Mama's Boy

I Kill a Horse thing?

[Y/N's POV]

Joe and I had been driving for about 10 hours and had made it to Nashville, Tennesee. He tried to convince me to keep going and kept saying that we needed to get to "camp" as quickly as possible.

"Joe, it is like 11 at night! We haven't eaten since Breakfast, and I'm starving. Let's at least stop for the night, alright? I doubt that thing, whatever the heck it was, could track us for like 400 miles, right?" I reassured him.

We decided to just eat at McDonald's. I had my wallet with me and scrounged together a whopping 10 dollars I had to my name and bought some food for the two of us. Slamming the tray onto the table of the nearly abandoned Mcdonalds, I decide I needed some answers.

"Alright, Joe, what the heck is going on? First, I managed to run 400 yards in like 10 seconds. Next, Ms Moss turns into a weird 3-horned horse monster; next, you're half goat! What is happening right now?" I whisper yell at him since I figured this wasn't something I wanted other people to hear even if the McDonald's was mostly abandoned.

Joe moved a little closer to me. "Y/N, listen, I can't tell you anything until we get to camp. It's not safe for you to know right now. Just trust me for a little longer, and I'll tell you everything, I swear!" I let out a huff and returned to eating my food, a Mcdouble with some fries and a drink; thank god for the dollar menu, am I right?

We opted to just sleep in the car we'd stolen for the night and hotwire some other car in the morning, which I honestly felt bad about, but our situation was apparently life and death if Joe's attitude was anything to go by.

With a solid night of sleep, we went ahead and "borrowed" another person's car, not before I wrote a note on a napkin apologizing for the inconvenience—not that it meant much to someone whose car just got stolen by two 12-year-olds. Still, I wanted to let them know I was kind of sorry at the very least.

On hour 2 of our 13-hour drive from Nashville to New York, I finally turn the Radio on to break up the tense silence that's been going on between us. As the radio crackles to life, a song I know all too well starts playing.

"I'm not a present for your friends to open; this boys is too young to be singing~"

"So goodbye, Yellow Brick Road! Where the dogs of Society Roll"

I slowly tune the music back out of my head as I'm hit with a startling thought.

Is Mom ok?

I don't know what that Monster did to Oakhill, even if it didn't do anything physically besides break open that room when that thing grew to the size of an Elephant, she's probably worried about me. I nudge Joe on the shoulder, "Do you think I could call my Mom at some point? I want to let her know I'm ok."

Joe looked at me before looking back at the road. "We can try calling her when we get to camp; cellphones and Demigods don't exactly mix." He shudders. "It attracts monsters, so we generally try to avoid that form of communication... but there is another way I can show you later" I give him a curt nod and focus back on the passing scenery

—--------------------------------------------------------------

"Almost heaven, West Virginia."

"Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River"

I'd always wondered whether West Virginia had lived up to the hype the song made it out to be, and frankly, it did. I had lived in Texas all of my life, so the biggest elevation change I've ever seen was a small hill or a particularly large pile of dirt; the National Park we were passing through was probably about as beautiful a place could be.