TJ stayed behind while Chastity and John Wesley went into the convenience store, with Chastity promising John Wesley sausage biscuits and all the boiled shrimp he could eat once they got to Grand Isle. TJ wasn’t exactly sure how it was all gonna work once they got down there, unhitching her daddy’s big boat, fueling up, and navigating all the way over to Old Mexico. All she knew was that they were gone from that goddamn zombie house and those dark-eyed druggies, and that fresh air blowing through the windows in Graham’s Land Cruiser felt like a little slice of heaven.

TJ got out and started pumping gas after Chastity had paid thirty dollars. She said that would be plenty to get them where they were headed. TJ hadn’t slept all night, worried how they were going to get free and what they’d do if they’d been stranded in the city. At one point, she thought about leaving John Wesley in a big fancy hotel, telling him to let the folks there know he was lost and needed help. But her little brother would’ve never gone for that. Through this whole fucked-up road trip, that boy had never left her side. He was tough and brave as hell. And the idea of leaving him while hiding out somewhere else made her guts turn inside out.

“That’s a sporty little wagon you got there,” a man said. She looked up to see some short fella standing beside an old truck.

TJ nodded and turned back to the spinning numbers on the pump. Behind the store’s plate-glass windows, John Wesley and Chastity flitted about bright colors of snack cakes and candies, stacks and stacks of Coca-Cola and Sprite.

“Tight little chassis, tires with fresh treads,” the man said. “Whew. Sure would like to take that vehicle out for a spin, break it in and loosen up them struts.”

TJ glanced over at the odd little man again. He stood in the shadows, but she still got a good view of his stocky body, black beard, and coal-black eyes. He had on a ball cap, a heavy camo hunting jacket over his blue jeans and mud boots. The man’s chapped face and dirty beard made him look like some kind of creature that had crawled out from the center of the earth.

He licked at his lips before lighting a cigarette. His right foot back behind him resting on the rear tire.

“Where y’all headed?” the man said.

TJ shrugged.

“Where y’all been?”

“Everywhere,” TJ said.

“Everywhere, huh,” the man said, topping off his tank and tapping at the nozzle to get every last drip into his old Chevy. “Ain’t that somethin’. Say, don’t I know you from somewheres?”