Burnt Road: Dante

by Neal, Toby

  Women’s lingering gazes and their attempts to touch him and talk with him were easier for Dante to endure if he kept his gaze averted, avoiding the searchlight of eyes probing him. Eventually they gave up when he ignored them. Melody would, too.

  Mama and his little sister, Lucy, were the only women Dante had ever liked to be around.

  Women. Why had he said yes to JT?

  A massive pileup of vehicles was blocking the road ahead—an accident from some time ago, never cleared. He glanced right and left, then braked, unsure of which way to turn. He looked at the GPS, but the icon spun uselessly.

  Dante reached beneath the seat and pulled out the atlas he’d stowed there. “Help me get us out of here. We need the freeway toward Anaheim.” He angled the Escalade up onto the sidewalk to get around the blockage.

  “May I turn the music down?” Melody started flipping through the pages. Even with the volume up, Dante could hear the sound of her fingers on the paper.

  “No. It helps me focus.”

  Navigating back onto the road, Dante was able to pick up a little speed. His ears still rang from firing the Walther into the air to scare the crowd into backing off from Melody. He’d always worn ear protection at the range. Dante had to work out hard before and after target practice because firing weapons stressed him badly, scrambling his senses, jangling his nerves and making him twitch for hours.

  Guns reminded Dante of his father: a big shadow of a memory with a booming voice that vibrated Dante and filled him with good feelings. His dad used to pull Dante onto his lap while he cleaned his weapons, explaining what he was doing in that rich baritone. Dante didn’t listen to the words, just the sound of his father’s voice, the way it felt against his ears, and the feel of his father’s shirt against his skin. The smell of gun oil and his father were tied in Dante’s mind, a binding that did little to ease his discomfort with the weapons.

  Paulie Luciano was shot while working undercover when Dante was four years old, but he didn’t like to think about that. He wanted to like guns because they were a weapon his father had used and respected, but the terrible sound and deadly effect stressed him too much.

  Now he had to get through a thousand miles of obstacles to the Haven, and he would definitely have to use the Walther again. Dante needed to find somewhere to practice until it got easier. Practicing helped him get used to difficult things.

  Maybe he could teach Melody how to shoot if she didn’t already know.

  Melody swiveled in her seat, looking into the back, taking in the folded down seats, and the neatly packed supplies. “You seem really prepared, Dante.” Her soft, pretty voice was warm. “It was great the way you fired your gun and scared that guy off. And this car is awesome.” Melody bounced on the seat. Her hair gleamed and her breasts jiggled. Dante felt a twinge in his groin.

  So uncomfortable. Women.

  Dante grunted. “I didn’t plan for two. What’s the next turn?”

  “Up ahead. A left.” Melody bent her head over the atlas and the light shimmered on her hair, distracting Dante. “The ramp should be right there.”

  “It’s blocked.” Someone had erected a barrier of burned cars. It was probably created as a pinch point to rob people. Dante hit the brakes, burning rubber as he backed up, and Melody, or maybe it was the puppies, squeaked as he spun the wheel and took off again. “Find me the next on-ramp.”

  “Where are we going? I mean, what route to Idaho?” Melody put the puppies down by her feet as she bent over the atlas, tracing the side road they were on with a finger. “It would help if I knew where I had to get us.”

  “We just need to get about five miles down the freeway to Highway 15. That leads onto 93. Once we’re on that, we can take it all the way to Idaho. Small road. Safer.”

  “I don’t think we should get on the freeway at all.” Melody lifted her head up, scanning the overpass beside them. Out of the corner of his eye, Dante saw sunlight on her, making Melody glitter and glow. “Looks like a total jam up there. Everyone’s trying to get out of the city right now.”

  Dante groped for the mirrored aviator glasses in the storage slot of his door, and slid them on.

  Better. The shine of her was dimmed. He could focus.

  “Turn left here. We’ll take back roads instead. I can get us there.” Melody raised her voice confidently, and Dante’s groin twitched again. How could he make the distraction stop?

