I slid murkily into consciousness, as if from one dream to another, and tried peacefully to make sense of the swimming gray above me, streaked with gold and green fish that lapped effortlessly through the haze.  I was wrapped in sheets and blankets, feeling like some forgotten Lazarus waiting to be unbound.  I was a little too warm, and very thirsty.  I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, minutes, hours later, the room was brighter, and I could see the green trim that framed the faded wallpaper, and dust motes swirling in the bright sunlight that now filled the room.  I heard soft footsteps coming toward the room, the quiet creak of the old door opening to her (our) room, and my Ella entered, carrying a battered stainless steel tray with sandwiches and a pot of some pungent smelling tea.

She wore a clean white summer dress spotted with faded red flowers, no doubt trying to enjoy one of the last warm days before the harsh winter set, the fabric clinging to her slender frame, swishing almost noiselessly around her hips and thighs as she padded silently across the floor.

Ella set the tray on the end table and climbed into the bed and lay next to me, propping herself on a slender arm, looking at my face with a deep compassion that for some reason unsettled me even as I felt a spreading warmth in my chest.  She smiled, and brushed the hair back from my temples and forehead, her spidery fingers running gently over my face.  I closed my eyes again, enjoying the sensation of her touch on my forehead and eyebrows, down my cheek, across my lips.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Better,” I replied mechanically, keeping my eyes closed, focusing on the warmth of her fingertips, now tracing the veins of my throat.  ”Where’s Margaret?”

“She’s in school,” she answered, and we let the silence return for a moment.  One of the recent reforms in Roadhouse territory created the option of a public schooling system, based out of the old high school.  Originally, the benefits of a pre-Crossing education were relegated to those of us who were old enough to have actually had one and to those we independently decided to teach, creating an almost mystical reverence of the wisdom and knowledge of the “elders.”  However, Nick had proposed to create a schooling system available to all of the children in our territory, citing that it would create a stronger future than would a community of peasants ruled by some intellectual elite.  I was inclined to agree with him, despite Kevin’s misgivings about planting the seeds of liberal and enlightened malcontent.

There were maybe a hundred children in the school program all told, since it was voluntary and most families preferred to keep their children home for safety and labor reasons, even though the vegetable oil bus that transported the children was barred and armored, and contained no less than two armed guards in addition to the armed driver at any given time.

“How long have I been out?”

“Almost three days.  Your fever finally broke last night.”  Her lips touched my forehead, what I had always considered a mysteriously developed maternal instinct for checking temperatures.  Satisfied that the fever had not reemerged, she gently kissed my cheek and then sat up in the bed, expectantly.

I opened my eyes again, finally, and with a small grunt lifted my heavy head from the pillow and pulled myself into a sitting position, hooking my arms around my knees so that I wouldn’t fall back again.  The room spun and pulsed terribly, and blood pounded vengefully through my temples and neck, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open, knowing that if I shut them against the maelstrom it would be a short trip down again to the threadbare pillow.

Ella’s hand pressed reassuringly to the center of my back, and I gratefully leaned toward her, resting my head in the nook of her shoulder, letting her fragrant hair cover my face.

“Come on,” she whispered.  ”Let’s see if we can’t get something down you and get you out of this bed.”

I felt her smile.

“Ella,” I said, almost tenderly, and felt her other hand gently squeeze my arm.  ”What are we?”

She leaned back suddenly, her lips curled into an almost pitying smile, her bright eyes the only steady points in the still swirling room.

“We’re Adam and Ella,” she said warmly.

+

A little less than an hour later, Ella and I walked hand in hand toward the central mall of the Roadhouse.

The Roadhouse had changed significantly since pre-Crossing times, when it was simply the Skvarla house, fortunately situated between all of our own homes, and thus was our unofficial “base” of operations.

Now most of the woods behind the house had been cleared, surrounded by high stone walls, and the Roadhouse resembled not a spacious Pennsylvania backyard but a spoked, teeming futuristic medieval micropolis.  In the center, as mentioned, was the mall: a trim, spacious, and reasonably circular clearing which provided a sort of community center, complete with cart-pushing vendors and merchants from the surrounding towns peddling their wares during the semi-open daylight hours of the Roadhouse before the evening lockdown.  Just off of the center of the mall stood our laughably named Forum, a closed pavilion made of cinder blocks and two by fours filled with folding chairs, where we occasionally had something like “town hall” meetings, but more often it was used as nothing more than a run-down dance hall for the Townies, with grainy speakers trickling pre-Crossing music.

