the car (Life 3/?)

A VW: blue, heavily dented, sporting a makeshift bullbar (She wasn't the greatest mechanic. It was more of a bodged-bar made from some copper piping she had found. Still, it did the job. She was proud of that).

The driver's door had taken a bash -- she couldn't remember what exactly happened; had it been that way since she got home? -- it didn't open properly, anyway. It always needed a bit of tugging, so normally parked with the passenger door facing the house, just in case rapid access was needed. She thought about such things a lot.

She had found a nice little mechanic's place a half hour out of town where she was able to get some basic work done on the car.

The rear and side windows had been replaced with a protective mesh. She had welded shut the rear doors and ripped the seats out to give more storage space for gas, food, clothes. Depending on how much shopping she had gotten done that day.

She even took the time to give it a bit of a paint job. Running along the side of the car were blades of grass, and popping up out of this a couple of daisies. On the back she had even painted a few birds.

It brightened things up, so she liked to imagine, anyway. Not that anyone else would have noticed.

It's surprising how fast you picked up this stuff, she thought. She wouldn't of imagined she had a DIY streak, that she could do anything like this to a car. She had never tried before -- why would she? -- but it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it. That was certainly true.

Her favourite thing about the car was that it was her car. Somehow it had survived this long. She bought it -- what..? -- eight years ago -- for a grand and a half? -- and it was sat there in her drive when she got back, just waiting.

It still started every time. This was important. Two thing you didn't want to happen were stalling the car and running out of gas. This car got great milage too.

She had never named the car; it never seemed to need one. So that was fine.

Everything had it's own place inside the car:

Nigel -- obviously -- always rode shotgun. She would leap in the door and lay him down on the seat. His black shaft, pointing skyward, acted as something akin to a Linus blanket for her. He kept her calm.

Claire had her own set up. She rested on the dash, two bolts were craftily placed to keep her nice and secure when the car took a bump or two, yet keept her within arms reach.

Betsy used to live in the glove box. Mostly out of habit -- she had had Betsy for some time, her Grandad had given her as a gift when she went away to college -- you never knew who you would meet, nor what they would make of a sizeable six-shooter like that.

Recently she hadn't met so many new people; it was less of a concern.

Now Betsy just rode with her, resting in the holster, which was shifted round to her lap so she could sit down properly.

This was how it was.

'The Gang'.

Out on the town.