*Before… Stevie.

I lean over and kiss her softly and pouring my sexuality into it a bit.
I feel her vibrate a little her body thrumming.
“I think it’s called something else now babe, Reagan’s not president any more.”
Yep we’re actually that old.
No, we haven’t been out of things that long….I’m just joking.
She smiles and she nods rubbing her forehead against mine.
“At least we got out before Nixon’s head in a jar got elected.”
I laugh a little and we pull out of there heading west again on the highway.
As good as this was…
As amazing as Serra just was…
We’re still on the run and she’s still sitting in the passenger seat going over a handgun and has clips of rounds and boxes of ammo in her lap.
And part of me really hates this.

*And Now…. Stevie.

We try and make as good time as we can while being careful in not getting seen or spotted.

The world has changed.

America has changed definitely and there’s more cameras everywhere and all these different government and state stuff going on.

It’s getting difficult to keep snagging cars or vans and things too.

And not having ID’s isn’t helping us either.

Sure being off the radar is good but it’s rough even getting a place to sleep.

We end up stopping after two days in this town called Wolf’s Creek and we ditched the last van off the road and wiped it down really well.

Then we jogged cross country for thirty miles to the highway and hitched a ride into town.

We’re in luck as we’re getting in there’s a bunch of migrant workers getting ready for early morning pick up for undocumented work in some of the local fields here.

Luckily we both speak perfect Spanish.

So they’re cool with us joining in after we sort of spin a story about getting chased out of town because of my abusive ex.

I’ve still lots of lingering bruises from both the escape and what the good doctor had done.

Scars too which I can tell pisses Serra off.

The farmer was kind of side eyeing us two white girls being there and we spun the same story with a few empathic pushes to get him on our side. Serra shows some of my hurts to him. “Look sir, look at what the fucker did to her….we just need some work, we just need some running cash.”

“Running cash what about the law?”

Serra pushes the poor blue collar feelings. “Fucker’s rich, he’s got the cops in his pocket.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, he’s a lawyer, one of those Leftist hypocrites that is just as bent as they come.”

“Oh one of those types huh?”

“Yessir just as fake as they come.”

He did a big breath. “You speak Spanish, this bunch pretty much speaks nuthin but.”

“Grandpa was a lead hand in the oil derricks down in Texas sir.”

“Okay, you too still gotta work.”

She smiled. “I’m country born sir, used to working hard in the hills sir.”

“Hills?”

“North Carolina sir, that’s why we’re still alive sir. We know how to git out when trouble comes and a storm’s brewing on the mountain.”

“Alrighty then.”

I don’t like lying but with our people it has been a thing that we have always have had to do to survive.

We pile in with everyone else and we head off to the fields to pick tomatoes.

Serra’s right neither of us are strangers to hard work and being able to shift out metabolisms so things are easier helps tones and for Serra it’s even easier as she learns watching the good ones, the older ones as she learns all the tricks and she puts in a lot of energy putting in all the work.

Every flat we get a punch in our tickets.

Each punch is worth a dollar.

Yeah that’s it. There’s six baskets to a flat and even if the farmer is getting a buck each he’s still making five, minus gas and others likely three.

Still that’s like the minimum.

But beggars can’t be choosers and people don’t look for wanted people in the migrant worker’s fields.

I’m good and I’m fast too as long as we keep hydrated we’re actually good. Serra moves like a pro and when she’s done she talks to the boss each time she finishes a row asking if he needs a hand with anything else.

She ends up with a bunch of twist ties to go over the worker rows.

That’s to get the plants standing better to the wires and the rods and to lift the still green ones up so where they’ll be drier and get better light for the next run through.

Me I earn some goodwill by helping the grandmas there and some of the kids finish their rows and fill their flats for their money and I just talk to people.

Rubs some old hands and sooth the hurts and the pains.

One of the abuela’s looks at me smiling wide and whispers in Spanish to me.

“You, you have the touch don’t you my child.”

“Yes abuelita, I have had it all my life.”

“You’re not running from a bad ex are you?”