To the west of the mall, along the old Paintertown Road, was the limited residential sector, which those of us lucky or powerful enough to have been allowed to actually live within the walls called home.  Running along the whole northern wall was the foreboding military complex, with its low concrete buildings and flat dusty earth, encompassing the training grounds, barracks, the armory where Ella worked, and the notorious “Brig,” located in some cold sub-basement where our AN friend was no doubt being held.  Toward the south were the administrative offices, and along the eastern wall, furthest from the interterritorial travel roads, were our utility centers: power, water, the motor pool with its vegetable oil refinery.  It was a self-contained fortress, and while Nick had always encouraged it as a community center for greater Roadhouse territory, we rarely saw new people milling about.

The mall was quieter than usual as the two of us strolled along.

“I guess word must have spread about your unusual return,” Ella said, worry creasing her brow.  ”I’ve never seen it this empty.”

“People are scared, I suppose.  This is an unstable time.”

“But do you think they realize that?  How bad things are getting?”

“Maybe not consciously.  But you can feel it.  In the air.”  At least I could.  ”Ella, do you even know how bad it’s getting?” I asked gently.

She drifted a bit closer to me and I wrapped my arm around her bare shoulders.

“I’ll protect you,” I said after a while.  ”And Maggie.  I promise.”

“Don’t say that, ” she said bitterly, quickly.  ”Don’t promise.  You’re a lot of things, boy.  I don’t want you to end up a liar too.”

I pulled her a little closer, and we walked on in silence.  We had almost made a full lap when Michael appeared.

“Adam, I’m glad I found you.”  He stopped and turned to Ella, bowing slightly.

“If you’ll excuse us–” he began, trying to lead me by the arm back the way he had came.  He seemed agitated and hurried.  I rotated my elbow, popping out of his grip.

“What?” I snapped.  I could hear the coldness returning to my voice.

He sighed, obviously anticipating resistance.  ”Emergency meeting.  Dad’s house.  We need to go, now.”

“Can she come?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Michael said, raising his hands in a placatory gesture.  Shrugging, I began to turn away.  It was Ella who stopped me, her own hands resting on my chest.  She was smiling again.

“I have to be home for Maggie anyway,” she said.  ”The bus will be coming soon.  When you get done, though, we’ll all have a nice dinner together.  Okay?”

I didn’t answer at first.  To be honest, I really didn’t want to go to the fucking meeting.  I wanted to rest.  I wanted to be with Ella.  I wanted–

Her cool hand came to rest on my cheek.

“Okay?” she asked again, her eyes full of compassion and understanding.  She knew how I felt.  I was beginning to think that maybe she always had, even when I didn’t.

I nodded reluctantly.  She stretched up on her toes and kissed me, and then walked away without another word, sunlight in her hair.

“Look,” Mike began, but I had already pushed passed him and begun stalking toward the house.

“You know,” I said, bracing myself against the frame of the cab with my good arm, “if you shred the transmission, we’re pretty much fucked.”

Michael grunted sharply, his brow knitted with concentration and anxiety.  Even after nearly a day’s practice, navigating the truck slowly through narrow canyons lined with cars and debris was still harrowing.  He would’ve undoubtedly given me the finger if he was willing to loosen one of his whitened knuckles.

I sighed, and glanced into the jumpseats behind us, where the bleeding soldier from the AN lolled and sweat in a haze of pain and drugs.  Next to him sat the ominous cylinder wrapped in scraps of blue tarp that had been recovered from the burning truck.

I faced forward again.

“I really don’t like that thing being in here.”

“Would you rather have left it for some harrier to run across?”  Mike sounded more relaxed now that the road widened; Behemoth was easier to manage at a reasonable clip.

I was silent for a moment.

“Can I get back to you on that?”

Mike grinned a little uncomfortably, and then glanced over at me.

“You look like hell, dude.”

“I feel like it.  Felt like it for a couple days, now.”

