Eli’s cabin was full of guns. They were laying atop his bags and in all of the conference chairs. And not just the enormous mounted ones from the wrecks. There were ARs, shotguns, SMGs, lots of pistols— one was tucked into Cone’s waistband. Cone himself had bags under his eyes and a nice shade of red on his face. He had taken his jacket off to reveal, much to Eli’s surprise, a set of decently muscled and hairy arms. Cone reeked of sweat and old metal. This wasn’t the same person who had spent last night whining about a perimeter: here was someone who’d find a way to set tripwires on flat ground himself.

“Does that pistol work?” Eli asked. He knew that the twin-barrel autocannon behind him worked just fine. The same couldn’t be said for the woman operating it. 

“Found this in a glove compartment, it’d better.” The merchant said.

“Good to know you’ve been busy in my absence.” Eli said.

“Good to know that your absence wasn’t permanent.” Cone retorted.

“I’m just happy that your stuff’s not on my bed. I might ask if you could move that… sniper?” Eli asked, not sure of what kind of long-range firearm was sitting where he kept his boots when he slept.

“Anti-materiel rifle. When I was a kid, I saw my dad kill the engine in an oncoming truck with one shot.” Dedschik said from one of the spinny chairs. There was a sawn-off shotgun in her lap. That thing was so primitive that 30 years of exposure wouldn’t age it a day. Thankfully any shells for it would have decomposed long ago. The politico he had worked for out East had encouraged him to attend a lecture on understanding Pre-Burnout weaponry. It was finally paying off.

“Can I ask why you’ve crammed my personal quarters with enough antiquated firearms to arm a sizeable convoy of raiders?” He asked. That joke hadn’t even been sarcastic— it was literal. He’d had a long day, and it was showing.

“You know you’re not going to be able to use them.” He said. Hopefully Cone also knew that they wouldn’t make much of a difference if a real attack happened. They hadn’t for their last owners.

“A haul like this is too big to be used.” Cone said. Eli smiled. Pre-Burnout weapons had two buyers: the Guild which would melt them down, or any clan with the artisans to restore them to their former lethality. This was a once in a lifetime find for anyone. Basically the same as stumbling on a prepper’s bunker. 

“Who’re you thinking of selling this to?” He asked.

“That can be figured out later— there are more pressing issues.” Cone said. Eli found himself staring at the pistol lodged in his waistband. His gut was pressing into it with such pressure that Eli was surprised that it hadn’t popped out yet. He had to focus. This wasn’t good having Cone calling the shots.

“I assume you got my note?” He asked.

“Should have known that feral would try to contact her friends. It’s a shame about Hugo, though.” Cone said. The note had said something about how Eli suspected that Warra had hung back to signal the Reaper to attack them… or a version of that. He was more impressed with how quickly he had come up with that. 

Varly climbed through the roof-hatch with the barrel for another large rifle in his hand.

“This is the last of the ones that I found lying around. T-there’s still a few in the bus that have r-rusted to their hooks.” He said.

“Don’t worry about those. Do your best to close any gaps between the cars so we have a solid perimeter. And give us some space to talk— make sure to check in on Splint!” Cone ordered. No doubt that he must have been like this back in the 40’s and early 50’s, when there were bigger stakes than the silicone trade. Varly paused on the ladder, not sure if he should continue bringing in the weapon, or leave the room like he was asked. 

“Lemme get that for ya.” D.Q. offered. She took the rifle and looked down the sites on it, with Cone as a target. Dedschik started on her way out.

“Do you have any other hardware that’s good to use?” D.Q. asked. 

“Possibly, but I don’t want to go messing around with decades-old gunpowder.” Cone said.

“Good call.” Eli added. Cone watched the roof-hatch close before he continued.

“So… did you make it?” He asked.

“Sure did.” D.Q. answered.

“What’d you find?” Cone asked, with his hands on his hips. That was what this whole expedition had been about. 

“Why don’t you sit down?” Eli said. Cone scooped an SMG from Eli’s desk chair and sat. Eli leaned on the top of one, and D.Q. stood against the ladder.