“No love, the government tried to take my touch. Wanted to use it for evil but we escaped.”

She nods. “You will be safe child. You come and stay with us for some time, we will see you safe.”

I nod and hug her. “Then bring your hurt to us, to me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’d be a poor healer if I didn’t try.”

She kissed my forehead and we went to get some new rows and we keep close, we keep close and it’s mostly the older folk here in the fields talking to me as I help.

I’m not a woman of God but I’m not an unbeliever either.

Some of my folk are just as science based as others but we as a people walked between worlds.

We can literally see good and evil.

For me the universe has forces.

So when I borrow a rosary and say a few prayers to ease a few hurts well.

It’s all for the good.

Though they’re calling me curendera or healer.

I feel better doing this.

This is me, this is what I was supposed to be doing instead of healing those men with the dirty hearts and souls.
*Serra…

Three days after the two assholes at the truckstop and four different vehicles.

Backtracking once and then after another vehicle and another day we sidetracked.

Swiping vehicles is easy for me, as long as it runs or can run I can get it going. I don’t even need keys or a full battery. I can jump it enough to get it running and keep it running at least until it builds a charge to use.

And that’s a big important thing right now older cars that you can “boost” with power like using jumper cables aren’t all computerized like the new ones. You can fry your electronics in these new rigs and mess up the entire car.

But not older cars.

And older cars and stuff aren’t lojacked.

But still we only have so much time before we will get chased and with the agents I took out and from what Stevie has said the people that she healed.

They will want us back.

So it’s back and forth and dumping cars until we decided on this.

Hiding with the people that no one looks at.

Our people have done that since we’ve gotten here.

And now maybe more than ever in America right now people like this are really invisible.

Which helps us right not.

George Brigham the farmer is an alright man.

Not perfect and feeling him out he’s a little racist but not as much as compared to a lot of people that i’ve met over the years.

Balding in his mid fifties he’s just one of those good old boys.

It rolls off of him like a smell.

Leather, earth, wood, hints of whiskey, beer, barbeque, blood and coffee and this sort of overlay of that kinda of low key taint he grew up with that sort of smells like someone was curing fish in a tobacco shed.

It’s all this empathic sort of thing with me, kind of like word association but with my senses.

George is okay, a product of geography and his age.

I’ve smelled worse.

Armbrewster he smelled like a corpse, like a dead body that was left out to rot but only did so partway before he dried up inside, the rest was smoke and booze he was a gin person.

Even him I’ve smelled worse.

I’ve been all over the world.

Had to.

There are people that are literally evil, that are monsters and that evil is so strong you can almost hear the ichor drip.

I know some of them are likely Armbrewster’s masters.

No I don’t know who they are but it’s been all very deep government and all that black ops stuff.

People can say that stuff is fake but some of it isn’t and from what I’ve lived some of these bastards are worse than the stories.

But yeah George was kind of harmless.

I mean in the scale I’ve just been talking to kinda way.

I know that he thinks that Stevie and I are dykes and he’s not really good with that but about three hours into working he’s a lot better with it than he started off being.

Home we do this stuff and Tuanic Masters the older ones that teach us how to use our gifts use work as training.

And with some simple control I just turn off things that make me tired or sore or uncomfortable from the work and I use my gifts to focus on doing the tasks. It’s all hand eye stuff and picking up the little techniques from the other workers and then just dedicating myself to actually doing it.

Most farmers can tell city people, most farmers can tell when people haven’t really done this kind of work.

And when you can do it you get a certain type of social cred.

Stevie is making him look too with her doing her prayer bit too.

I can feel the little bit of confusion at a dyke with faith.

But again there’s that farm town midwest thing about religion too and that is adding to him being good with us.

I get some other duties too and ask george for more stuff to do when the strapping the plants is done and it’s mostly little things but I do that old school not idle thing.

Stevie while doing her woman of the people thing is also giving george a little nudge to looking at her breasts and her ass.

He’s too old for anything and too out of shape honestly but there’s enough of a push to give him a medium boner.

Why?

Because men keep pretty girls around.

Even if nothing is going to happen they like having girls like Stevie around.

