothly to the garage level and she looked out over the slumbering cars. The vodka tickled at her but it was usually quiescent in the mornings.
She walked down the line of cars and stared at them deciding which to take. The sections were marked by the two heavy SUV’s that marked where the normal collection and the muscle collection met. The muscle cars were too much like the Barracuda for her taste to carry Spencer.
She paced the row once more and her eyes fell on something that made her smile. She quickly picked up the key and climbed in. The little car started easily and rolled free of the garage.
Kyla received the reply message with some worry. Usually she only got a reply when Ashley wasn’t going to school but then she read and her jaw dropped.
She read it again. Same message.
She quickly texted Aiden to come get her. When he showed up looking worried she was waiting for him on the porch.
“What’s up? Ashley not going to school?”
She just held up her phone for him to read the message with his own eyes. He read it twice.
“So she’s going herself… wait SC is it…?”
“Who else would it be?”
“She hasn’t gone to school without you dragging her in years!!”
“I guess Spencer has cracked the wall.”
They got into Aiden’s Xterra and drove toward the school.
Spencer slept badly that night. When she finally gave up and woke fully at five she was strangely nervous. She kept running through the night before in her head and letting her hopes rise. Then she would remember what Aiden and others had told her and she would squash them.
As a result she never got around to telling the others that she had a ride to school. She kept listening for the roar of the Barracuda. Finally at seven there was a honk from the front of the house.
Spencer who had finally given up on fighting it and gone downstairs to have breakfast darted quickly to the window and peered out. A little car sat at the curb the top down and the engine running. As usual the car elicited gasps of awe from her brothers and even her dad whistled in appreciation. She turned to them, “Sorry, I forgot to tell you that I’m getting a ride to school from my friend.”
Her father looked at her. “I hope she’s your good friend. I wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at that car.” He smiled and kissed her on the top of the head, “Have a good day.”
As she was walking out the door her mother pulled into the driveway, “Hey honey, who’s your friend?”
“That’s Ashley, Mom. She’s giving me a ride to school. See you later.”
“Alright, have a good day.”
As she approached the car Ashley looked up, “Hey you.”
“Hey yourself. What is this car? Even my dad was impressed.”
“It’s a 1978 Aston Martin Vantage. They used it one of the early Bond films. I forget which one. I probably have it.” Spencer noticed that her voice held a trace of sadness and pain in it. This was unusual as it was mostly flat and emotionless.
“Is something wrong?” She asked as the car accelerated smoothly away from the curb and down the street, “You seem a little down.”
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve been clean for almost twenty-four hours and I think it’s starting to get to me. I mean last night is one of the few nights that I haven’t gone to sleep with enough liquor to numb the pain in years.”
“Ash I’m sorry.” The brunette snapped her head around to look at her. Her face held shock and her hands involuntarily jerked the wheel of the car. For a second they swerved toward an oncoming car and Spencer braced herself and prepared to scream. Then Ashley corrected without looking away from Spencer’s face. The other car whizzed by.
Finally Ashley spoke, “You called me Ash.” Her voice was infused with sudden guilt.
“What’s wrong? Should I not have called you that?”
“No its fine, just that nobody has called me that since… It doesn’t matter.”
“Ashley, please tell me what’s wrong. I want to help.”
“I know you do. I want you to help me, but I just need to take this slowly.”
“Alright,” Spencer felt somewhat hurt as the other girl returned her eyes to the road.
The car slowly started speeding up as Ashley instinctively started trying to run. She knew that it was futile with the object she was fleeing sitting in the passenger seat but it was automatic response when someone got too close.
Spencer stared at the girl. She felt the car start to accelerate and braced herself but didn’t say anything. She had known Ashley for four days and had only seen her for two but she still trusted the brunette unconditionally. The busy street that led to the school finally forced Ashley to slow down to the speed limit. They had peaked at eighty down the residential street. As a result they reached the school in far less time.