“I… you can probably see what an intense few hours it’s been.” He said as he wiped the sweat off his brow.

“You should have seen it Cone, I mean…” His words were failing him. Maybe with a lot of time on his notebook, he would be able to describe what the Road had been like for him. What would it matter for Cone? Here was a man who had come up here all but shitting himself with dread. He had helped deal with a treacherous guide, and a misguided elder, and had then discovered a gigantic stash of valuable weapons. Cone was on track to have the most action-packed day of his life. And Eli couldn’t even think of how to describe a road he’d seen. Where was the depraved clarity he had found earlier in the day when he was writing that note? 

“Looks like you found something that finally got you to shut the fuck up.” Cone said. That was vengeance. He shouldn’t have cut him off yesterday when he was crying about how his life as a shipping administrator had become stale. Eli was pissed, very pissed, but his usual urge to use a snappy comeback had abandoned him. A lot of his tendencies had abandoned him over this afternoon. Goddamn, he wished he was back at the Road and reminiscing with D.Q. That blue sky above them had been so pure, and unhurried. Everything in his life had been about— this existential crisis would have to wait. He still had a job to do, and he was still fucking amazing at it.

“You said it first, and you heard it from Beefcake this morning— there is something out there. It’s been here for ages, and it’s not going away any time soon.” Eli said. None of those people going nowhere could ever go away like they had been made to. Cone looked at him like he had just pissed himself or something like that. This whole time, he had been the one talking about the Singing Road and its power, while Eli had been content with “phenomena”. The man who wasn’t supposed to be scared of anything, was now telling Cone that he had every reason to be afraid. All of the nervous energy that he had diverted to Warra, and reselling these old guns went right back to the main focus of the expedition.

“It’s what killed these people.” Cone said.

“Yeah, and it’s gonna git you too if you don’t listen to his plan.” D.Q. said. They hadn’t talked about about “plan”. Eli said that he’d figure something out when he had a better understanding of the situation. 

“You should have been reading my reports instead of making this an exhibit of military history… it’s almost a universal trend that— it doesn’t matter how much you put between us and it. If it wants you dead, you’re going to die.” Eli said. He sounded like Varly with all of this mish-mashing.

“I know this. Is there any way to… there are survivors. We can survive this.” Cone said. He might be onto something. Eli had written a few different theories on unifying factors for survivors. Most of them had been partly responsible for their crew-mate’s deaths by acts of cowardice or downright greed. They had left their friends to die. 

“You need to think of the Road, and all of its phenomena as a living thing. It has motivations and a reasoning for its actions… it wants something…” He said to keep the ball rolling. What did all of those people want? Eli knew. 

“Varly, Dedschik, and Splint. Are they expendable?” He asked.

“We all knew this was a suicide mission.” Cone said. That was a good dodge. D.Q. chuckled in the back.

“They’ll buy us time. Then we have to worry about escaping this mess you’ve parked us in.” He said.

“I got that! The river!” D.Q. said, proudly.

“The one right next to us? That’s over a mile wide and not likely to support our weight for more than 20 seconds? I thought about that as well.” Cone said.

“We don’t need to cross it to get out of this…” She said, looking around for props. After settling for the desk’s surface and a rusted bullet, D.Q. outlined their exit strategy.

“We find a spot on the bank where we can drive through— like between trees— and put a tether around one of them. My squad has done this a few times with barges when we got pinned down. We just have to pull on the tether, and we’ll get through. ” She said. 

“And how does the tethering work?” Eli asked.

“Someone places it— on foot.” She said. Cone instantly knew who that someone would be.

“I…” He tried to say before Eli stepped in.

“You told me how you were miserable about how your life had no adventure in it—” Cone found his tongue.

“And you just asked me if my crew was expendable! Get one of them to do it!” He said.

“No. They need to die for this to work. You’re going to be on the way— we’ll pick you up as we leave.” Eli said.

“OK, so I find a place for you to get out through place the tether…” He went pale.

“What?”

“It’s already dark by now.” Cone whispered. And dark was when the monsters came.

“So flare us, with this.” D.Q. reached into a side-holster and offered something to him. It looked like another pistol.