She’s also trained too, not really seduction but well...using that has led to us being stable in other covers and in other jobs over the years.

It’s a long day like into nightfall and none of us mind or complain in fact we got a lot of rows and things done.

And some of our new friends invite us home.

It’s a walk from where we were picked up about two miles but when we get there it’s a welcome stop.

America is full of shanty towns like this. It’s a dusty old RV park that lets them use the water and sewer and power at a pretty steep price actually. These places used to be like campgrounds and things way back when more people went places and travelled the back roads now they’re just dusty and rusty and used for money off of the farm workers.

It sounds bad, it does but it’s not at the same time.

It’s a lot of travel trailers and those small airstreams and other versions of it and they’re all sort of this community and they fixed things up as best they can and there’s stuff repainted and patched and there’s strung lights out and people cooking things outside.

There’s some communal showers there too and Stevie has impressed the people enough of her healing cred and what she is that we’re given some extra clothes and some space to shower.

There’s a common area where we all sort of gather and there’s some music being played on guitars and some other instruments as things are being cooked and there’s beers handed out and I take one and I join some of the guys around the grills and we talk.

Stevie is sitting with the grandmothers and she’s has herbs being passed to her and other things and she’s talking with them as she’s making medicines.

That’s a Shuani thing, this powerful and experienced technique where she knows all the medicinal properties of plants and things and she uses power to bring them out.

She makes medicines, does prayer and laying of hands, helps the pain and the arthritic as well as other hurts that she can fix.

Fever, sunburns, light burns, small infections and all of that have no chance vs my girl.

There’s a line.

For a while there’s a line.

Then we’re done for the night as the food is ready and it’s good food too.

Black and pinto beans cooked all day long with onions and garlic that has browned off in porc fat and the whole thing seasoned with a chunk of pineapple and cilantro and cumin.

Some of the fat chunks are still in the beans.

Then there’s salads and that’s pretty much anything that people have done in different styles. I take a little that’s tomatoes and oranges with sweet red onions being sort of cooked or milded by both and a little salt.

Rice, there’s always rice. It’s funny because I’m willing to bet a lot of white people don’t get how many people here use rice cookers like the asians do.

Flour tortillas, corn, these young anaheim chilies that are just tossed in oil and salt and put on the grill.

Meat in mostly pork and chicken and there is organ meat there too and things done in different ways and all of it is pretty good.

I get sausage and yeah it’s homemade likely somewhere else here in camp and something a lot of people not from here would turn their noses up at. Me I’m immune pretty much to food bugs and all of that and I like sausage and I need, really need the fat and the calories.

It’s good too, porc, liver, kidney, probably chopped lung and other things with ground meat and fat with it and some rice and blood to bind it all together and really well seasoned and salted even cured. Whoever made this made it fresh and it cured and hung all day long at least.

I don’t eat them out of house and home. Instead it’s a couple of sausages, a rib chop and the rest is tortillas and beans with a grilled pepper added in and rice to fill it out and sometimes salsa or pico.

We eat and we talk and then we’re given a small tow trailer to stay in and after a lot of talking and explaining things we bed down for the night.
The plan is to stay here and hidden for awhile until the heat dies down and the man hunt becomes to much of a resource to keep going.

You can only field people for so long before it gets expensive on a large scale.

We’re...I’m planning that to be our advantage in this.

When it’s just us and whatever agents they have after us from the facility those are better odds.

I want to do more with Stevie.

I really do but we’re both exhausted.

And right now we’re safe because of her and what she’s doing as a wise one with the gift.

We’ve been just running on fumes for too long.

We’ll get clear, get to Los Angeles and find a safehouse and regroup from there.

Then...then...we’ll find Dylan.

My child.

I almost get swallowed up in how much I miss him as I touch my stomach.

I can’t keep the Mom sob from slipping out as Stevie wraps me in their arms and holds me.

There’s a little emotional nudge that has me turn my face to her’s and she kisses me and the bond between us flares and she’s just softly gives me this swell of love and support like she’s giving me mouth to mouth for my soul.