“Probably from never sleeping.  Come to think of it, I can’t even remember the last time I saw you eat.”

I shifted, annoyed, trying to wedge myself into a more comfortable position.

“Maybe it’s the company,” I said coldly.

This time, Michael gave a genuine grin along with one of his freed fingers.

We were quiet for a while.  It was hard to say how long, but it couldn’t have been much longer than ten minutes.

“What I can’t understand,” Michael said, “is why they had that thing on them to being with.  Unless . . .”  His voice trailed.

“Unless they weren’t planning on turning around when they got us,” I finished.

+

Despite the lurching and roaring of Behemoth, I felt myself dragged into some twilight of consciousness, slipping in and out of feverish dreams and memories and nightmares.

I dreamt of Michael’s wedding.  Michael was dressed in a worn yet impeccably cut tuxedo and a deep green tie, and Maria was in a long, flowing, and clean white dress adorned with ribbons and lace, also of green.  I think it was the brightest white I had ever seen after the Crossing, burning like a sun from some faraway place.  The whole compound had been decorated likewise, with banners and trappings of green and white stretching and flowing over and among the buildings with glorious verdant fervor.  Flowers of every conceivable shape and size and color had been planted and meticulously cared for in large strips, creating a beautiful aisle through which they had ascended as two and descended as one.

During their reception, a loud, joyous, cacophonous affair, I found myself so moved that I ran to my house and returned, breathlessly toting a battered banjo, the grin on my face finally one of peace and revelry, devoid of cunning and violence, and I leaped onto the small crude stage and began picking out a spry jig, stomping and shouting, feeling the band silent for only a moment and then joining into the song, the storm, surrounding and exalting my friend, my only friend, and his beautiful bride.

I wept, and I couldn’t tell how much was memory and how much was nothing but a hollow dream.

I dreamt of Kevin.  We were talking, and then we were arguing, and we were savagely punching and kicking and rolling around and I remember his eyes, full of fury and a deep sorrow, stung with tears, and I remember hearing my laughter as it filled everything else.

I dreamt of waking up to gunfire and dirtbikes, screaming and shouting, fire and blood and snow everywhere, on the ground and on the burning homes and in my eyes and my mind and my heart.

I remembered that the fire had gone out as I stared at the young girl’s charred flesh, mummified by the senseless heat and violence, her parents’ tears freezing on their pale faces, and where the fire had been there was stillness and silence and nothing but the ashen gray of the empty skeletal buildings steaming and smoldering in the slush and ice.

I remembered the fire that followed, hoping that the pain and destruction and heat could somehow pierce into my own cold flesh.

I dreamt of that great rotting house that still filled my mind sometimes, its cracked windows and sagging roof like a mirror of my face, the door long gone leaving nothing but an aching and black maw daring and damning entry.

Michael stayed outside, and the electric torch clipped to my belt shone like a sad, pathetic angel dancing across endless ruin and mildew and blackened wood.

I smelled the cooking fire.

I climbed the stairs slowly, the odor and rot of it all in my lungs and mouth and behind my eyes, the cooking scents replaced by wet ash as someone had heard me, doused the fire, was no doubt lying in wait at the top of those dark stairs.

I kept walking.

The door was closed, but it yielded easily, crumbling like glass under the savage kick and then my automatic was thrust into the room, the trigger half squeezed in my steady hand, and it was then that I saw her eyes.

The light from my torch played across her face and hands,  glinting off of a worn kitchen knife that was pointed at me from across the room.  I could see her chest and her shoulders trembling as she clutched a dirty bundle to herself, but the point of the blade stayed true and still.  Her eyes were filled with a calm hatred, and they shone through the dark circles and lines of her face, smeared with old blood and new soot, and I lowered my pistol, staring into her eyes, drinking from the deep wells of them.  The bundle in her arms shifted and turned, and another set of eyes emerged, peaceful and stupid, and I felt something in my chest like a twinge of remorse and betrayal, and I held out my hand to her, the pistol clattering uselessly to the floor, and I prayed with whatever fervor and strength and faith that I had left, and her eyes bored into me, past the shame and guilt and brokenness and loneliness, and Ella, my Ella, laid the child tenderly in a tattered stroller,  stood, and lunged.