“You also had that on you?” Eli asked.

“Can’t just have the Divining Rod on one side, it wrecks your back like that.” She said.

“Just pull the trigger?” Cone asked.

“And you’ll get a sixty foot line of fire— it’s the same thing we use to signal attacks.”

“I can… when do we start?” He asked.

“We started when we left the Rusted Horizon. Use the rope-ladder and whatever cables around camp you can find for a tether.” Eli said. 

“So once we’re out of this place, then what?” Cone asked. 

“We drive like hell, and hope that we… by that point it will have gotten what it wants.” Eli said.

“What does it want?” Cone asked. 

Eli chuckled.

“Get that tether in place, I’ll tell you afterwards.” He said. 

“What about me?” D.Q. asked, raising her autocannon.

“Put holes in things.” Eli suggested.

Eli was the first one to go up the ladder. This “plan” was half-decent relative to the other schemes he had come up with over the years. But for things he had come up with on the fly, this was his greatest work. He heard the shrieking as he was on the fourth rung. The sound had come from outside the wall of abandoned vehicles. From what he heard through the Roller’s wall, the people in the camp had also heard it. He could even hear one of them cursing his bad leg for the pain it gave him when he turned in his chair too quickly. Eli also saw that the vent into his room had been left open. Pontius had heard their entire conversation, and how all three of them had forgotten his existence for its duration. What to do about him?

The three surviving crewmembers were standing behind their crudely made perimeter of old cars. Varly and Dedschik had started closing gaps with loose bits of metal, and whatever branches they had found by the river bank. He saw that both of them had guns slung across their backs. Not like they would be good for anything besides a decent bludgeon. The wall itself still had gaps large enough for five people to walk through together. There was also nothing to keep shorter things from going under the vehicles. The fire where Warra and Hugo’s remains lay was still going strong, thanks in part to the cannister of methanol that someone had put on it. Splint was sitting on a crate by the fire and drawing in the snow with a stick. He couldn’t see much of what lay beyond their defenses. He didn’t want to. Everything was in the shadow of the Roller. 

On the other side, the sun had recently set and the sky was still somewhat red. Cone was right about the river, there was no way that they would be driving across that without testing the Roller’s buoyancy. They did have a large air-tight chamber in the middle of the vessel. But one survivor had mentioned a swimming phenomena that looked like a frog. He would take his chances with the tether. Speaking of which, Cone had already retrieved the rope ladder, and was tying an end of it to the top of the plow. He had several coils of rope across his chest. In his haste, Cone had forgotten to put on his jacket. Hopefully Eli would remember him as that muscled and active middle-aged man who did his complaining before he started a task and not the flabby, paranoid merchant who had plagued this expedition. Regardless, his current business was with the person whom Cone shared a bunk. 

Pontius had already come out of his enclosure, and was cupping a hand to his ear. He thought he had heard some shrieking, the same way that Eli believed that something was sniffing outside of his room last night. While maybe not complete insanity, this still gave him a reason for what he was about to do. 

“Eli, I heard wha—” Pontius started to say, but his knife was already deep in the pilot’s side. He pushed himself off of the blade and made it a few steps before his bad leg gave out from under him. Pontius fell forward, crawled for a few more feet, and then stopped. 

“None of you people have any trust… You’re all broken!” He groaned when Eli stepped on his lower back and finished him. Although he had been forced to do this many times, he had never kept a record of the crewmates he had killed. This time, Eli wiped the blood off on his own jacket. It wouldn’t make a difference now.

“Nice work.” D.Q. said as she climbed out of the roof-hatch and onto the deck.

“What took you so long?” He asked. 

“Had to see about something.” She answered before going over to the camp-side. Eli went over to the pilot’s enclosure. Just like they had forgotten about Pontius, they had failed to determine who would be driving the Roller for their plan. They definitely could have worked the pilot in, but… He was right about what he said near the end, that none of them had any trust. 

