The Vacuum

Part 31

Alex rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes in the early hours of the morning. She'd been driving all night. It was shocking that she hadn't been pulled over with how she drove, slamming on her gas pedal or slowing down as she pushed through anger, fear, worry, and general anxiousness. Her fingers had clenched around the steering wheel as she tried to think through what she was about to do.

Mac was back there...through the vast expanse of dead desert, she was plowing through. The question was, was it the Mac that she had started to fall for and miss or was it the Mac that had assaulted and so many people while he was high. Not that she hadn't done some stupid stuff while she was high but most of that consisted of self-harm, sleeping for an entire day or eating the entire condense of her refrigerator...not rape and murder. It was strange. She knew he was fucked up the first few weeks she had been screwing him but the second part...not so much. Sure he was still violent but not kill her in her sleep violent.

She shook the thoughts from her head. The desert was messing with her head again, digging in deep and she was letting it. Reggie. She had to get Reggie. She had a plan and knew where she could get a weapon. She was ready and she was golden. What was the worst thing that could happen? She could die?

She wrapped an old shirt that had been in the back of her car around her hand in the early hours of the morning after parking her car around the side of the bar where it would not be able to be seen from the apartments. Licking her lips she looked around her before taking a deep breath and driving her wrapped fist and arm through the glass pane of the back window. She smiled to herself, glad that her assumption that Walter didn't have a security system was correct. Grabbing the inside lock she clicked it and snuck into the empty early morning structure.

Bending low to the ground she ducked through the back storage room and behind the bar searching. Finding what she was looking for she held it in her hands for a moment before nodding to herself. "Okay...okay...now just wait." She muttered, sliding down on the business side of the bar and sitting on the ground.

She rested the object across her knees and pulled the joint from behind her ear, putting it in between her lips and lighting up to calm her shaking hands. Damien said it was good to be nervous and slightly afraid but she didn't want to be. If she had been she would have shied away from Mac and not had two months of relative normalcy....the first two months she had experienced since she had been brought back now over a year ago. She pulled her lighter out and took a long hit, twisting her neck.

Walter spoke with his younger son as he and Devon came to the door to open up the Bar for the drunks that came in at lunch to buzz up for their second half of work in the dead-end jobs the town provided.

"I'm just saying," Devon said as Walters old key worked in the lock. "He's really off lately....like more off than he was and that's saying something."

Walter shook his head and pushed open. "What does it matter? He's just hurting hookers. They don't report, cops don't care...let him go cra-"

Both men stopped as they looked up and into the dimly lit bar, seeing a petite little brunette moving around the counter and into the main space. Her sharp green eyes were as focused on them as the shotgun that she had retrieved from behind the bar was. "Hey boys...long time."

"Alexandra...." Walter said calmly as Devon put his hands up innocently. "You're supposed to be dead."

Alex quirked an eyebrow at him. "I know...trust me I know. But I'm not." She cocked the gun hard as Devon tried to step away. "Don't move you sick, twisted, little fuck."

Devon raised his hands again and froze. "Okay...okay Ali-"

"You don't get to call me that." She snapped with eyes narrowed.