Last Line Blogfest

For Lilah's Last Line Blogfest http://lilahpierce.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-first-blogfest.html,
I submit the last several *coughdozencough* lines of chapter 4 of my WIP.

To set the scene a bit so you know WTF is going on, My MC Sam and Scarlett are both returned from the grave. They've already discovered their bodies reform themselves if damage is done to them. They've just met this day and are still strangers, and are also seventeen. They are being 'called' west, but they don't know where to. They are in her crappy white Pinto station wagon in Denver at the moment, after having travelled across Kansas. They are leaving Denny's at the moment, trying to decide where to head from there.

Oh, and he thinks she's a lunatic.

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I left the waitress a buck-fifty, which was over twenty-percent of our seven dollar meal. Quite generous, I thought. As we walked back to the car, I glanced at the nearby interstate and the cars speeding down it. In them were people who knew where they were going. I envied them.

A thunderous sound startled me, and I snapped around in search of its source. Scarlett, too, searched the darkness from her side of the car.

"What the hell was that?" she said.

"Fuck if I know."

We looked around a moment longer, then it resounded again so loudly I covered my ears. Other patrons of the restaurant passed us by with curious eyes, unfazed by the resonating echo in the night. It seemed they were either deaf or had not heard it because only Scarlett and I could. When it struck a third time, a flash of light accompanied it from the sky, turning night into day. My lifted eyes saw dancing circles of color against the clouds.

"A sign?" Scarlett asked across the hood of the car.

"I guess. Words spelled out would be a lot more helpful, though."

"Text message of the gods?" Her tone was amused.

"Hey, divinity shouldn't have limitations."

The lights stopped dancing. I almost apologized to the sky for my disrespect. Maybe the divine disliked being mocked as much as any human.

"Way to go. You pissed them off," Scarlett said. "Say you're sorry."

"You're not serious," I said. True, I'd the impulse to retract my statement, but I wasn't actually going to speak to floating colors above my head.

"Yes, I am. Do it, or don't get back in the car."

"Fine."

"Like you mean it, too. Not one of those fake forced apologies your mom makes you give your brother."

I didn't have a brother, or a sister for that matter. I knew that wasn't the point, though, so I looked up at the lights and said, "Sorry if I pissed you off."

"Sam!"

Scolded by the crazy chick. My afterdeath had reached an all new low point.

"I'm sorry if my remark was offensive to you in any way," I said to the luminescent colors, feeling like a world class jackass.

The lights circled again, then drifted away slowly, heading south.

"Get in!" Scarlett said, throwing open her door. "They're going to show us the way!"

That was a pretty wild assumption, I thought, but I did as I was told. For all we knew, the lights were going to lead us off a cliff. Or to a used car dealership.

Scarlett peeled out of the parking lot and sped down the street. I wasn't sure her Pinto could take that kind of abuse, but negative remarks about her car while she was excitedly speeding down the street seemed a bad idea. It was harder to keep my mouth shut when we nearly caught air going over train tracks.

"Dead or not, you need to obey the rules of the road before you send other people to the grave," I said, gripping the door handle in anxiety.

"You know what?"

A rhetorical question I loathed. I almost answered sardonically, but kept it to myself.

"Shut up," she said. "I'm not going to kill anyone. You don't count. You're already dead."

"Well, I'd prefer not to be dismembered again, thanks."

She shot me a confused glance, then her eyes returned to the road.

"Watch out for the...!"

"I see it."

The Pinto narrowly missed someone edging their Mustang out from a gas station parking lot. They honked loudly and the driver gave us the finger.

"Being with you is almost more excitement than I can handle," I said.

"Yeah, I get that a lot."