The pilot’s enclosure felt larger without Pontius taking up space in it. There was a small light above the seat that had been left on. Someone had written on the walls. This also happened when the Singing Road started affecting people. At least he hadn’t made any of these in his own blood, like others had. The medium looked like a charcoal-marker that merchants used to count shipments. What had he written? Most of the victims wrote mundane confessions or repeated phrases. This read like instructions— it was instructions, on how to operate the Roller. Pontius must have assumed that they would be driving non-stop, and that someone else would need to take the wheel. Maybe he had known that they might panic and kill him. Well, Eli knew that he could drive this when the time came. 

From the state of the camp, that time was fast approaching. The fire had gone out, and Dedschik and Varly were desperately pushing against one of the cars to keep something from coming through. He could see large puffs of steam going up behind the two as the phenomena fought against them. There was another shriek. Varly covered his ears and screamed in return while Dedschik noticed that whatever had been trying to get through had left. Eli took a moment to see if Cone had made any progress with the tether. The rope ladder was still tied to the bow, and he saw the lines moving as something on the other end moved farther away. For all he knew, that could be Cone’s body blowing in the wind. 

Speaking of bodies, there was Splint’s. Something had taken her head clean off. He saw the reddening snow beneath her was undisturbed except for her foot prints. She had died quickly, and mercifully, as if someone had wished that for her. 

“Beefcake, I have a feeling that you would enjoy watching this.” Eli said to himself. He didn’t have anything better to do than watch. Cone was still putting that tether on, and until then they wouldn’t be going anywhere. There was still the tent to worry about. However, the worn fabric, and a few stakes in the snow would be no match for the Roller once Eli had it moving. The structure would have to drag behind them until someone was able to roll it back up, or cut it off. They were going to be returning the Roller with a cargo full of priceless relics; the Guild would definitely overlook their tent being destroyed. But there were still bigger problems, one of them had climbed onto the cab of a perimeter semi-truck. 

The survivors had been right about many things so far, Eli found that they were also accurate in their descriptions of the creatures. He could call them “creatures” and not “phenomena” now. The thing on top of the truck was obviously a creature— there wasn’t any imaginable way that it could be anything else. He’d heard some talks about advanced robotics and how Pre-Burnout machines were almost life-like. But there was a separation between life-like, and breathing while producing large amounts of drool. Maybe it wasn’t drool. Some kind of liquid was flowing out of the creature’s mouth. It was shaped like a coyote’s, with the severe underbite that several witnesses had described. The key word for those descriptions had been “distorted”, “like a dog, but with a heavier build,” “The teeth weren’t in the right places, and not the right types either,” “Looked like a person when it looked at me.” Survivors had disagreed on where this one’s eyes actually were. Eli saw a glowing patch on the side of the animal’s head, and he was almost certain that that was one of the eyes until Varly put a bolt through it. The creature reared up and opened its mouth to scream. He didn’t hear anything. D.Q. didn’t look like she had either. When he looked back, the creature was staring at Varly with a set of eyes mounted at the front of its head. 

Although the thing’s mouth wasn’t moving at all, Eli heard growling. His limited experience with dogs indicated that the creature was about to pounce. Varly wasn’t in a position to delay this event, as he was still trying to reload the crossbow that he had taken off of Warra. And it wasn’t like a bolt through the head would be a problem for his attacker. A survivor, this one ex-military, had said that the only way he had seen any of the monsters incapacitated was when their legs were gone or they were cut in half. “Mobility-kill” he had called it. He should tell D.Q. that. Varly went down right as he was raising his weapon. Dedschik was quick enough to grab the crossbow from Varly as his throat was being ripped out. She fired another bolt through the thing’s neck. The growling went on uninterrupted. It sounded quite similar to what he had heard last night, before he realized it had been his chair creaking. There it was: little cracks and pops mixed with a deep moaning… coming from right behind him. 

Eli was fast, very fast, faster than all of the people who had tried to catch him off-guard over the years. He was fast enough to lop off one of his attacker’s claws, with the knife in his left hand. That didn’t make a difference. The creature came down on top of him and started to pin him down with its remaining appendages. Eli counted three. There weren’t just claws either, he felt something more dextrous grabbing his legs and holding them still. It felt like a person was trying to restrain him. The stump of the animal’s front right leg was next to his head, bleeding heavily. He felt the lukewarm fluid seeping under his face, it was steaming heavily on the Roller’s freezing deck. Oh, and he was tasting a little of it. It was salty… and bitter, it tasted like ash. He coughed the blood out and rolled to the other side. 