+

I awoke with a start.

“Where are we?” I muttered through the haze.  My mouth was dry.

“We just turned onto Paintertown.  Sorry for the rough downshifting.  You were out for quite a while.”

“Did you drive straight through?”

Michael nodded, and I could see the rings under his eyes and the pallor in his skin.

“Wow.”

While Mike navigated down the treacherous and winding road toward the compound, I tried my best to clear my head.  The dreams and nightmares had all but faded, drawing back into the recesses of my subconscious like a tide into the sea, and all I could think about was how apocalyptically dry my mouth was and the rust that had managed to work its way into my limbs.

Before long we had made it to the gates of the Roadhouse, and, as per protocol, there was a party to meet us, headed by DPM.  There appeared to be some consternation regarding our early arrival back home, and even more when somebody realized they counted only two heads.  Our friend from the AN had sank low into the back seat, his head resting on the tarp-covered cylinder.

I clambered out of Behemoth’s cab, hopping unsteadily down onto the pavement.  Michael had begun talking in a hushed whisper with DPM, whose expression grew more and more dour.

“There’s bad news about Kevin and Smarto, too,” DPM began, but was interrupted as I pushed past one of the nameless and faceless guards that had accompanied him.  Technically speaking, I was supposed to present my papers before entering, and always had, but today I had no patience or interest in playing the game.

The guard was staring at me, stupidly I’m sure, but then again, was he supposed to try to stop me?  Could he?  I was respected and feared.  Should he?

I didn’t care what he did.

I heard DPM call over my shoulder, sounding exasperated and afraid.

“Adam!”

I stopped, but didn’t turn.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” I answered.

Home.

+

As I marched through the grounds, I recited in my head the words I’d use when I saw her.  I had thought a lot about hers, and they had cut me more than anything I’d ever seen or done.  I was still deep in thought as I crested the small hill and saw our house come into view and, kneeling in front of it, tending to some small and wilting flowers, still dressed in her work jumpsuit, smeared with grease from the armory and dirt from the garden, was Ella.

She turned suddenly and saw me, and even from that distance, I could see the concern and confusion in her face and her movement.  She stood and I quickened my pace.  I raised my good hand and felt myself smile (when was the last time I had smiled like that?) and tripped, falling to the ground.

I tried to catch myself, and pain shot through my bandaged and already swollen hand and up my arms, resonating in my side and in my head.  I groaned sharply, and rolled onto my back.

Ella stood over me a few seconds later, her cheeks rosy both from running and the cooling night air.  She knelt, then, and I felt her hands gently examining me, her hands smelling sweetly of solvent and brass and gunpowder.  Her face was full of compassion and worry, and her cool hands reached my face and neck.

I closed my eyes.

“Adam,” she said softly, “you’re burning up.”

I opened them again, and her face filled my vision, her eyes shining like chips of sapphire, her hair surrounding everything as it circled her face and mine like a bright corona.  She was beautiful.

I opened my dry, desert mouth.

“I’m so sorry.”

Marlow cleared his throat.

“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” he began.  I sighed and shifted my weight.  It was one of those opening statements that I loathed, up there with “No offense, but” and “Don’t take this the wrong way”–useless phrases that never seem accomplish what they’re designed to do.

I don’t like my time wasted.

I was enjoying one of my favorite pastimes, which was smoking a cigarette and staring at nothing in particular, and thinking about hazy, swimming things that I could never seem to recall when I was roused back to whatever semblance of reality everyone still shared.

Michael was silently reading for perhaps the literal hundredth time his faded and beaten copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

“What’s the deal between you and your woman?” he continued.  I, of course, realized he was referencing Ella, but was intrigued by his apparent bravado.

So, I pushed him farther.

“Who?”

He was silent for a minute, obviously not certain how best to describe her.  The insane woman who accosted me?  The skinny bitch who kissed me in front of everyone?

He stammered stupidly.  ”You know, the girl . . . before we left . . . she talked to you.”

“Ella.”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“I’m not really sure what you mean,” I lied.

“I dunno.  It just seemed like you guys dug on each other, but there was a problem.  Just wonderin if you wanted to unload some.”

I was quiet for a few moments.