The Aston Martin rolled easily into the parking lot and Ashley parked it haphazardly across the two spaces. It was nice to come into the lot without squealing tires and smoking rubber. Spencer continued to stare at her for a minute. Then Ashley turned to her, “I’m sorry about before. It’s just that I don’t think I’m quite ready for a full healing right now. I would like it if you kept calling me Ash though.”
Spencer gave her a small smile in return, “Okay.” They got out of the car simultaneously. Already a crowd of boys was starting to gather around the car. They spread to let Ashley through and Spencer could hear them talkin
g, “Wow. It’s like a perfect replica from Living Daylights.”
“I can’t believe that I’m seeing this.”
“Dream come true.”
Spencer looked at Ashley as they finally fought free of the crowd, “It seems like I’m saying this a lot but what is that about?”
“I haven’t brought this car to school before. It seems that whenever I bring a new one they have to come admire it.”
“How many cars do you have?”
“My dad left me an extensive collection as well as 25 million dollars when he died. I would say probably around thirty cars.”
“What made you choose this one?”
“Well you don’t like the Barracuda and this one of the few that I don’t have memories of…” She trailed off at the end and Spencer was curious about what she had been going to say.
“Your father.”
“No, actually. My father would never affect my love for the cars. There was someone else after him. I shared everything with her.”
“And she left.”
“I wish that was all she had done. She broke my heart and she…” Again Ashley trailed off. This time Spencer was too distracted by something the other girl had said to pursue.
They walked in silence to Spencer’s locker where Ashley looked at her seriously.
“Will I see you in class?” Spencer asked hardly daring to hope. The other met her eyes and nodded mutely. As she walked away Spencer saw something that made a chill run down her spine. The girl had pulled a set of keys from her pocket and was bouncing them in her palm. The problem was that the key to the Aston was just a long car key on a ring. This was a shorter door key and a different long key.
Even here without it the black had a hold on her.
She stumbled to her first class in a daze. Kyla was in this class and when they got assigned a partner worksheet she turned to the younger sister.
“Kyla, why does that car have such a hold on her?” As soon as she said this she remembered another question but that one could wait until she figured things out a little further.
“That was her favorite car going up. Because it was her favorite her dad spent the most time with her going places in that car. He would leave it at the house when he was on tour telling her that the car would look after her in his absence. When Mom couldn’t comfort her she would go out and just sit in that car for hours on end. I never liked it too much but it meant a lot to her.”
“What happened after her dad died?”
“I’m actually not really sure. Mom had divorced him by that point and we only saw each other occasionally. I know she was driving it with a fake ID. But the only time I saw her after funeral was at school. Then she seemed to get better and I saw the car less and less. Those were some of her happiest times. We reconnected as a family. She had a girlfriend who was really taking care of her and they loved each other. She was living with the girl but she would spend a lot of nights with us at my parents’ house after they got back together. Then two years ago something happened. I remember going over there one day after school and the house was empty. Ashley dropped off the map for a month. When I finally saw her again that car was the only thing she drove.”
“Who was the girlfriend?”
“Her name was Annie but don’t say it to Ashley. She claims that the girl just left but I think there is more to the story. Again my information is limited to what Ashley told me.”
Spencer just nodded and processed this information. They didn’t speak of Ashley again.
Ashley sat in her American Politics class and stared up at the chalkboard without really seeing it.
She had left the house after the fight her heart racing and her mind churning furiously. The girl she thought loved her was just a two bit scam artist pretending to love her to get at the money and the cars after her real lover had murdered her father.
How could she be so stupid? She looked back at all the signs that she had ignored and screamed at herself for not seeing it sooner.
The car in the driveway was the Alfa Romeo. She loved all the cars but there was one that she needed right now and this wasn’t it.
The engine screamed through the night as Ashley sat behind the wheel and fought back the tears. She knew that logically tears would help ease the pain in the long run but she couldn’t deal right now. The feelings and by proxy the tears were suppressed.
The powerful car raced forward. She looked at the speedometer out of habit but didn’t even register the numbers or the needle. She could hear the tortured shrieking of the engine at some level but didn’t notice as her foot mashed the pedal to the floor.