D.Q. was still on the deck, with her autocannon, and unaware of his situation. She was intently tracking something at the campsite with her weapon, while taking glances at the plow. Of course, all of her focus was on Cone setting up the tether. How long had it been? Two, three minutes? All that he had to do was climb down, run a hundred or so feet, and tie a decent knot. In the dark, with two feet of snow, and these things running around. If he wasn’t almost done by now, he was probably dead. The rope ladder tied onto the plow wasn’t flapping around anymore. Whatever Cone had done, he had the line taut with something. So how much longer to finish the knot and signal them? 

More pressing concerns dug into his thigh. He felt sharp pain down there. Eli’s free arm slapped the deck.

“Denny!” He croaked. D.Q. Turned to him and raised her autocannon. This wouldn’t do. The creature would easily tear his head off even as it was being pelted with 1-caliber slugs. 

Eli raised his hand and put up two fingers. Hopefully that looked enough like a gun. She understood and held still. So did the thing above him. 

Eli kept his focus on the rope-ladder and behind D.Q… Any moment now. 

A line of fire shot out on the river-bank. The creature shifted its weight off him. 

Eli shot it with his finger-gun, and D.Q. followed up. 

The first slug hit the animal’s shoulder. The appendage hit the ground as the second shot went through its central mass. Ashy blood sprayed all over him. As he was trying to blink it away from him, a third shot hit and the creature fell off of him. 

It was dead. Very dead. And Eli was feeling very alive. If anyone was below decks, they could probably hear his heart thumping against the Roller’s surface. He didn’t feel anything but the excitement rushing through him. Not even the blood that was seeping into his clothing. He reached his hand back to where the claw had dug into him. There were tears in the fabric of his outer pants, hopefully they didn’t extend to deeper layers. Further down, between his legs, there was something hard. Like solid. Near-death experiences did this to people. Definitely not the time for further examination. There was something off about this. The protuberance was coming from his leg. 

“That’s my femur.” He said to himself as he contemplated his route to the driver’s enclosure with a compound fracture. He would have to be the one driving. D.Q. would be gunning, and Dedschik would finally be able to die. 

He was currently lying on his back on the middle of the deck, facing the camp side of the vehicle. He’d have to turn around, and make his way to the enclosure’s door. At least there was a chair in there. He could look forward to that. 

His right leg was working just fine. But what good was that if he couldn’t bring himself to a stand without snapping the left one off? Being able to grab a railing would make this process less risky. And he couldn’t crawl without rolling over. Eli pressed his good leg onto the deck. He slid forward. Right, the deck had just been lubricated with a coat of blood. This would work. 

Using his arms, Eli shoved himself across the deck to the side railing. After nearly pushing himself overboard, he grabbed the rail above him and pulled himself up. He put his usable leg on the ground and swung the bad one behind him. Now for the pilot’s enclosure. The slippery blood had helped him make it this far, but it would make the rest of the journey a goddamn nightmare on one foot. 

D.Q. started shooting again. Eli hopped over to the enclosure without incident and flung the door open. He heard something crunching as he sat down in the chair and looked over the last pilot’s instructions. This shouldn’t be too complicated for someone who had spent his career actively spurning the mechanical arts. 

He couldn’t tell if he had the engine started, or if the rhythmic pounding was from the autocannon outside. She was having fun. Some other lights had come on in the enclosure, and there were dials going… fuck it. 

Eli pushed the lever that Pontius had labeled “Ax-ell-erat-or” and the Roller lurched forward. After nearly losing her footing, D.Q. started reeling in the ladder. Presumably that would bring them to wherever Cone had tied the other end of the rope. 

Now to deal with his leg. Was this something he could do himself? Eli didn’t see another option. He would die of infection from this open wound long before they reached anyone who knew what they were doing. At the very least, he needed to put the bone back inside his leg. 