“It’s just all very confusing,” I said softly and lit another cigarette.

Marlow grunted a little bit uncomfortably, but took my hint.

“So what about you,” he said, elbowing Michael.  ”Any girl troubles?”

“Widower,” Mike said distractedly, and turned another page.

+

The three of us drove in silence for a while, Michael still methodically flipping through his book, my head bouncing off the slightly opened window as I smoked, Marlow driving as steadily as ever.

It was all very peaceful, actually, and the rumbling and motion was slowly lulling me off to sleep.

I was beginning to feel myself floating away from my exhausted body when Marlow slammed on the air brakes.  They chugged and huffed and squealed and barked and the whole rig began to slide left and right.

Michael and I were thrust forward against the large dashboard for a moment, only to be thrown back against the seat as the truck finally lurched to a stop.  My shoulder was beginning to pound where it had connected with the hard vinyl.

“What the fuck, man?” I whined, rubbing my shoulder, but when I glanced out the window, a little dazedly, I knew why.

Sitting suspiciously in the middle of the road, perpendicular to our previous vector, was a single car where the rest had been cleared, though by AN or raiders it was hard to say.  I didn’t quite know how to judge distance when we were traveling by vehicle, so where exactly we were remained a mystery.  It all seemed to go much faster and much slower at the same time.

“Well that looks suspect,” Michael observed, after collecting himself from the floor of the cab.  The back end of the car was sagging deeply on its rusted suspension, and the angle of the car had the clear indication of being placed.  Michael and I didn’t run into IEDs very often in our travels, but spending a couple of weeks without eyebrows early in our adventures taught me the valuable importance of caution.

I sighed, rather dramatically.  “Let’s check it out.”

+

It was a remarkably sophisticated device.  Against both Michael’s and Marlow’s better judgment, I savagely and repeatedly kicked in the trunk until I could force it open, and stared silently at what looked to be four or five silver cylinders, which appeared to be stripped down howitzer shells, each with a small green wire coming from the top and disappearing into the recesses of the vehicle.  Shredding the interior of the car did not reveal any more wires or, what I was hoping for, a detonator.  So now I laid on my back under the frame, a small flashlight in my mouth, following the tangle of wires into the wheel well.

“Son of a bitch,” I breathed, my lips curling into a wolfish grin.  The detonator was planted on the axle.  In a particularly sadistic way.

“What do you got?” Mike called, a little uneasily.  He always got antsy when I played with explosives.

“Fucker’s set to blow if the wheel turns.”  I slid out from under the the car and sat down, lighting a cigarette while studying the clever bomb.

Mike inched next to me, still palpably uncomfortable.  I considered pointing out that if anything, he was more likely to die a slow and tortuous death at his farther post rather that simply being vaporized where I was sitting, but thought against it, in what I assumed was probably a rare moment of sympathy.

“This is a remarkably sophisticated device,” I remarked casually.  “Definitely not a harrier trap.”

I’m sure Michael caught the hint, but we never really had time to discuss it.

“Face down,” Marlow ordered, gruffly.  “Hands on your head.”  He paused for a moment.  “Sorry.”  We didn’t have to look to know that he had a gun pointed at one of our heads.

Mike turned his head slightly, glancing at me.  I shrugged, and spat out my cigarette.

Even I wasn’t that fast.

+

In a remarkably exhaustive search on Marlow’s part, I had been relieved of both of my sidearms, three knives, a pair of brass knuckles, my picks and jimmies, and even my little grease pencil.  Michael had received a similar treatment.

Marlow now stood about eight or so feet away from us, a pistol gripped tight in his fleshy hand, watching us reasonably well.  After all, though, we were unarmed, handcuffed behind the back, and alone.  We had been sitting on the dusty pavement for more than an hour, waiting for whomever Marlow had called on his cell phone after rather roughly restraining us.

I sat cross-legged, facing Marlow, and Mike sat  with his legs stretched out, leaning against the wheel of the Behemoth rig.  His eyes were closed, but I knew that he was deep in thought, his mind racing.

For my part, I was trying to talk myself up for the insane plan that I had hatched in my head.  I really didn’t want to go through with it, but at the same time, I figured that waiting for his Yukon mates to come would only serve to narrow our options even further.