The car responded brutally. She loved this car. Her father had taken her everywhere in it even though he was only passive about it. She could almost hear his voice, “Now be careful when going fast in this car, babe. It was built for racing not driving around town and the only limit to the speed of it is physics and the reliability of the parts. It is in perfect condition but that only lasts so long.”
Now here the car finally reached its limit. The needle of the tachometer and speedometer were both far beyond redline as the car hurtled through the night. Some point had been reached where it just couldn’t go any faster and the acceleration stopped. Still the big V8 screamed as it fought everything to pull the heavy car forward faster, ever faster.
She had ditched the Romero back at the garage and this car came out speeding. It wasn’t until after the glowing headlights showed the sign reading welcome to New Mexico that she slowed.
The needle on the gas gauge read E and she was feeling the car start to falter as the dwindling fuel in the tank tried to keep up with the demand of the engine. She flicked the switch on the dash that enabled the emergency five gallon tank in the trunk. Her father had installed it after they ran out of gas twice in two weeks.
The engine renewed itself but she had pulled her foot off the pedal and the car just started to roll. With the amount of inertia it had it rolled for quite some time but eventually gravity, air resistance, and the gears brought the car to a halt ten miles inside New Mexico.
It just came to the base of a slight incline and without gas to push it forward it jerked once and stalled. She didn’t respond to the sudden flash of lights in the dashboard that accompanied the stall.
She just sat there. Her hands fell from the wheel and landed in her lap. She turned her wrists up and stared at them momentarily. Then she raised her head to the road. The sun was coming up and the spreading light engulfed the black car and rendered useless the headlights blazing from the front of the hood.
One hand reached up of its own accord and snapped the lights out. Her hand fell back again and she sat there in the silence.
The only sound for miles was the tick as the huge V8 slowly cooled.
A jackrabbit stood at the edge of the highway and stared at the black mass of the car. Its ears twitched and it darted back into the desert.
Ashley started suddenly as a minivan whizzed by in the other lane horn tooting and the ridiculous kids staring at the road block as it faded behind them at 75 miles an hour.
She sneered lightly at herself and reached forward. The key met her hand and she turned it from run to start.
The engine turned over once, coughed, and then caught. It peaked quickly then settled back down to the light growl of idle. Ashley reached for the gearshift and dropped it out of overdrive into first. Her foot pressed down and the car rolled forward.
She pulled to the median, which on this stretch of road was only a bare patch of earth. The car handled the gap easily and quickly pulled out onto the other lane, tires sp
itting dirt and native grasses as it accelerated back down the road.
A sign showed the ad for a little hole in the wall gas station ahead and she made plans to pull off and feed her car. She could see that the oil was getting low, even in the expanded reservoir and she was running on the spare tank.
It was a quick stop. The pimply teen behind the counter could have cared less about the sleep deprived customers that came and went. She spent ten minutes refilling oil and both gas tanks then rolled free again.
Back toward L.A.
“…Miss Davies?”
Ashley looked up at the teacher of her politics class. She hadn’t been paying attention and the instructors were always trying to catch her at it. She had learned long ago to hear without listening and to be able to recall what people told her.
She stared up at the woman a slight sneer forming on her lips.
“Well Miss Davies?” The teacher prompted her a second time. Ashley met her gaze for the second it took for the older woman to drop her gaze then replied, “Federalism.”
“Very good. As Miss Davies just told us, the relationship between national government and state governments is called…”
Ashley listed to part of a sentence then zoned again. This time however she didn’t fall into memories but into thoughts of Spencer.
Christ, she was so fucked.
Just thinking the blonde’s name relaxed tense muscles and lessened the sneer on her face. People looking at her covertly after the confrontation she had just had with her teacher were shocked over the change.
The bell rang sometime later and Ashley vanished out of the class room like magic.
Spencer walked to her locker with dragging feet. She was fully concerned that Ashley would just disappear from her life and she was surprised how much the thought hurt her. She had only known the girl for four days and already she had a bigger hold on Spencer than anyone left in Ohio had ever had.
She made her usual detour to the window on the parking lot and was immeasurably relived to see the sleek silver car parked across the slots. She stared at the car for a minute almost pressing her face against the glass when a voice spoke behind her.