  “You mean, I can get us there with you reading the map.” That was what was really going on, despite her sexy talk. “I suppose it will work. But I didn’t plan for this.”

  “Do you mean that you don’t have enough food and supplies?”

  “Not for two. And you will not like my food.” His rations were simple: dehydrated meat, jerky, and vegetables. Mama and Lucy would not have approved.

  “The puppies and I will eat whatever there is, and I’m sorry I didn’t bring more. I have some protein bars I made myself.” Melody folded her arms over her breasts, covering them. “I didn’t see this coming, either.”

  Dante hit a clear stretch of four-lane road and sped up. All the lights at the intersections flashed red in emergency mode. Even through the music, he could hear the sound of sirens.

  “How long do we stay on this route?”

  “Another two miles.” Melody’s voice made him think of dark chocolate: smooth, not too sweet. He thought of chocolate melting on her lips, and of licking it off.

  He was so uncomfortable. Dante turned up the AC.

  The brown puppy had wriggled its way down by Dante’s feet. It was going to get in the way of the pedals. Dante scooped the creature up and put it in his lap for Melody to take, but she was turned away, looking out the window and holding the other dog in the crook of her arm.

  It probably had fleas.

  The one in his lap had gone quiet. He glanced down. It was wedged between his thighs, its head on his crotch, eyes shut as it slept. The dog radiated warmth and calmed his discomfort. Dante wanted to smile, but then Melody would think that meant he liked smelly, flea-riddled dogs that climbed all up in his space.

  “Tell me about the Haven and your family.” Melody turned to Dante and he could tell by her voice that she was smiling, and thinking that he liked the dog. She was wrong, but if he pushed it off it would probably just come back to bother him again.

  “I have five brothers.” Dante cleared his throat. “We’re Italian. From Philly. I have a sister, Lucy, and Mama. My father passed away. My brother, JT, is second from the oldest. He knew something bad was coming. He bought the Haven and got it ready two years ago. He prepared.” Dante gestured toward the back of the SUV. “He prepared much better than I did. I hoped the skinheads wouldn’t poison the people. It was not in anyone’s interest for Scorch Flu to get out of hand like it did.”

  “I don’t know what you mean about the skinheads. I didn’t realize the flu was so serious until people started dying on my set.” Melody’s voice was quiet.

  Dante glanced at her, wanting to know what that tone meant, and her green cat eyes gazing into him were like touching a live wire, too intense. He returned his attention to the road. “The Aryan Brotherhood, the KKK, and their offshoot skinhead cousins are saying it’s God’s judgment clearing the land of undesirables.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” Melody’s voice pitched up. “Cause if so, I’m getting out right now.”

  Dante glanced at her. Melody’s hand was on the door.

  “They are the undesirables. They are the scourge on the earth.” He groped for the words to express his contempt. “There’s a rumor online that the skinheads started the Scorch Flu.” His voice was dark.

  “Wow.” Melody sat back into the seat. “Who would do something like that?”

  “You would be surprised what people will do.” He’d seen too much on the internet.

  “Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything men would do.” Melody sounded dark, too.

  “There are lots of women skinheads, t
oo. But they aren’t actual skinheads. They don’t shave their hair off.”

  She laughed. Melody was a good name for her. “You’re kind of weird, you know that?”

  Dante was talking to a woman and she’d called him weird but she laughed in a way that made him feel good, and there was a puppy in his lap and it felt good, too.

  “So I’ve been told.” He had. Many times. For as long as Dante could remember, people had told him he was weird. He’d done well for himself in spite of his autism, and he owed that to his brothers, too, especially JT, who’d shielded him from the worst of the bullying. He’d also helped Dante navigate some of his business deals, including the one they’d done together that created JT’s wealth to buy the Haven.

  In first grade, Mama took Dante to the doctor because his teacher complained that he “wouldn’t look people in the eye.” He still remembered sitting on the cold, crinkly paper after the exam and lots of questions. The whoosh of the air conditioner wasn’t enough to mask the doctor’s voice coming through the closed door as he talked to Mama. “Your son has autism.”