So the question became one of when.  I could tell that Marlow’s lonely vigil was waning in its intensity, but it still was not enough.

Suddenly and fortuitously, an electronic ringing sound pierced the bright afternoon.  Marlow fumbled for his phone, keeping the gun trained more or less on the two of us.

“Yeah,” he nearly whispered.  After listening for a few seconds, he seemed to grow agitated at the other.  He looked over us angrily, and stepped partially behind the truck .  I knew that it had to be now or never.

I leaned forward onto my knees slightly, raising the seat of my pants off of the ground several inches.  I folded my left thumb as much as I could across my palm, did my best to move the other hand out of the way, and dropped my full weight onto my hand, dislocating the thumb.

The pain was surprisingly fierce as it burst behind my eyes, my tongue feeling swollen as fire and glass coursed through my wrist and forearm.  I did my best to stifle a pained groan, focusing the air into a thin blade, letting it out slowly between my lips.  I prayed that I hadn’t broken the thumb instead.  Having never purposely dislocated a digit before, I wasn’t sure how it ought to feel.

Michael opened his eyes and stared at me evenly.  I wonder if he was thinking maybe it was the last time we’d see each other.  Marlow leaned out then, checking up on us.  I didn’t think that he had heard anything, so I did my best to look impotently suspicious and not in stifling pain.  Apparently satisfied, he returned to his hushed argument on the phone.

I wrenched my flattened hands apart and another wave of pain shot to my elbow.  My knuckles were skinned, and I felt like I was on fire from my fingertips to my shoulder, but the hand was free.  I stretched it open and closed, and the thumb popping back into place hurt nearly as much as it had coming out.  I took it as a good omen.  Marlow was facing away from us now, and I crept forward, clutching the empty manacle so it wouldn’t jingle, feeling like an orangutan doing a surprisingly reasonable impression of  a duck.  I made it nearly halfway when Marlow stepped back out from behind the truck.  He was looking down at his phone when I lunged, giving me the split second advantage I needed.

My hands closed over his and pushed the gun away from my chest where it had been quickly leveled.  It discharged once, searing the flesh on my already  throbbing hand, but I kept the grip and twisted it as far as I could, locking his elbow and forcing his shoulder away from me.  I thrust my mangled hand into his elbow, and felt it split with a satisfying crunch.  I immediately followed with a savage kick into the back of his knee and he dropped and I caught him with my arm around his throat.

In my experience, there are some injuries that can give your enemies incredible strength in the rush of adrenaline and panic, but generally I found a shattered arm to not be one of them.  But as I fruitlessly tried to wrench his neck from its natural position, he elbowed me twice in the ribs with his good arm like a tattooed steel piston, and I felt a rib pop.  I hated myself for loosening my grip, and hated myself even more as he turned in my arms and swatted me away with the bear’s arm.  I was on my feet almost as I hit the ground, but he was already going for the gun, and I knew that there was not enough time to close the distance again.

I sincerely hoped Michael had taken advantage of the opportunity.

Of course he hadn’t.  Instead, Michael, still handcuffed, awkwardly and heroically crashed into Marlow, sending him sprawling and the gun clattering once again.  I scrambled madly for it, my hands closed around the familiar cold weight, and I ended the struggle with a single echoing retort.

I stumbled unsteadily over to Marlow, and took his phone as well as the keys to the rig and the handcuffs.  Unlocking Michael and my other wrist, I finally sat down and tried to ignore the pain washing through my hands and head and chest.

“Wow,” was all Michael could manage as he rubbed his raw wrists, I think more out of surprise at how out of hand the whole thing had gotten than anything else.

“Which way,” I whispered hoarsely, my eyes pressed shut.

“You mean keep going or go back?”

I nodded.  Everything was silent for a few minutes as we thought, but slowly a low rumbling from the north filled the air.

“Guess that settles it,” Michael said.  He hauled me to my feet and I handed him the keys, and we ran towards Behemoth.

It seemed like I always had the first watch.  I suppose it was because I rarely slept even when Mike took over.  I rarely slept at all.  They say you need less sleep as you get older.  Then again, they say you need more sleep when you get older.  They say a lot of things.

