The Liverly

I

The wind rakes past me as a train flies by, shaking the trees beside it. I hunch down in my coat up in a futile attempt to hide from the cold. It's freezing out here as I walk through the sleet and increasingly furious gale. I wonder if this is what walking through a hurricane feels like, because I think I deserve a medal for this.

I do have a reason for being out in this crappy weather, but the farther I walk, the more I begin to question my sanity. My bag of clothes and various belongings I can't live without sags as I keep going, pulling me toward the ground.

Okay, so you want to know why I'm here, wherever here is—I'm somewhere in mid-east Georgia according to the map at the Greyhound bus stop. I'm following a hunch. It's more than a hunch, it's a gut feeling...that sounds just as stupid as saying it's a hunch. I'm here because I feel like I need to be here. As soon as I got out of town, I followed the train tracks and started walking. It's like something inside of me is telling me to come here, like an internal compass pointing my way. To what, I don't know.

I'm looking for a way to stop a vampire. Whatever kind of help I need, it's got to be better than a SWAT team. I don't think a bunch of soldiers wielding guns will be able to defeat him at all, but I don't know what will. I figure since he's a vampire, there has to be something good out there like him, if that makes sense. If evil exists, so does good. Vampires are the opposites of...elves—what do I even know about this stuff? There can't be just one mythical being on the entire planet, and it be evil.

The strap for my bookbag slips off one shoulder, and I do a funky dance to get it back on. It's so heavy, physically, mentally. All my memories are crammed into one tiny bag, all the pieces of my hopes and dreams, and all the money I could steal to get me here. I couldn't stay in Kansas anymore. I couldn't, and no one understood that even when I begged the cops to send me as far away as they could. So, I did the only logical thing one could do when they see the man who kidnapped them and their family.

I ran.

I ran as far as I could with the money I had, all the way to the east coast, to Georgia. That's as far as I could get without spending all of their money—my money—on just a bus ticket.

The sleet slowly increases in pounding my back until it's giant raindrops, beating my head and back. My hair blows into my eyes, and I slap it away, the rain plastering it around my face. The red blinking lights of the crossing area ahead shift and stop flashing, and I run as fast as I can towards it. It's getting darker, the ground is full of rabbit holes and briars. I've never seen so much random nature crap in one location. Kansas is flat and easy to traverse because you can actually see what's ahead, not like the insanely bumpy, tree-filled terrain of Georgia. I have to keep looking down at the ground to make sure I don't step on a rock wrong or shove my foot into a hole or bush.

The sound of engines reaches me through the wind, and I scrunch my coat around me as best as I can and keep running. I can see the woods are breaking up the closer I get to where the crosswalk was, and I'm desperate to get to it and see if there's a store nearby, anyplace I can go to get out of the rain. My clothes are soaked through, and I'm shaking uncontrollably. Can you die from this kind of weather?

A car whizzes by, and I take a step further, my foot landing on hard asphalt. I look left, then right and don't see any headlights. I step into the road and crane my head looking around to make sure there aren't any cars before I pelt across the road and across the train tracks, running diagonally toward the break in the trees. The asphalt cuts through the woods, making a path toward faded, fogged lights—I found a freaking town. Hallelujah.

There's a church up ahead, to my right built of orange bricks, white trim, and a little steeple. It's not fancy enough to have stained glass, and it looks empty—makes sense since it's Tuesday, I think.