  Mama’s gasp of pain hurt Dante. He’d heard her make that sound when Luca broke his collarbone on the football field and when Dolf fell out of a tree. Now he had hurt her, too. “You’re lucky. It could be so much worse. He has Asperger Disorder. It’s not as severe. He will probably live a fairly normal life, but he will never feel or express emotion like normal people do.”

  And Dante never had, though he’d learned how to pretend enough to get by, and watched for clues to what others were feeling. The truth was, though, most of the time he didn’t care enough to wonder.

  Dante was still a virgin, and that bothered him. Though he’d studied books on how to be a good lover, and watched YouTube instructional videos, he had never been able to get past his dislike of being touched enough to get to the actual act. Women always got mad when he pulled away. They left him after that.

  Dante clenched his hands on the steering wheel.

  “Tell me more about the Haven. I want to know what I’m getting myself into.” Melody’s soft voice relaxed him again.

  “The Haven is safe. A fortress. Beautiful. Fields and abundance. An underground bunker. Water. Its own power. Satellite internet hookups.”

  “And I bet that’s the most important thing to you. Satellite internet hookups.”

  Was Melody teasing him? Dante risked a glance. She was gazing out the front window but there was a dimple in her cheek, so maybe she was. But it didn’t feel bad.

  He had almost driven away and left her behind. The scene replayed in his mind, every moment emblazoned on his memory; he’d swung away from the sidewalk, trying to drive around the mob, and that’s when he spotted her in the rearview mirror.

  Melody was running carrying a backpack and her long legs were clad in tight yoga pants that made him think of sex and she had on hiking boots and her hair was black obsidian, shiny iridescent and her shirt was green and her eyes, too.

  Melody. Her name had burst across Dante’s brain as if surrounded in neon lights.

  And there was a dog under each of her arms: one brown, one gray.

  “Oh, hell.” Dante had put on the brakes, threw the Escalade into reverse, and backed swiftly toward her, scattering the mob.

  Some thug had grabbed her, and she was wrestling and fighting, but she wouldn’t let go of the damn dogs.

  Dante didn’t think. He just jumped out of the Escalade, leaving it running, pulled the Walther and fired it overhead three times: bam bam bam. Dante’s head hurt, his ears rang, the hot wind outside felt like sandpaper on his skin and there Melody was, stumbling, and he got her into the car and everything changed.

  Dante’s thoughts returned to the present. “It is very useful, the internet.” What an understatement to describe his world. But Melody didn’t know that it was his world. She didn’t know anything about him. For the first time in Dante’s life, he wanted someone to know him.

  “I understand being an internet junkie. I’m dying without my phone.” Melody pulled it out of her pocket, fondled it, scrolled, sighed, and put it back. He could hear everything, even the sound of her thighs rubbing together in those yoga pants.

  Melody looked back down at the atlas. “So Highway 15 out of Anaheim connects with 93, and it’s a small highway, two-lane most of the way. Looks like a straight shot to Idaho through Vegas.”

  “We will go around Vegas. Urban centers are to be avoided.”

  “Right. No urban centers. I will be your navigator. Uhura to your Spock.”

  Dante glanced at her. With those green eyes, smiling lips, and bright white teeth, Melody was so beautiful it hurt his eyes, so he looked away.

  Dante had fantasized about Uhura, the brave, beautiful navigator and communications officer from Star Trek who understood and loved Spock’s logical, brilliant mind.

  He glanced over at Melody again. Her eyes were focused on the map. Dante pictured an earpiece poking out from under her hair and felt his heart pick up pace as his imagination painted a Star Trek uniform onto her body.

  She glanced over at him, her green eyes catching his for just a moment before he could get his gaze back to the road. Did she see him? Really see him, the way Uhura saw Spock?

  No, that wasn’t possible. He was weird, distant, “incapable of normal emotion,” as the doctor had told his mother. He’d get Melody to the Haven. He’d promised JT that much.

  But Melody would not be his Uhura. Women like Uhura only existed in fiction, and this was the real world. Even Dante knew that.