To be honest, I don’t know if I actually do sleep.  Sure, I close my eyes for a few hours at a time, and when I open them again I’ll feel a little better, but when the world with your eyes closed and with your eyes open is the same place, the same nightmare, how can anyone be sure?

So the night found me with the first shift, and the first shift found me with my weapons laid out on a greasy towel in front of me.

I cleaned and oiled each in turn.  I cleaned them often, and I cleaned them well.  Each was a tool, a precision instrument, and each needed to be operating efficiently.

Before long, the task was done, and I returned my automatic pistol to its holster under my arm, the heavy revolver to my side, and carried the nicked up carbine over to my bags.

I slid the medic bag and revealed my beat up messenger bag, emblazoned with a fading but proud red star.  I rooted around inside for a few moments, and produced a yellowed and creased paperback volume: “1,200 Chess Problems.”  I was on number 984.  I produced a grease pencil from my pocket and sat cross-legged on the floor, poring over the diagrams and numerical hieroglyphs.

I shook my head at the treachery in some of them, scratched notes, drew arrows, and smirked as I slowly unlocked the puzzle within each one, the perfect moves that would lead to one inevitable conclusion.

The beauty of the problems was that perfect move.  There were scores of bad moves, a couple of decent ones, a few good moves, and then the perfect move.  The perfect move that changed the game from a battle of wills and hearts and minds to the tragic and forced knowledge of predestined victory or defeat.

Life was the same way, sometimes.

Sometimes you found yourself the heroic White, always a step ahead, playing on your terms, and finding victory.

Other times, far more often, you were the Black, the disadvantaged, the lonely, forced to make moves that you didn’t want to make, to be put into positions that you never in your wildest dreams imagined you’d occupy.  You watched, helplessly, your hands forced, the slow, inexorable march of the oncoming checkmate.

I was so enraptured in the diabolical beauty of the book that I almost didn’t hear the low, almost musical tones of a human voice.  A conversation.

It was coming from outside.  I exchanged the book for my field glasses and climbed into the loft, silently crawling to the edge of a large hole in the front of the barn, and began to scan the area.

The binoculars fixed on an apparition stalking back and forth before the monstrous rig (which we had already nicknamed Behemoth), its head glowing an unnatural whitish blue, its feet almost fading into the darkness of the ground.

It always surprised me the things that you could remember from before.  Things that you hadn’t seen or heard in 15 years you’d wake up thinking about with no rhyme or reason.  I know Mike would occasionally wake up humming showtunes from our high school musicals.

But I didn’t spend much time wondering about all of that, because I found it far more interesting that our illustrious driver and guide to the north, the perfectly named Marlow, was pacing back and forth, jovially chatting on a cell phone.

+

I had watched Marlow until he retired back into the cab, and then climbed back down into the barn.  At this point there wasn’t much time left in my watch, so I absently sharpened one of my knives as I waited for Michael to awaken.  I thought.

We knew the AN had the advantage of oil, and therefore probably superior tech.  But if Marlow was truly an ally, why wouldn’t he tell us he had a phone?  And who was he talking to?  I saw the moves play out in my head.  This was the endgame.  But we had an advantage going into it.  We knew.

+

My shift over, I kicked Michael in the ribs, probably a little bit harder than was necessary.

He coughed and rolled away, half awake.  He leveled his gun at my chest and blinked a few times.

“What the fuck, man?”  He lowered his pistol and stretched and sniffled and rubbed his eyes, his attractive morning routine.  I crouched down, feeling a bit like some terrible Black bird of prey as I hunched over his supine form.

“We’ve got a problem.”  My mouth widened into a death’s-head grin.  ”But we’ve got the advantage, boy.”

“So wait.  How long have we had this thing?”

Michael was staring at a great steel cubic monstrosity, armored plates riveted atop the original metal, the windows slatted with steel and impact-resistant glass, the whole thing set above monstrous wheels fitted with wide flat steel discs, giving the rig and absurdist, almost pimped-out look.  The sloppy flames that had been painted on the side also contributed.

Though they perhaps didn’t bear a comforting omen.

“Couple years,” DPM said, admiring his handiwork.  ”The plating and stuff is more recent; the engine was a bitch to get running.”

