Pattonsburg, still fully decorated, had real bodies in every Christmas scene, even those on lawns, with each corpse painstakingly put in the place of the person they most looked like: Mary, Santa, Wise Men, even the baby Jesus. She and Marc had turned around immediately, the feeling of evil too strong to ignore. They had detoured an extra day, sure each of the scenes' "actors" had been survivors of the War, not victims. They were just too fresh.
Pattonsburg had become, or maybe always had been, home to a serial killer now reigning unopposed, and she had marked it in her journal, then tried to let it go. Later, when she'd kept worrying over it, aware Marc wanted to go back and challenge the mad man just to ease her horror, the Witch had asked, and she'd said yes with a heavy heart.
After her own encounter with evil, she now understood that some people had earned death. The nut job in Pattonsburg was certainly one of those, and she had let the Witch hunt him down while she slept. The fact that it hadn't been by her hand was helping, but death was something she couldn't handle, and if she ever had to personally do it again, she might… "Angie."
She looked up to find Marc staring at her.
"Try to let it go."
Angela closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The fact that she had saved future travelers was also helping. "I will. What did you say?"
"We'll have to cross the Missouri to get into Nebraska, unless you want to parallel it until we get below Kansas City. Flatter land, might have a better chance of finding a shallow."
She was already shaking her head, raising her sunglasses, "That's another week. Let's try to find a dam or a bridge around here that looks okay."
Marc just stared, stomach suddenly very uneasy, and Angela gave him a quick look that revealed an almost desperate glare in her eyes. "I feel it too, but I can't waste another week. I just can't."
"I won't ask you to unless we can't find a shallow or dam, like we did when we came over the Mississippi."
Angela studied the mud-streaked lanes of Interstate 29. The cracked pavement was full of potholes and mud that was slowly drying in the steady breeze now that the temperatures had stayed above freezing for a few days. The wind was calm, the weather clear for a change, and Angela lit a smoke, not sure what was wrong, but sure something was since there was only darkness when she looked.