Splint would have had some packed supplies, but he was in no state to access them. He grabbed the binoculars from their hook on a nearby wall. Keeping his eyes on the path ahead of them, and one hand on the wheel, Eli uncoupled the strap on the binoculars. He shoved the strap in his mouth for safe keeping and moved to the edge of the chair. After being sure that the binoculars would have a clear path, he bashed his femur-bone with the clunky instrument. 

“Woooaaayyynnnngg.” He groaned as the bone disappeared back into him. Easily the worst pain he had ever felt. None of it would matter if he bled out. That’s what the strap was for. There was enough material for him to make two passes over the exposed area on his inner thigh. He should have poured some of his scotch on the strap to sterilize it. After doing his best to make a knot, Eli turned his attention to the Roller’s progress.

The tether line was now off of the left side. Eli spun the wheel until they were once again heading towards where Cone had put the end of the tether. He saw a tree up ahead, it was over 50 feet tall and already leaning over from the strain the Roller had put on it. The tree must have been dead already. As soon as the wheel was on solid ground, they would be able to cut off the tether on their end and start heading South. They were close. Extremely close. D.Q. was still taking infrequent shots at something behind them. Eli gave the wheel a half-turn to the right, moving the plow just out of the way of the tree. The dead mass slid past them, partially illuminated by one of the lights mounted on the enclosure. Hopefully Cone had cut the tether by this point, so they wouldn’t—

He hadn’t. The Roller stopped abruptly. Eli turned the accelerator to its lowest setting so the wheel wouldn’t bury itself in the snow. He didn’t want to risk stopping and restarting the engine. There was a switch that read “Emerj-in-C Plow relese”, but they would still need the implement to go through the snow. Eli would have to cut the tether knots himself. 

There wasn’t anything in the cabin that he could use as a cane, so once again, Eli hopped his way across the deck to a railing that he could grab. It would be a long 40 feet to the plow. He felt inside of his jacket; he still had two knives in there, and either one of them would could go through the braided cords that made up the rope ladder. Just cut the ladder and they could be on their way. 

Railing lined the deck of the Roller except for the two spots where the ladders came up. To cross the gap by the pilot’s enclosure, Eli had to execute some kind of a leaning cartwheel. Once on the other side, he was free to keep pulling himself hand over hand by the railing. He looked at D.Q., her attention was on something behind her. The deck around her was covered with shells, and her autocannon was producing an incredible amount of steam. The line of ammunition that fed from her backpack was no longer full of fresh slugs. He estimated that she had about 15 shots left. There was still a lot that someone could to with 15 slugs. Behind them was the trail that the Roller had left as it came up from the river-bank. There was a hole in the ice. He hadn’t felt the surface cracking under them. 

“I got the lines!” Cone wheezed from below the ladder. Eli shuffled back to the edge of the railing. If he had indeed cut the lines, why weren’t they moving again? He still felt the wheel struggling against the snow. 

“Get up here— we’re going home.” Eli said to him. Cone laughed softly as he climbed up the ladder. Eli looked back behind them. The hole in the ice was glistening from the fire back at camp. They still weren’t moving forward. 

“D.Q. what’s your situation?” Eli called back, to make sure that she was still there.

“I don’t think I have enough ammo for this!” Came the response.

“For wha…” Eli started asking as something grabbed Cone’s leg. The merchant grabbed the railing as he was pulled to the back of the vehicle. Eli did his best to follow. Something’s appendage was wrapped around Cone, and he saw a spine going through his calf. He didn’t want to follow the limb back to its source. All he needed to know was what Varly had told him earlier about some of these things being over 30 feet long. 

“Eli! Eli, please!” Cone begged. He couldn’t do anything. The arm grabbing him was as thick as his torso, and covered in spines. Their flimsy appearance reminded him of a catfish’s whiskers. Even Cone knew that he didn’t have a chance.

“Wha— What does this place want?!” He cried. He’d done everything that had been asked of him: assemble an expedition, watch his companions die, and finally risk his own life for a chance at escape. All of that suffering for what?

“It wants acknowledgment.” Eli said as Cone’s grip around the railing broke and he was pulled from view. Something enormous bit him and he stopped screaming. 