She recognized it instantly. It flowed around her and over her like a shower of warm water. All at once she was warmed and comforted. But at the same time she felt driving pain that had arrived with the warmth.
“Checking to make sure that I’m still here?”
“How did you…? I mean…” she leaned her forehead against the glass, amazed at how easily she told Ashley the truth.
“You mean that you were just looking out to see if there were storm clouds forming so that your big plans wouldn’t be ruined by the weather.” Spencer turned so fast that her books tagged the wall and tumbled forward. Or they would have if Ashley hadn’t put her hand against them.
“How did you do that?” Spencer stared down into the girl’s dark eyes and losing herself.
“You are easier to read than my sister and I could have said that that would happen with her as well.” A small smile shaped her perfect mouth for a brief instant. Then it vanished. Spencer took a second longer to return her eyes to Ashley’s and she noticed.
The other girl was standing so close that Spencer could feel the warm breeze from Ashley’s light breathing. She stared deeply into the other’s eyes. Something caught deep in her throat and she felt all at once happier than she ever had and so deeply fearful that something was coming.
Ashley watched this roll over the blonde’s face like a movie. She fought through her fear and the shields that she had so carefully constructed and took the final step upward to the light.
Spencer watched with fascination as something cleared up in the shorter girl’s face and she took the final step forward. Spencer automatically tried to move back, forgetting for a second that she was already pressed against the wall as a result of the other girl’s space invasion. Suddenly the brunette was so close that Spencer could see the individual fibers that made up the irises in her eyes.
Ashley felt the result of her step as soon as she took it. This close, the blond was intoxicating. She looked up into Spencer’s eyes and breathed, “I trust you.” She leaned forward so close that she could feel the heat radiating from the other girl’s face.
Spencer stood there in shock her body pressed up against the wall. Ashley was close, closer than she had ever felt comfortable having someone. Then she breathed “I trust you.” The words were so quiet that at first she was unsure if she had heard them at all. Then the she leaned forward even further. Spencer stared as the brown eyes came so close she felt that they would touch her.
She took a breath, closing her eyes and inhaling the scent of the other girl. She felt as though she had to touch her and reached forward. There was nothing there. She opened her eyes and looked wildly about.
Ashley looked at her from a distance of a couple of feet. Out of reach but still close. She cocked her head to the side much like a curious animal does. Then she turned and was sucked into the crowd flowing through the hall toward various classrooms.
Spencer slumped against the wall of glass and tried to figure out what just happened.
Ashley strode through the hall following the ebb of the crowd without caring. Her body had become used to taking care of itself with limited input from her brain and she got to class well before the bell. Her normal spot nearest the door at the back of the class was taken.
It was Aiden. Great just what she needed right now. Aiden was like a really big, whiny girl who ran to Kyla with everything remotely related to her. She didn’t feel like talking right now but she decided it wasn’t worth the fight.
She reached out and flicked him in the ear, “Get out of my seat.”
He stared at her as though he had never seen her before, “Why should I?”
“Because we have assigned seats and if you are in my seat then we both get marked late. I skip enough to as it is.” He glared at her for a second then moved to his seat across the room. She ignored him after that.
Aiden was good for her sister. He settled her down and kept her from worrying too much about her shattered sister. The problem was that he had started with Kyla just to get close to her. She had rejected him time and again but he was stubborn.
Her mind drifted to the time that he had confronted her about his feelings for her. She had stepped in and told him to back off and leave her alone. Only this time it was Spencer standing there hands on her hips and eyes flaring at Aiden.
Ashley stood up in one smooth movement, took a single stride toward the door. The entire class turned to look at her. The instructor turned to look at her. Ms. Keenan was one of the few who actually like Ashley but this was going too far. She opened her mouth to tell the girl to sit back down when she caught the look on her face.
It would remain branded in her memory forever. It was the look that she imagined a wounded deer gives the hunter right before he finishes her with a second round. It was the look of someone seeing their killer.
Ashley screamed and collapsed.

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Saviors – (Chapter: Climbing)

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