Sinn’s voice came through the speakers. Slightly different from before. The specific quality of a man whose confidence has been accurately updated.

"Outside kid," he said. "What do we do now?"

"He’s referring to you," Sherry said quietly beside me. Her hands were trembling in her lap. Not from cold.

Mercury pressed something on the dashboard and opened a radio channel.

"Hello." Sinn’s voice again, waiting. "You there?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

A pause. "What’s your name again?"

"Abram Nadez, sir."

"Abram." He said it like he was filing it properly this time. The voice of a man whose plans had just been revised by reality and who was making adjustments. "What do we do?"

"How strong are these cars?" I asked.

"Strong enough to keep what’s inside in and what’s outside out."

"Then kill the engines. Switch off all lights. In three hours the infected will lose interest and move on. We rest. We move at dawn." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Silence. Then: "Understood." His commanding voice returning, the brief human moment closing back over. "All units. Kill engines. Lights out. We move at dawn."

The lights went out across all the vehicles. The plain went dark around us.

****

Mercury started laughing first.

Not performance. The genuine helpless kind that comes when the body has run out of other options for processing something. May joined her. Then Sherry, which surprised me enough that I couldn’t hold it either.

Two full minutes of that. Then quiet.

"What do we do now?" May asked.

"Sleep," I said. "We need to rest."

"He’s right," Mercury said.

She pressed something I couldn’t see and the seats responded. The front pair folding back to meet ours, connecting into one flat surface. Then she moved to our side and adjusted the rear seats into the same configuration. The car had become a bed, which was either military engineering or expensive taste.

"Lie down," she said.

We arranged ourselves in the dark. I took the edge closest to the door. Sherry beside me. Mercury next, positioned protectively between us and the opposite door. May on the far side, legs already finding the dashboard as a natural extension of her sleeping area, her skirt doing what it usually did with no apparent concern from her.

The plain was quiet outside. Whatever was moving out there wasn’t moving toward us.

"Moments like this," Mercury said softly into the darkness, "forced my legs to open."

Sherry stirred. "What do you mean?"

"Her body count is thirty something," May said helpfully.

Mercury chuckled. "I mean the only way my body knew how to process fear and grief was sex. Still is, sometimes."

"That’s," Sherry searched for the word. "Not right."

"It works," Mercury replied simply. "Try it sometime and see."

It should have been funny. Nobody laughed. The silence after it told me that the plain had finished arriving for all of them. The jokes had been a delay. This was what came after the delay.

"Bram," Sherry whispered, her breath warm against my neck. "How do you fight grief?"

I lay there staring at the ceiling of the vehicle, feeling the weight of three sets of ears waiting in the dark.

Sherry had grown up in Goth. Outside the walls but protected by structure and Max Donman and the specific privilege of belonging somewhere. Mercury had found her method and built a number around it. May had probability to fall back on.

I had had nothing but forward.

"I just move," I said eventually. "I hold onto whatever hope I can find and I keep moving forward."

Nobody replied. The dark held us.

"When my mother died," I said, to the ceiling of the car, to the plain outside, to anyone still listening, "I didn’t die with her. She told me to run. So I ran." I closed my eyes. "I was ten. I ran when I had no one. I ran when I was starving. I ran when I was weak. I ran when I was dying." A pause. "I just keep running."

Sherry’s hand found mine in the dark and held it. Sleep came before I finished deciding to let it.

***

The sun came through the armored glass like it had a point to make.

Plain sun. Not city sun. The kind that arrived with full conviction and no interest in how you were feeling about it. I had grown up under it and my eyes still needed a moment. I opened them slowly, squinting against the glare.

Sherry was on me. Face against my chest, legs wrapped around mine, the unconscious arrangement of someone who had found warmth in the night and held onto it.

Mercury was asleep in a posture that was going to cost her neck something when she woke up. May lay sprawled on the far side, one leg still claiming the dashboard, her skirt barely covering anything.

I lifted myself carefully and pressed Sherry down onto the flattened seat. My ribs registered the movement. The battle with Vince was further away now but not far enough.

I looked out the window.

The infected were gone. Sand in every direction. The other cars parked ahead of us, still and silent.

"Girls," I said. "Time to wake up."

Mercury was first, a yawn that involved her whole face. May moved one leg from the dashboard. Sherry’s arm swept out in a wide arc that nearly caught me across the jaw.

We sat up, hair messy, clothes rumpled, the distinct morning-after look of people who had slept fully dressed inside a military vehicle on the plain.

"Morning," Mercury said, rubbing her eyes. "They’re gone."

The car in front opened its door. Harmione stepped out. Red hair somehow still fine, which was either good genetics or a specific ability I hadn’t catalogued yet.

"Let’s go," Mercury said.

We got out into the sand.

All three vehicles open. No infected visible in any direction. The flat silence of a plain morning.

But the Guardians’ car doors were still shut. Nobody had come out.

I looked at Sherry. She looked at the closed doors of the Guardians’ truck, her expression tightening.

Ten Guardians were bitten last night, I thought. And this morning nobody from the their car is stepping outside.

I started walking toward it.