The Roller started moving again. Eli hopped back into the pilot’s enclosure and pushed the vehicle to its top speed. There was a bright light in one of his mirrors: D.Q.’s autocannon. The weapon lit up his view of the Roller’s left deck, and then behind the vessel as the shots landed on the monstrosity chasing them. There were three kinds of creature-phenomena associated with the Singing Road: the owls, the dogs, and the fish-thing behind them. That drawing by the chipped Formers suggested that there was a fourth, but no one else had confirmed its existence. 

D.Q. backed onto the middle of the deck as her weapon ran out of ammunition. She dropped the heavy gun on the deck and pulled out her pistol in time to liquify a tentacle as it reached for her. She sat down on the deck and laughed for a while. No further tentacles or creatures arrived. Eli turned the Roller South and clamped the wheel in place. 

“Hey Denny!” He called out from his enclosure. 

“Yeah!” She shouted.

“Could you go down and get me that last note cannister— and whatever bedding’s available, we’re going to be sleeping up here to take shifts driving… And a bottle of scotch, it should be in the cabinets.” She gave him a thumbs up and started for the hatch. After realizing that her backpack was now useless, she unslung it and threw it overboard. Her autocannon stayed on the deck. Eli could hear her rummaging around through the vent. Someone had taken a lot of time to perfect the acoustics on this vehicle. He even heard the song she was humming to herself, the same one that Beefcake had done before they shot him. There was a handle in the enclosure to shut off the vent. Eli pulled it when he heard one of his duffle bags being emptied out. He unclamped the wheel and tried steering around a bit. 

Denny climbed out of the hatch, and pulled up a duffle after her. 

“You wanna drive for the nights?” She asked him as she dragged the bag into the enclosure. It took up most of the floorspace in the room. D.Q. sat on the lower bunk and started going through the contents.

“Here you are.” She said, passing him the note-cannister titled “End of Expedition” and a notebook. There was a marker in a cup by the front window; Eli put it in his mouth as he unscrewed the cannister. There was already a note inside. It was his list of “Everything That has Gone Wrong.” 

“How’d you know about this?” He asked.

“I had a hunch that I’d make it somewhere in your notes.” She said.

The first item on the list was titled, “Don’t go around saving people— it doesn’t get you anywhere.” 

“Are you sore about it?” He asked as he started writing in the notebook. “Survived attack. Rest of crew is dead. Mechanism behind organic and mental phenomena is still unknown. Current theory is that victims of Road massacre want acknowledgement. Want others to be aware of the arbitrary nature of their suffering. Three confirmed hostile fauna. Mental state remains stable. Moving to re-contact Rusted Horizon.”  He wrote. 

“It’s been a rough couple of years for both of us.” She said after he had thrown the cannister out the door. 

“I’m… There’s not a whole not left of me.” Eli said. 

“You going to keep doing this?” She asked. He thought.

“We have a Relay Roller that’s crammed with Pre-Burnout firearms— we could basically go anywhere we want.” He said. 

“It was kind of like that last time… just waking up without any ties and being free to— shit…” She trailed off. 

“Do you want something new?” He asked.

“Not sure yet. What about you?” She asked.

“This job… a fuckin non-chipped Formers. It took everything from me. I don’t even know who I am at this point. I turned into this sort of… do-er. I got an assignment, I went there, I asked around, I lied to make others feel safe, stabbed them when they didn’t… and watched people die, just so I could get a glimpse of what happened to them. I became used to not feeling anything. I did my job and wrote the report. I did that job here. Maybe I’ll write that report for fun.” 

Eli leaned back in the chair. This one didn’t creak. He was still in his mid-twenties, with great reflexes, decent looks, and good wits. And he was a survivor of the Singing Road.

“You know what I want?” He asked.

“I want a job that’s going to give me something for once.” Eli said. 

“Amen to that.” D.Q. said as she poured scotch into metal cups.

She stood next to him, equally tired and embittered. They drank and went their separate ways to contemplate what their new lives might look like. While Denny slept, Eli kept driving through the frozen North Dakota prairie, hopefully going somewhere.