Odessa sleeps too much. I watch her on the security feed and listen to her labored breathing. She needs to wake up and stop bleeding. I should shake her and force open her eyes. For now, I allow her to rest and dream of her life before the highway.
I hold her wallet in my hands. The ID is a few years old. Her hair is longer and darker now. She lived in Missouri before finding her way to the Lost Highway. I open her suitcase. Like with her wallet, the luggage is old and tattered, perhaps used. The clothes inside aren’t folded. I press a shirt to my nose. No detergent. They aren’t clean. She grabbed them in a hurry.
Nothing in her suitcase feels personal. The clothes are generic. I find no family pictures or trinkets.
Odessa stirs in her sleep. She hit her head either in the car accident or during her struggles against the other Death Dealers. I saw her kill the woman called Velma. She also cut down the bald man from the Winnebago group that arrived some time back. After beating him to death with a bat, she took his ax and tried to kill me.
The other woman from her car is with the Death Dealers I call Beavers. They show their teeth in an odd way when they laugh. They’ll hurt the woman for a long time. She might become like them, or she might be their dinner. I don’t know them well. They tend to stay on their side of the highway while I remain on mine.
Except Dag crossed the line into my territory. Others might too. They want Odessa. Many of them prefer women prey. If more Death Dealers come, I’ll make them bleed. This side of the highway is mine, and no one survives my traps.
I touch the screen where Odessa stirs. She needs to wake up and stop bleeding. I don’t dare clean her up. I don’t want to know her too well. Like the others before her, Odessa won’t survive. Besides, I don’t trust her. No one worth trusting comes to the Lost Highway.
When she wakes later, I take her water and bread. She looks at the food and then at me. She isn’t truly this passive. I watched her kill two people in the woods. I know she wants to survive, and I know she’ll spill blood to regain her freedom.
“Do you have a phone?”
I don’t answer her question. Odessa’s eyes are clearer. She’s more aware now. Despite her improvement, she needs to move around and stop bleeding. This place won’t wait for her to catch up.
“I want to call my family and tell them I’m safe,” she says in a rough voice.
Her screams drew me to the road. I watched her run into the territory I don’t control. I’m not sure why I followed her. None of the other people I’ve brought here survived. I don’t want to learn more names. I can’t pretend their lives matter. They all end up dead, and silence suits me now.
“My children will be worried,” she says after drinking the water.
“You’re a poor liar.”
Blinking rapidly, Odessa still hopes to talk me into allowing her access to the phone. “I won’t tell anyone where I am.”
“You don’t know where you are.”
Odessa swallows hard, struggling with her sore throat. She screamed so much when she killed Velma and the bald man. When she fell silent later, the world felt unbearably quiet.
“Who was the man in the woods?” she asks, playing her game.
“He wanted to hang you upside down and bleed you. Afterward, he would hollow out your flesh and store small animals inside you. His name was Dag, and he is one of many.”
Odessa’s eyes widen, but not nearly enough for a normal person. She takes in stride what I tell her. “What do you want?”
I don’t answer. Odessa is afraid, but she isn’t ready to accept the truth. Once she knows it, I won’t have her around to admire. I decide to keep my secrets to ensure she’ll stay with me longer.
Taking away the tray, I leave her in the locked room. Outside, the wind whips up without warning, and I watch the leaves hover in the sky. A storm is coming. The Death Dealers won’t attack until the weather clears. I have at least a day or two before I need to clean my traps.
Until then, I admire Odessa on the screen and wait for her to stop bleeding.
Chapter Four
Odessa
The house rattles under the thunder’s wrath. A splash of green colors the walls from the lightning.
I force my body into a sitting position. My leg throbs and dried blood acts as the glue between the tattered pant leg and my flesh. Ignoring the pain, I struggle to stand. A window might allow me a view outside this room, and I need to know where my captor has taken me.
Lightning sends streaks of green across the room again, and the thunder’s intensity nearly knocks me off of my feet. I hold onto the window sill and scan the scene outside my window.