They burst out of the smoke into clean noon like a fish breaching.

The world went bright and ugly again. For a moment there was no one in front of them at all.

"Left," Elias said, because he trusted his instincts and the map more than a miracle. "Three more pickups. One with men in the bed. One empty. One with a tarp."

"Tarp," Alexei said, pleased. "Interesting toy to bring to this fight."

The tarp blew back in its own hurry to be part of the drama.

Under it: a winch welded to the floor with a cable around it thick as a man’s thumb. The thing was massive, probably taken from the same tow truck that gave the throwers their cables. It was made to lift heavy things... and Zubair had a feeling he knew what the plan was.

Afterall, it was obvious. Lasso the target, catch it, and haul it back in.

He sighed, a tiny sound of disappointment... like a craftsman being asked to tolerate duct tape as a fix instead of just doing it right.

He nudged the truck to give the raiders what they wanted... and a little bit of hope went a long way to make you stupid.

One of the throwers rose.

The loop hissed out, a decent cast, a good one even.

It slapped the bed corner, skated, found nothing to grab hold of, and slithered back off into its maker’s lap.

"You need more practice," Sera advised kindly through the window, and the man flinched as if struck. "Maybe try mutton busting, it would be a good start."

Ignoring her words, the raiders continued to press their ’advantage’.

If hornets never broke off their attack, then neither would they. Not while the day was fat and their pride fully intact.

They came and came, and the road kept giving the same lesson in different sentences.

Or course, they weren’t all that dumb.

The tricks changed. Sometimes it was oil poured across the lanes, or nails scattered like confetti decorating a birthday cake, a truck angled to fake a rollover.

But no matter what they tired, they proved over and over again that they were insane.

Reflex wasn’t a strategy, noise wasn’t a plan, hunger didn’t make a man immortal... and trying the same thing over and over again did not give different results.

It just sent them home tired.

Soon enough, Zubair, with the men and Sera passed a farmhouse that should have been dragged into the last century and hadn’t been.

A man stood in the yard with his arms folded in front of him, watching the parade of men trying to kill each other with the face of someone who’d already seen it twice that day.

Two children peered out from behind the door.

"They’ll try to make an example," Elias said quietly, more to the air than to the cab. "If they can’t break us, they’ll break anything we pass."

"No," Sera said, just as quiet. "They won’t have time."

He did not ask why. He had learned that her sense of time was nothing that a mere mortal like him could question.

A rider drew parallel on the left and shouted something that might have been a challenge or a prayer.

He lifted a knife to show he had one, his eyes wide and slightly unhinged.

Sera rolled down her window, leaned her head out just enough for the rider to see the curve of her smile, and the man—God help him—wobbled a degree as if the ground had shifted under his front tire.

"Men," Lachlan chuckled, soft with amusement. "It’s like he has never seen a pretty face before."

Zubair took them over another low bridge that divided a ditch instead of a river.

The concrete hummed and shifted beneath the tires of the truck as the rails threatened to break with just a look.

Through his mirror, the line of raiders kept lengthening, a never ending beast that still hadn’t learned it didn’t stand a chance.

"They’ll change leaders," Elias said, feeling the shift that happens when a man has used up his loud and the pack wants a different noise. "Someone younger will have a new idea. They’ll stack the next trick on top of an old one and call it a plan."

"Will it work?" Lachlan asked, eager for a bigger swing.

"For a minute," Elias said. "Then it won’t."

"Comforting," Alexei drawled.

"It isn’t meant to be," Elias replied. "It’s a warning."

"About?"

"About how many minutes they have to try."

No one argued.

Sera’s eyes had gone to the far horizon again, not for threats, but for the possibility of them.

Luci rested his jaw on the door and watched the world with the contented attention of a creature that had eaten and found his pack intact.

The riders did switch leaders.

Elias could tell by the way the formation hiccuped for a brief second, then reknit around a truck with red paint slashed across its hood.

The new man liked drama more than the last—he sent four bikes weaving close in a cloverleaf, set two trucks to drag a net between them like fishermen, and timed the shots from the rifles to the beats of their engines as if music could make rounds smarter.

It worked for a minute.

And then it didn’t

Zubair lifted them over the cloverleaf with patience, not speed.

Sera leaned out the window and cut the net with her hand like it was twine, because to her it was. The red-hood truck nearly took itself out trying to keep time.

When it was done, when the last trick in that set had exhausted itself and lay crumpled on the shoulder like a carnival banner after rain, Elias finally let out the breath the day had been stealing from him in thin taxes.

"They’re not going to stop," Lachlan said, not upset, almost satisfied at the certainty of it.

"No," Elias said. "But they’ll learn not to play so close."

He didn’t say the rest, because he didn’t need to. Close or far, clever or loud, predators burned through fuel and men the same way.

Sera tilted her head, as if hearing something he did not. "Let them keep coming," she said, friendly as a tavern invitation. "Day’s generous."

Elias glanced at her, at the clean line of her jaw now that the blood had dried there and then flaked off.

He opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it again.

The world didn’t care for his reminders, and the truck didn’t need them.

The road unspooled.

The riders poured themselves thinner and wider to keep pace. Zubair set the engine to a hum that could go on all afternoon.

Alexei hummed along, tuneless and pleased. Lachlan cracked his neck and grinned at the mirror like it had insulted him personally.

Elias marked the patterns in his head the way he marked wounds: number, depth, whether they’d scar.

He did not count hours. There weren’t any that mattered.

There was only light and then not.

Behind them, the hornets came on.

Ahead of them, the day held.

And in the middle of it, between hunger and road, Sera rested one hand on Luci’s head and smiled at nothing at all.