“Isn’t everything,” I agreed.

Marlow stared at it with a mix of confusion and lust.

“What about the fuel ration?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I had the answer.

“Yinz are headin on a high-priority mission, here.  You need speed and protection.  Not to mention, for anything else, something like this seems a bit . . . well, excessive,” Skip answered.  A good many of the higher ranking Roadhouse officials had come to see us off, including our illustrious leader.

“Excessive?” DPM scoffed, flicking his cigarette.  ”Fuck me.  I’ll show you excessive.”

+

As it turns out, DPM had mounted a detachable .50 caliber Browning heavy machine gun onto the back of the rig, with a clever little system that snapped right  onto the so-called fifth wheel, complete with heavy plates to shield the gunner.  It turned the whole thing into a mobile turret.

“Now obviously, you don’t want to use this thing while you’re moving,” DPM explained.  He paused dramatically, eying me steadily.  ”The combined force of the recall and the inertia of the rig will snap the motherfucker right off.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said.  ”Marlow’s got the wheel, right?”

Marlow nodded and hopped into the cabin, but Michael looked a bit surprised.  I sighed.

“It’s been twenty years since either of us has driven anything bigger than a dirtbike.  And you remember.  Homeboy here has some moves.”

Michael rolled his eyes and slid in to the middle.  I climbed in after him.  And with a satisfyingly masculine roar, the engine turned over, the whole cabin vibrating with barely contained raw power.  I grinned.

“Oh, one more thing,” DPM said, and handed me a bundle of tubes with bungie cords wrapped around them.  ”LAWs,” he said casually.

“There’s one more thing.”  A woman’s voice.  Ella’s.

She was clutching Maggie’s hand and she was trembling, but she didn’t look scared.  She looked pissed.

“Come down.”

I did.

She studied me for a few seconds, glaring up at me with some undefinable energy in her eyes that seemed to rival the rumbling of the rig behind me.

“I used to pray that you wouldn’t make it back, you know,” Ella said.  ”I used to pray that you’d get shot up or blown up or maybe find somewhere better than here and just not come home.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Every night I’d pray before I went to bed, and then I’d lay in bed, in our bed, alone, and stay awake half the fuckin night scared to death that you were shot or blown up or found somewhere or someone better.”

Her eyes were tearing up.  I felt a strange tearing feeling in my chest.

“I just wanted to be free from all this . . . all this waiting.”  She looked down.  Maggie was silent and had her eyes pressed shut.  I don’t think she’d ever heard her mom talk like this.  I sure as hell hadn’t.

Which isn’t to say that I was surprised to hear it.

“But I’m stuck here.  Cause you take care of me and Maggie, even if you don’t really love us.  You know you’re supposed to, even if you can’t figure out how.  I used to think I could teach you.  Maybe one day you wouldn’t look at us like strangers.  Maybe we could, you know, be . . . all of us . . . together . . .”

“What do you want?”  She didn’t answer.  Instead, she let go of Maggie and she lunged at me.  Her arms pinned mine and her hands dug into my back and my hair and she kissed me, her lips chapped but soft and I had forgotten how sweet it was, to be kissed.  I had forgotten how strongly her skinny arms could hold me.

“I want you to find whatever it is you’re looking for, because I know and you know and Skvarla knows that you don’t give a shit about the Roadhouse.  You don’t want land or influence or technology.  Difference among all of us is that I know what you’re lookin for.”

Staring into her roiling eyes and feeling her heart beating through her skinny chest, I believed her.

+

“You really should’ve said something to her, man,” Mike was saying.  Marlow sort of grunted in agreement as he steadily and skillfully took us out of Roadhouse territory, but I think he knew he wasn’t technically supposed to have heard anything.  I really didn’t care, because, well, everyone heard.  And I didn’t care.  I may have gone of the deep end in recent years, but I knew that everyone was scared to death of me.  No one would say anything.  Not that I cared.

I didn’t answer him right away.

“What should I have said?”

“I don’t know.  Something.  Anything.  I do know that you care about her.  At least you want to.”

“So what, should I have told her that this is it?  I’m done after this?  I don’t want anything more from this world, or these roads?  That I just want to go home and be with her and try to feel like I belong?”

“Do you?”