It had been almost 10 years since Eli had last seen the woman sitting next to him. She had changed: D.Q. had become taller, stockier, and the lines under her eyes had grown deeper. Despite her capricious nature and eager mannerisms, she was one of the most weary people he had ever encountered. There had bene people who thought that about him for sure. Anyone who spent more than a few days with him knew that he wasn’t much more than a hollow young man hiding behind his charisma and title. He wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was either. 

“Did you know what he ‘supplicated’ for?” She asked him. Eli dragged his hand across his face. He hadn’t.

“Whatever he wanted was with him when he died. I doubt he’s really in the…” He groaned. He was about to make a joke about “headspace” with how Beefcake had lost his and all. Other jokes sat on his tongue with an incredible bitterness. Every thing was sour to him. His order had spent the last five years preparing him to die up here in the hopes that he might deposit some enlightening notes on what killed him. He’d always known that he was being used to some extent, yet the full realization wasn’t coming any easier. He sat on the car and breathed heavily, like that would accomplish anything. Where did he think this job would take him? To some warm place that was full of fulfillment and happiness? No, he was up in North Dakota, freezing his ass off with only this psychopath and several million anguished ghosts for company.

“Hugo told me his dream was about all of these— I guess they were people— trapped under the snow. And they couldn’t get out, so they screamed.” That might have been the old man’s interpretation of the fetal-creature dream.

“There’s not enough left in me to scream for anything emotional.” D.Q. said.

“Is your full name ‘Denise?” He asked.

“I thought that was one of the first things I told you.” She said.

“You told me a lot of things that night, why you’re called ‘Denny’ wasn’t one of them.”

“Well, you know ‘Dennies’? Restaurant chain with a yellow diamond for a sign. My parents would meet at one when their breaks overlapped. When things calmed down enough for them to think about a family, they found the remains of one… and made me.” She said.

“My mother was a traveling welder. Somewhere along the way, she got pregnant. ‘Captain of a twin-turbine Hunter’ she told me. Her plan was to make it down to the Delta, so I could grow up and learn from them. I started coming out a few weeks earlier than she planned, so she settled for a pig-farm and a quick death from some infection.” 

“We all come from somewhere.” She said. 

“Is this where we end up?” He asked. Everyone who had been in the cars behind him had come from somewhere.

“I thought I would die of bloodloss.” She said. Eli had found her, half-mauled, lying on the ground. Then he had had the idea to put her on a sled and drag her the 10 miles through densely wooded forests to the next settlement.

“I still can’t believe the job I did trying to stitch you up.” He said. His only practice had come from workin with pig-leather. 

“That was one hell of a night.” She said, and together they drifted back to that fateful evening. Despite the cold, he could still imagine the feeling of his sweat going through all of his clothes, the bugs attacking him, and how he kept finding enough breath in him to ask her for another story. 

“Did you ever— was that the night what made you want to be a Formers?” She asked.

“Not at first. I worked around for a bit, but they stuck with me.” He said. They both shuddered. There was nothing mythical about the “Hill-Beasts”, however, he had spent countless nights lying in bet wondering what atrocity had tormented those people to the point where they went off into the woods and became animals. One had looked at him during the raid. It was clad head to toe in the skins of various creatures, but those had been human eyes looking at him.

“Sometimes I still see one taking that swing at me.” She said before pulling back her lip so Eli could see the metal replacements of the teeth that she had lost. There was still a visible divot in her jaw.

“Did you heal up down there.” He asked with a gentle nod towards her midsection.

“I…let’s just say that piss, shit, and foul language are the only things that’re ever going to come out of me. I was warned about that possibility when I woke up.” Eli would never tell her this, but one of the reasons he had left soon after making sure that someone would take care of her was that he was afraid she would wake up and fall deeply in love with the man who saved her. He was a really dumb kid back then. Now he had to change the subject before the conversation turned to Eli’s thoughts on being able to have kids.

“You remember that story you told me? About the two guys by the river?” He asked, remembering how she would have to pause between tales to spit out parts of her shattered teeth.

“And how they were both so distrustful that they shot one another while they were getting water… What about it?”

“You talked about what happened afterwards in that place, how there was this presence in the woods where… how’d you say it?”

“You just knew that something bad happened there.” She said.

“I feel it here. It’s all around us. There’s a presence here.” 

“You think it’s them?” D.Q. thumbed at all of the wrecks behind them. He twisted and looked at it again. All of this… enormity out here. Millions of people who were going nowhere. That had to produce something more than the metal husks on the road.

“Eli…” She said with a firm hand on his thigh. But her attention wasn’t on him. In the car to their left, where Beefcake had sat down to “supplicate” himself, there was no body…

Eli whipped out his largest knife while D.Q. returned to her perch atop the minivan. 

“I can’t cover alla this— we gotta git back in the open!” She said. She had sounded exactly like that when they had first met. Her autocannon was nervously swinging from side to side as she scanned the road for movement.

“Just hold on a minute.” He said as he crossed the Road again. This was the same blade that he had dispatched three meth-fueled cultists with, and he was still the same person who had made it this far without losing his shit. 

The bags were gone. Whatever had taken Beefcake must have also taken them. He saw some blood on the snow. Only Beefcake’s corpse had been fresh enough to not have completely frozen over. There wasn’t enough to follow a clear path, not like he wanted to follow a trail of blood. 

In the distance, now obscured by falling snow, he saw something moving. He couldn’t tell the distance with all of the particles, but it looked bigger than a person, especially with the size of its strides, and it was moving faster than any human could in two feet of snow. 

“Start the sled.” He told D.Q. on his way back. Normally it didn’t take this much effort to sound calm when he gave commands. He was shaken by what he had seen, he knew that much. 

While she dealt with the engine, which had partially frozen over, he slashed the cables connecting them to the baggage train. He grabbed the bag that had come from the Roller. In the note he had given Warra, he had asked for the crew to pack his note cannisters, a notebook, a compass, a map, flint-and-steel in case he had to do any signaling, and lunch for two. He flipped the notebook open, set it on his knee, and began to write.

“Arrived at Road. Deposited several bodies. Member of crew Supplicated. All bodies removed. Firm belief that interactions have stimulated a deliberate response from Phenomena. Possible sighting of non-human—”

He scratched off the page as a shriek filled the air. The noise had come from past the road.

“You heard that too, right?” He asked D.Q. She nodded and started up the sled. He jumped on and continued writing.

“Non-human vocalization. Leaving now for site on Missouri River.” He forgot which one he had specified on his note to Cone. Probably the one that was further South. He put the date, approximate time, and best guess at location. Eli tore off the page, stuffed it in the cannister, then threw the “first contact” notes as far back as he could. The visibility was so bad that he didn’t even see where it landed. It was snowing more than when they had first arrived. Already the blue sky above the Road was fading from view.

“Reeeaaaahhhggg!” Something shrieked. He wasn’t sure where that one had come from.

“I can drive us back.” He said. D.Q. went to the front of the sled and sat down on the pile of bags that the last driver had left behind. She was still gripping her autocannon. There was no guarantee that she would stay lucid for the next few hours. The Singing Road cracked all kind of people, especially those with pre-loosened screws. But she had been to the Road itself, and presumably been a few feet away from the thing that had snatched the bodies. Denny could keep it together, probably. If she could do it, so could he. He had told her something like that when he started moving her away from the remains of her village. 

“It’s going to be a loooong night.” She said.