ALL NOVEL Ch. 2.05 The Crossroads
5.
There was a small dilapidated bar on the side of the road that they decided to use. It was built right on the cross roads of Road 96 and the country road they had been traveling on. A single story with peeling paint and sun bleached letters on the front spelling out Red’s. The name of the bar had been painted in a vivid red that had faded to a pale pink. A few cars had been abandoned in its cracked asphalt parking lot. A gravel side yard held a broken down RV that looked to be in worse shape than the bar.
“Alright, that place looks…well, it has walls,” Santi couldn’t force himself to say the leaning building looked secure. It was too far of a stretch.
“Santi, we’re going to be murdered in that shithole,” Chloe said with a dark chuckle. The rest of the group nodded, even Chad and Adam looking nervous about it. Daniel was the only one not looking stressed out about it. Then again, he wasn’t going to be staying the night there.
“It’s this place or an empty field. With no walls. Do you remember the bugs?” Santi asked.
“We all remember the bugs, Santi. It’s just that…this place is going to give us tetanus. Or rabies. Or both,” Penelope spoke up looking concerned about the health implications.
“I’m staying the night in the creepy abandoned bar at the crossroads. Shit, now that I say it outloud it does sound bad.”
“You’re still going to stay in there though, aren’t you?”
“You don’t have to sound smug, Chloe.” Santi fired back at his tormentor. The rest of the crew were slowly separating from the two as they fired back and forth at each other.
“You’re so fucking stubborn. Just admit that we’re right. We’ll go a little further and find an old meatpacking plant or abandoned farmhouse, or anything else that’s not as creepy as that bar!” Chloe was getting heated, a red tinge creeping into her cheeks as she pointed at the bar.
“The bar is fine! We’re not some dumb college kids out in some haunted ass place and ignoring the warning signs!”
“You’re literally ignoring the warning signs right now!” Chloe shot back.
“I’m staying in the bar! If you don’t want to, go and find your own place to sleep alone then!”
“Fine! I don’t want to sleep with you anyway!”
Both froze, red faced and screaming inches away from each other while the rest of the convoy looked at them with wide eyes. Santi could feel his cheeks heating to incandescent levels while Chloe had the decency to blush at her words.
“I know what you meant,” Santi offered.
“We’ll stay in the creepy bar. But if we get murdered in the middle of the night, it’s your fault.”
“Agreed.”
With that problem temporarily on hold, Santi set out to explore the bar while the rest of the party tried to hold back their guffaws. Santi shot them a dirty glare and blew through the dry rotted front door in a huff.
The bar was dark, hot, and smelled. With the light streaming through the broken windows and doors he got a good look at the dust covered tables and broken chairs. Blood stained the wood in the center of the floor, a wide circle where something had bled for a prolonged period of time. There were no corpses though.
His morph blade transformed into a long knife while he stalked through the building without hesitation. The entire bar was one big room with the actual bar against the far wall. Broken shards of glass glittered around but other than that Santi didn’t see anything that could look like a monster nest.
There was a charge in the atmosphere. Like when one perched on the edge of a cliff, the potential for something tragic. Was it unscrupulous that Santi had decided to check out the bar that Cameron had died in the first timeline in? He’d say yes if there was an actual nest here. Instead there was just the history of a violent act and general decay and neglect.
Santi checked the bathrooms, neither of which seemed to have been cleaned in the last two decades. The store room was bare. Not even a single beer left. Someone had come and cleaned this place out, there was nothing of value in it to scavenge.
Santi tried to follow that feeling in the air, that charge of power that could be. It was faint, amorphous, the whisper of a possibility. There was the power here to form a nest, but it hadn’t fully solidified yet.
“The place is clear. Dirty and stinks, but there’s nothing in here to hurt us!” Santi yelled outside to the team, none of whom had ventured into the building. They walked into the bar with trepidation and wrinkled noses. They stacked their bikes in the back and uncoupled the wagons. Nobody wanted to be in the building and they all went and sat outside to enjoy the late afternoon sun.
Daniel had quietly pulled a small pack off to the side and was preparing to go off. Hana watched with concern but hadn’t said a word as everyone ate. Most of their meals were canned or dried food. Santi got a can of tuna and some dried peaches that were washed down by a can of hot soda.
As he chewed he couldn’t help but think of the two days of bliss he had. Two days of air conditioning and fresh food and cold soda. It had been heavenly.
“Daniel’s going by himself?” Penelope spoke up suddenly. Santi thought it would have been Hana or Chloe, but the nurse seemed concerned.
“I’ll be fine. My affinity works well in the dark. I’ll go a few miles down the road and to the sides. See if there’s anything out there that we need to be aware of,” Daniel spoke confidently in his faded English accent. Everyone nodded and that was the end of the questioning.
Santi found himself looking around the group slack jawed. He had gotten into a near screaming match about sleeping under a roof and Daniel just said “trust me” and everyone was good with it? Maybe he needed to affect an accent?
Daniel went and caught a quick nap in the shade of the building, using Hana’s lap as a pillow with an arm draped over his eyes. Adam and Chad sat shoulder to shoulder with Penelope, the three of them chatting about a TV show they had all been watching.
Chloe said something about checking out the RV and disappeared. Santi just sat back and thought of seeing his family. The years hadn’t been kind to him. He knew that. Everyone who had survived had lost people, if not most of their people. The thought of getting them back, of seeing them and feeling them and their love was enough to choke him up when he thought about it.
Daniel could find them tonight and he could see them in the morning. Unless something had happened. Unless a monster got lucky. Unless they drank bad water. Unless. Unless. Unless.
Death was there, always watching, ever patient. If he didn’t get them back, if his hopes had been raised just to be snatched away. Darkness lay down that path of thought. Santi needed to move, to get up and do something before his anxiety overwhelmed him.
Walking the perimeter of the bar didn’t help. Aside from the parking lot and gravel lot the RV was parked on, there wasn’t much around. Just more and more untended fields. These fields were bare, tilled into perfect rows just waiting for seeds to be planted. The earth had turned light brown and dry, the slight breeze picking up and carrying the topsoil away with every gust.
He didn’t find the bodies of whomever had gotten killed in the bar. Santi couldn't’ tell if that was a good or bad thing. It would be nice to know what had died, but he didn’t need the rest of the team freaking out if he found a bunch of human remains.
He walked back to the gravel lot and watched as Chloe drug a mattress across the ground. She had the strength to carry it over her head but lacked the height needed to keep it off the ground. She marched into the bar and threw the heavy mattress inside before declaring she was going to bed. The rest of the team took this as time for bed and trickled inside the bar, leaving Daniel and Hana outside as they waited for dark.
Santi couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. He knew this bar became a monster den. Something had died inside of it. There was power in the air and all around him. This was the right spot. He just couldn’t seem to figure out what it was that was missing.
Santi stared at the crossroads and finally felt comprehension wash over him. Old folk tales of deals made at the crossroads flashed through his mind.
“Fuck’s sake. I’m not getting any sleep tonight,” Santi grumbled as he walked back into the bar. He couldn’t let the rest of the team know there was something out there. He would never live it down.