  Chapter Four

  Melody

  Following Melody’s directions, Dante got them out of the city onto Highway 15, and as the sun set, splashing vivid rays of gold and fuchsia across the pale blue sky, there was nothing but empty road ahead of them.

  Abigail curled up in Melody’s lap, a little heater snoring gently. She played with one of the dog’s velvety ears and glanced over at Dante.

  He was so beautiful it actually made her ache a little, the same as when she looked at a spectacular painting, saw a phenomenal performance, or watched waves breaking on the shore.

  Melody’s first impression of Dante, that hard coldness, was a façade. He was weird. The guy was on the spectrum, for sure. But there was a gooey center there inside his stiff armor. Melody could sense the man inside of him, the man locked behind shutters of protection.

  The constant peaks and valleys of music, the cool AC, and the mirrored aviator glasses hiding those eyes were all a smokescreen, a way to cope. But he was clearly competent. The car spoke of money, his manner projected confidence, and his eyes. Oh, damn. She just wanted to see them more. A lot more. And that honed, toned body under his tight black shirt, too.

  She wanted to get to know him.

  Melody had expected that the guy picking her up was going to be useful. He’d help keep her alive, travel with her to Idaho, provide a service. She hadn’t expected him to be utterly fascinating, completely different and totally remarkable, let alone heart-stopping gorgeous.

  As they drove, Dante’s eyes were focused on the road ahead. The few times he’d touched Melody with his amber gaze it had felt like a laser raking over her. In Melody’s experience, when men looked at her, it wasn’t with a focused, detached curiosity—they checked her out as a sex object.

  And she wasn’t above using her looks to her advantage. A girl had to do what she had to do to survive, and Melody knew what to do.

  But she wasn’t sure what to do about a man like Dante, and his surprising effect on her.

  Barkley was curled up, his little body snug between Dante’s thighs and chin resting on the man’s leg. Occasionally, Dante would reach down and pat the dog’s bottom, a stiff and awkward movement that over the hours in the car had become more natural. Now his hand rested on the little dog, cupping his back and squeezing gently as Barkley panted and squeaked with appreciation.

  Dante turned on his signal and Melody stifled a laugh. The road was empty—who was
he signaling to? And why was he pulling over? He must be tired. Though he looked fine. Real fine.

  “You want me to drive?”

  “No. I need to rest. Conserve energy.”

  “I can drive, though.” Melody sat up, closing the atlas and throwing it onto the dash. “We should really keep going and make the best time we can.”

  “You can’t drive.” Dante rolled to a stop on the shoulder.

  “I can drive. I promise.” Melody struggled to keep her voice even. She could drive the crap out of this gangster SUV. Who did he think he was, implying she couldn’t drive?

  Dante didn’t look at her when he answered: “No.” He was searching the desert landscape, his eyes narrowed.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A marker.”

  In the dying light of day, the desert glowed with a wonderful soft light: golden sands, scrubby brush, and in the distance, tall peaks dusted with white. Even in the August heat, the snow at the top of those mountains never went away.

  Dante put the SUV in drive again, turning into the desert, headed toward a large boulder.

  “We will stay here tonight. I will rest. In the morning we will drive more.”

  “I really can drive.” Dante was one of those guys who thought women couldn’t control a vehicle. How disappointing. She frowned, staring out the window at the mauves and blues of night rising to drown the reds and golds of sunset.

  “No. You can’t drive my car.”

  “What’s that supposed mean?”

  Dante glanced over at Melody, those focused golden rays hitting her, pinning her, holding her. “No one can drive this car but me. I programmed it that way, for safety.”

  He turned back to the desert. The truck bounced as they traveled over the rough ground.

  “Oh, I thought you were one of those men who thought women couldn’t drive.”

  “That is a fallacy. In fact, women have lower accident rates than men.”

  Melody smiled. So Spock.

  Except he was much better-looking than Spock. If the world survived, she could get him work as a model. Hell, she’d like to see him model underwear for her. Now, that would be something.